KINSHASA (AFP) — Pay delays, indiscipline and logistical problems threaten the army's capacity to defeat Rwandan and Ugandan rebels and reestablish peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, analysts say.
"The house is still on fire," according to Kinshasa daily Le Potentiel, underlining the powerlessness of the Democratic Republic of Congo Armed Forces (FARDC) to put an end to violence and abuses against civilians in Orientale Province and Nord and Sud Kivu.
The force of around 140,000 men, backed by 17,000 UN peacekeepers, has failed to defeat 5,000 to 6,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels and between 400-500 Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army guerrillas in the forests and mountains of eastern DR Congo.
Speeded-up integration of several thousand former rebels of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) was supposed to strengthen the FARDC's hand, but has only weakened it, observers here say.
"The FARDC is going through an extremely difficult transition period, the intergration of former militias is creating problems at all levels. Making an effective fighting force out of this group is an enormous challenge," said Kevin S. Kennedy, director of information at the UN in Kinshasa.
The process has been hit by problems since it began early this year, including a delayed census of the new recruits, with the effect that basic pay of 64 dollars (46 euros) a month has been held up for several months.
"That has provoked desertions, mutinies and revolts. Units have even refused to leave on operations. These kinds of incidents have increased recently," a western military source said.
In mid-June, 27 soldiers who had not been paid fired on a UN base in Nord-Kivu, before being arrested.
"The logistics are not up to it, or are re-sold in the case of food or of fuel. The arms, the medicines are not getting through either," said the source.
"Their morale is lower because of these problems, but also because some of them have been on operations for years, without ever having been relieved. Soldiers are living in the combat bases with their families, and their priority is to defend them, or flee with them," he said.
He said the military operation in east was a "predictable failure".
In such a situation, the current military operations against the rebels can only be "doomed to failure", according to Guillaume Lacaille, of the International Crisis Group, saying a new strategy was needed for Congo's armed forces.
The answer could lie in the "formation of small batallions ... to break the link between the (Rwandan Hutu) FDLR combatants and their radical leaders," certain of whom participated in Rwanda's 1994 genocide against the Tutsis.
"The process of disarmament, demobilisation, repatriation, reintegration and reinstallation (DDRRR), should be boosted," he said, proposing to Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) volunteers "a relocalisation in Congo, Rwanda or in other countries," he said.
For Jason Luneno, a civil society leader in Nord-Kivu, "the situation has become catastrophic, the international community must help us to settle this conflict coming from outside," with the FDLR.
A UN source said the answer to Congo's immediate problems lay in the government in Kinshasa opening negotiations with the rebels.
Copyright © 2009 AFP
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