India’s blue berets sacrifice lives for peace in faraway lands

Hundreds of villagers lined up along the road on August 1 as the cortège of Sanwala Ram Vishnoi of the slowly proceeded to the crematorium at Band in Barmer in Rajasthan. The scene was equally sombre at the Bagariya Ki Bas village in the Sikar district of the State where the mortal remains of Shishupal Singh was consigned to flames on the same day.

Vishnoi and Singh, both head constable of the Border Security Force (BSF), were brought home dead the previous day – from Butembo, a city in North Kivu in Democratic Republic of Congo, where they were killed by a frenzied mob that attacked a United Nations facility on July 26. They were among nearly 2040 soldiers and police personnel India contributed to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC, a.k.a MONUSCO.

The irate mob not only pelted stones, but also fired at the UN peacekeepers after snatching weapons from the local police personnel. Vishnoi and Singh as well as another UN peacekeeper from Morocco were killed in Butembo. At least 30 civilians were also killed in the waves of violent protests against the MONUSCO across eastern Congo.

The agitators were led by the youth wing of the DRC’s ruling Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDSP) party led by the country’s President Felix Tshisekedi. They were demanding immediate withdrawal of the MONUSCO from the country, as the UN peacekeeping mission allegedly failed to protect local people from the militias.

The conflict in Congo has a long and complex past and present, involving its eastern neighbours, Rwanda and Uganda, which have been backing countless militant organizations to extend influence in the Central African nation’s eastern region, which is known for mineral resources.

The MONUSCO in 2010 replaced an earlier UN mission called the MONUC. It is now the largest of the 12 ongoing UN missions around the world, with 17783 personnel, including 12384 military personnel, 1626 police personnel and 2970 civilians, deployed in the DRC’s conflict zones, according to a fact-sheet released by the international organization in November 2021.

The UN already set a timeline to wind up its mission in Congo. The DRC’s government forces are expected to take over most of the responsibilities of the MONUSCO by the end of 2024.

But, with the DRC set to go to polls next year, the withdrawal of the MONUSCO turned into a political issue and, in the wake of the recent waves of protest over the UN mission’s failure to protect civilians from the militias, President Felix Tshisekedi’s government decided to ask the international organization to fast-track the exit of the peacekeepers.

The MONUSCO spokesperson Mathias Gillmann recently told French radio station RFI that the UN peacekeepers deployed in the DRC did not have the military means to fight the M23, the most brutal among the militias operating in the eastern region of the country. He said that the M23 was operating almost like a professional army and armed with sophisticated weapons and if the MONUSCO focussed only on fighting the group, it would adversely affect its operations elsewhere in the country. His comment did not go down well with the DRC government, which expelled him from the country. No representative of the DRC government was present at an event the MONUSCO had held to pay homage to the peacekeepers killed recently – indicating the state of relationship between President Felix Tshisekedi’s regime and the UN mission.

The UN peacekeepers in Congo have also been accused of sexual exploitation of local women as well as killing or injuring innocent civilians. As recently as on July 31, two UN peacekeepers allegedly opened fire at a border post between the DRC and Rwanda, killing two civilians and injuring 15 others.

Soon after Vishnoi and Singh were killed on July 26, New Delhi’s diplomatic mission in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, demanded that the perpetrators should be swiftly brought to justice. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated the demand during a phone-call with the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, on July 30.

India has been a leading contributor of troops to the UN peacekeeping missions. It has so far deployed more than a quarter million troops in as many as 49 of the 71 UN peacekeeping missions around the world so far. Its contribution to the UN peacekeeping missions had started soon after it attained Independence in August 1947. It had deployed over 300 personnel of the Indian Army’s paramedical unit to facilitate withdrawal of the sick and wounded soldiers of the US and Republic of Korea as well as the UN forces engaged in the Korean War. It at present has about 5500 military and police personnel – both men and women – engaged in nine of the 12 ongoing UN peacekeeping missions around the world.

The nation has so far lost 177 bravehearts, who sacrificed their lives for peace in faraway lands, with Singh and Vishnoi being the latest.

New Delhi has since long been arguing at the UN forums that the peacekeeping missions should be given clear, focused, sequenced, prioritized and practically achievable mandates. India has also been insisting that the mandates should be matched by adequate resources for the peacekeeping missions. “Safety and security of peacekeepers should be an utmost priority for all of us,” Saurabh Kumar, Secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of the Government of India, told the UN Security Council on July 12 last. “When the (Security) Council decides the crafting of peacekeeping mandates, we need to keep that cardinal principle in our minds. We cannot let the bearers of the blue flag be exposed to harm’s way, without providing them the necessary resources needed to tackle such threats”.

New Delhi has been arguing that the UN peacekeeping missions with so-called “robust mandates” had become targets of terrorist and armed groups. It cited data that suggested that while the success rates of the missions in protection of civilians in conflict zones had not improved, attacks on the personnel deployed for the mission had increased leading to an exponential growth of fatalities of peacekeepers. Kumar stressed on addressing the issue by engaging local communities, building trust, and helping them understand what peacekeepers could do for them and what they couldn’t. He argued that local communities must be briefed about the responsibilities of the governments of the host countries.