UN peacekeeping cut in Congo could backfire

By Buchizya Mseteka

LUSAKA (Reuters): A decision by the United Nations to cut the number of peacekeepers it will deploy in the Congo is a recipe for disaster and could undermine Africa's home-grown peace plan, analysts said on Wednesday.

A report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday said the UN force to the Democratic Republic of Congo would comprise 500 military observers protected by close to 2,500 troops -- down from a total of 5,537 troops authorized a year ago. The United Nations currently has only about 200 military personnel in Africa's third largest country.

Annan hopes to build on the longest period of relative claim in the Congo since a 1999 cease-fire signed in Zambia and on renewed pledges by some of the key players in the conflict since Congo President Laurent Kabila was assassinated last month.

But the analysts said the number proposed was far too small to be effective and some charged the downgrade reflected a lack of will by the international community to help end Africa's most dangerous war.

"By slashing the number of peacekeepers in the Congo, the United Nations is sending a clear message that it is going to write off the Congo," said Hermann Hanekom, a regional analyst and former South African ambassador to the Congo.

"It is obviously clear that the longer this Congo conflict drags on, the more marginalized the Congo will become in global terms," he added.

The new president is Kabila's son, Joseph, who has already traveled with his arch rival, Rwandan President Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, to New York to present new promises for peace.

The issue of UN peacekeepers will feature prominently at a regional summit to be held in the Zambian capital Lusaka on Thursday. Officials involved in preparatory talks said the presidents would demand that the world body does for Congo what it did for Kosovo and East Timor.

Fighting has raged in the Congo since 1998, when Rwanda and Uganda, who had helped Kabila to power in 1997, turned on him and backed rebels trying to topple his government.

The 30-month conflict has sucked in half a dozen foreign armies, extremist militias are preying on the local population and a cease-fire deal is repeatedly violated.

Regional security experts say keeping the peace in the former Zaire, a country the size of Western Europe, would need a force of upwards of 80,000 troops and air mobility because of the non- existent road and railway network.

This compares with a total figure of 10,000 suggested by France last year and 4,000 mooted by the United States.

Annan told the UN council thousands of foreign troops were deployed in the Congo: 20,000 from Rwanda, 10,000 troops from Uganda, 12,000 from Zimbabwe, 7,000 from Angola and 2,000 from Namibia. In addition, there are between 15,000 and 20,000 armed exiled Rwandan Hutu and Burundian militia fighting on the government side.

These figures easily dwarf Annan's proposed force.

The peacekeepers would monitor the disengagement of the domestic and foreign forces at war in the Congo and secure the country's borders.

"The UN figures just do not make sense," said Claude Kabemba, analyst at Johannesburg's Institute for Policy Studies.

"The Congo of today is one hell of a heavily militarized country. Annan's figure of 2,500 troops makes a mockery of peacekeeping. We are witnessing another cock-up in policy formulation by the United Nations," Kabemba added.

"The Congo needs a far bigger force to police the peace and most importantly to reassure the Ugandans and Rwandans that their border security concerns will be taken care of."

Kabemba said by not committing a larger force to the Congo, the United Nations was refusing to learn from its past mistakes in Somalia, Rwanda and recently Sierra Leone.

"The United Nations has a duty, a moral duty to help Africa. Africa deserves the same importance the United Nations attaches to Europe, Asia and even the Middle East," Congo chief mediator and Zambian President Frederick Chiluba told Reuters.

The UN's reluctance to deploy heavily in the former Belgian colony leaves poor, ill-equipped and under-resourced Africa with the unenviable and almost impossible task of restoring peace in the country.

UN officials argue that the United Nations was already stretched by larger peacekeeping operations in East Timor and Sierra Leone, and so far very few countries -- notably Senegal, Pakistan and South Africa -- have agreed to send troops for the Congolese mission.