[A-List] French imperialism: DR Congo

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

French offer relief force for Congo

James Astill in Nairobi
Wednesday May 14, 2003
The Guardian

France promised to send a relief force to Bunia in the north-east of the
Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday as 625 UN peacekeepers and about
8,000 civilians sheltered in two UN compounds.

Unidentified rebels who seized control of the town on Monday after a week of
inter-tribal fighting continued marauding through the streets and fired
random shots outside the compounds.

A human rights group in Bunia, Justice Plus, estimated that at least 112
civilians had died in the week of carnage, since Ugandan troops withdrew
from the town. The number is probably much higher.

The French foreign ministry, responding to Monday's request to the security
council by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, for members to send
reinforcements, said: "France is willing to contribute to the stabilisation
of Ituri [province], and we are currently looking into the practicalities of
participating in an ad hoc and temporary international force."

Mr Annan had called on the security council to form a "coalition of the
willing" to send troops.

Protestant missionaries evacuated to Uganda yesterday said dozens of bodies
were lying in the streets and at least 20 were piled in the aisle of a small
church in the suburb of Nyakazansa.

A least six babies in the two UN compounds were reported to have died by
early yesterday.

"The people eat, sleep and excrete their waste at UN compounds, and falling
rains put them at risk of communicable diseases like cholera," Christian
Lukusha of Justice Plus said.

The Congo human rights minister, Nyumba Luaba, who is in one of the
compounds, refused to comment, saying: "I am waiting for medication for
hypertension and will only be able to talk later in the day, after I rest,"

Meanwhile Africa analysts have been castigating the UN for failing to
foresee the bloodbath predicted since Uganda agreed last year to withdraw
its troops from Bunia.

Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch said: "This is an appalling
response by the international community. The UN knew this was going to
happen, yet they've been completely overwhelmed.

"The peacekeepers don't have equipment or proper knowledge; they're not even
combat troops.

"The UN has to reinforce immediately."

The fighting around Bunia exemplifies many aspects of Congo's civil war,
estimated to have killed up to 4.7m in the past four and half years.

Two tribes in the area, the Hema and the Lendu, were each in turn armed by
Uganda in its search for a reliable Congolese ally.

When Ungandan troops left the town on May 6 under the agreement by foreign
states to withdraw their forces from Congo, Lendu militiamen flooded in.

On Monday one of the two Hema militias drove the Lendus from the town.

Yesterday the Party for the Unity and Safeguarding of the Integrity of Congo
and Union of Congolese Patriots both claimed to have captured Bunia, but
independent observers were unable to verify which group was in control.

The UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said yesterday that the three
years of tribal killing in Ituri could amount to genocide.