Trouble in the Congo

The situation is the eastern DRC is not going to get better any time soon, yet the Europeans are showing their typical brand of "leadership".

European defence ministers have put off a decision on sending peacekeeping troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo ahead of elections there in June.

Ministers meeting in Austria called on EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to travel to the country to confirm what was required.

The UN, which has 16,000 peacekeepers in the country, has asked the EU to supply hundreds of extra troops.

But the EU nations have struggled to agree on the make-up of the force.

One reason for the beard-pulling is that it would be a dangerous place to put troops.

Analysts say the EU has been struggling since January to come to a decision on the force for what would be a risky operation.

It's perfectly natural to want to protect your troops, and not send them off halfway down the globe to a country whose problems are not your own. But, the indecision is symptomatic of how the Europeans want to have it both ways with the United States. They're perfectly willing to let the Americans defend them, and the world, but don't ask them to contribute till it hurts. The Europeans say if there is a truly sticky problem, don't come calling on us.

And do you know which countries have contributed the bulk of the UN troops in the DRC? According to MONUC's last update, the top contributors of troops are Pakistan (3795), India (3547), Uruguay (1572), South Africa (1409) and Bangladesh (1317). The Euros aren't exactly holding down the lion's share.

France is listed as having 9 troops. Sweden 5, the UK 6, and so on. (Granted, the UN troops are no saints. There have been accusations of sexual crimes committed by UN troops in the Congo.)

Perhaps it's easier to let the poor and developing nations do all the fighting and dying in a faraway country that doesn't seem to matter in the tony salons of Europe? (The United States will not place troops under the command of the UN.)

And in the meantime, the situation in Congo is bordering on awful.

Some 1,000 people have arrived in the southern suburbs of Bunia, the main town of Ituru District, fleeing fighting approximately 50 km farther south, according to local officials.

"The people have no choice but to flee," Akobi Katorogo, the chief of the Walendus Bindi Collective said in Bunia. "The militias treat them as army collaborators and are executed [when caught], while the army accuses them of giving information to the enemy."

He said thousands of displaced people were hiding in the valley near their homes and in the bush. They come from the towns of Kagaba and Getty, respectively about 47 km and 60 km south of Bunia. Many fled ahead of fighting between government forces and a coalition of militia forces, based at the nearby town of Tcheyi, known as le Mouvement Révolutionnaires au Congo and the former fighters of the Front des Résistants Patriotiques en Ituri.

The other day I wrote about how some Congolese troops working with the UN troops staged a mutiny of sorts over their conditions of service. Here is an example of the kind of lawlessness that is present.

It was when the off-duty Congolese soldiers decided to go late-night shopping with the help of some hand grenades that the trouble started.

It was 11pm on the boiling, sandy streets of downtown Bunia, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's semi-lawless Ituri province, centre of much of the past three years of ethnic violence.

The soldiers, drunk and dressed in civilian clothes, had been trying to extort beer and cigarettes from street vendors, threatening them with hand grenades.

Within minutes, the commotion had attracted the attentions of heavily armed gendarmes from the newly formed Congolese police force, who arrived in two Toyota pick-up trucks, draped with Kalashnikovs and machineguns.

There was a brief struggle, some shouting in Swahili, some pushing, and then one of the soldiers threw himself violently at the police. A police officer raised his Kalashnikov assault rifle and fired.

Thirty seconds later, the slumped and bleeding form of one of the drunken soldiers was dumped unceremoniously into a pick-up truck.

Such clashes have become common since soldiers from the Congolese armed forces, furious at not having been paid, mutinied on Thursday in a battle in eastern Congo, turning on their commanders and the UN peacekeepers with whom they were supposedly cooperating in a battle against Congolese militiamen.

There are elections scheduled for June, as mentioned above, but getting there is going to a difficult chore.

Foreign diplomats are battling to keep Congo's elections on track as former rebels threaten to pull out and boycott parliament, and participation by the leading political opposition hangs in the balance.

With long awaited polls tentatively scheduled for June 18, belligerent factions are fragmenting and politicians and rebels are negotiating alliances behind the scenes.

The biggest U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to restore order and the European Union is considering sending troops.

But fears are growing that President Joseph Kabila's dominance of the political apparatus could hand him a simple victory -- upsetting his opponents, including those with guns.

Peace deals concluded in 2003 lured a plethora of rebel factions out of the mineral-rich bush to join Kabila and opposition politicians in an interim government meant to guide the shattered country to elections after the 1998-2003 war.

"If we are talking about a transition to inclusive elections, everyone must be part of it ... a lot of effort is going into trying to convince Kabila's people that one group should not get everything their way," one diplomat said.

"Various groups have concerns that need to be discussed to ensure that the process remains credible and everyone has a fair crack," the diplomat added.

The former Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma rebel group, which ran large swathes of the east in the war and still has hardline loyalists fighting in the bush, is embroiled in a growing row with Kabila's faction over the interpretation of the peace deals on the distribution of seats in the future parliament.

"The failure to respect the ... agreements, as well as the government's decisions would lead to the RCD disengaging from the process, which is more and more looking as though it will only benefit one political family," the party said in a statement issued late on Monday.

The RCD warned that the lack of faith showed by Kabila's entourage risked "driving the transition to an unhappy end."

It's a wonderful world, isn't it...