AFRICA/DR CONGO - 69 armed groups are in the east of the Country

Kinshasa (Agenzia Fides) - There are 69 armed groups which are still active in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in a strongly degraded humanitarian context with 1.6 million people displaced. According to a statement sent to Agenzia Fides by the Peace Network for Congo, which cites a recent report carried out by the Study Group on Congo (GEC). The presence of so many armed groups derives from the fragmentation of larger formations. In 2008 in fact the armed groups present in the two Kivus were only twenty. Most of these militias are small groups which comprise "no more than 200 members, usually recruited on an ethnic basis".
The strongest active armed groups in the region are mostly foreigners: the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Allied Ugandan Democratic Forces (ADF) and Burundian National Liberation Forces (FNL). The FDLR include between 1,000 and 2,500 members. According to GEC, we are talking about an important rebellion, but "has been unable to undertake significant raids in Rwanda since 2001".
Another group, much smaller and with less than 300 to 500 men, appears much more dangerous: we are talking about the Ugandan ADF, a rebel group and initially opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. If these rebels, present in the DRC for over 20 years, "have largely abandoned their ambition to overthrow the Ugandan government", however, they are responsible for many massacres in the Beni region (North Kivu): At least 600 dead in October 2014. Asked about the thesis of some local NGOs under which the ADF was strengthened with foreign recruits and have taken in recent months, a "jihadist" turning point, General Jean Baillaud, interim commander of MONUSCO (the UN Mission in the DRC ), said: "It is a hypothesis to be taken very seriously. It must be verified. Their number has increased. They have heavy weapons, mortars, machine guns, a lot of ammunition. It was not like this a few months ago. And this raises the question of who will supply them (Al Shabaab of Somalia? Former members of the former M23 fled from Kivu to Uganda after their defeat? Commanders of the Congolese army? ...). To complicate things, fighter men wear uniforms of the FARDC, the regular Congolese army, and women fighters wear the Islamic veil". (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 07/12/2015)

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