West Congo violence catches out U.N. peacekeepers
By Joe Bavier
KINSHASA, March 5 (Reuters) - Violence between a shadowy ethnic group and police in western Congo has wrong-footed the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force, leaving it scrambling to try to end the latest violence in the vast country.
At least 22 people have been killed since police tried to assert state control in restless Bas-Congo province last Friday, prompting five days of clashes with members of Bundu dia Kongo (BDK) -- a group seeking to revive a pre-colonial kingdom.
The U.N. force, MONUC, which operates mainly in the eastern part of Congo, sent around 140 extra peacekeepers to Bas-Congo in January to ensure calm around the anniversary of a military crackdown on the BDK last year in which more than 100 people were killed, but they withdrew in mid-February.
The 17,000-strong U.N. force began dispatching military and police reinforcements to Bas-Congo again on Monday to quell fresh violence, but by Wednesday afternoon they had still to reach the conflict areas.
"More than 90 percent of our force is in the east," MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki said on Wednesday, adding the world body was doing all it could to bolster its presence in the province.
"We try to be present where the situation is tense, where there are conflicts, where the population feels they are in danger, but we don't have the possibility to deploy rapidly everywhere," he said.
BDK followers are campaigning for the re-establishment of the pr-colonial Kongo kingdom, which encompassed parts of present-day Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Republic and Gabon. They reject central authority over their province.
The violence around the town of Luozi, 200 km (125 miles) west of the capital Kinshasa, continued as late as Tuesday as security forces pursued BDK militants from town to town.
Two policemen died in fighting in the town of Sekebanza, 80 km (50 miles) north of the provincial capital Matadi, on Tuesday. Twenty-two people were killed in the first days of the clashes alone, the province's governor has said.
BDK leaders said the death toll was much higher than figures given by the government and accused Kinshasa of orchestrating a crackdown on the BDK.
More than a hundred people died in January 2007 during a military crackdown on BDK supporters protesting alleged fraud in local elections.
With little U.N. presence on the ground, rights campaigners are worried that innocent civilians are again being caught in the crossfire in Bas-Congo.
"Whenever (the government) goes out against BDK, they go all guns blazing," Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
Congo is still recovering from a 1998-2003 war that left much of the country in ruins and killed an estimated 5.4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease.
Much of its eastern borderlands -- where the vast majority of peacekeepers are based -- remain a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia controlled zones. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/) (Editing by Nick Tattersall and Sami Aboudi)
