On 28th of February, the UN peace keeping mission in DRC commonly known as Monusco begun pulling out, a withdrawal exercise that will happen in three phases and will go up to December this year. But the legacy of this peace keeping mission is darker and definitely leave DRC in the worst state scenario.
In all evidence, Monusco’s mandate, whose cost of operations is estimated to $1 billion a year, for the past three decades, has been nothing but a sheer failure. On top of that, it will be remembered as one of the few peace keeping missions that was an utter waste both of resources and time.
The failed, unpopular mission which has got about 13500 forces dispatched in 14 UN bases, mostly in Eastern provinces kicked its operations in 2010 with a mandate of quelling insecurity, protect civilians, support the stabilisation and strengthening of State institutions, key governance and security reforms.
Tasked to protect civilians in security prone areas, the UN peace-keepers later turned into their perpetrators. Since the start of operations, reports from UN groups put the number of internally displaced people from the Eastern DRC to Seven million and according to Global Conflict Tracker six million people have died since 1996.
Mandated to chase, arrest, disarm, canton and repatriate different armed groups, Monusco became nothing but crime partners. When Monusco set foot in DRC, they were a couple rebel groups specifically the notorious FDLR, ADF, Mai Mai and or Codeco but the number grew up to hundreds of armed groups as reported by UN groups of experts.
Ignoring the build-up of the armed groups in DRC from which they were supposed to prevent, it became a norm for the UN peace-keeping in DRC to sit idly while Kinshasa’s government force FARDC was strengthening its unholy alliance with FDLR, a blacklisted terrorist and genocidal group.
According to keen observants in the Great Lakes region, Monusco and or its parent organization should be held to account in regard to vivid complicity of the same unholy alliance. Not only the FDLR was fully integrated within FARDC but it carried out its genocidal mission of doing ethnic cleansing of the minority Congolese of Tutsis origin.
In the provision of helping the government conduct security reforms, Monusco was mandated to trace and prevent sources of illegal mining, mostly done by infamous armed groups. Instead, it went astray and became a business enterprise which deals in trades of uncertified and untagged minerals.
Very often Congolese expressed frustrations and anger towards Monusco because they were displeased by their actions that often led to their vulnerability. It is important to note the torching of their premises, the ransacking of their offices and or the burning of their vehicles in Kinshasa which led to UN security council’s decision to clear its complete withdrawal. Unfortunately, it is leaving DRC in a worse than it was in a quarter century ago
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