The Economist - USA (2020-09-05)

TheEconomistSeptember 5th 2020 37

1

O

n the edgeof Beni, a city in north-

eastern Congo, a field is strewn with

bricks and broken glass. Three Malawian

soldiers, working for the un’s peacekeep-

ing mission, known as monusco, lounge

under a tree amid the rubble. It is all that is

left of monusco’s offices after they were

burned down in November by locals furi-

ous that the mission had failed to protect

them from rebels. “We have suffered years

of massacres,” says one of those who took

part in the burning. “We see un soldiers all

over town, but when the rebels are killing

us they never come.”

The peacekeeping mission in Congo,

with over 16,000 soldiers and police, is the

largest and third most expensive in the

world. un troops have been in Congo since

1999, when they arrived to oversee a cease-

fire in a civil war that had left between 1m

and 5m people dead, thanks to bullets, ma-

chetes and disease. For two decades the

mission has tried to pacify the country’s

embattled east. Yet more than 100 armed

groups still hide there in the forests. They

survive by smuggling minerals, looting

and extorting cash from the locals.

This year alone about 1m Congolese

have been displaced by violence. Some of

the bloodiest fighting has taken place in

Ituri province, where two rival tribes have

been clashing. Rebels have hacked at least a

thousand people to death with machetes,

attacking 60 schools and raping children.

Even though the violence still rages (see

map), monusco is under pressure from the

un Security Council to pack up and go. A re-

port commissioned by the council last year

says monusco should aim to be out by

2022, largely because it is too expensive

and has sputtered on for so long. President

Donald Trump’s decision to cut America’s

contributions to un peacekeeping has

squeezed monusco’s budget to $1bn a year,

almost a third less than in 2016. Yet condi-

tions for the mission’s total withdrawal

will plainly not be met by 2022, when Con-

go’s army is supposed to be largely back in

control. So monusco will probably be

shrunk but will not leave altogether.

The peacekeepers are far from fulfilling

their mandate to disband militias, protect

civilians and stabilise the state. Armed

groups are multiplying. Few Congolese ci-

vilians think the mission really protects

them. According to a poll in 2018 by peace-

buildingdata.org, an American ngo, only

15% of those surveyed said they trusted mo-

nusco to keep their neighbourhood or vil-

lage safe. Still, with nobody else to turn to,

displaced people do often huddle around

monusco bases.

At the best of times, bringing peace to

eastern Congo is a very tall order. The east-

ern provinces are ten times the size of Swit-

zerland. Much of the land is jungle. Murder

and mayhem can occur quickly at night, so

by the time un soldiers arrive—if they do at

all—the rebels have invariably melted back

into the bush. “Whenever I see the blood-

shed, I always ask, where were we?” says

Leila Zerrougui, monusco’s head. “We can

never do enough.”

United Nations peacekeeping in Congo

Blue helmet blues

BENI

The world’s largest peacekeeping mission has struggled to bring peace

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