During
a visit by U.N. Security Council ambassadors to the eastern capital
of Goma on
Sunday, U.N. officials said that while M23 had garnered global
headlines, just as great a threat was posed by the Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)
and the Islamist group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

"If
we do not manage by one way or another to neutralize, disarm,
demobilize those groups, we are not very hopeful (for sustainable
peace)," said Ray Torres, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission,
known as MONUSCO, in North Kivu province.

He
said that many of the other 39 armed groups in eastern Congo had
justified their existence as rivals to M23 and FDLR.

Millions
of people have died from violence, disease and hunger since the 1990s
as rebel groups have fought for control of eastern Congo's
rich deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and uranium.

The
Security Council earlier this year created the so-called Intervention
Brigade within MONUSCO, an assertive new step for U.N. peacekeeping,
which for years has been criticized in the region for inaction and
failing to protect civilians.

Malawian
troops started deploying last week to join South African and
Tanzanian soldiers in the 3,000-strong Intervention Brigade,
officials said. MONUSCO has a total of about 20,000 troops spread
across the vast Central African state.

Standing
on a hilltop – known as Kibati Three Towers – just north of Goma,
Torres told the 15 Security Council envoys that was where Congolese
troops, aided by the Intervention Brigade for the first time, had
beaten back M23 rebels in August.

"The
operations that took place here changed substantially the situation
and the set up in North Kivu,"
said Torres. Not only had M23 returned to peace talks with the
Congolese government, but defections had increased and the operation
had sparked a number of peace initiatives with other armed groups, he
said.

Despite
the initial success of the Intervention Brigade, however, Security
Council envoys came up against what they called "excessive
expectations" for the force during talks with Congolese
officials in Kinshasa on
Saturday and with civil society leaders in Goma on
Sunday.

"I'm
sure they're expecting too much (of the brigade)," said British
Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant. "It's been a good start; it was an
experiment the Security Council decided to take because of our
concerns to protect civilians in a place and at a time when they
hadn't been protected for a very long period."

Questions
over support

One
in six people in North Kivu have
been displaced. The council envoys visited Mugunga 3 camp, which is
home to more than 16,000 people internally displaced. Camp resident
Amnazo-Sharv told them she believed it was up to the U.N.
peacekeepers to clear away all the armed groups in eastern Congo.

"Once
MONUSCO has finished that task we will be assured peace has been
restored," said a visibly upset Amnazo-Sharv, speaking through a
translator, after she threw herself to her knees in front of the
ambassadors to ask for help.

Azerbaijan
Ambassador Agshin Mehdiyev, president of the council for October,
told a news conference in Goma that
while the international community would continue to support Congo,
"at the end of the day you are Congolese, you're responsible for
the protection of your territory and your people."

Eastern Congo has
long been one of Africa's bloodiest battlegrounds. The roots of this
conflict lie in the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, where Hutu
soldiers and militia killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Many
of those responsible for the genocide fled into eastern Congo along
with two million Hutu refugees. Many "genocidaires" now
fight for the FDLR.
Rwanda has accused Congolese troops of collaborating with the FDLR,
a charge Kinshasa has
denied.

U.N.
experts have repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the 18-month-long
rebellion by M23, a claim the Rwandan government has fiercely
rejected.

"We
need to study much more the access, not only of M23 and FDLR,
but the access of all the groups to weapons and ammunition,"
MONUSCO force commander General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz told
the Security Council ambassadors. "We need to know more on the
financial support for them, how they get these weapons, ammunition
and more resources, including uniforms."

Thick
forests, rugged terrain and the scarcity of roads on Congo's
eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda have complicated efforts by
Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers to control the resource-rich
area.

Santos
Cruz said that while the U.N. force needed more helicopters, the
expected arrival next month of an unarmed surveillance drone would be
a great boost to capabilities.

It
will be the first time the United Nations has used such equipment
and, if the trial surveillance in eastern Congo is
successful, officials and diplomats hope the drones could also be
used by missions in Ivory Coast and South Sudan.

Torres
expressed particular concern about the ADF, which he said was
establishing and strengthening its position.

"It's
very strongly ideologically based, it's an extremist Islamist group
that is developing a network of businesses that indicates to us that
they are planning to stay," Torres said.

The
Ugandan government says the ADF is allied to elements of Somalia's al
Shabaab movement, an al Qaeda-linked group, but Torres said not
enough is known about them and he has established a MONUSCO task
force to learn more about it.