Revealing a modicum of common sense, the Security Council has so far held back from ordering Mr Annan to conjure up the 5,000 troops who are supposed to bring order to the vast mayhem in Congo, and protect the handful of UN observers already there.Congo is an extreme case.
Given the rampant and enduring corruption and chaos within the Congolese armed forces and government, Rwanda wants and - you could argue - needs its own loyal commanders in key positions of operational control in the eastern DR Congo in order to protect its own borders, its legitimate security interests and its far less legitimate economic interests.
So are blankets, clothes, cooking sets, jerry cans, soap and mosquito nets to protect against malaria – the number-one killer of children in DR Congo.
The United Nations has been urged to go back to basics in protecting civilians in Eastern Congo after admitting that 500 rapes in the space of a single month amounted to a serious failure in its mission.
He touted his Congo Free State as a sort of preserve for the natives, promising to protect them from slavers..
He touted his Congo Free State as a sort of preserve for the natives, promising to protect them from slavers.
The Rwandans also argue that they are acting to protect their national security; many of their countrymen are still under threat, they say, from Congo-based exiles who took part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.The battle for Kisangani has become part of a wider rivalry for regional supremacy.
Unofficial sources talk of operations in Algeria, both during its bloody war of independence and more recently to protect French citizens from Islamic extremists; in Vietnam in the 1950s; in Libya in the 1970s; in Congo-Brazzaville in the 1990s.
Page A10 CONGO VIOLENCE FINDS NEW LOCALE Eastern Congo is home to almost a third of the world's surviving 700 wild mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park, but because of a recent surge in violence, there is nobody left to protect them.
The Congo resolution, introduced by Nancy Soderberg, the African expert at the United States mission to the United Nations, would let the peacekeepers use force to protect themselves and 500 monitors and officials from relief, human rights and medical operations.
