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He had only been back in Uganda for a few months when the security forces asked him to follow them to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the province of North Kivu. Dennis*, former rebel of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group of Ugandan origin and based in eastern Congo since 1995, left early December with the military. The Ugandan and Congolese armies had just launched their joint operation, intended to overcome the ADF. “I had to guide the soldiers to the rebel camps I had passed through”he explains.
This former cocoa producer, originally from the Bundibugyo district in Uganda, a neighbor of Congolese North Kivu, spent several months among the combatants of the armed group. A rallying which, according to him, is a combination of circumstances. When he was a planter, Dennis, then 27 years old, used to cross the border regularly to go to the markets. In 2020, the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) arrested him on suspicion of complicity with the ADF, simply because of his nationality, he says.
“The rebels then attacked the prison of Beni [ville du Nord-Kivu] in which I was to free the detainees. That’s when I started working with them.”, he says, explaining that the ill-treatment allegedly shown to him by the Congolese soldiers convinced him, at the time, to join the armed group. On this day in October 2020, nearly a thousand prisoners fled the prison establishment during the assault.
The young man then took part in the attacks and looting perpetrated by the armed group in the surrounding villages. In June 2021, he finally decides to flee, with his Kalashnikov, then surrenders to the Ugandan authorities in the hope of finding his family. On his return, no legal action was taken against the former combatant: the amnesty law, adopted in the country in 2000, pardons any former member of an armed group who requests it, in order to encourage the rebels to return to civilian life. Like Dennis, 2,500 former ADF Ugandans have already benefited from it.
Local terrorist cells
“The assistance of repentants is essential, whether for the joint military operation, but also to try to dismantle the networks of collaboratorssaid a Bundibugyo district security official. After several months in the heart of the camps, the veterans can tell us, on the Ugandan side, who communicates with the enemies. »
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