Uganda troops ready to withdraw from eastern DRC — CDF Muhoozi

KAMPALA - The Chief of Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has announced that the army is set to pull out of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“We announce that we are ready to withdraw from all our positions from Lubero to Mahagi in Eastern. In coordination with the DRC government,” he said in a post on social media platform X on March 25, 2026.

“We want total peace with our brothers and sisters in the DRC. We have some issues to sort out in Ituri (province), apart from that, we are doing well,” the CDF, who is also the Senior Presidential Advisor on Special Operations,  Gen Muhoozi, further stated.

The Eastern DRC hosts bases of different armed groups that have wreaked havoc in the region for 30 years. These groups include the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

In another X post, the CDF stated, “All UPDF troops will withdraw from Lubero in the next few days if the Governor of Ituri is not changed.”

The following day, Gen Muhoozi posted saying he was hearing that the UPDF, together with the Armed Forces of the DR Congo (FARDC), killed the second most senior ADF commander in DRC, who was only identified as Kasibante, some weeks ago.

“I hear we (together with our FARDC comrades) killed the second most senior ADF commander in DRC, Kasibante, some weeks ago. They called down the thunder, well, now they've got it!”

He also recounted that in May 2024, their joint operation had made significant progress in weakening the ADF terrorists, citing numerous casualties, captures, and surrenders.

In November 2021, UPDF and FARDC launched a joint operation dubbed ‘Operation Shujaa’ against ADF, their common enemy.

This was about a fortnight after the Islamic State, a radical Sunni military group affiliated with ADF, claimed responsibility for the twin bombings in central Kampala, which left seven people dead and over 36 injured.

Other achievements

While briefing the United Nations (UN) Military Staff Committee about the joint operation in April 2024, former Operation Shujaa Commander Maj. Gen. Dick Olum said they had successfully redeemed the population from slavery under “the ADF spell”.

He said ADF uses the spell to force the civilian population to grow crops that they (ADF) would later harvest for their own survival and attack civilian settlements for food and medicine.

He also said their operation succeeded in stopping the insurgents from making hit-and-run attacks, improvised explosive device emplacement, infiltration from the area, laying ambushes, attacking civilians and attacking motorists along public roads.

Olum also explained that the enemy situation was that the ADF was still carrying out deliberate activities to divert the UPDF from pursuing the small groups they had clustered themselves into, ease the pressure from the joint operation, gain publicity as till formidable force, causing panic among civilians who were beginning to resettle in the villages they had previously run away from and discredit the efforts of the joint force.

He quoted the example of the ADF attack on Mpondwe Lubiriha school on June 16, 2023, where 44 people were killed, 38 of them students and six civilians.

Eight students were injured, and four others were abducted and later killed in the jungle, the UPDF statement said.

“The joint force has rescued, rehabilitated, and reintegrated a number of minor soldiers with their families and increased socio-economic activity owing to the peace and stability ushered in by the military operation,” Olum was quoted as saying.

“There has also been a recorded increase in the cross-border trade between the DRC and Uganda owing to the good roads and security. ADF has lost substantive weaponry, and a good number of the insurgents have been put out of action. Thousands of rounds of ammunition have been recovered, which has degraded their ability to fight,” he added.

Some of the challenges he highlighted included bad weather, which majorly impedes air operations, collaborators facilitating ADF activities in eastern DRC, a poor road network impairing swift movement and heavy rain that destroys and wipes away roads.

Others are: the social media propaganda alleging that the UPDF entered DR Congo to both fight the ADF and support the M23 rebel group fighting against the DRC government.