Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

A child multilated by LRA rebels standing by Ugandan Defence Force soldiers.

We have what amounts to incontrovertible proof that Monusco, the so-called peacekeeping U.N. mission in eastern DR Congo, is in an unholy alliance with the newly formed Foreign Intervention Brigade to actively participate in the savage fighting raging there.

As if this is not enough of a violation of their "peacekeeping" mandate, Monusco with the FIB - comprising mainly of troops from Tanzania and South Africa - are unreservedly taking sides in that fighting, giving every possible help to FARDC (the Congolese military) with its FDLR allies as they commit every imaginable war atrocity in the name of fighting the M23 rebel group.

Looting is routine for the FARDC/FDLR alliance. As is raping. Included in the list now is dragging corpses of dead bodies through the streets using blunt metallic objects as tools.

Let us first look at a few of the ways Monusco and FIB are violating their mandates. Part of Monusco's brief is to "use all necessary means" to protect civilians. Instead they are providing logistics, intelligence, evacuation services, and even giving their bases for the use of FARDC/FDLR Interahamwe.

The cowardly FARDC is best known for using rape as a weapon of war; FARDC troops are best known for killing innocent civilians while plundering their pitiable property and causing stampedes of frightened civilians fleeing to neighboring countries. What are Monusco officials thinking, actively siding with this motley bunch of thugs? The Foreign Intervention Brigade, read that Tanzanian troops, on their part are implicated in these atrocities by furtively dressing up as FARDC to try to shore them up.

Why then are Monusco/FIB overlooking the very existential threat to Congolese of Tutsi ethnicity, and not only overlooking it but also actively abetting the acts of those hell-bent on committing even more genocide in this region?

Now, let's play Devil's advocate and say, maybe Monusco/FIB sympathize with FARDC supposedly because it is "the national army" fighting an alleged "foreign force," as the M23 rebels have been dubbed in the Congo thanks to the exceedingly spurious but oft repeated propaganda of the DRC government. Let's for a moment shut our eyes to the fact the M23 are as Congolese as the loud-mouthed "Information Minister" Lambert Mende, but have only decided to fight their government after being pushed against a wall by the atrocities inflicted upon them, for the crime of being of Tutsi ethnicity. Why then are Monusco/FIB overlooking the very existential threat to Congolese of Tutsi ethnicity, and not only overlooking it but also actively abetting the acts of those hell-bent on committing even more genocide in this region?

This brings us to another practice of the unholy alliance that is in direct contravention of their mandates.

FIB specifically has been created to combat all rebel groups fighting and causing instability in DRC and these include, in the wording of the resolution creating the FIB - the M23, the FDLR, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and others. But now we have the appalling situation where Monusco/FIB not only are participating in hounding and hunting down only one group, M23, in cahoots with one of the most human rights violating militaries in the world, and with a group whose history of genocide is incontestable.

Monusco/FIB have given the LRA a free pass to plunder weak Congolese villagers and threaten their native Uganda. They care not a whit what Joseph Kony does.

Any clear-headed person knows Monusco and FIB are not in the DRC to keep any peace.They are there for pecuniary interests. Whether their activities actually abet more atrocities, and possibly genocide, for them is far beside the point.

Monusco is about trafficking children for sex (don't take our word for this, look it up in documents detailing their recent history). Monusco is about mineral trade in the Congo, them being directly involved in multi-million dollar transactions. They are about safeguarding their own existence and the plum jobs it comes with (over 1.2 billion U.S. dollars is spent on this mission annually). They have to justify this expense and their own existence and the only way to achieve that is perpetual chaos in eastern DRC.

The FIB's interests closely align with those of Monusco. South African president Jacob Zuma is reputed to have business interests in the DRC, with a cousin of his taking care of those (mining) interests. Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, according to inside accounts, has gotten himself and his sidekicks big mining concessions from the DRC president - the weakling Joseph Kabila whose only strategy to hang onto power is to outsource all his fighting to rapacious foreigners.

It is a free for all in the DRC. American companies, Canadian, South African and others from different countries are there. And they all thrive in the chaotic atmosphere. An unstable Congo of never ending chaos fully aligns with their interests. You can be sure, one way or the other, they are working for the situation to remain exactly how it is. Perpetually. How many more lives will be lost; whether one of the groups exists for the sole purpose of one day finishing the genocide they started in Rwanda, in fact whether Rwanda itself dissolves in the kind of chaos prevailing in the Congo, all that concerns very little all those individuals and entities making vast sums of dollars in the vast country with no government.

That is the sad reality of human greed.