originally published in the New York Times, United States
The United Nations will begin withdrawingpeacekeeping troops from Congo by June to hand control of the country’s security back to the Congolese, officials with the United Nations mission to Congo said Thursday.
The officials said they would still keep thousands of troops in Congo’s troubled east, where a toxic mix of armed groups continue to brutalize the population. But the peacekeepers will soon pull out of the more stable areas in the central part of the country.
Pressure has been building for months for the United Nations to find an exit strategy, with President Joseph Kabila eager to solidify his control before elections next year.
“We know that they want us to leave,” said Jean-Paul Dietrich, a United Nations spokesman. “The Congolese want to show that they are more and more a master of their own land.”
That land has been plagued by war, chaos and large-scale displacement since 1996, when a rebel movement overran the government of Mobutu Sese Seko, a notoriously corrupt dictator. Several other African nations then stormed into Congo, aligning themselves with various factions and plundering the country’s tin, copper, diamonds and gold. Aid agencies say that the ensuing conflict claimed millions of lives.
The United Nations created the Congo peacekeeping mission in 1999, and it grew to be one of the world’s largest, with more than 18,000 troops. But the mission has been tainted by sex scandals and accusations that the United Nations was turning a blind eye to abuses by the Congolese Army.
Many Congolese living in the conflict zones, like Katcho Karume, a scientist in Goma, in eastern Congo, were wary about the peacekeepers’ withdrawal.
The Congolese military, Mr. Karume said, is “just a group of people with guns.”
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