Editor, RE: “MONUSCO handling of FDLR issue is appalling” (The New Times, August 28). The only ones who are baffled by how appallingly incompetent MONUSCO and the wider UN have dealt with the FDLR are those who believe that they are there for the purposes they claim they are. In fact, it would be quite interesting to try to plot on a map the major MONUSCO deployments against the operational locations of major resource extraction by global enterprises in Congo. I have a sneaky feeling that the coincidence between the two would be extremely striking, providing a truer explanation for the large, long-lived and highly expensive MONUSCO whose mandate is waved through every year without debate despite its clear failure to fulfill any of its publicly stated goals. In reality, MONUSCO is meeting the underlying mandate for which it was intended: Providing a UN Security Council Chapter VII-mandated guard duty for global mining and other resource extraction companies to operate in the DRC without let or hindrance. At only US$1.5 billion a year, this is a wonderful bargain given what these companies are taking out every year. The continued presence of the FDLR and the other armed groups is absolutely necessary to justify the perpetuation of this security arrangement. And so everything will be done to ensure the FDLR is never eradicated because it serves as a justification for MONUSCO’s own continued presence. Kagaju
