What else is new?
By Adrian Blomfield in Bunia
(Filed: 07/06/2003)
The Telegraph (UK)
French special forces embarked on one of the West's riskiest African missions in years yesterday, deploying in the Congo with orders authorising the use of force against warring tribal militias ravaging one of the world's bloodiest regions.
About 100 of France's elite troops and a small contingent from the RAF, the advanced party of a UN-approved European combat force, flew into the ramshackle airport at the small town of Bunia, receiving a tumultuous welcome from war-weary residents.
As the French commanders drove into the UN compound in the town, hundreds of Lendus, members of Bunia's majority tribe, jubilantly poured out of an overcrowded, makeshift shelter in the grounds.
Thousands had fled there since the minority Hema tribe seized the town on May 12 during a battle in which at least 430 people, mainly civilians, were killed.
Pressed against the razor wire surrounding the compound, they chanted "liberé! [freed] liberé!", clapping and cheering as the French drove past. "We were suffering but now we are free," said Robert Asiya. "My past is gone. My parents, my wife, all my children were killed. But now the French are here perhaps I have a future."
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been wracked by a civil war for the past five years. Aid agencies estimate at least three million people have died in the fighting and from hunger and disease. The UN mandate is unclear on the geographical boundaries of the operation but does specify the mission must end in three months.
Disarming the militiamen and pacifying the region in so short a time could turn an operation fraught with problems into a mission impossible.