Since October 2014, communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Beni territory have been terrorized by brutal killings that have claimed about 300 civilian lives. The attacks have been characterized not only by their magnitude, but also by their excessive brutality, including beheadings, mutilations, rape, and the targeting of women and young children. These events have disjointedly hit various news headlines, and there are various narratives examining the sequence of attacks spanning the past three months.
Two aspects of this crisis have yet to be thoroughly addressed by popular media, largely because of the uncertainty that still surrounds them. Who is really behind the slaughter of so many innocent civilians, and why are they perpetrating it? The Congolese government and several media outlets have quickly attributed the violence to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group that has been based in eastern DRC for nearly two decades. More than three months have passed since the attacks began, and the ADF have yet to claim any responsibility for any of the violence, though widely-held views that the ADF are playing some part remain.
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