Kamanyola: Doors and locks have been broken, electrical equipment stolen, fuel, food, water or electricity … Welcome what the United Nations has given to the Congolese police! by peacekeeping forces in the previously violent province of South Kivu.
The first phase of what the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo called an “orderly, responsible and sustainable” withdrawal by MONUSCO forces will end on April 30.
The peacekeepers have so far left four of the dozen bases in the province, including the post in Kamanyola, which now looks more devastated than the post Pakistani troops left two months ago, according to the provincial government.
“We have no food here,” said Bruno, one of the police officers stationed at the camp in the Ruzizi Plain.
Watched by three colleagues, corn or cassava paste is cooked in a pot on a fire on the ground.
Bruno said he requested supplements from a nearby Protestant church.
“If I don’t share, my colleagues will starve,” he said.
A small group began exploring the UN base two months ago.
Today, they passed a helicopter landing site where the corn was two meters (six feet) tall.
“I left my wife and children in Uvira (75 km south), where they are suffering and they put us in a cardboard house,” he said, touching the outer wall of a dormitory under construction.
Inside, a man sat on the bed of the smoking joint.
He was in civilian clothes but a member of the police’s “special intervention unit”.
The man admitted to stealing the bed with his colleagues during a thank-you ceremony at the base on February 28, attended by senior Congolese officials and senior UN officials.
More than half of the 115 policemen who were supposed to fill the base at the end of April have left, according to an AFP correspondent.
The rest did not agree to the terms and there was no payment.
“It’s easy for a police officer to go two days without food while on duty attacking civilians,” said Joe Wendo, a local civil society activist.
He remembers that MONUSCO gave the police three Jeeps, but now there is no fuel.
The Ruzizi Plain, near Rwanda and Burundi, is notorious for robbery and kidnapping.
“The withdrawal of MONUSCO is progressing well,” said Gaston Cissa wa Numbe, provincial minister in charge of liaison between the government and the United Nations in South Kivu.
He told the AFP news agency that there were “some problems mainly in the supply of electricity and drinking water”.
But “now there is a solution,” he assured.
The 15,000 MONUSCO troops stationed in the central African country began leaving in February at the request of the Kinshasa government, which it deemed ineffective.
The second phase of the UN withdrawal plan involves the war-torn North Kivu, where M23 rebels, backed by Rwandan forces, have seized large swaths of territory.
In early April, several UN bases were established to protect the provincial capital, Goma, held by rebels after UN peacekeepers ignored orders and abandoned them.
This mission was established in 1999 to stop the second DR Congo war, where local forces supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe fought against rivals supported by Uganda and Rwanda.
Since the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of deaths have been blamed on a succession of conflicts.
According to UN figures, 20,000 UN troops were killed in more than 270 MONUSCO peacekeeping countries.
Kinshasa wants to complete its withdrawal from the UN by the end of 2024, but the Security Council has not yet set a date.
The UN estimates that by the end of 2023, nearly seven million people will have been displaced in DR Congo, including 2.5 million in North Kivu alone.
