Those responsible for the Beni attacks are not just ADF, but include gangs and criminals and Congolese troops exploiting an already vulnerable situation, writes Azad Essa.
They came on motorbikes and marched through the forests of Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed with machetes, axes and semi-automatic rifles, as they said they would. They picked up civilians - men, women, children - and killed indiscriminately. By the time the UN peacekeepers arrived and fired rounds into the air, at least 68 civilians had been massacred. While many of the assailants fled into a nearby thicket, severed limbs of the victims lay strewn across the dusty earth.
No reason was offered for the killings of the 13 and 14 August, and no responsibility was claimed. The cycle of attacks without responsibility in this part of the country has become normal in recent years. And the impunity with which these crimes are committed points directly to a failure of the United Nations peacekeeping force, in the country, since 1999.
According to the UN Security Council (UNSC), more than 700 civilians have been killed in Beni, close to the border with Uganda, since October 2014. Local civil society organisations however say the number is closer to 1 300.
It is widely accepted that the perpetrators belong to a group known as the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF. Evidence however suggests that multiple actors are almost always involved in the crime.
Following the violence in mid-August, the UNSC once more expressed “deep concern regarding the persistence of violence in this region” and asked the “DRC Government to “conduct a thorough and prompt investigation into these attacks in order to ensure that those responsible are held to account.”
But none of this is likely to happen.
Not only is there mass confusion over the identity of the perpetrators, there is also a lack of political will to tackle the root causes of the violence.
While the ADF has been consistently blamed for these attacks, researchers argue that the violence is only one part of a complex social and political milieu in the eastern DRC.
According to the Congo Research Group based at New York University, some 69 militia groups operate in this part of the country. The ADF, a group of Muslim Ugandan rebels, who organised in 1995 with the ambition of taking over Uganda, is one such group. When they were driven out of the country in the 2000s, the group turned its attention to controlling a small area inside the forests of the DRC, close to the Ugandan border. They survive on the tremendous deposits of resources - gold and timber - in the territory.
The Congolese army is no regular army. Made up of former rebel commanders and ragtag militia men, there are often many forces working at the behest of interests other than that of the state. Soldiers are poorly paid, under-resourced, under-trained and mostly unmotivated. Many have a history of going back and forth between militia and the army.
Those responsible for the attacks on the villages of Beni are not just ADF, but include Congolese troops and other gangs and criminals exploiting an already vulnerable situation.
In May this year, a UN panel of experts found that a Congolese army official recruited, financed and armed elements of ADF, while being in charge of an offensive against the group. The officer was not charged, but he was transferred.
With no one taking responsibility, analysing motivations for these attacks is as good as guesswork. For Fidel Bafiemba, an independent field researcher in the great lakes region based in Goma, it is a case of collective punishment on the local population.
The story of Beni is the story of many rebellions in the eastern DRC - the seemingly mindless violence is merely a method to traumatise the population into turning to new protectors and militias, to control the territory and stand up to an already weak government. Certainly, this is what the government thinks. But new theories abound.
The ADF is said to be made up of many Muslims prompting some to suggest the group was a self-styled Islamist armed group - with ties to others like al-Shabaab. In March this year, the Congo Research Group refuted the claim. In July 2016, it was revealed that the UN had been duped into perpetuating these links based on a single source who identified himself as an ADF defector.
The man who surrendered in late 2014 turned out to be an agent working for the Congolese army, hoping to deflect blame from the army for their crimes. Daniel Fahey, a former coordinator for the UN group of experts on Congo, describes the UN peacekeeping force as “complicit in lies to the Congolese people – lies about who is responsible for massacres.” If the story of Beni is the story of the DRC over the past two decades, then the inability to protect civilians is further proof of how incompetent the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC remains.
And the situation is about to become even more complex. Political tensions are set to rise in the country, after the electoral commission announced on Saturday that presidential elections, scheduled for November, are likely to be delayed to at least July 2017 due to “logistical constraints”.
*Azad Essa is a journalist at Al Jazeera. He is also the co-founder of The Daily Vox.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.