generalspeaking

Savagery Unabated in Democratic Republic of Congo

When the savage slaughter in Rwanda was over in 1994 and the Tutsis who had been targeted by the ruling Hutus, managed to take control of the country and rout the murderous Hutu leaders engaged in ethnic cleansing, the Hutus made themselves scarce in Rwanda, crossing the border to invade neighbouring countries. In particular the "genocidaires" marched to Democratic Republic of Congo and renamed themselves the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

And then ran amok in the DRC. The forests of North and South Kivu provinces in eastern DRC provides perfect haven for the Hutus in company with other rebel groups. Attempts have been made to disarm the Hutus. A United Nations-led initiative to persuade them to surrender their arms for amnesty went ignored with a relative handful of ill and elderly rebels surrendering, and left behind was an estimated 1,500 combatants dedicated to murder and mayhem.

And rape, mass rape, a special weapon of their special ethnic-cleansing war. A military formation of South African, Tanzanian and Malawian troops under UN control had a mandate to attack the rebel groups in the eastern DRC, to avoid anything approximating the disaster of the UN forces in Rwanda using force only in self-defence, while slaughter went on around them and they were helpless to stop the mass murders by ethnic Hutu militias.

Partial success was realized in routing the Rwandan rebels from North Kivu in 2013. And then DRC President Joseph Kabila appointed two generals who appeared on a United Nations "red list" for suspected human rights violations to lead the joint African operation against the Hutus.  President Kabila refused to replace the generals leading the UN to suspend its support. The African Union has been ignored in its calls on President Kabila to accept UN support.

The Congolese army is poorly paid, infused with low morale, suffers from poor discipline and a telling lack of special forces training to enable them to combat guerrilla fighters like the Hutu in the rugged landscape that they have existed in for 20 years. And while the Hutu guerrillas have been accused of mass rape, so too have the Congolese army.

Over a million civilians in the Kivus were displaced in 2009 by Congolese and Rwandan troops with retreating Hutu fighters taking to massacring villagers and destroying their villages to send a message to the international community. Without the UN engaged in humanitarian work in light of such huge displacements and to oversee the Congolese troops so their history of human rights abuses do not once again run amok, civilians become the victims of the fighting.

Labels: Africa, Atrocities, Conflict, DRC, Rwanda

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 17, 2015