EXCLUSIVE: Monusco together with the Foreign Intervention Brigade (FIB) work with the FDLR and the Congolese army, FARDC

The Rwanda Focus is in possession of a leaked Monusco document, a "weekly assessment report", for the period 09 July to 15 July 2013, submitted to headquarters of Monusco North Kivu Brigade. The document, a copy of which was leaked to this newspaper by sources in eastern Congo, is proof of what many already suspect - that Monusco, the UN "peacekeeping force" together with the UN "Foreign Intervention Brigade" (of Tanzanian and South African troops) are far from being neutral in the fighting and attendant atrocities like rape, looting and desecration of corpses taking place in the east of the Congo.

Monusco and FIB troops are actively providing logistics, intelligence and even directly fighting on the side of FARDC and the FDLR Rwandan genocidal militia that has been thriving on looting, raping and targeting Congolese Tutsi populations for extermination for the past 19 years.

The "weekly assessment report" and the paragraphs superimposed on the maps in it speak for themselves. A paragraph states in part ... "FIB/Tanzanian troops 'will move forward with 39th and 41st and 42nd FARDC/FDLR 110 rgmt (regiment) against M23'",... and: "Monusco supplying foods, water, medication and EVAC (evacuation of the dead) to 'FARDC coalition'". By "FARDC Coalition," Monusco means coalition of the Congo army and the FDLR. The FDLR militias often fight in place of the Congo military whose troops all the time turn and run as fast as they can at the first sound of opposing fire.

Another paragraph within the report says: "It's reported that Monusco supported FARDC tanks and troops to use its premises today 10:50 A.M so as to come closer to M23 held zones, a fact 'violating and compromising the mandate of U.N. in Congo'". The report went on to say the M23 political directorate raised this complaint (of Monusco violating its mandate).

The entire tenor of the report is decidedly anti M23. It is as if the entire raison d'être of Monusco (and now the FIB) is to actively participate, with the FARDC and its FDLR/Interahamwe militia proxies in hunting down, hounding or killing members of only one fighting group - the M23. But that is nowhere in the Monusco or FIB mandates.

The U.N. resolution that created the FIB for instance states: "the resolution strongly condemned M23, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) 'and all other armed groups and their continued violence and abuses of human rights'".

It is nowhere in Monusco's mandate to provide logistics, intelligence, evacuation services, air cover or any other measures actively supporting one side or another in the belligerencies. Yet that clearly is what Monusco - with its help of FARDC and FDLR - is doing.

Human rights atrocities are taking place in the open, with the Congo army directly implicated in raping, looting and desecrating corpses as media reports that were awash with grisly images last week showed. FDLR have for the last 19 years terrorized the east of that vast country, exporting their genocide ideology by targeting Congolese Tutsi communities for extermination, killing all they can find, raping, looting and committing all other kinds of atrocities.

Reports of FDLR activities have repeatedly been forwarded to all the relevant parties: the U.N. bosses in New York, the African Union and international rights organizations. But the Congolese army and the FDLR receive much less condemnation than M23, a group that is barely four years old and that came about as a reaction to its people being targeted for annihilation.

Entities like Human Rights Watch, or the UN GoE ("group of experts" on the DR Congo) reserve far more brutal commentary for alleged M23 atrocities, even in the total absence of real evidence of those alleged M23 crimes. But HRW, GoE and others like that so much downplay FARDC and FDLR atrocities that the uninformed may imagine they are almost innocent of any crimes.