These United Nations armoured personnel carriers were on their way from Malawi to DRC; they were not on a mission to Malawi.

Various pictures of the APCs being hauled by vehicle carriers started circulating late last year on social media, including a video of the convoy stopped at the side of a road in Malawi.

Posts like those archived here, here, here, here and here claimed UN-backed soldiers had started arriving in Malawi to play a peacekeeping role ahead of a constitutional court ruling on the legality of last year’s elections.

The same claims were published on this website called Maravi Post (screenshot below).

 

 

However, some posts and articles, like these here, here, here and here, either questioned why the APCs were in the country or suggested they were on their way to DRC (see screenshot of article below).

 

 

Some of the images published in the posts show the white APCs being hauled by an orange truck. 

 

More images, again reproduced from various social media posts and articles, helped to place the vehicles inside Malawi.

 

The photo below show a vehicle carrier loaded with APCs, seen at the tip of the arrow, with a big red and white bus in the foreground. The bus markings match those of the Malawi Postal Corporation. 

 

 

Footage from a video posted to this Facebook account shows the full convoy, consisting of five APCs and a container, stopped at the side of a road. The license plates of passing cars are Malawi plates. The man filming is speaking Chichewa, Malawi's official language. (He says: "They are here. These people have paid us a visit. I don't know where they are heading to but they are many, as you can see. I don't know where they are coming from." )

 

 

At least two of the posts also included a photo of an unrelated military vehicle (see below), which a Google reverse image search shows was used in this piece published in NATO Review in 2006.

 

The lettering ISAF on this particular armoured vehicle stands for the International Security Assistance Force, which was mandated by the UN to help rebuild Afghanistan’s security forces in 2001.

A spokesperson for UN Peacekeeping confirmed in an email to AFP that the white UN armoured carriers were heading from Malawi to MONUSCO -- the abbreviated name for the longstanding UN stabilisation mission in DRC.

“They seem to be new APCs that are being moved for rotation into MONUSCO, where Malawi contributes peacekeepers,” the spokesperson wrote.  

“They are not for use in Malawi, and the UN has no mission or mandate in Malawi to conduct operations.”

Malawi’s contribution to the DRC mission is more than 800 soldiers and police officers, according to UN Peacekeeping.

The misleading social media posts appeared ahead of a ruling by Malawi’s constitutional court, which is expected this month and will decide the outcome of a challenge to last year’s national ballot.

President Peter Mutharika’s winning margin was tight and subsequently disputed by the opposition Malawi Congress Party and United Transformation Movement, both of which alleged fraud and asked the court to set aside the results, as this AFP story explains.