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Explore real-time news, visuallyIn volatile Congo, a new U.N. force with teeth
View Photo Gallery — U.N. tries to act with a fighting brigade in Congo:?In trying to reverse the trajectory of one of the most complex conflicts in the Congo, the United Nations hopes to rescue the image of the troubled peacekeeping force. By Sudarsan Raghavan, Kilimanyoke, Congo — With shells flying overhead, the Congolese soldiers pressed forward on a desolate stretch of road near the Rwandan border. Ahead of them was a rebel army, firing relentlessly. Behind them, a new U.N. combat brigade waited in white armored vehicles, ready to serve as backup.
The U.N. soldiers are in Congo with an ambitious goal: to reverse the trajectory of one of the world’s most horrific and complex conflicts, one that has killed more than 5 million people since 1998, the deadliest war since World War II. They are also here to rescue the image of the troubled U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo.
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“To be a peacekeeper doesn’t mean you need to be passive,” a top commander, Gen. Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, said hours before the offensive began. “To be a peacekeeper, you need to take action. The way to protect the civilians is to take action. If you see the history of atrocities here, it justifies action.”
Inaction is precisely what the U.N. mission here has been criticized for in the 14 years since the United Nations dispatched soldiers to Congo, the first members of what has become the largest peacekeeping force in U.N. history. Now, the U.N. Security Council has launched the Forward Intervention Brigade in a bold attempt to defeat the dozens of militias that pillage this mineral-rich central African country, which is roughly the size of Western Europe. The brigade, composed of 3,000 soldiers, is the United Nations’ first offensive combat force and is seen as a possible model for defusing crises in other chaotic parts of the world.
But the force is also an unparalleled gamble for the United Nations that challenges the basic principles of peacekeeping. It has orders to react offensively to enforce peace, essentially transforming peacekeepers into combatants. And it is openly supporting Congolese government forces, a move away from the principle of neutrality that has guided other U.N. missions.
That could affect the United Nations’ ability to negotiate peace deals with the militias and risks deepening conflicts. Humanitarian agencies are worried that Congo’s brutal militias could see the entire U.N. mission, which also includes aid workers, monitors and civilian experts, as non-neutral potential targets.
There are also concerns that the U.N. force is propping up a corrupt government and aiding an undisciplined military that has a history of human-rights abuses, including mass rapes. Many Congolese remain skeptical of the new brigade’s potential to eradicate the militias. Others have lofty expectations that could bring disappointment and further antagonism toward the U.N. mission.
But senior U.N. civilian and military officials, as well as some analysts, say the brigade could be the United Nations’ best chance to help bring meaningful change, and perhaps even a sustainable peace, to Congo.
This week, the Congolese and U.N. forces pushed the rebels of the M23 movement out of major towns, including their last primary stronghold of Bunagana, near the Ugandan border. The remarkably swift military defeat of the rebels, who only last year briefly seized the eastern city of Goma, represented the first significant victory for the force.
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