Congo on the brink of new civil war amid genocide accusations-(another paradise)

the telegraph ^ | 05/06/2004) | By Adrian Blomfield in Bukavu

[Flavius]

Congo on the brink of new civil war amid genocide accusations By Adrian Blomfield in Bukavu (Filed: 05/06/2004)

The rebel commander who could re-ignite Africa's bloodiest war relaxed in his deckchair yesterday, admiring the view across Lake Kivu.

As United Nations peacekeepers spent a third day trying to end fighting in the Congolese town of Bukavu, Brig Gen Laurent Nkunda, who made cheese before he took up arms, insisted he is not trying to topple President Laurent Kabila.

Renegade troops prepare to leave the Congolese town of Bakavu He marched into the eastern city at the head of 4,000 renegade soldiers on Wednesday, sending troops loyal to the government fleeing into the hills. But he invaded, he said, to prevent alleged attempts by the army's commander in Bukavu to carry out genocide against Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge.

"I cannot break peace but I cannot accept a peace where the Banyamulenge are being killed," said Gen Nkunda. After a year of shaky peace, Congo faces renewed civil conflict and possible war with neighbouring Rwanda, which is accused of backing the mutineers.

For all that, Gen Nkunda seemed remarkably nonchalant, chatting with officers in the garden of the governor's colonial mansion while his troops supposedly withdrew to positions outside the town under a UN-backed deal. Few, in fact, appeared to have left. Soldiers loyal to Gen Nkunda still swaggered through the streets, although in smaller numbers than a day before.

Under the deal, the government will investigate Gen Nkunda's claims. That there were attacks on the Banyamulenge is not in doubt. Congolese Tutsis who fled to Rwanda tell of soldiers searching for them from house to house. Three-year-old Felice Mukongo bears a terrible face wound inflicted by soldiers loyal to Bukavu's government commander, Mbuza Mabe.

Gen Nkunda says such incidents prompted his invasion. But many say the mutiny preceded the attacks and government soldiers and civilians took advantage of the mayhem to turn on the Banyamulenge.

[Flavius]

... disapointed they are using ak's ...

http://www.dsarms.com/item-detail.cfm?ID=SA58PCONGO&storeid=1&image=paracongo.gif

[Law is not justice but process]

This is a fine example of the result of decades of UN management of a nation. Those who wanted the UN in charge of Iraq should be ashamed. If things go well in Iraq there will be an elected government in less than two years from the overthrow of Saddam. The UN has been intervening in the Congo since the Belgians left and there has been nothing even approaching a stable democratic government, just a series of kleptocracies. Iraq would have been similarly disastrous under the UN. It would have been oil for food writ large.

[Flavius]

Well, the way that is settled is that its Belgians fault the situation is so bad...

Blame someone else, hmm who does that sound like....

[Law is not justice but process]

If you go back and read Churchill's speeches from 1945 you get an idea of what many envisioned the UN as being. They saw an international organization that would act against aggressors decisively and early. The UN envisioned by Churchill and others would have taken Saddam out in 1991 when he invaded Kuwait if not in the early 1980s when he invaded Iran.

Instead the UN is a bloated bureaucracy with its own kleptocratic tendencies. Totalitarian dictators have so much pull in the Security Council that the UN is more likely to protect aggressors (as they did for Saddam) than to control them. How can there be any legitimacy to an organization in which countries like China, Syria, the Sudan, Russia and Zimbabwe have equal standing with democracies that actually respect human rights? The UN is, sadly, a failure. Every penny we spend on the UN is a waste. Only international politics keeps us in this ludicrous dictator's boys club.

The political price of pulling out is so great even Reagan couldn't seriously consider it. He did lead the charge on withholding funding, though. I think we should seriously consider returning to that policy.

[Flavius]

UN Sucks...

[jennyp]

One Alexander Marriott proposed in Capitalism Magazine that we leave the UN and join up with a few other free nations and start a competing "Liberty League". It's an interesting idea.

[Law is not justice but process]

Thank you. An interesting read. I see no reason why we couldn't start such an organization in competition with the UN. Eventually the donor states of the world - pretty much exclusively free states with free economies - would prefer to donate to an honest organization rather than the kleptocratic UN. The UN would live on, but without money it would become just a sort of toothless world legislature.

Wait a minute . . . I think that was what the League of Nations was.

Still, a UN without money would be largely harmless.

[ampat]

Way to go Koffi. May the same happen to you.

[ampat]

Its too bad there are no americans in official capacity that have the balls to do what needs to be done at the UN. That includes accusing the UN officials, who are responsible for doing nothing, in public, and expose them for what they are.

[Billthedrill]

Well, I'm sorry to see the UN has come a cropper on this, but at least we have the EU to fall back on to show us crude, warmongering Americans how to wage a proper peace. I'm waiting for them to give us an object lesson here. Waiting. Any day now. Still waiting. Oh, yeah, I'm waiting.

[Fiddlstix]