Patrick Cammaert breaks the silence

Patrick Cammaert, a retired Major General of the Dutch marines, was Commander of the UN forces in eastern Congo from 2005 to 2007. He told Radio Netherlands Worldwide he would welcome additional troops but stressed that the crisis itself can not be solved by military power alone.

Breakthroughs and agreements in countries like the DRC should always be observed with due caution, as most, if not all of the earlier agreements were never observed. And it may well be that the offer made by wanted war criminal Laurent Nkunda is inspired by the fact that his Tutsi forces have made considerable progress in the East in recent weeks. His offer also comes with a catch: he rules out direct talks with Congolese President Joseph Kabila.

France has asked the United Nations Security Council to send an additional 3,000 peacekeepers to Eastern Congo on top of the 15,000 blue helmets already deployed in the region. Fighting between the Congolese army, Tutsi rebels led by Laurent Nkunda and an array of militias has led to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians and thousands of deaths.

Cammaert doesn't want the UN peacekeeping force MONUC to participate in a tripartite commission that should monitor a ceasefire. For the UN, that would seem to be an unacceptable precondition.

Attention drifted away
For two years, retired Major General Patrick Cammaert was the Commander of MONUC in eastern Congo. Under his command, MONUC conducted offensive military operations against any party that refused to comply with the peace agreements, as warranted by the mandate given to MONUC by the UN Security Council.

But since his departure early last year, that assertive stance dissipated, leading to the troubling conclusion that success or failure of UN peace missions depends on individual force commanders. But there's more to it than that, Major General Cammaert says:

"After the elections in 2006, the international community drifted away with their attention to other parts of the world and started to think even about a draw down of troops, which I think is also a mistake". Political solution needed
For a former UN general known for his no-nonsense approach, one would expect that he would support the current calls for a tougher mandate or more UN troops. But on the contrary, the former MONUC Commander stresses that the problems in the Democratic Republic of Congo are of a political nature and so should be any solution to those problems:

"It is very disappointing to see that the situation has deteriorated as it's doing now. But it is in fact a combination of factors. [Laurent] Nkunda and the FDLR-Interahamwe - the former genocide Hutus - are political problems. The international community and also President Kabila try to solve these problems in a military way, which I think is not right. The political arguments that Nkunda is using should be dealt with by president Kabila. And you can put on military pressure, and the UN can do that, but first of all, it's a political problem".MONUC mandate
Retired Major General Patrick Cammaert is also criticising the way in which the UN peacekeeping force MONUC has interpreted its mandate since his departure. The mandate is twofold: to protect civilians under imminent threat, and secondly, to support the Congolese army in disarming rebel groups.

"I think that over the year, the interpretation of this mandate has been blurred and confused. The United Nations should have dealt more forcefully with the projection of civilians under imminent threat of physical violence".

Olusegun Obasanjo has meanwhile warned not to expect immediate results from his mediation. He told reporters that one visit to Goma will not bring the solution: "Anyone who would bring that about, would be God."

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