U.N. peacekeepers in helicopters and armored troop carriers headed for the front line Tuesday in eastern Congo to stop renegade soldiers from advancing farther after more than a week of fighting.
The U.N. mission in Democratic Republic of Congo said it was setting up a temporary buffer zone between the towns of Kanyabayonga and Lubero to keep rebels and troops loyal to the government apart.
The U.N. mission, which has been accused in the past of being too passive when violence has flared in the vast central African nation, stressed that it was serious this time. Any unauthorized attempt to breach the divide would be pushed back, it said in a statement.
“The helicopters are in the air, and they have orders to shoot at any of the insurgents that move towards Lubero,” a senior U.N. official in Congo told Reuters.
4 million killed in last decade
The violence along Congo’s jungle border with Rwanda has raised fears of a return to war in Africa’s Great Lakes region, where conflict and related hunger and disease have killed at least 4 million people over the last decade.
Congo’s transitional government and its new national army, made up of former belligerents from a five-year civil war, have been struggling to maintain order in the east, which is prized for its mineral riches including gold and diamonds.
A company of South African peacekeepers, which is expected to number about 100 men, would be deployed in Kanyabayonga, a farming town that was the scene of several clashes over the past week, while a second company would move toward Lubero, about 45 miles to the north, another U.N. official said.
The buffer zone was given a cool welcome by the governor of North Kivu province, Eugene Serufuli. He said it was the government troop reinforcements, not the rebels, who had triggered the latest crisis.
“The ideal is that we continue to work to stop the fighting without a buffer zone. I think this can be done,” he said.
Humanitarian crisis
The buffer zone is also meant to allow aid to reach displaced civilians. As many as 200,000 people may have been uprooted between Kanyabayonga and Lubero since hostilities broke out, although some have begun returning home, the United Nations has said.
“Forcing civilians to flee into the forest has been one of the worst killers in the Congo wars,” Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser to Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The New York-based rights group said many of those who fled were women and children who had no food, water or medical aid because the violence had forced aid agencies to leave.
Fighting erupted this month between reinforcements sent to the east and RCD-Goma, a faction backed by Rwanda during Congo’s civil war but now supposedly part of the national army.
The government has accused Rwanda of launching incursions to support the renegade forces. Rwanda has repeatedly denied the claim, but it says it has the right to cross the border to pursue Hutu extremists who fled after taking part in its 1994 genocide.
The United Nations said last week that it was convinced that foreign troops had crossed into Congolese territory following Rwandan threats to do so late last month. It also said it had confirmed that the insurgents were receiving weapons and support from abroad.
Both ordinary Congolese and international analysts have accused the United Nations of not acting decisively in Congo.
An influential think tank, the International Crisis Group, said in a report last week that the U.N. mission had stood by ineffectively after Rwanda made its threats.