The national army and armed groups in the eastern Congo: Untangling the Gordian knot of insecurity (Usalama Project)
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The national army and armed groups in the eastern Congo: Untangling the Gordian knot of insecurity (Usalama Project)
Over the past eighteen months, the Rift Valley Institute’s Usalama Project has carried out investigations into seven of the most important armed groups, and the Congolese army, in order to understand what drives them and whether policy responses have been adequate. This report presents the conclusions of that research in three parts: an analysis of armed mobilization, focusing on the region of North and South Kivu; an examination of the FARDC; and a critical review of past and current efforts in the field of demobilization and army reform.
While the social underpinnings of each armed group vary considerably, since the beginning of the First Congo War (1996–7), armed actors have moved away from their roots in local communities to become more dependent on political and business elites in the region. However, even groups that form part of elite networks continue to be anchored in their local environment. While they may emerge as a result of competition over power between and among elites, they are at the same time informed by local conflicts and grievances.
In the DRC’s current political order, violence is an effective strategy to obtain power and control resources. The resulting militarized nature of power politics is an outcome of the 2003–6 transition, which followed the end of the Second Congo War (1998–2003). The peace process was based on a power-sharing principle: former belligerents joined Congolese state structures and their armed wings were integrated into a new national army. The implied logic of this process—granting insurgents political power in order to quell their insurgencies—persists until today, creating incentives for elites to mobilize armed groups.
Troubled army policies constitute another source of armed mobilization. By repeatedly integrating armed groups into the FARDC, the government has not only provided incentives for further insurrection, it has effectively sanctioned impunity. In turn, abuses committed by the army have driven numerous groups to take up arms and legitimized rebels’ claims of self-defence. Furthermore, the army is sometimes complicit in armed group mobilization, with officers providing support to armed groups or being involved in the arms trade.
Untangling this Gordian knot will require a comprehensive political and military strategy, aligning local, national, and international initiatives. This strategy will have to address both the incentives that drive elites to take up arms, and local conflicts over land and local governance that are liable to feature an ethnic dimension. An informed approach to such a complex problem thus needs to take a range of factors into account.
