And the Beat Goes On.

From the AP, via Newsday

KINSHASA, Congo -- Assailants forced a group of villagers into their huts and set them on fire in eastern Congo, killing 39 people and injuring 17 others, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday.

The attack came late Saturday in Ntulumamba village, some 45 miles northwest of Bukavu, U.N. spokesman Kemal Saiki said. Communications with the remote area are difficult. Villagers who managed to escape blamed Hutu rebels for the attack, but Saiki said this could not be independently verified. Some 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels operate in eastern Congo after fleeing their homeland following the 1994 genocide.

Fifty Pakistani peacekeepers were immediately sent to the area and local and international rights group were also in the region to investigate the massacre, Saiki said.

Asked about reports the attacks were retaliation for U.N. peacekeeping activities, Secretary General Kofi Annan said in New York: "It would be unfortunate if that were the case because really what our people on the ground are trying to do is to take effective measures to protect the population who've been harassed over the years by these militias."

Unfortunate, indeed, Kofi. As unfortunate as this? From the Weekly Standard. by Joseph Loconte 01/03/2005

LAST MONTH A CLASSIFIED UNITED Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worst of the 150 or so allegations of misconduct--some of them captured on videotape--include pedophilia, rape, and prostitution. While a U.N. investigation into the scandal continues, the organization has just suspended two more peacekeepers in neighboring Burundi over similar charges. The revelations come three years after another U.N. report found "widespread" evidence of sexual abuse of West African refugees.

"The issue with the U.N. is that peacekeeping operations unfortunately seem to be doing the same thing that other militaries do," Gita Sahgal of Amnesty International told the Christian Science Monitor. "Even the guardians have to be guarded." That's not far off the mark. Various U.N. reports and interviews with humanitarian groups suggest that international peacekeeping missions are creating a predatory sexual culture among vulnerable refugees--from relief workers who demand sexual favors in exchange for food to U.N. troops who rape women at gunpoint.

Allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct by U.N. staff stretch back at least a decade, to operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. A 2001 report, released by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children, found that sexual violence against refugees in West Africa was endemic

In May, the United Nations reported that Hutu rebels and local militiamen have killed, raped and kidnapped about 900 people since June 2004.

Neighboring Rwanda and Uganda have invaded Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, under the auspices of driving out the rebels, who they feared were plotting another slaughter of Tutsis across the Rwandan border.

The 1998 invasion sparked a five-year war that sucked in six African armies. The war killed nearly 4 million people, mostly from war-induced sickness and hunger, aid groups say.

Right. So what the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo need is more of the blue-helmeted bastards who have been doing the same thing to them for years. "Troops" who are normally forbidden to defend themselves protecting much of a nation. Well, at least they don't carry matches.