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As Congolese Army Loots and Flees, UN Patrols Goma But Says It's Not Responsible

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, October 30 -- With the Congolese army having fled Goma in North Kivu after engaging in looting and even killing, the UN Mission is "the only organized force" left patrolling the city of one million people, the UN's Kevin Kennedy told the Press on Thursday.  Contrary to reports that UN peacekeepers blocked internally displaced people from entering Goma, Kennedy blamed this on rogue elements of the Congolese army, the FARDC.

  Inner City Press asked Kennedy, since MONUC has a mandate from the Security Council to use deadly force to protect civilians, if the UN Peacekeepers would engage and fight with Congolese soldiers who were robbing, raping or killing people, or blocking their flight to safety. "Without going too far down the hypothetical road," Kennedy said, "yes we would act if we could." Video here, from Minute 27:49.

  The question is not, however, hypothetical. The UN itself, even prior to renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's most recent offensive, has produced reports about human rights violations by the Congolese army, the FARDC. Nonetheless, as Kennedy emphasized on Thursday, the UN supports this army, since it is affiliated -- however loosely -- with what Kennedy called a democratically-elected government. The UN still brags about its role in the election, so the fact that major opposition figures did not run, and that that second place finished Jean-Pierre Bemba has since been arrested by the UN-affiliated International Criminal Court don't stand in the way of the UN justifying its support of the FARDC based on the election.

   So the question is, does the UN's clear siding with the government of Joseph Kabila, and his disintegrating army in the Kivus, put the UN in an untenable position?

Fleeing Goma not now but 1994, plus ca change, has the UN changed?

  Inner City Press sought to ask this question, and get Kennedy's response to Nkunda's statement that "if MONUC is incapable securing Goma," his forces will, but the UN Spokesperson Michel Montas did not allow any more questions from Inner City Press after its first question about mandate to protect civilians. This was asked a follow-up to a French journalist's inquiry about civilians barred from Goma; that reporter was called on two more time before Kennedy said he had to leave.

  Inner City Press followed Kennedy in to the hall and asked how MONUC moving its forces from Ituri to Goma would impact MONUC's purported engagement with the Lord's Resistance Army of indicted war criminal Joseph Kony.  "I am only prepared to talk about the Kivus today," Kennedy said as he rushed away. "It is all Kivus all the time today."  One up-and-coming correspondent wondered, "But what about tomorrow?"

News analysis: The UN's statement that it would protect civilians from the FARDC come after the events in Rwanda in 1994 -- admitted, a mandate under the weaker Chapter Six of the UN Charter -- and Abyei, Sudan earlier this year, in which civilians were attacked while UN peacekeepers reported locked themselves in their base. With all due respect to the UN peacekeepers now in Goma, and in Ituri, they need to balance its ethical and legal responsibility to protect civilians against the political orders they receive from a UN mission which has cast its lost with Joseph Kabila and the FARDC come hell or high water, just as the UN has cast its lot in Somalia with the Ethiopian-based Transitional Federal Government. More to follow.

Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs

and this October 17 debate, on Security Council and Obama and the UN.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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