Fighting an invisible enemy in Congo

It is difficult to identify the fighters of the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), one of the many armed groups active in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), some of whose leaders played a key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Bearing neither uniform nor insignia, they are indistinguishable from the civilian population.

The pangas (long knives) the FDLR carry in North Kivu Province’s Rutshuru Territory village of Bishongera are commonplace within agricultural societies while the AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades have been stashed away since the Congolese national army(FARDC) and Malawian soldiers from the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC’s Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) began preparations in the area for an offensive against them.

Look at the footwear

The trick, according to Patrice Munga*, a civil society activist based in Tongo, a few kilometres down the mountainside, is to look at the footwear: “The ones wearing the gumboots… they are FDLR.”

In the valley below, a UN helicopter gunship traverses the Virunga National Park.

The clatter of its rotors does not elicit a glance from the roughly 10 young men in gumboots, some brandishing pangas, gathering around the only bench in the village, on which Agathe Nzabonimana* sits.

The black-shod senior FDLR officer barks orders in Kinyarwanda at the encroaching men and they move away.

“We [FDLR] don’t have uniforms. We don’t have support from a foreign country,” he says, a direct nod to M23, an alleged proxy force of neighbouring Rwanda.
M23 was the first to be targeted by FIB, established after a February 2013 UN Security Council resolution to “neutralise” and disarm all armed groups in DRC. FIB has since shifted its sights to other armed groups.

The 3,069-strong FIB — a unit shorn of any civilian functions — is made up of soldiers from Malawi,South Africa and Tanzania equipped with heavy weapons and helicopter gunships and works in tandem with the FARDC.

Military operations in North Kivu Province are either under way, or in preparation, in the districts of Masisi against Janvier Buingo Karairi’s Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain (APCLS); in Beni against the anti-Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF-Nalu); and in Rutshuru against the FDLR.

In a joint March 5 letter to the UNSC on the renewal of the “robust” military mandate, a host of NGOs noted that the “upcoming military operations carry with them high risks for the civilian population of DRC.”

But the heavy weaponry of the FIB — which proved decisive against M23 — will be less effective against the FDLR, which has integrated within Congolese communities over the past two decades.

In Tongo, where soldiers are gathering with the support of FIB’s Malawian contingent, a FARDC major in the 601 Regiment — commonly referred to as the “Chinois Commandos” in reference to their three years of training by Chinese military instructors — told us the difference between M23 and the FDLR is that the latter mix with civilians.

“M23 had military emplacements; so when we used heavy weaponry, we knew we were hitting military targets,” he said. “It makes FDLR very hard to attack…
“The FDLR is essentially using civilians as human shields.