Why I won’t hold my breath about new Monusco chief

Editor, RE: “MONUSCO’s new chief should come with new ideas” (The New Times, September 6). Don’t hold your breath. The Monusco chief does what he is told by New York, which also mostly relays instructions from Paris via the head of UN Peacekeeping (four senior French diplomats in a row) or from Washington. Martin Kobler, like his predecessors in the DR Congo, may seem to have failed especially miserably in fulfilling Monusco’s mandate to eradicate the FDLR and other non-state armed terror groups from the DR Congo, but this is a failure only if one believes for a moment that Monusco’s publicly stated mandate is one and the same with its underlying unstated assignment—which is to make it possible for global resource extraction companies (almost all from the West) to operate safely across the DR Congo under UN-mandated and provided security services. From this latter task (which can never be publicly admitted), Monusco is doing a sterling job for which Mr. Kobler should be appropriately decorated and rewarded. A pity like Patrice Lumumba’s assassins he will never be allowed to boast openly, this side of 50 years, about his exceptional service to global capital. Mwene Kalinda

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Why I won’t hold my breath about new Monusco chief