MONUSCO leaves South Kivu after twenty-five years of service

After twenty-five years of presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) officially ended on Sunday, June 30 in the province of South Kivu, in the east of the country.

The total disengagement of the 15,000 peacekeepers present in the country, approved in December 2023 by the UN Security Council, is planned in three phases. While a deadline had been set for South Kivu, the timetable for the Ituri and North Kivu regions is still not known.

A closing ceremony was held on Tuesday, June 25 in the town of Kavumu, 32 kilometers from Bukavu, the provincial capital, in the presence of several personalities. Among them, the head of MONUSCO, Bintou Keita, the Congolese Prime Minister, Judith Suminwa Tuluka, the governor of South Kivu, Jean-Jacques Purusi, as well as other representatives of the UN and the Congolese government. During this event, MONUSCO donated equipment worth an estimated $10 million (some €9.3 million) to the Congolese authorities.

In a press release published on June 25, MONUSCO also indicated that it had transferred a heliport and a base in Rutemba, near Uvira, to the Congolese armed forces (FARDC). However, warns Bob Kabamba, a researcher on conflicts in Central Africa at the University of Liège, “These donations of equipment will be of no use because the army is structurally inefficient. The FARDC are poorly trained and do not have enough financial resources to maintain the bases bequeathed by MONUSCO.”

Chronic difficulties

Disorganized, poorly trained and poorly paid, the Congolese military is unable to restore security in the east of the country: according to Mr. Kabamba, the cause is the lack of “real reform of the army, always awaited and which would be the symbol of a strong political will”The FARDC’s strength includes many elements from former armed groups integrated under botched “disarmament, demobilization, reintegration” programs. They suffer from significant technical and structural shortcomings.

MONUSCO (formerly MONUC) was created by a Security Council resolution of 30 November 1999, following the Lusaka ceasefire agreement in July of the same year. This ended the Second Congo War, which pitted the DRC, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, which supported various Congolese rebel groups.

Renamed MONUSCO on 1^er July 2010, it has been experiencing chronic cooperation difficulties with the Congolese army. Due to a lack of results on the ground, the oldest and most expensive mission in the history of the UN, with a budget of just over a billion dollars per year, has gradually discredited itself among the population, thus becoming a scapegoat designated by the Congolese authorities.

While MONUSCO’s ability to protect civilians is being questioned, part of its action, which is less visible, provides significant logistical support to the Congolese armed forces in terms of transport, fuel delivery and intelligence sharing.

Large-scale offensive by the M23

Despite this, in recent years, sometimes violent demonstrations, resulting in both civilian and military losses as well as looting, have been organized to demand the departure of the blue helmets, accused of ineffectiveness in the fight against the armed groups that have been destabilizing the east of the country for thirty years.

“MONUSCO’s mandate was to ensure the protection of civilians, but we regret its passivity. The number of people killed and displaced has continued to increase for twenty years.”laments John Anibal, member of the citizens’ movement Struggle for Change (Lucha), one of the Congolese organizations demanding the departure of MONUSCO.

In November 2019 and April 2021, MONUSCO was confronted with large-scale demonstrations, motivated by the persistence of massacres perpetrated by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group and established since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they have killed thousands of civilians.

MONUSCO’s disengagement from the far eastern borders of the DRC is beginning as North Kivu faces a major offensive by the March 23 Movement (M23) rebellion, supported by elements of the Rwandan army. In February, they managed to take control of the town of Shasha, cutting the road linking Goma in the north to Bukavu in the south.

Mobilization of Southern Africa

The M23 attacks have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and worsened the humanitarian crisis. In May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that approximately 5.7 million Congolese displaced people were living in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika. In North Kivu alone, approximately 1.5 million people have fled their homes due to fighting involving the M23.

Since mid-December 2023, South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania have sent soldiers from SAMIDRC, the armed force of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). According to the specialized media Africa Intelligence750 Tanzanian soldiers, 2,600 South Africans and 1,000 Malawians were dispatched to Goma in mid-June, bringing its total strength to some 8,000 men.

“SADC has neither the logistics nor the financial means to ensure stability in the eastern provinces”deplores Bob Kabamba. This regional mission follows the operation led by the East African Community (EAC) supported by Kenya, Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan, whose mandate ended after only one year of intervention at the request of Kinshasa, which accused it of passivity with regard to the M23.