Building peace with well-trained soldiers and money

Date: 27.01.05

Perhaps it should count as the most successful EU peacekeeping operation ever. It cost nothing, no troops were injured and its goals were achieved immediately.

In June last year, Louis Michel, then Belgium's foreign minister, arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa and hinted that the EU might launch a military operation to expel rebels who had taken the eastern town of Bukavu.

The thought of facing French, British or German soldiers was enough to persuade the Rwandan-backed rebels to turn tail and flee the city and enough for the Rwandan government to rescind its most recent threat to invade.

But several hundreds of civilians were killed in the run-up to these events. And in its aftermath, Congo's underlying problems remain largely untouched.

By December, Rwanda was once again threatening to invade, claiming civilians need to be protected against attacks by the Congolese army.

It has been a similar story for the EU's largely successful mission to the town of Bunia around 600 kilometres north of Bukavu. The bloodletting was halted, but instability remains.

Meanwhile remnants of Rwanda's Huti génocidaires continue to launch attacks inside Rwanda and Tutsi refugee camps inside Uganda.

Michel's intervention did, however, send a clear message to rebels and to the international community.

The rag-tag band of aggressors thought twice about standing up to well-trained European soldiers, but nothing of confronting the Congo's regular forces or UN troops who have been in the region since 1999.

The EU has since called for UN's mandate to be strengthened, enabling tougher action. Others have called for MONUC, as the UN force is known, to be given the authority to disarm rebels forcibly.

Belgium, France and the UK are participating in efforts to establish the Congolese army as a credible force.

Now, as the Union's development commissioner, Louis Michel is trying to make a longer-term impact. The EU has pledged €80 million for June's first democratic elections, which it is hoped will establish a more credible government.

Council of Minister diplomats are doubtful that the elections will go ahead on time and say September or October would be a more realistic time for the constitutional referendum, which has to be held before a series of regional, legislative and eventually presidential elections.

There is concern that Joseph Kabila's government is fudging the elections and the transitional government seems close to collapse.

So far the EU has not begun to spend the €80 million it has pledged for training election observers and producing voter registration cards.

Despite efforts to lay the groundwork for Congo to become a viable state in the long term, the EU may once again be called upon to stop the slaughter of civilians.

In the last decade Congo's two wars have claimed the lives of up to 3.8 million people and another four million people have been displaced.

Article reports on the fragile security situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the EU's assistance to democratic elections, probably to be held in June 2005.