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U.N.'s peace force unravels in Congo

"Where are they going?" asked a nurse. But to many more, the failure is no surprise.

KIBATI, Congo - The refugees watched in anger as the U.N. tanks headed away from the battlefield and the Tutsi rebels they were supposed to be stopping.

"Where are they going? They're supposed to protect us!" shouted Jean-Paul Maombi, a 31-year-old nurse who had fled his village because of the violence. Nearby, young men hurled rocks at the U.N. troops.

The quick unraveling of the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping effort has come as no surprise to the mission's critics, who complain the force was unprepared for its main task - protecting civilians from the war.

Growing numbers of civilians are furious at the United Nations' failure to keep them safe. Angry Congolese have pelted rocks at all four U.N. compounds in the provincial capital of Goma, a city of 600,000 near the border with Rwanda.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents, refugees and government soldiers fled in a chaotic torrent ahead of advancing rebels. A cease-fire appeared to halt most fighting yesterday in Goma.

Tutsi-led rebels launched a low-level fight three years ago, claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi. Despite agreeing in January to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, fighting resumed in August. The recent clashes have forced more than 200,000 people from their homes in two months, the United Nations says.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that peacekeeping troops in Congo were "doing everything possible to protect civilians and fulfill their mandate in untenable circumstances."

Fewer than 6,000 of the mission's 17,000 troops are deployed in North Kivu, the site of the current fighting.

The inability to protect civilians is particularly frustrating for the U.N. mission in Congo, which got a strong mandate, including the power to use force, in part because of lessons learned in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and other regions of Congo, where failure to prevent civilian killings became a mark of shame.

The explosion of violence in eastern Congo has shown the mission to be lacking more than manpower. It has been ill-equipped to deal with the guerrilla tactics of rebels who overwhelm the conventionally trained peacekeepers with hit-and-run attacks by small groups.

The mission is composed mostly of troops from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uruguay and South Africa. Few speak the region's languages.

"It's not just the language skills - it's about the conflict preparedness, the ability to understand the political situation" said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London.

Perhaps most fundamental is the complexity of the mandate handed to the force, known by the French acronym MONUC. The peacekeepers have been charged with simultaneously protecting civilians, disarming rebel fighters and policing buffer zones separating the insurgents from government troops.