Congo Seeks Protection

The recent Rwandan invasion suggests that the Congolese and Rwandan governments, for their part, now doubt that the U.N. should have any role in the region. In December, the U.N. published a report alleging Rwandan support for Nkunda. Kigali shot back that the U.N. was among those that "have failed to resolve the conflict ... despite numerous bilateral, regional and international initiatives in the last 14 years." Conceivably, Rwanda is now showing that it is prepared to be serious about peacemaking and cut off allies like Nkunda if they behave badly. The message from Rwanda seems to be: You, the world, are doing an unacceptably poor job. We locals can, and must, do better.

I left Congo with the memory of one more sign. At MONUC headquarters I found a display of the achievements of Indian peacekeepers. Pictures of the soldiers with refugees were captioned GUARDIANS OF THE LOCAL POPULACE and DO NOT WORRY, WE ARE THERE. In pride of place was a display of pictures and letters detailing how the Indians extracted the body of a Chinese climber from the crater of the nearby Nyiragongo volcano. Above these was a proud banner reading BEYOND MANDATE. Retrieving a dead Chinese tourist from an uninhabited, uncontested mountain may be noble work. But the responsibility to protect was supposed to be about more than that.