GOMA, CONGO—The United Nations issued a direct, public appeal to Canada Tuesday, asking for the country's help with the international peacekeeping operation in the troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The challenge to Canada to step up was echoed repeatedly by residents in Goma on a day when Governor-General Michaëlle Jean arrived amid tight security as violence rose in regions of the country.

A possible UN pullout at this critical stage has soldiers, civilians, and men and women of Goma fearing a wholesale withdrawal will leave people at the mercy of vicious armed groups hiding in the jungle.

Christian Manahl, the UN deputy administrator overseeing operations in the eastern Congo, was blunt with Canadian reporters after meeting Jean at the UN compound here on the shores of Lake Kivu.

He outlined progress on the ground, but quickly added there was an important role for Canada.

“Definitely logistics, mobility, and intelligence are the key issues where we felt more would be needed,” Manahl said.

He also said the UN mission in Congo needs more money to boost its peace-building efforts. He said another $5 million to add to the $4 million available.

Some of that support may well be on the way.

It is widely expected here Canadian Gen. Andrew Leslie will get the nod from Ottawa and members of the Security Council to take over command of the UN mission in Congo, and will bring with him up to 100 top-level officers to support the mission.

The question swirling around political circles in Canada is whether the Stephen Harper government will back Leslie with Canadian troops, effectively redeploying soldiers from Afghanistan where Parliament has set a mid-2011 deadline to begin a pullout.

Jean pointed Manahl to Canadian reporters. “I think that Canadians need to understand what's happening here, how it's progressing, what the challenges are.”

Goma is at the crux of the battle to stabilize this nation, where armed conflicts fuelled by tribal and ethnic rivalries and competition for the country's mineral wealth are estimated to have left more than 5 million dead in the aftermath of successive wars.

A heavy UN presence is visible throughout the city: at the airport, at public plazas where light-armoured vehicles are posted; and in the streets where pickup trucks filled with blue helmeted soldiers on patrol.

Manahl and others say Goma is more secure than last year.

There are more joint military operations with UN and Congo troops to flush out rebels across the region; disarmament efforts are drawing foot soldiers out of the jungle and weakening the militias; and people once again walk Goma's streets, even at night.

The big dangers lurk over a vast territory outside Goma. Helicopters are needed to move troops more quickly because roads are little more than rutted dirt paths through the bush that leave civilians vulnerable to attack, and batter even the hardiest of UN vehicles.

“Mobility and intelligence; in these two areas, certainly, a contribution would be most welcome,” Manahl said. “As we reduce troops, we have to be more mobile.”

A wholesale withdrawal is not on yet on the table. But the UN — faced with demands by Congo's president to start packing up the mission — will draw down 2,000 of 20,500 troops, likely by June 30, the country's 50th anniversary of independence.

The wrench in any withdrawal is the active presence of violent armed militias. The jungles of the Kivu provinces are home to the brutal FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group which counts many of those involved in the Rwandan genocide in its ranks.

Manahl said Canada should help in dismantling the exiled leadership of the group. At least one of its members is known to be seeking asylum in Canada, he said.

“We know where they are and we know who they are,” said Manahl, adding their arrests are key to dismantling the militia.

Last year, Germany was the first country to arrest two leaders of the FDLR on its territory for war crimes committed in the Congo.

Manahl is, however, cool to integrating any more armed groups into the patchwork army that is the Congolese national armed forces, or FARDC.

Instead, a big effort needs to be made to repatriate them to Rwanda or integrate them as civilians.

“Congo needs a better army, not a bigger army.”

As long as the FDLR remains active, large swaths of this region remain “no-go zones,” local journalists say. If the UN troops leave, “all the country would be a no-go zone,” said Jules Ngala Wamona, a Goma-based reporter for Radio Okapi, a UN-sponsored network.

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A bemused blue-helmeted peacekeeper from Malawi on guard outside Jean's working lunch raised an eyebrow when told Canada has 12 soldiers posted to Congo, working to train the Congolese national army and strengthen the military justice system.

“There should be more, they should come here,” he said. Malawi has deployed 160 to secure the UN compound in Goma.

UN, Congolese and Canadian RCMP bodyguards kept close to the governor-general as she arrived at the Goma airport, boxing her in as she moved past a group of singing and dancing women – survivors of rape of different ethnic origins - who waved and smiled at her.

Honoriné Kabuo was among them. There were no helicopters to come to her aid nine years ago in the early days of the UN mission.

Still, Canada played a small part in rescuing the 35-year-old, and giving her the means to live.

A clothes vendor, Kabuo, her family and a group of others were attacked in 2001 by uniformed rebels as they walked through the bush towards Goma. Some in Kabuo's group escaped, to return three days later to find her barely alive.

“They killed my husband and my son,” she said through translators who interpreted her tribal language into Swahili, then to French.

The knife-wielding soldiers slashed Kabuo's neck, shoved fingers into her vagina, where they yelled she had hidden money.

“Then they raped me. Four of them.”

Her tormenters stabbed her in the belly, her uterus protruded, and she fell unconscious, bleeding.

When finally found and brought to Heal Africa, a hospital that treats victims of sexual violence for their physical and psychological wounds, Kabuo learned she had been impregnated by her rapists and infected with HIV. She gave birth to a daughter, now 8, also HIV-positive.

“At first it was hard to love her,” she admits

Counselling – under a program supported by aid from Canada which also teaches craft skills - taught her that “the child is not a sin, the rapist committed the sin.”

“Ushindi!” Kabuo grins when asked her daughter's name. “It means victoire — victory. Sentimental,” she says. But her smile broadens, “I got out of the bush to come here to get help. I won. I'm still alive.”

Watching Jean come to Goma, Kabuo was ecstatic.

“We didn't know Canada,” says Kabuo. “Now we've seen each other eye to eye.”

Jean, she says, puts a face to Canada's name, and means more help will come.

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