
The ADF formed in DRC in 1995 after members fled military pressure in Uganda. It has its roots in the repression of Ugandan Muslims, although its complex history and modus operandi gets lost in narratives that focus solely on its Islamic State (IS) ties and ideological leanings.
Although IS has significantly influenced the group, researchers that have studied it are often wary of overplaying the connection. Instead, they emphasise the ADF’s complex history, the varying motivations of its fighters, and the way it has become enmeshed in local politics, conflicts, and business networks.
The women’s full accounts will be explored in a separate upcoming story.
On the side of a national road, at the entrance to the town of Mavivi, in the region of Beni, is an imposing UN base topped with barbed wire and painted in blue and white. Inside are peacekeepers from half a dozen countries around the world.
Well-armed and wearing their customary blue helmets, the troops are tasked with defending civilians in a restive part of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet just a few kilometres down the road, civilians say they are feeling far from protected.
“We are living with fear in our stomachs,” Gervais Makofi Bukuka, head of the village of Vemba-Mavivi, said while surrounded by a dozen concerned villagers who included teachers, farmers, traders, nurses, and craftspeople.
So far this year, Bukuka has counted five attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group of Ugandan origins that has allied itself to the so-called Islamic State. Around 200 people have been killed, he said, some very close to UN camps.
Known by its acronym MONUSCO, the peacekeeping mission in DRC is supposed to complete a withdrawal from the country in the coming months, yanking out thousands of troops after a 25-year deployment that is the longest and costliest in UN history.
Diplomats and analysts have voiced fears that the drawdown could create a security vacuum in the east, where most of the country’s record seven million displaced people are living and where even greater numbers are experiencing severe food insecurity.
Yet in regions like Beni, which has faced more than a decade of appalling violence and massacres – linked to the ADF as well local armed groups and the national army – residents like Bukuka said they will not miss the mission’s presence at all.
Perceived inaction by peacekeepers has turned Beni into a hotbed of anti-MONUSCO protests and dissent in recent years the suffering of its population becoming an emblem of the wider failure of the mission to bring about peace and stability in DRC.
The New Humanitarian travelled across the Beni region – home to roughly 1.5 million people – in July, speaking to community and civil society leaders who shared disturbing accounts of the ADF killing civilians as nearby peacekeepers allegedly failed to act.
Residents also strongly criticised MONUSCO’s anti-ADF counter-insurgency operations. They said aircraft deployed by the mission to bomb ADF camps have killed scores of civilians that were held hostage by the rebels in recent years.
Dozens of residents also described widespread sexual abuse and exploitation by the peacekeepers, alleging that troops have long frequented local bars and brothels, some fathering children with women who they then abruptly abandoned.
Augustin Makasi, a member of a youth council in a rural part of Beni, summed up the local sentiment: “We are at the end of our hopes,” he said. “They have abused our trust. We are ready for them to leave.”
MONUSCO’s spokesperson, Ndèye Khady Lo, said the mission undertakes “extensive measures” to protect civilians, despite facing major constraints such as the size of Beni territory, the lack of infrastructure, and the ADF’s knowledge of the terrain.
“The ongoing insecurity in the Beni region has understandably stirred up frustrations, which are sometimes manipulated to spread disinformation, incite violence and exacerbate animosity towards MONUSCO,” Lo told The New Humanitarian.
“Despite these challenges, MONUSCO seeks to protect civilians in a comprehensive and integrated manner, leveraging the mission’s civilian and uniformed capacities to promote dialogue, physically protect civilians where possible, and help establish a protective environment,” Lo added.
Not too long ago, Beni was a place of relative tranquillity in eastern DRC. But starting in 2013, a series of gruesome mass machete killings turned the region into one of the county’s most dangerous places for civilians.
The killings implicated a diverse set of groups, yet the ADF’s foreign and ideological leanings made it an easy scapegoat. Military operations zeroed in on the rebels, but they led to brutal ADF reprisal attacks against civilians that continue to this day.
To deal with the massacres – the country’s main security threat until the more recent M23 rebellion – MONUSCO deployed its Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), a specialist unit with an unusual mandate for peacekeeping: to neutralise armed groups.
“The enemy has killed and roamed this area for two months without being disturbed, while there are well-equipped peacekeepers with reconnaissance drones only three kilometres away. We alert them, but there is no reaction.”
Not everybody we spoke to about MONUSCO expressed criticism. Guillaume Kandibaya, a human rights activist, said the peacekeepers have been able to “hinder the enemy” while civilian staff have helped train civil society actors like him.
Kandibaya said a 2017 ADF raid that left 15 Tanzanian blue helmets dead and 43 wounded – one of the deadliest attacks in recent UN peacekeeping history – ”is proof that they are sharing this difficult moment with us”.
Still, most described a complete breakdown in trust with MONUSCO that has led to periodic mass protests that have spread to other eastern cities. They said tensions have resurfaced in recent months as the ADF has carried out a new spate of mass killings.
Bukuka, the head of Vemba-Mavivi, described repeated ADF attacks this year, including one occasion when he said they struck a village just a few kilometres from the Mavivi base, which is the main MONUSCO camp in the Beni region.
Bukuka spoke from inside a shed-like structure that locals call “the Senate”. Every morning, community leaders gather there to discuss social and security issues, sharing tea made from kola nuts mixed with ginger.
Also inside the shed was Makasi, the youth leader who is from Batangi-Mbau, a grouping of several villages. He described a case in April in a nearby district, where peacekeepers allegedly took five hours to respond to an attack just near their base.
“The enemy has killed and roamed this area for two months without being disturbed, while there are well-equipped peacekeepers with reconnaissance drones only three kilometres away,” Makasi said. “We alert them, but there is no reaction.”
Some residents are so distrusting of the peacekeepers that they prefer to sleep in the forest to avoid attacks than in villages and towns adjacent to UN camps, said Jeanne Bahati, who heads a network of peace activists from local parishes.
After a decade of bloodletting, Bahati said large numbers of people can no longer access their fields, afford more than a single meal per day or find resources to send their children to school.
“The UN mission has helplessly allowed the situation to fester when it has everything it needs to succeed,” Bahati said. “They came while we were living in peace and it was under their watch that the violence spread.”
Rodrigue Kabulwese, secretary of the youth council of the Beni-Mbau district, said MONUSCO’s “failure” isn’t unique to Beni. He said the number of conflicts and armed groups in the east has mushroomed since the mission first deployed.
“Certainly, when they arrived, there were hostilities, deaths, but not on the scale of what we are experiencing today in eastern Congo,” Kabulwese said. “There were only about 10 militias [back then], but today we have more than 100 armed groups.”
“We must not be satisfied with the simple aid, jobs and infrastructure that they build, nor with the simple biscuits that they give to children in the villages,’ Kabulwese added. “That is not what they came to do.”
Lo, the MONUSCO spokesperson, said the mission “continually” refines its approach to protecting civilians based on identified threats and as the situation on the ground evolves.
Lo said the mission’s military component has deployed forces at key locations across Beni to enable more rapid responses and to deter threats, and has quick reaction forces that can also enable a fast response to sudden outbreaks of violence.
She said the mission’s Beni office has an operations and coordination centre that operates 24/7, collecting and disseminating security alerts that are “integral to ensuring timely and effective responses to emerging threats”.
- The New Humanitarian report