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Publication Date: 08/02/2004 The UN Security Council turned its attention to the fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week. It passed a resolution extending an arms embargo against warring factions for another year. It wasn't much of a bite. As usual, the council went robotic. It requested Secretary General Kofi Annan to reconstitute, within 30 days, a committee to investigate any violations of the embargo and report back in December. There wasn't a hint of penalties for failure to comply. The council added some diplomatic niceties. It repeated a call on neighbouring countries not to provide direct or indirect military and financial assistance to parties. While the council was going through the motions, fighting raged in eastern DRC. Some 35,000 civilians were on the move in South Kivu province. The fighting was between President Joseph Kabila's and renegade soldiers. South Kivu and the northern DRC, where fighting has raged for several years, aren't adjacent to Indian or Atlantic Oceans. They are enclaves of sorts. Similar enclaves exist in the continent: northern Cote d'Ivoire, Darfur in western Sudan and northern Uganda. Earlier there was the infamous one, part of Angola that John Savimbi's Union for Total Independence of Angola, or Unita, controlled. While there exists problems causing strife in these enclaves, there's an external issue the council should have addressed long time ago. How do the arms get there? At issue aren't tanks, howitzers, Stalin organs, fighter jets or bombers. The issue is portable arms. It doesn't, of course, mean that in the absence of rifles, people won't kill each other. Rwanda's extremist Hutus demonstrated how lethal machetes are. Firearms do a faster job, though. Areas of the DRC affected by conflicts border Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Central Africa Republic and Congo Brazzaville. Only hypocrites can accept these countries' righteous assertions they don't know from where the warring factions get arms. Well, Sudan can point at Colonel John Garang's Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army. Uganda and Rwanda had better stay mum. The other day a report by a United Nations experts accused Rwanda or providing DRC's renegade soldiers direct and indirect support. President Paul Kagame saw red. He charged the United Nations swallows anything Mr Kabila says. In Cote d'Ivoire, some soldiers didn't like President Laurent Gbagbo's style of governing. In September 2002, they split the country into two. The part they control borders Liberia, Mali, Burkina-Faso and Ghana. The rebels have been holding their own since then. Late last week Mr Gbagbo had to tone down, for a third time, his bombastic claim to absolute governance of the country and agree to work with the rebels. Granted the rebels took off with some military materiel. Certainly they didn't have enough to last as long as they have. It's obvious the rebels have been getting supplies from somewhere. Definitely, it's not through the southern parts Mr Gbagbo controls. Even if it's by air through Bounke town, the airplanes pass through other countries' air space. Liberia, of course, has been cited as one of the sources of arms for the rebels. As long as President Charles Taylor, a butcher who is now Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo's guest, that was understandable. However, the story is Liberia still remains a source. That can only be peanut. What about the rest? Then there is Darfur. The neighbours are Central Africa Republic, Chad and parts of Sudan controlled by Khartoum and the SPLA. Mr Garang will, smiling, only admit to heart felt sympathies for the rebels. Yet they are armed well enough to cause Sudan to resort to tactics that have earned Khartoum an international badge of infamy. There's the Lords Resistance Army, which has given Uganda's Yoweri Museveni more than his share of headaches. The rebels are in the league of savages by any language. Yet it's well known that without Khartoum's support the LRA would be history. To jog memories, Mr Savimbi fought for decades despite declarations by the United Nations. He had: tanks, artillery and multiple rocket launchers. He didn't control a centimetre of seashore. He had no armament factories. All the cases cited have been possible for a variety of reasons. The principle one is illegal arms dealers. But they don't operate in thin air. Unfortunately, there aren't penalties for nations that tolerate the activities of these dealers or directly support dissidents most of whom are thugs shouting political slogans. That's where the United Nations, which has a good idea of arms routes, comes in. Of course, Mr Annan can't call his bosses criminals. But the United Nations can and should routinely name guilty countries. There are enough do-gooders who will publish at least an annual list of shame. Mr Mbitiru, a freelance journalist, is a former 'Sunday Nation' Managing editor |
