Transcript
ANTHONY GAMBINO: We all know that the Congo crisis is deepening. On top of the humanitarian emergency that's been going on now for roughly 17 years, we've seen over the last few months displacement of another quarter-million or more people. Many of those people cannot be reached by international efforts because of the ongoing fighting occurring.
In my view, it is only the international community with the lead of MONUC, the UN force, the peacekeeping force in the Congo, that can take the necessary actions to protect civilians in Eastern Congo and create the conditions for a return to peace. The mandate of the UN peacekeeping force is up for renewal at the end of this year, but urgent action is required now to end the violence and instability. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has urgently requested 3,000 additional military and police personnel for MONUC.
. . .To avert regional war, response to the immediate humanitarian needs of hundreds of thousands of displaced Congolese and to secure Eastern Congo, MONUC needs to be strengthened. But what should their mission be? Eastern Congo is buried in multiple layers of violence and exploitation. The present crisis of displacement, humanitarian emergency, massacres, looting, fighting is, of course, the result of a struggle between the Congolese government and the CNDP force led by Laurent N'kunda. But that crisis grows out of and is related to the horrific abuses committed over the last 14 years by a militia group now called the FDLR. And that group is led by Rwandan Hutus who were involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. So that layer of conflict sits on top of the fact of the Rwandan genocide and its spill over into Eastern Congo in 1994. Finally, it can't be forgotten that under that layer is another one of ethnic enmity and conflict in Eastern Congo that predates the Rwandan genocide. In my view, though, there is a bedrock issue, a fundamental problem underneath all these layers which is where the international community has to start to respond to the crisis in the Congo and that is the inability of the Congolese army to establish and maintain control over territory.
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