By Rajat Pandit, TNN
NEW DELHI: Even as the UN Security Council moves towards pumping in more peace-keeping troops into war-ravaged Congo, India has for now virtually ruled out sending additional soldiers to the Central African nation.
India is already the largest troop contributor to the UN peace-keeping mission in Congo (MONUC) with 4,700 soldiers, followed by Pakistan with 3,551 soldiers. With a total of 17,000 troops, MONUC is currently the largest and most expensive UN peace-keeping mission around the globe.
But the blue-helmeted soldiers, primarily Indians, deployed in the eastern province of North Kivu in Congo, are increasingly getting sucked directly into the raging conflict between government and rebels forces in the region.
After defence minister A K Antony recently expressed “serious concern” over the developments in Congo, sources said his ministry has now told the external affairs ministry that there is no need to rush additional troops to Congo unless it is felt that it would “serve some major strategic or politico-economic interest” of India.
This came even as a battalion of 3rd Gorkha Rifles left for Congo on Friday as part of the “routine turnover” of Indian battalions deployed in MONUC. “The planes taking them to Congo will return with a Sikh Light Infantry battalion completing its tenure there. With European and other countries reluctant to strengthen MONUC, our troops should not become cannon-fodder,” said a defence ministry source.
As it is, there is mounting pressure on Indian troops in Congo to undertake “unilateral armed action” for any breach of peace against both the rapidly-advancing rebel forces led by Tutsi warlord General Laurent Nkunda as well as the poorly-trained and ill-disciplined Congo government forces “increasing running amok” with raping and looting sprees.
“But UNSC will have to revise the existing mandate to allow unilateral action. Even if it is done, the defence ministry is not in favour of sending more troops,” said the source.
The Indian reading of the situation is that western powers are playing their “own games” in the mineral-rich Congo, with a few even “sympathetic” to Rwanda’s support to rebel groups like Nkunda’s CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People).
With European countries unwilling to send troops to the vastly over-stretched MONUC, Indian and other troops have established COBs (company-operating bases) and MOBs (mobile-operating bases) in the “hot zones” in the North Kivu province, the epicentre of the conflict.
Except for a few incidents, which led to an Indian Lt-Col and a couple of others being injured recently, apart from a few rockets being fired on UN armoured personnel carriers, the warring groups have refrained from directly attacking the peace-keepers till now.
But there is the distinct possibility of the peace-keepers getting caught in the cross-fire since government forces now often use the cover of COBs and MOBs of MONUC to fire rocket and mortar shells at rebel forces.
With the January 2008 ceasefire agreement between all warring groups shredded to tatters by the escalating battle, estimates suggest over 250,000 people have been displaced in the North Kivu province since August.
After overrunning several important towns and villages in the region, the rebel forces are now threatening to take over North Kivu’s capital of Goma, which has a population of around 500,000.
There is also the fear that the conflict will spill over into other countries since Congo borders as many as nine other African nations, in what will be a repeat of the continent’s five-year war which touched all of them before it ended in 2003.
– TNN