UN Peace Keeping Operations in Congo: The ONUC and the MONUC

This section is partly based on interviews and questionnaire investigation of the participants in UN peacekeeping in Congo (MONUC) and the local population in the DRC. Some of the data were gathered through field research conducted in June 2007 in eastern DRC at three MONUC camps, including the headquarters of the force. Members of the local population in the eastern DRC also

71 Fortna, supra note 2, p. 292.

72 O’Connor, M. (2001). ‘Policing the Peace’ in Thakur, R and Schnabel, supra note 1, p. 58.

73 For a good example of comparative work on peacekeeping success and failures that take peacekeeping as a universe of cases, see Howard, L. (2001). ‘Learning to Keep the Peace? United Nations Multidimensional Peacekeeping in Civil Wars’. Unpublished PhD.diss., Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. (On file with the Author).

provided some information.⁷⁴ In the said research, participants in this peacekeeping force took part in the interview and the questionnaire (see Appendix “C”) was administered to a sample of respondents, including soldiers who served in the force, civilian members of the force and humanitarian aid workers. The sample was stratified. Since it was a mailed questionnaire, one should not claim that the answers are entirely representative, but on the other hand, the tendencies are often very clear and found in most of the literature relating to the subject, so I would be inclined to rely on them, particularly where they are consistent. These interviews and answers to the questionnaire, together with historical research, form the basis of this section of the chapter.

The general practical problem explored can be formulated as a very simple question: what is the role of the MONUC in resolving the Congo conflict as seen by both the participating solders and by the general public in the DRC? More particularly, was the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission an effective mechanism for conflict prevention in the Africa’s Great Lakes? A third formulation of the question would be, “Where do we locate the MONUC in so far as its success or failure in resolving the Congo conflict is concerned?” A brief overview of the nature of the mandate and deployment of the MONUC as presented later in this section will assist in answering these questions.

The organization, functions and assessment of the current UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, the MONUC⁷⁵ cannot be understood without some knowledge of its predecessor, the ONUC.⁷⁶ The latter became the second major UN peacekeeping operation to be deployed since the inception of the concept.⁷⁷ There are substantial parallels between the situations under which the two operations have been deployed, save for the Cold War paradigm: a divided country, a variety of internal and external actors in the conflicts, a formal request by the Congolese government for UN support to restore territorial integrity and to remove foreign troops from the country and ambiguity over the UN’s role as third party. Thus, it is appropriate to examine, albeit briefly, the ONUC operation to see whether it provides any relevant conflict resolution lessons to be learned that will help determine whether to call the present UN mission MONUC in resolving the Democratic Republic of the Congo conflict a success or a failure.

74 The main Headquarters of MONUC is in Kinshasa with 6 other Sector Headquarters in Mbandaka, Eastern Division Headquarters in Kisangani, Kananga, Kalemie, Kindu and Bunia.

75 See supra note 3.

76See supra note 5.

77 ONUC was second after UNEF. See supra note 9.

The ONUC operated within the Congo, which had descended into chaos on the withdrawal of the Belgian colonial power in 1960. The original mandate of the force was to supervise the withdrawal of Belgian forces from the Republic of the Congo, to assist the Government in maintaining law and order and to provide technical assistance.⁷⁸ But this mandate was subsequently modified and expanded to allow the use of force beyond self-defence when the UNSC used the language of Chapter VII authorizing the force to prevent the occurrence of civil war and secession of the province of Katanga.⁷⁹ In essence, it could be argued that the operation shifted its role from that of a traditional peacekeeping operation to enforcement action, although this view did not receive support from the ICJ.⁸⁰

In a further UNSC resolution, the policies and purposes of the UN with respect to the Congo were reaffirmed thus:

a) To maintain the territorial integrity and the political independence of the Republic of the Congo;

b) To assist the Central Government of the Congo in the restoration and maintenance of law and order;

c) To prevent the occurrence of civil war in the Congo;

d) To secure the immediate withdrawal and evacuation from the Congo of all foreign military, paramilitary and advisory personnel not under the United Nations Command, and all mercenaries;

and

e) To render technical assistance.⁸¹

It must be admitted however that, in practice, the actual mission of the ONUC was more complex and demanding than viewed legally and theoretically. It was not only required to deal with the Congolese internal civil war situation, but it also had to prevent, in interim, a direct clash of superpower military forces in a country which became both an open and covert Cold War battleground.⁸² For the first eight months, ONUC found itself in an impossible situation: reluctant to withdraw, for the sake of the civilian populace; reluctant to take sides, to preserve a semi-balance of impartiality; and unable to take significant military initiatives because the mandate was interpreted

78 By its resolution No.143 of July 14, 1960, the UNSC “decides to authorize the Secretary-General to take the necessary steps, in consultation with the Government of the Republic of the Congo, to provide the Government with such military assistance as might be necessary until, through that Government's efforts with United Nations technical assistance, the national security forces might be able, in the opinion of the Government, to meet fully their tasks.” See also United Nations Document S/4387 of July 14, 1960 quoted in Durch, supra note 8.

79 By its resolution No.161 of February 21, 1961, the UNSC:

1. “Urges the United Nations to take immediately all the appropriate measures to prevent the occurrence of civil wars in the Congo including arrangements for the ceasefires, the halting of all military operations, the prevention of clashes, and the use of force, if necessary, in the last resort; (Emphasis added).

2. Urges that measures be taken for the immediate withdrawal and evacuation from the Congo of all Belgian and other foreign military and paramilitary personnel and political advisors not under the United Nations command;”(United Nations Document S/4741 of February 21, 1961). See also Evans, supra note 34, p.223.

80 See the Court’s decision in the Certain Expenses Case, supra note 40.

81 UNSC resolution 169 of November 24, 1961. UN Doc. S/5002. 9 votes to none, with 2 abstentions by France and the UK.

82 Durch, supra note 8, p.315.

to forbid such actions, particularly by Hammarskjöld, who was strongly averse of violence.⁸³ Furthermore, although Congo and its bordering lands were gaining their independence from different colonial powers at the time the UN deployed the ONUC, colonial interests added to UNOC’s initial political complexity. In addition, a colonial “ghost” still lingered in the minds of local Congolese who misidentified any western foreigner, including the UN officers, as just other

“Belgians” with dangerous and occasionally fatal consequences.

ONUC was an important model of peacekeeping with several outstanding features. At the peak, the force involved some 20,000 troops; it was the first UN peacekeeping force which was composed of both civilian and military components, and its mandate arguably crossed the threshold of enforcement action.⁸⁴ However, the ONUC in the minds of many was a regrettable UN peacekeeping operation that a generation of UN officials wanted to forget—or at least never repeat.⁸⁵ Although its four-year presence in the Congo⁸⁶ arguably prevented worse disintegration of civil order,⁸⁷ UNOC did not by any means put an end to civil and political unrest in the country.⁸⁸ The current conflict and humanitarian crisis upon which MONUC has been deployed borrows much of its origins from the failure of ONUC to move towards a long-term resolution that would have involved the establishment of appropriate state structures and forms of governance in the DRC.

ONUC officially terminated its operations from the Congo at the end of June 1964.

In short, the final assessment of the ONUC indicates that the operation lacked almost every element that history says is necessary for a successful peacekeeping mission, including lack of effective support from the Great Powers, lack of support from all parties to the conflict, a clear and transparent mandate, sufficient and good command, control, communication and logistics. It also (notoriously) became partial in its dealings with the conflict parties, especially in the crisis leading to the arrest and the assassination of Lumumba. Its legitimacy was challenged repeatedly and therefore its role as an effective third party in conflict resolution was highly compromised, and it fell into financial crisis leading to its premature withdrawal from the Congo.⁸⁹

83 Ibid.

84 Katayanagi, supra note 12, p.27.

85 Durch, Supra note 8, p.316.

86 It was deployed in July 1960 and it withdrew its operations from the Congo officially at the end of June 1964. See also Durch, supra note 8, p.333

87 Whatever its shortcomings under extreme circumstances, UNOC had its accomplishments to its credit. See for more analysis on this point, Riggs and Plano, supra note 39, p.138

88Durch, supra note 8, p.244

89 See Riggs and Plano, supra note 39, p.138.

Despite all these shortcomings, the ONUC provided some important lessons that could or should have been applied in subsequent UN peacekeeping operations, including the current MONUC.

Besides financial lessons, which have led to the current missions being funded as “expenses of the organisation”, ONUC also showed the need for better training and cooperation-- from planning and deployment through logistics and communications.

In efforts to address the conflict in the current DRC,⁹⁰ the UN joined the various regional peacemaking initiatives undertaken within the African Great Lakes region framework. The initiatives included the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, which was signed on July 10, 1999 by the six states that were party to the conflict,⁹¹ and the subsequent Inter-Congolese Dialogue Process which culminated in the Sun City II Agreement of April 2003.⁹² It sought to place a heavy burden of responsibility on a UN peacekeeping force, whose presence was deemed an essential component, not only providing for standard monitoring and verification tasks, but also for carrying out a number of peace enforcement tasks. The latter included the tracking down and disarming of armed groups;⁹³ the screening for mass killers, perpetrators of crimes against humanity and other war criminals; and the handing over of suspected genocidaires to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.⁹⁴ It was assumed that these tasks would have to be carried out by the UN peacekeepers.⁹⁵ Consequently, the UNSC decided that the previously authorized UN personnel in the DRC would constitute the MONUC and expressed its intention to expand MONUC based on assessed conditions of security,

90 The origins, nature and parties to this conflict are as discussed early under chapter Two of this Thesis.

91 The six parties to the Congo conflict, which signed the ceasefire agreement for a cessation of hostilities, were the DRC, Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The main provisions of the agreement included:

• the immediate cessation of hostilities;

• the establishment of the JMC, comprising the belligerent parties under a neutral chairperson appointed by the OAU, to investigate ceasefire violations, work out mechanisms to disarm identified militias and monitor the withdrawal of foreign troops according to an agreed schedule;

• the deployment of an ‘appropriate’ (peacekeeping and peace enforcement) UN mission tasked with disarming the armed groups, collecting weapons from civilians and providing humanitarian assistance and protection to vulnerable populations; and

• initiating an ‘inter-Congolese dialogue’ intended to lead to ‘a new political dispensation in the DRC’.

92 For a fairly detailed treatment of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue Process, see Apuuli, P. (2004). ‘The Politics of Conflict Resolution in the Democratic Republic of Congo: The Inter-Congolese Dialogue Process’ in African Journal of Conflict Resolution: 4(1), pp.65-84.

93 The identified ‘armed groups’ included Rwandan Interahamwe militia and the former Rwandan government forces (FAR); Congolese Mai Mai militias; the Allied Democratic Front (ADF), the Uganda National Rescue Front II, the West Nile Bank Front and Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda; UNITA; and the Burundian Forces pour la défense de la démocratie (FDD).

94 With its Seat in Arusha Tanzania, this is an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal established in 1994 as a response to the conflict in Rwanda which to the 1994 Genocide. However, this latter task was later discarded by the UNSC aas it was considered too costly given the reluctance of troop contributing countries. See UNSC Res.955 of November 1994.

95 Malan, M, and Colliers, J. (2001). ‘Peacekeeping in the DRC, MONUC and the Road to Peace’, Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, p. 2.

access and freedom of movement as well as cooperation on the part of the signatories to the Peace Agreement.⁹⁶

Initially established as a small military liaison team in 1999, the MONUC was turned incrementally into a multidimensional peacekeeping mission with a broad mandate. Comprehensive assessments of it have been rare.⁹⁷ This is surprising because the MONUC-with 18,434 uniformed personnel in 2008 is one of the biggest and more expensive missions ever deployed by the UN. Moreover, although general criticism of UN peacekeeping is not unusual, condemnation of MONUC’s performance has been exceptionally fierce. For example, international opinion has labelled it as the world’s least effective peacekeeping force,⁹⁸ while the Congolese citizens repeatedly assaulted peacekeepers to vent their angers at the mission and its alleged failures.⁹⁹ An internal UN report even observed that the mission was tainted by a perception of “impotence and cowardice.”¹⁰⁰ It is from these realities that a more scholarly assessment of the MONUC’s role in the peace process is imperative.

The original mandate of the MONUC was simply based on Chapter VI of the UN Charter and constituted the following:

a) To monitor the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement and to investigate its violations by parties;

b) To establish and maintain continuous liaison with the headquarters of all the parties military forces;

c) To develop an action plan for the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement;

d) To work with the parties to obtain the release of all prisoners of war, military captives and cooperate with international humanitarian agencies;

e) To supervise and verify the disengagement and redeployment of the parties’ forces;

f) To facilitate humanitarian assistance and human rights monitoring, with particular attention to vulnerable groups;

g) To cooperate closely with the Facilitator of the National Dialogue, provide support and technical assistance and coordinate other UN agencies’ activities to this effect; and

96 See UNSC res.1279 of November 30, 1999 by which the UNSC decided that personnel authorized under its previous resolutions: S/RES/1273 of November 5, 1999; S/RES/1258 of August 6, 1999 and S/RES/1273 of April 9, 1999.

would constitute the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

97 Roessler, P and Prendergast, J. ‘Democratic Republic of Congo’ in Durch, W. (Ed.) (2006) Twenty First-Century Peace Operations, Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace and the Henry L. Simpson Center.

98 Is this the World’s Least Effective Peacekeeping Force?,’ The Economist, Dec.4, 2005, pp. 43ff.

99 Grignon, F and Kroslak, D. (April 2008) ‘The Problem with Peacekeepers’ in Current History, vol. 107, No. 70, pp.

186-7.

100 ‘UN Report Accuses Peacekeepers of Failing the Congolese People’, Financial Times (London), March 23, 2005, p.

3.

h) To deploy mine action experts to assess the scope of the mine and unexploded ordinance problems, coordinate the initiation of the mine action activities, develop a mine action plan, and carry out emergency mine action activities as required in support of this mandate.

The peace enforcement tasks required of the UN peacekeeping force envisioned under the Lusaka Agreement, obviously required a Chapter VII mandate and not a Chapter VI one as indicated above.¹⁰¹ The relevant part of the Agreement reads:

“The United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and in collaboration with the OAU which provides ceasefire monitors to the DRC, shall be requested to constitute, facilitate and deploy an appropriate peacekeeping force in the DRC to ensure implementation of this agreement; and taking into account the peculiar situation of the DRC, mandate the peacekeeping force to track down all armed groups in the DRC. In this respect, the UN Security Council shall provide the requisite mandate for the peacekeeping force.”¹⁰²

However, contrary to the above-contemplated mandate of the envisaged peacekeeping force, MONUC was flawed from its conception within the UN, being a Chapter VI operation with only one Chapter VII component that allowed it self-defense and limited protection for the civilian population. It is hard to find an explanation for such a departure in the approach, but, according to one senior DPKO¹⁰³ officer who is a representative of the Mission to the United Nations, “the Congo file started in Africa, not in the United Nations. The Lusaka Agreement called for the UN forces, but they did not know what they were writing. As the UN was not there, it came in with the framework which was not theirs.”¹⁰⁴ Ultimately, what the Lusaka parties asked for was a force to restore and enforce peace; what they got was what the UN was willing and able to provide. One would then conclude that the mandate of UN peacekeeping operations is a function of what member states are likely to be willing to bear and what troop-donating countries are willing to commit to. Or as another member of the MONUC puts it, there is no such a thing as bad mandate. The mandate is what the Security Council makes it. Simply put, there was no willingness among the UN member states to commit combat troops to a Chapter VII mission in the DRC--not in the initial stage.

101 A Chapter VI peacekeeping operation is normally deployed to help keep peace, and the peacekeepers are not authorized to use force other than for self-defence. In contrast, a Chapter VII peacekeeping operation also referred to as

“Peace Enforcement” operations, authorize UN peacekeepers to use military force if necessary to restore peace and security.

102 See Article III (11) of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement of July 10, 1999.

103 DPKO is the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which is responsible for the planning, preparing, conducting and directing UN peacekeeping operations.

104 From interviews with the UN Representative in the MONUC in Congo, June 10, 2007.

The involvement of MONUC in the DRC conflict over a decade now can be broken into four broad phases:

The first phase began with the creation of the MONUC in 1999 and ended with the Pretoria accord and on the formation of a government of national unity in late 2002. Shortly after the signing of the Lusaka Accord, the UNSC authorized the deployment of 90 military personnel to establish liaison with the signatories.¹⁰⁵ In late 1999 the mission formally renamed MONUC and was subsequently expanded to 500 observers and a protection force of 5,037 soldiers to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.¹⁰⁶ Following agreements between the DRC on the one side and Uganda

The first phase began with the creation of the MONUC in 1999 and ended with the Pretoria accord and on the formation of a government of national unity in late 2002. Shortly after the signing of the Lusaka Accord, the UNSC authorized the deployment of 90 military personnel to establish liaison with the signatories.¹⁰⁵ In late 1999 the mission formally renamed MONUC and was subsequently expanded to 500 observers and a protection force of 5,037 soldiers to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.¹⁰⁶ Following agreements between the DRC on the one side and Uganda

In document A Human rights approach to conflict prevention, management and resolution in the Africa’s Great lakes region : A Focus on the DRC conflict (sivua 162-171)