Joint action needed to end ADF terrorism

COMMENT

A local non-governmental organisation called Cepadho reported last week that 40 civilians were killed by Allied Democratic Front (ADF) over the last 10 days in Beni, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to the organisation, at least 794 civilians have been massacred by the ADF since October last year. The 24 civilians were killed over two days by the ADF in the Beni region, where the Congolese army is trying to flush out the renegades.

The ADF, a group formed by Ugandan terrorists in the mid-1990s, has been blamed for more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the Beni region of North Kivu Province since 2014. Before it was forced to flee from Uganda to seek refuge in the eastern DR Congo, the group committed numerous atrocities, including mass murders and kidnap.

Between October 2014 and December 2015, more than 500 people were killed in Beni, according to a local NGO, the Study Center for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights, which documents violence in the region.

According to the security agencies, the ADF which has been based in Congo for more than two decades, has forged strong links with local political and economic figures and has tapped into networks trafficking mainly timber, taking advantage of corruption within the Congolese security and the local administration.

Security experts aver that this illicit economy has been at the heart of the violence and instability in the eastern DR Congo for decades and necessitates a large military presence.

According to the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), a UN peacekeeping force in the DR Congo, several armed groups are operating in the Beni region, but ADF is considered to be the main security threat.

Against this background, no doubt ADF is a menace to the eastern DR Congo and also poses a serious security threat to Uganda. It is clear that the interventions made so far by DR Congo and UN to eliminate the ADF renegades have not achieved anything tangible.

The ADF continues to perpetrate atrocities with impunity. It is high time Uganda, DR Congo and other countries in the region agreed on a joint security strategy to eliminate the ADF and other negative forces in the eastern DR Congo once and for all.