The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered two wars since 1996. At its height, the second war involved the armies from seven African nations and multiple rebel groups. According to the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 5.4 million people died between 1998 and 2008, most from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food security, displacement, and destroyed health-care systems. The formal conclusion of the war in 2003 did not bring an end to conflict in the region.
The dense jungles of eastern Congo remain home to numerous rebel organizations, which have complex histories and agendas. Responsible for perpetrating mass atrocities against civilians, including massacres, rapes, and abductions, three rebel groups stand out as having caused the greatest destruction and suffering in recent years. These are the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. At times, each organization has received government support from different countries in the region, and many of the rebels have profited generously from the continued exploitation of the DRC’s abundant natural resources. All prey on the civilian population.
Spread thinly across northeastern Congo, the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world (MONUC) is largely unable to halt attacks. The Congolese Armed Forces, themselves responsible for committing widespread atrocities in 2009, is increasingly an impediment to achieving peace and security in the region.
What follows are background summaries for the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. We hope they will help extend an understanding of what can appear to be, at first glance, a hopelessly complicated situation. Please follow the links to learn more.
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Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR): Comprised of approximately 7,000 combatants, the FDLR is a rebel group that operates out of North and South Kivu Provinces of eastern Congo, where it has committed widespread atrocities against civilians, including massacres and extreme sexual violence, and conducted extensive illegal exploitation of natural resources. The International Crisis Group (ICG) identified the FDLR as being one of two rebel groups — among the dozens based in eastern Congo in early 2009 — that possesses the highest military capabilities and causes the most civilian suffering in the region. (The ICG identified the other as the CNDP, which has largely since disintegrated.) Although members of the FDLR are often identified as perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the majority of FDLR rebels are post-genocide recruits drawn from refugee camps in eastern Congo. The FDLR is commanded in part by ex-officers and civilians who took leadership roles in the Rwandan genocide and is supported by a network of expatriates who share the group’s ideology.
Although the FDLR did not emerge until 2000, its history begins six years earlier in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide when one million mostly Hutu refugees fled across the Congolese border and settled into refugee camps. Using these camps to regroup, perpetrators of the genocide terrorized local populations and launched incursions into Rwanda. From this group emerged a succession of Rwandan Hutu organizations that — under different names — kept pursuing the goal of sparking an insurgency inside of Rwanda. In the early 2000s, the FDLR conducted cross-border raids into northwestern and southern Rwanda. Even after the second Congo War officially ended in 2003, the Rwandan government consistently threatened to send its army into the Congo to forcibly disarm the FDLR.
As with most developments in eastern Congo, the FDLR’s behavior related intimately to the region’s wider political and economic dynamics. The Congolese government supported FDLR activities as a means to limit Rwandan influence in the east. Rwanda authorities, meanwhile, aided the FLDR’s primary rebel enemy, the CNDP. As Congo and Rwanda manipulated the rebel groups in pursuit of their competing interests, the Congolese civilian population suffered greatly.
After aborted peace agreements and fresh clashes in 2007 and 2008, increased international pressure finally compelled the DRC and Rwanda to address the deteriorating situation together. On January 20, 2009, the Rwandan army entered eastern Congo as part of a UN-backed Rwandan-Congolese joint operation against the FDLR. Undoubtedly signifying an improvement in the political relationship between the two nations, the operation itself was a humanitarian disaster. It provoked revenge killings and rapes and drove more than 900,000 people from their homes. Just one month after the campaign ended, the FDLR was back to its former capacity.
