Peacekeepers at War

The Congo long had a knack bringing out the worst in foreign adventurers, King Leopold II of Belgium to Joseph Conrad's fictional Kurtz. Now it forcing a well-intentioned visitor, the United Nations, to reconsider how it keeps the peace time of war.

The U.N. faced harsh criticism in the mid-1990s its peacekeepers stood aside as atrocities unfolded in Rwanda and in Srebrenica the Bosnian war. Determined not to repeat failures, the U.N. resolved to use force in the of protecting civilians.

Thirteen years, hundreds of peacekeeper deaths and billions dollars later, the U.N. mission in Congo, its largest and most expensive, has shown the problems of what became as "robust peacekeeping."

A rebellion triggered in early April a general in the Congolese army—an army that the U.N. supports— caused hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees. Last month, Congolese villagers angry the U.N. for failing to protect them fired a U.N. base, injuring at 11 Pakistani peacekeepers. Constrained budgets from a weak global economy forced the U.N., for the first time years, to cut its peacekeeping budget and reduce troops the ground in places like Congo, and the Congolese government has begun pressure on the U.N. to pull out entirely.

For more a century, Congo's natural resources and geopolitical position have drawn the interest of global powers. By the Belgium granted Congo independence in 1960, the country found itself the center of Cold War machinations between Washington and Moscow. There's also guilt in the West a more recent source: France, which supported the ethnic group perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda, and the U.S., declined to act to prevent it, are determined to bring stability to region. When a U.N. mission was proposed in 1999, the U.S. readily gave its support, and other countries quickly got board. Poorer nations as Pakistan, Bangladesh and India now provide the bulk of the U.N. troops, for the prestige and, in some cases, for the financial compensation.

The U.N. mission in Congo encountered many obstacles, not the because of Bosco Ntaganda, the former Congolese general the center of the recent violence there. three years he lived the high life in Goma, a chaotic city beside an active volcano. He played tennis by the lake at the Hotel Karibu, a favorite spot Western humanitarian workers in Congo. He late breakfasts poolside at the Mbiza Hotel and was a fixture Goma's nightclubs and bars.

U.N. peacekeeping forces in eastern Congo left Mr. Ntaganda alone in Goma, accusations against him of human-rights abuses and a 2006 warrant his arrest by the International Criminal Court in Hague. The peacekeepers said that their hands were . As part of a 2009 pact that sought elusive peace, the onetime rebel leader become a general in the Congolese army. The U.N.—along with its 19,000 uniformed peacekeepers, special-forces units, armored personnel carriers and attack helicopters—in effect found itself supporting units accused mass killings and rapes of civilians.

Mr. Ntaganda, 39, ended the charade in April, when he defected the army with hundreds of followers, blowing military vehicles and munitions depots. Tens of thousands of refugees fled neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, the U.N. says. Mr. Ntaganda remains large.

U.N. peacekeeping today little resemblance to what it looked like its early days. The first mission, in 1948, was a small, unarmed observer force sent to monitor a buffer zone Arabs and Israelis. During the entire Cold War, the U.N. launched just 18 missions.

The end of the Cold War brought an increase in conflict within states and, particularly in Africa, rise in humanitarian crises. Global terrorism highlighted the dangers of failed states. Suddenly, demands peacekeepers became larger and complicated.

Since 1990, the U.N. has launched close 50 missions. The number of U.N. peacekeepers world-wide has grown sevenfold 1999, to 100,000, and the global peacekeeping budget has increased by a similar degree to $7.8 billion, of the U.S. is assessed 27%.

Many missions launched since 1999, when the U.N.'s current mission in Congo began, have carried the mandate to fight to protect civilians—a sharp break the era when peacekeepers used force only in self-defense.


Adapted and abridged from: The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2012.