AG: Well, there’s a long list of UN investigations documenting the Ugandan army’s mass atrocities and resource plunder in DRC. And in 2005, the UN’s International Court of Justice ruled that Uganda owed DRC $10 billion for human rights crimes and resource plunder in DRC. So shouldn’t these usually reliable sources know that bringing Ugandan troops into Beni is like inviting the fox in to guard the henhouse?
HE: One would think so. There have been even more recent UN experts’ reports that gold, timber, and even ivory are being smuggled across the Congolese border into Uganda and then on for export to international markets.
The assertion that the attack was actually carried out by this Ugandan Islamist militia acting alone is also very much in doubt. The so-called ADF, which has been languishing around in Congo for 20 years, is really a very small operation. The Congolese army chased most of them out of the forest in 2014. It’s very hard to believe that they could have carried out such a massive attack that went on for hours, wounded more than 50 soldiers, and killed 14 of them.
AG: The Tanzanian troops are part of the special UN Force Intervention Brigade that the UNSC created and gave an offensive mandate in DRC in 2013. That means the Brigade can actually pursue aggressors, not just defend themselves and the civilians they’re assigned to protect, and the UNSC has renewed their offensive mandate each year since. They’re the best armed and best trained peacekeepers in DRC, so it is extremely unlikely that a rag tag, barely extant, forest based militia could engage them in a fierce, four hour battle.
The Brigade, most of whose troops were Tanzanian, helped drive the M23 militia across the Congolese border back into Rwanda and Uganda in 2014, and some Congolese are suggesting that there was an element of vengeance in this for Rwandans and Ugandans among the attackers.
MONUSCO officials called it “a well-coordinated and complex operation launched at dusk by attackers armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades,” and reported that they took out two armored personnel carriers and an ambulance and truck before withdrawing.
Milton, are you denying or finding it insignificant that the TPLF attacked a federal army base...
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