Doss: Who Could Possibly Have Foreseen this?

From All Africa:

Civilians are bearing the brunt of attempts to dismantle armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the rebels carrying out vicious reprisals and some Government soldiers committing serious human rights abuses, the senior United Nations official to the country told the Security Council today.

Alan Doss, the Secretary-General's Special Representative and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (known as MONUC), said in a briefing to Council members that there is growing concern about the humanitarian impact of the efforts to disband the armed groups.

The fact is that neither Monuc nor Fardc was remotely capable of undertaking the sort of delicate and yet powerful counter-insurgency operation required to eliminate the FDLR. What has happened there is an entirely predictable disaster, with repercussions for the Congo and for future UN peacekeeping operations that will last a generation. There is no excuse for it. Whoever greenlighted this operation should be fired immediately.