When the Deputy spokesperson of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces Col. Deo Akiiki on Monday 18th March 2024 released a statement that a group of Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militants crossed into Uganda from DR Congo on Saturday 16th March 2024 and are planning attacks on urban areas, places of worship, schools and public events, my mind drifted into various reflections on the UPDF’s capacity and why the ADF has proved a “pain in the ass” not only for the UPDF but the region as a whole.
The ADF has been linked to a series of deadly attacks in Uganda in the recent past; including targeting a school in June 2023. In October 2023, the group is said to have been behind the killing of a newly married couple and a Ugandan tour guide in a national park.
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces launched a joint offensive with the Forces Armées de la république démocratique du Congo (FARDC) to drive the ADF out of their DRC bases, but to date, the group continues to cause mayhem both in DRC and Uganda. Its threat to the peace and security of the citizens is like a viral pandemic that mutates over time and presents itself in variants.
The Track record of the UPDF’s capacity to end insurgencies of such nature is indisputable. According to Global Firepower.com, Uganda’s military strength globally is ranked 114 0f 145 with power index score of 2.2405; out of those countries that qualify to be ranked in the Global fire power review. In Africa, it is ranked at number 22 out of the 38 African Countries that qualify to be ranked.
Since the formation of the UPDF, many rebel groups have been defeated militarily, others co-opted into government after peace talks, but not the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). This is attributed to the fact that the ADF was birthed out of radicalisation which accounts for its survival through the years as it connected to other radical groups in the Sudan where it is reported that the group received training, financial aid, and military support, and thus regional political complexities and its continuous metamorphosis have aided the group to thrive.
Furthermore, it is argued that due to the “easy life in DRC,” With the Bakonzo in its ranks, who share a language and customs as some ethnic groups in Eastern DRC, the rebel group found it easy to settle and integrate. Research has it that “ADF combatants became ‘naturalised’ and part of Congolese society,” Kristof Titeca and Koen Vlassenroot say in a study titled Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland? A biography of the Allied Democratic Forces.
The authors argue that inter-marriages between the ADF and local communities followed and this makes it difficult for the local population to cooperate with the UPDF, FARDC and allies due to the personal connections and relationships to some of the ADF combatants, who offer ADF combatants some freedom of movement and facilitate access to food, medical assistance, arable land, and general safe haven to thrive.
The naturalisation in Congolese communities has become a strong dis-incentive to even an amnesty strategy to persuade ADF rebels to return home and be integrated into government.
Although to a larger extent, the UPDF has been successful with the ADF, the entire group never falls apart and remnants continue regrouping and devise ways of causing mayhem.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, some prominent members of the group accepted amnesty that included Major Mohammad Kiggundu, who was assassinated in 2016. He had been reintegrated into the UPDF.
The Uganda government made another amnesty push in 2005 by opening an office in Beni, North Kivu where it offered rebels a deal to be integrated in the UPDF. “This demobilisation campaign proved to be a futile endeavour, because most rebels who turned up for demobilisation were instead Congolese.
The amnesty itself had its gaps since senior ADF leaders were reintegrated into the mainstream army which gave them access to comfortable lifestyles, they drove good cars, and they married new wives. They became relatively better off than even some loyal UPDF officers; yet their youthful counterparts were left on their own. They returned to the masjids [mosques], to the very conditions that had radicalised them and later mutated into angry radicalised people, and sought more strength from established radical groups like the Islamic State.
The ADF’s connection to Islamic State (IS), the transnational militant Islamist terrorist group initiated in 2017 transformed the group into a lethal organisation.
It is predicted that the ADF shall continue to mutate itself since it continues to win support, from its base areas by taking sides in inter-community tensions in the DRC, which enables them to create links to benefits from illicit trade and control land and routes in protected areas of such internal ethnic groupings in the eastern DRC. The ADF manages to use their knowledge of the area to hide and bounce back every time, as a chronic cancer in the region.
The UPDF should take note that although the population’s vigilance is very crucial, UPDF’s military action may not as such be an efficient strategy, rather more efforts should be put in first understanding how the ADF survive in the context of naturalisation and community integration within their safe havens and breeding grounds, who are their allies, their businesses, their sponsors etc. More effort needs to be put in helping the DRC build the capacity to dismantle those networks and that can only be done with a better facilitated and trained intelligence systems, identifying its sponsors and allies, and having a justice system capable of dealing with it.
In conclusion, proper conflict analysis tools, should be employed to properly identify the key actors and allies, facilitating this group to thrive.
The UPDF’s capacity to deal with this group is definitely undoubted, however, its reactionary approaches and the sounding of early warning signals appealing to citizens for vigilance causes panic, anxiety and may cause the general population to lose confidence in the capacity of the UPDF and other security organs to deal with the errant group.
By Mary Mutesi
Guest writer.
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