U.S.-trained Congolese troops committed rapes and other atrocities, U.N. says
Courtesy of U.S. Air Force - U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Christopher K. Haas, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, returns the salute of Lieutenant Colonel Pepe Tongawa in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo
By Craig Whitlock, Published: May 13
A Congolese army battalion that received its formative training from the U.S. military went on to commit mass rapes and other atrocities last year, a U.N. investigation has found. Members of the 391st Commando Battalion, a unit created in 2010 with extensive support from the U.S. government, joined with other Congolese soldiers to rape 97 women and 33 girls as they fled a rebel advance in eastern Congo in November, according to the United Nations.
U.S. Special Operations forces had spent eight months training the 750-member battalion in a bid to professionalize Congos ragtag military, which has a long history of rights abuses, including raping and killing civilians. The training program, dubbed Operation Olympic Chase, was led by the State Department and the U.S. Africa Command, which oversees military operations on the continent. Two years later, members of the battalion joined other Congolese soldiers to rape and rob scores of civilians in Minova, a town in eastern Congo, according to an investigative report released last week by the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office. The attacks occurred as Congolese forces were chased out of Goma, a key provincial capital, by a rebel group known as M23.
On Monday, the State Department acknowledged that some U.S.-trained soldiers may be implicated in these rapes, according to an e-mailed statement from a spokeswoman, Hilary Renner. We condemn these crimes unequivocally and call for a full and credible investigation by the Congolese government, she added. You have enhanced your moral understanding of how a professional military operates effectively within a democratic society to provide security, to protect the civilian population and to contribute to greater stability, Samuel Laeuchli, the ranking U.S. diplomat in the Congo at the time, said in a speech at the 391st Battalions graduation. Thierry Vircoulon, Central Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, said the U.S. government underestimated what it would take to reform the Congolese armed forces.
The state of the army in itself is a disaster, so you train people and you send them back to a dysfunctional army, he said. You are trained, but you still have a very low wage, no logistics, a very poor command system and no sense of belonging and cohesion because the Congolese army is still a patchwork of very different groups. Even if youre trained, at the end of the day, youre still an hungry and unpaid soldier.... The U.N. findings represent another setback in the U.S. militarys efforts to train and equip troops in Third World countries, many of which have poor human rights records.
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