M23 rebels near Sake, Eastern DR Congo. The rebel group withdrew from Goma on Saturday, Dec. 1. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo, May 16 2013 (IPS)

The “blind and unrestricted” reintegration of M23 deserters into the Congolese army could harm the country, according to Thomas d’Aquin Mwiti, the chair of the North Kivu civil society platform, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu province, 519 rebel deserters have been reintegrated into the Congolese army, known by its French acronym FARDC, since 2012.

Since Apr. 21, 87 M23 rebel fighters have defected to the FARDC. Deserters who give themselves up to the FARDC are immediately reintegrated into the army at Bweremana base, 50 kilometres from Goma.

But Mwiti told IPS that this “automatic reintegration (of fighters) is simply a rebel infiltration” of the FARDC.

“The government must first put in place a mechanism for the reintegration and monitoring of deserters who could, at any moment, rejoin the rebellion,” he said.

One M23 defector, Colonel Nzala Ngomo, was reinstated into the national army on May 1. Ngomo had been the commander of the 41st commando battalion of FARDC when he joined M23 after Goma fell to the rebel group in November 2012. He surrendered to the FARDC in April.

M23, named after a peace agreement signed on Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of a former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People, and the DRC government, started their recent insurgency in April 2012.

It culminated with their occupation of Goma, the second-largest city in DRC, in November 2012. The rebels withdrew from a week-long occupation of the town after Uganda brokered an agreement with M23 and the DRC government. However, the insurgent group has experienced a number of defections recently.

Juvénal Munubo, a legislator from Walikale, North Kivu, and a member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Defence and Security, agreed with Mwiti that the direct absorption of defectors into the Congolese army was risky.

“It’s unwise to reintegrate these deserters into the FARDC without… knowing their real motivation. They must first pass through a transit centre for re-education,” Munubo told IPS.

In contrast, former M23 combatants who surrender to MONUSCO – the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC – are enrolled in its Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reintegration and Resettlement programme, which is run in collaboration with the security and intelligence services of DRC.

Since April, 87 combatants from M23, including 12 officers, have surrendered at bases belonging to MONUSCO in Rutshuru Territory, and in Nyiragongo, both of which are north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

MONUSCO’s military spokesperson, Lieutenant-Colonel Félix Prosper Basse, told Radio Okapi – the U.N. radio station – that the number of rebel defections has been growing.

But Mwiti belongs to a section of civil society that believes M23 deserters are trying to avoid international prosecution after being named and accused in U.N. reports of atrocities and human rights violations against civilians.

“On this issue, we will insist on the rigorous application of military justice against those named in the reports,” said Mwiti.

However, the Youth League of Rutshuru, a collective of 24 associations fighting against the recruitment of idle youth into armed groups, has asked the government to unconditionally reintegrate the rebels into the FARDC to “put an end to the war.”

According to Bienvenu Mazirane, president of the umbrella group, many M23 combatants are fearful of fighting the new U.N. intervention brigade, which was formed to neutralise all armed groups in the east of the country.

On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peacekeeping force to an intervention force with a mandate to neutralise some 40 armed groups operating in the country, with effect from early May.

“They were willing to fight against the FARDC, but not against the MONUSCO brigade,” Mazirane told IPS.

Despite the defections from its ranks, M23 is determined to fight the U.N. intervention force.

“As the government in Kinshasa refuses to sign a ceasefire with M23, this brigade means the war can only be ended with victory for (either) the government or M23,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, military spokesperson for the rebel movement.

Kazarama told IPS that the rebellion could count on 4,500 men to “sacrifice blood” to fight for the country’s liberation, and downplayed the recent desertions.

Nonetheless, the rebel group is doing all that it can to prevent its fighters from deserting and surrendering to MONUSCO. M23 has set up an observation post just 30 metres from the U.N. base in Kiwanja, northeast of Goma in North Kivu province. And on Apr. 28, the rebels fired on two M23 soldiers who handed themselves over with their weapons to MONUSCO at the Kiwanja base.

“But they succeeded in entering the MONUSCO base,” said Mazirane.

Paluku welcomed the defections, describing the deserters as “lost children who have returned to the fold.” The governor of North Kivu called on other rebels to follow their example.

The national authorities have not commented on the matter, and simply acknowledged the defections.

The children of deceased police and army officers in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, are finding themselves forced to adopt their late fathers’careers in the armed services to help their families survive.

Children have been adopting their parents’careers in defence and policing for fear of losing the benefits enjoyed by soldiers and policemen in the DRC, particularly health care and accommodation in the army barracks.

“My father was a policeman and when he died they wanted to evict us from the house at the camp, but we had nowhere to go. We had to find a way to keep the family together, so I decided to become a policeman to help provide for my family,” said Pistchen Kalala, who became a policeman at the age of 20.

“Otherwise we would have been homeless and without health care,” he told IPS.

Congolese soldiers’ income of around 80 dollars a month is very low, and few of them can afford to own even a small home.

Following the death of his father, and his mother’s remarriage to another solider, Dibwa Ntambwe, aged 24, joined the army. He decided to become a soldier so that his brothers and sisters could continue to have access to the benefits accruing to his late father.

Around three quarters of Congolese soldiers are army children, according to Augustin Lukubashi, the chairperson of local NGO Integrated Development Association for Police and Army Children. He is also the child of a deceased soldier.

Lukubashi’s estimates are based on information from the policy and army communication departments in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

“Often, when a military parent dies, the children receive their monthly salary, which encourages them to follow the same career,” Lukubashi told IPS, adding that it was policy for children to receive their deceased fathers’ salaries, sometimes for up to two years after his death.

He added that “living in a military family means living a military life where you grow up in hardship. Army children are well prepared for life in the military.”

Sometimes, against their better judgement, army widows encourage their sons to join the army or police at 18 in order to protect their families.

“When my husband died, they wanted to throw us out of the house we lived in because when a soldier dies, there is a tendency to forget his family,” said Sifa Nyota, an army widow in Goma.

“To continue to receive benefits—health care and accommodation—we decided that our oldest son should take his father’s place (and join the army). That’s how he became a soldier,” she explained to IPS.

Human rights NGOs in North Kivu have protested that this is a violation of the rights of the child, as many of these children have no choice but to become soldiers just like their late fathers. NGOs say that the government should assist these children to further their studies and to embrace other careers.

“The situation these children find themselves in is unacceptable. They should be taken care of by the Congolese government, who should take responsibility for their basic needs and safety,” Duffina Tabu, the chair of the Volunteers Association of Congo, a local NGO, told IPS.

Similarly, Flavien Ciza, a member of the provincial coordinating group of civil society organizations, told IPS that “the precarious living conditions, poverty and unemployment experienced by these children, and their neglect by the government, is at the root of this social trend.”

According to a study in 2011 on poverty in the DRC, “70 percent of households live below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day.”

“The Congolese government should think about educating these children and provide them with a minimum income so that their futures are safe,” Ciza said.

Tabu said the current situation has negative consequences for the army. “This phenomenon weakens the Congolese army, which is sending untrained and inexperienced men into the field. The youth stay in the army out of desperation or to take revenge, rather than out of personal conviction.”

Lukubashi wants the government to pay for the education of all army children. “The unemployment rate and lack of support for these children is the reason for this forced inheritance.”

The M23 rebels are among the other rebel groups and Congolese army who have been accused of extorting money from locals to pay their soldiers. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA , Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

On the way to his fields, Denise Mambo, a resident of Kitshanga, North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, stops at a rope laid across his path.

“No one is allowed to go past this rope without paying the ‘lala salama’,” a Congolese army (FARDC) sergeant known only by the nickname Django tells IPS.

The “lala salama”, Swahili for “sleep in peace”, is an illegal tax often imposed by the army and rebels in the eastern DRC battlegrounds of North and South Kivu, Maniema, Katanga and Eastern provinces — and particularly in the Ituri region in the northeast.

Initially, “lala salama” was the name of a radio programme broadcast by Kisangani-based Radio Liberté, in northeastern DRC, in 2000. At the time, the programme was run by an officer belonging to a Congolese political grouping allied to Uganda, which accused Rwanda and its allies within the DRC of causing the country’s misfortunes.

Now “lala salama” is more about money than ideology.

Each person on their way to harvest their fields must pay a tax of one dollar or an equivalent of two to three kilogrammes of harvested crops to the men posted at the informal checkpoints. This illegal tax is sometimes called a “security contribution.”

“Sometimes the army and the militia will start fighting just to control a market or a path leading to the fields,” Jean Ngoa, the traditional leader for Kitshanga, North Kivu, told IPS.

The armed groups have also levied a tax parallel to the local authority taxes in market places. The tax ranges from 20 cents to 10 dollars, depending on the quantity of a vendor’s merchandise. This money is payable on market days, usually twice a week, and mirrors the rates of local authorities, who also collect them at similar times.

Ever since the failed integration of former rebels into the Congolese army in 2009, which led to the M23 rebellion or army mutiny in April 2012, the civilian population has become one of the main sources of income to feed the FARDC, armed rebel groups, and Rwandese militia such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

Today, all five provinces of eastern DRC abound with militia, and thousands of civilians have been victims of looting, rape and murder, according to Juvenal Munubo, a parliamentarian for Walikale, North Kivu, and a member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Defence and Security.

“But civilians are also subjected to unbearable financial exploitation,” he told IPS.

General François Olenga was appointed chief-of-staff of the FARDC in November 2012, following accusations in a United Nations report that his predecessor, General Gabriel Amisi, was selling arms to the rebels. Olenga acknowledged the inefficiency of the army and tried to reassure his troops. “I will personally make sure that every soldier receives his pay,” he promised at the time.

Although army chiefs say the average salary of a soldier increased from 10 to 60 dollars a month between 2006 and 2013, soldiers say their pay is inadequate and irregular. Civilians have been the easiest prey for racketeering.

“If we are lucky enough to receive money, we get 60,000 dollars to pay one thousand men, including officers,” Captain George Sakombi of the 810th regiment in Masisi, North Kivu told IPS.

“We were in an army with no pay,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the spokesperson for the M23 rebels who took control of Goma during November 2012, told IPS. The M23 rebels are from the former National Congress for the Defence of the People, which signed a peace accord with the Congolese government in March 2003.

The “lala salama” tax has encouraged the creation of armed groups. In North Kivu, for example, between 2008 and 2013, the number of armed groups increased from 12 to 25, according to civil society organisations. In South Kivu, the number of armed groups has risen from 11 in 2008 to some 20 in 2013.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a teacher from the market town of Kashuga, North Kivu told IPS that his village was attacked 12 times between April and July 2012 by the Congolese armed forces, the rebel Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo, and the M26 group. The latter is a new rebel group, which is demanding the full implementation of the March 2009 peace accord between the government and the Congolese Patriotic Resistance, which is now a political party.

“When they took over Kashuga, the M26 forced every person over 13 years to pay 1,200 Congolese francs (just over a dollar),” he said. The tax is called “rengera buzima”, which means “protect life” in Kinyarwanda, the local language.

Unlike the “lala salama” where no one asks for proof of payment, “the M26 militia go through the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, schools and churches to force everyone to show their ‘rengera buzima’ receipts,” the teacher said.