Who killed Ambassador Attanasio in Congo and what is the UN doing?
Giuseppe Gagliano's article on the killing of Ambassador Attanasio in Congo
On the killing of the Italian Ambassador Luca Attanasio at present there are some plausible hypotheses and some certainties. Let's start with the very probable hypotheses at the state of the investigation.
Congo's Interior Ministry accused a Hutu rebel group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) of carrying out the attack . According to witnesses, the attackers spoke in Kinyarwanda, the language spoken in Rwanda.
However, as Pierre Boisselet , coordinator of the Kivu security barometer, said, the FDLR are not the only ones speaking Kinyarwanda, there are other groups in the region , such as Nyatura or the former M23.
Although the identity of the group behind the attack remains unknown, the latest incident exemplifies the challenges local security forces face. During 2020, between October and September, there were two cases in which demonstrators in Kibumba and Rugari, both near the site of the attack, set up barricades on the RN2 road line to protest.
Given the size of the group and the way the group carried out the attack, it is likely that the kidnapping was their real motive rather than a deliberate attack on the Italian ambassador: increasing levels of kidnappings and armed robberies in Goma Western and Northwestern were and remain a growing concern.
Several incidents related to ambushes, kidnappings, armed robberies and rape were recorded in the immediate vicinity of the attack site, and WFP and vehicles of other humanitarian organizations were ambushed by armed and criminal groups in eastern DRC.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been grappling with numerous conflicts in recent decades, often linked to attempts to control mineral resources. There are still dozens of militias and criminal groups operating in the eastern DRC. Ambassador Luca Attanasio is the first ambassador to be killed in the country since French ambassador Philippe Bernard was killed during the riots in the capital, Kinshasa, in 1997.
The attack took place on a road that had previously been cleared for travel without a security escort. “There was no sign that an attack was about to occur in this area. The number of accidents reported by the populations had been decreasing in recent weeks and we were reducing the number of red roads, those that should only be used under the escort of Monusco, ” said Jean Metenier, head of the UNICEF office in Goma .
However, there is a historical pattern of ambushes occurring north of Goma.
In the past year, there have been two more incidents in the vicinity of this attack.
The most recent incident occurred on January 10, 2021 in Kabuhendo, where gunmen ambushed the ONVI guards. Although this incident occurred north of Kiwanja, it still showed that the threat persisted in this area. Observing the kidnapping episodes in the Goma area and at the mission site, we cannot fail to underline how the threat of kidnapping is still significant. Rather than seeing it through the lens of the extraordinary circumstances of the ambassador's first death in the DRC since 1997, the attack can instead be seen as a typical event in this region even if it had tragic consequences.
Let us now pass to some certainties, that is to say some objective facts.
The first fact relates to the role of the UN. It is only in 2010 that Monusco (United Nations Mission for Stabilization in the Democratic Republic of Congo) is born, just as it is only in 2013 that the first United Nations Combat Force, namely the Intervention Brigade, formed only by African troops, with the task of neutralizing and disarming the rebel movements in the eastern regions.
At present, the UN peacekeepers have their strongholds in Kivu and Ituri. These still represent areas of high insecurity despite the UN having the bulk of its forces. What does this mean in practice? That the objective of achieving stabilization by the UN has so far proved unsuccessful.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/chi-ha-ucciso-lambasciatore-attanasio-in-congo-onu/ on Tue, 16 Feb 2021 07:44:50 +0000.