The utilization of 17,000 troops in MONUC represents the largest single deployment of UN forces worldwide. Yet, as with most peacekeeping forces, it is a smaller contingent than the standing army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and even of some of the warring militias, including the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC) and the Mai-Mai rebels . The UN troops are positioned precariously among a proliferation of armed and often trigger-happy groups. For example, in January 2006 while MONUC armored personnel carriers and helicopter gunships chased rebel Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF/NALU) troops as well as forces loyal to renegade Congolese general Laurent Nkunda after a series of raids, battalions of the DRC army?comprised of former Mai-Mai militia and the Congolese Rally for Democracy?broke into skirmishes against each other. Then, on January 23, 2006 , eight Guatemalan soldiers from a UN detachment were killed in strikes by Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) . Those deaths bring MONUC’s total casualty figure since arrival in 1999 to 62. If that were not enough, in recent years, both the Rwandan and the Ugandan armies have crossed or threatened to cross their shared frontiers for brief attacks in Congo against their own rebels seeking sanctuary over the international border in DRC.

Ironically, this narrative of recent events is from a country technically at peace. In 1998, at least six African nations sent troops to the DRC civil war, which had broken out in a year earlier. A peace agreement reached in 2002 set in motion current plans for a transition to democracy. Alarmingly, in early January 2006, New York-based International Rescue Committee issued a report concluding, “Congo is the deadliest crisis anywhere in the world over the past 60 years.” Their estimation of nearly four million war-related casualties due mainly through hunger and disease was higher than the numbers killed in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur. All told, it is difficult to imagine any moves toward democracy as having much chance at success.

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