In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, MONUSCO has the mandate to maintain the regime at the summit and, in the event of conflict, aggression or opposition to the regime, it facilitates the signing of international agreements between foreign rebel groups with the Congolese government.
And because the Congolese government does not have the capacity to finance such a mission, the United Nations is supplementing and reinforcing the support provided to the Congo government as part of sponsorship programs that facilitate the extraction of the Congo mineral resources without any control and without limits.
Principles of Peace Maintenance according to the UN Peacekeeping
Peacekeeping operations are guided by three fundamental principles: “Party consent; Impartiality; Non-use of force except in the case of legitimate defense or defense of mandate.” To consolidate peace in a country in conflict, the UN’s mission is to promote “dialogue, repair relations and build institutions.” And for the changes to last, the peace process must involve all parties affected by the conflict.
Rather than excluding or fighting foreign rebel groups from Congolese territory, MONUSCO has brought them around a table by concluding agreements according to the agreements of the parties (Nairobi Agreement with the CNDP, Kampala Accord with the M23, Addis Ababa Accord, …). Peacekeeping is not a “concrete response to a specific need expressed by communities for peace-building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” or a project that meets the real needs of the local community.
We are therefore forced to say that the international community, embodied by MONUSCO, is “incapable ofining peace in the east of the country and sometimes, is unable to support an attack on foreign armed groups in the Congo.” Despite its existence, MONUSCO is the constant object of ridicule but also of anger for the Congolese people who do not hesitate to be violent towards it. The will of the Congolese people to get rid of MONUSCO would mean getting rid of the current regime. In other words, attacking MONUSCO means attacking the illegitimate government established in Kinshasa.
The current international intervention in the Congo is problematic in that it has not addressed the problems of “intercommunal dialogue, exploitation of natural resources and mafia or foreign leadership.” As such, the Cohen plan (named after former Deputy Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen), which envisaged the creation of a common market in Great Lakes Africa, embodies what could be called “consciousness of the economic dimension of the conflict.”
Thus, as long as the constituent issues of local ethnicities are not addressed in front of the peacekeepers before the outcome goal is set, “the prospects for a negotiated settlement of the conflict in eastern Congo can only be limited, fragile and short-lived.”
The “Congolization” of MONUSCO in the DRC
The United Nations mission is contaminated by “environmental corruption and impunity,” while presenting all the characteristics of a heavy bureaucracy projected into a war zone. According to the report “Kassem dated 2009”, the inspection services of the United Nations had noted that “peacekeeping contingents were trafficking gold and other raw materials to their countries of origin, but these accusations did not result in sanctions, to the great frustration of the UN inspection agencies.” Although they retain command, the United Nations has not wanted to take sanctions against themselves.
It is no secret that the Congolese people have suffered and continue to suffer indescribable atrocities under the helpless eye of the international community and the inaction of MONUSCO. The Blue Helmets clearly let or let foreign armed groups “massacre, rape, kill, assassinate the Congolese population in the east of the country.” And the fact that the United Nations publicly apologized for their inaction proves that the purpose of their mission lies elsewhere.
Instead of safeguarding the vital interests of the Congolese people, the mission of the United Nations has been taken into a double progressive process of “congolization” and “bureaucratization”. The goal of achieving the consolidation of peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is “to accumulate resources, plunder wealth, and maintain a chaotic situation by impoverishing and slandering a population of different tastes but falling into a belief in a Congo more symbolic than real.”
©2022 – Analysis by Didier Amani SANGARA for LNL News