Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo — 'They have abused our trust. We are ready for them to leave.'
On the side of a national road, at the entrance to the town of Mavivi, in the region of Beni, is an imposing UN base topped with barbed wire and painted in blue and white. Inside are peacekeepers from half a dozen countries around the world.
Well armed and wearing their customary blue helmets, the troops are tasked with defending civilians in a restive part of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet just a few kilometres down the road, civilians say they are feeling far from protected.
"We are living with fear in our stomachs," Gervais Makofi Bukuka, head of the village of Vemba-Mavivi, told The New Humanitarian while surrounded by a dozen concerned villagers - teachers, farmers, traders, nurses, and craftspeople.
So far this year, Bukuka has counted five attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group of Ugandan origins that has allied itself to the so-called Islamic State. Around 200 people have been killed, he said, some very close to UN camps.
Known by its acronym MONUSCO, the peacekeeping mission in DRC is supposed to complete a withdrawal from the country in the coming months, yanking out thousands of troops after a 25-year deployment that is the longest and costliest in UN history.
Diplomats and analysts have voiced fears that the drawdown could create a security vacuum in the east, where most of the country's record seven million displaced people are living and where even greater numbers are experiencing severe food insecurity.
Yet in regions like Beni, which has faced more than a decade of appalling violence and massacres - linked to the ADF as well local armed groups and the national army - residents like Bukuka said they will not miss the mission's presence at all.
Gervais Makofi Bukuka, chief of the village of Vemba-Mavivi, said people in his area don't feel protected by the peacekeeping mission. "We are living with fear in our stomachs," he said. (Claude Sengenya/TNH)
Residents of Vemba-Mavivi brought up recent ADF attacks and criticised the response of the peacekeeping mission in a discussion with The New Humanitarian. (Claude Sengenya/TNH)
Perceived inaction by peacekeepers has turned Beni into a hotbed of anti-MONUSCO protests and dissent in recent years the suffering of its population becoming an emblem of the wider failure of the mission to bring about peace and stability in DRC.
The New Humanitarian travelled across the Beni region - home to roughly 1.5 million people - in July, speaking to community and civil society leaders who shared disturbing accounts of the ADF killing civilians as nearby peacekeepers allegedly failed to act.
Residents also strongly criticised MONUSCO's anti-ADF counter-insurgency operations. They said aircraft deployed by the mission to bomb ADF camps have killed scores of civilians that were held hostage by the rebels in recent years.
Dozens of residents also described widespread sexual abuse and expolitation by the peacekeepers, alleging that troops have long frequented local bars and brothels, some fathering children with women who they then abruptly abandoned.
Augustin Makasi, a member of a youth council in a rural part of Beni, summed up the local sentiment: "We are at the end of our hopes," he said. "They have abused our trust. We are ready for them to leave."
MONUSCO's spokesperson, Ndèye Khady Lo, said the mission undertakes "extensive measures" to protect civilians, despite facing major constraints such as the size of Beni territory, the lack of infrastructure, and the ADF's knowledge of the terrain.
"The ongoing insecurity in the Beni region has understandably stirred up frustrations, which are sometimes manipulated to spread disinformation, incite violence, and exacerbate animosity towards MONUSCO," Lo told The New Humanitarian.
"Despite these challenges, MONUSCO seeks to protect civilians in a comprehensive and integrated manner, leveraging the mission's civilian and uniformed capacities to promote dialogue, physically protect civilians where possible, and help establish a protective environment," Lo added.
Protection failures: 'We alert them, but there is no reaction'
Not too long ago, Beni was a place of relative tranquillity in eastern DRC. But starting in 2013, a series of gruesome mass machete killings turned the region into one of the county's most dangerous places for civilians.
The killings implicated a diverse set of groups, yet the ADF's foreign and ideological leanings made it an easy scapegoat. Military operations zeroed in on the rebels - but they led to brutal ADF reprisal attacks against civilians that continue to this day.
To deal with the massacres - the country's main security threat until the more recent M23 rebellion - MONUSCO deployed its Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), a specialist unit with an unusual mandate for peacekeeping: to neutralise armed groups.
Augustin Makasi, a member of a youth council in a rural part of Beni
Not everybody The New Humanitarian spoke to about MONUSCO expressed criticism. Guillaume Kandibaya, a human rights activist, said the peacekeepers have been able to "hinder the enemy", while civilian staff have helped train civil society actors like thim.
Kandibaya said a 2017 ADF raid that left 15 Tanzanian blue helmets dead and 43 wounded - one of the deadliest attacks in recent UN peacekeeping history - "is proof that they are sharing this difficult moment with us".
Still, most described a complete breakdown in trust with MONUSCO that has led to periodic mass protests that have spread to other eastern cities. They said tensions have resurfaced in recent months as the ADF has carried out a new spate of mass killings.
Bukuka, the head of Vemba-Mavivi, described repeated ADF attacks this year, including one occasion when he said they struck a village just a few kilometres from the Mavivi base, which is the main MONUSCO camp in the Beni region.
Bukuka spoke from inside a shed-like structure that locals call "the Senate". Every morning, community leaders gather there to discuss social and security issues, sharing tea made from kola nuts mixed with ginger.
Also inside the shed was Makasi, the youth leader who is from Batangi-Mbau, a grouping of several villages. He described a case in April in a nearby district, where peacekeepers allegedly took five hours to respond to an attack just near their base.
"The enemy has killed and roamed this area for two months without being disturbed, while there are well-equipped peacekeepers with reconnaissance drones only three kilometres away," Makasi said. "We alert them, but there is no reaction."
Sleeping in the forest
Some residents are so distrusting of the peacekeepers that they prefer to sleep in the forest to avoid attacks than in villages and towns adjacent to UN camps, said Jeanne Bahati, who heads a network of peace activists from local parishes.
After a decade of bloodletting, Bahati said large numbers of people can no longer access their fields, afford more than a single meal per day, or find resources to send their children to school.
"The UN mission has helplessly allowed the situation to fester when it has everything it needs to succeed," Bahati said. "They came while we were living in peace - and it was under their watch that the violence spread."
A woman selling cassava flour in Tenambo, near the town of Oicha, said ADF attacks have prevented farmers like her from accessing their fields. (Claude Sengenya/TNH)
Jeanne Bahati, who heads a network of peace activists, said some Beni residents prefer to sleep in the forest than in villages adjacent to UN camps, so little do they trust the mission. (Claude Sengenya/TNH)
Rodrigue Kabulwese, secretary of the youth council of the Beni-Mbau district, said MONUSCO's "failure" isn't unique to Beni. He said the number of conflicts and armed groups in the east has mushroomed since the mission first deployed.
"Certainly, when they arrived, there were hostilities, deaths, but not on the scale of what we are experiencing today in eastern Congo," Kabulwese said. "There were only about 10 militias [back then], but today we have more than 100 armed groups."
"We must not be satisfied with the simple aid, jobs, and infrastructure that they build, nor with the simple biscuits that they give to children in the villages,' Kabulwese added. "That is not what they came to do."
Lo, the MONUSCO spokesperson, said the mission "continually" refines its approach to protecting civilians based on identified threats and as the situation on the ground evolves.
Lo said the mission's military component has deployed forces at key locations across Beni to enable more rapid responses and to deter threats, and has quick reaction forces that can also enable a fast response to sudden outbreaks of violence.
She said the mission's Beni office has an operations and coordination centre that operates 24/7, collecting and disseminating security alerts that are "integral to ensuring timely and effective responses to emerging threats".
Language barriers and misinformation
Interviewees offered many different reasons for why they felt MONUSCO has struggled to perform its mandate.
Josué Kapisa, a community leader from the Nzuma district, said he thinks it takes too long for peacekeepers to get authorisation from their superiors to leave their barracks upon receiving reports of ADF incursions.
MONUSCO official responsible for liaising between peacekeepers and civilian communities
Kapisa said Nzuma was attacked several months ago by ADF fighters who looted a clinic and killed two children. The attack was close to a UN base, Kapisa said, but peacekeepers "only fired bullets in the air without daring to leave their enclosure".
A MONUSCO official responsible for liaising between peacekeepers and local communities offered a similar assessment, criticising the slowness of certain contingents to act on intelligence.
The official said they will often alert camp commanders about an attack, but the commanders will then wait for an order from higher-ranking colleagues who are stationed in bigger towns several hundred kilometres away.
"Unfortunately, the enemy expects no response," said the official, who asked not to be named to avoid sanction. "He attacks and kills the civilians who have alerted us, and when we arrive late, we only count the dead."
Makasi, the youth council member from Batangi-Mbau, said communities also face language barriers that prevent them from sharing useful information and intelligence with some peacekeeping units.
"Sometimes we may have information that we would like to share only with the brigade commander, but how can we get it to him without going through interpreters?" Makasi said.
"If I come across rebels and while escaping I see South African peacekeepers who speak neither French nor Kiswahili, how am I going to alert them?" he added. "How can [MONUSCO] deploy people who don't speak our language?"
Isaac Kavalami, the president of civil society groups in the town of Oicha, told The New Humanitarian that language issues can lead to rumours forming about the peacekeepers and their mission.
He gave an example of a group of youth who recently saw peacekeepers unloading food from a broken-down vehicle. When they asked the peacekeepers what was happening, the soldiers responded in English, causing a misunderstanding.
"[The youth] then entered the village and claimed to have met peacekeepers supplying rebels with food," Kavalami said. "This is how rumours can invade and destroy confidence in the peacekeepers."
Despite the perceived language issues and cumbersome processes, MONUSCO should still have had enough firepower to prevent attacks, said Kabulwese, the Beni-Mbau youth council secretary.
"They have an offensive mandate, so they should engage in combat," Kabulwese told The New Humanitarian. "They are not civilians, they are soldiers. They should stop watching us die."
A former ADF hostage who spent four months in captivity, and passed through six different camps, said they don't understand how MONUSCO and the Congolese army have struggled to defeat the rebels, who they said are lightly armed by comparison.
The former hostage said they would often walk around with a group that had two belt-fed machine guns between them, the first at the front of the line, the other at the back. The rest had Kalashnikovs with a few cartridges each, they said.
Dalmas Nzingene, a youth leader from Mbau who lost several relatives in ADF attacks, said peacekeepers don't follow the recommendations given to them by local communities.
Nzingene said he participated in regular community meetings with peacekeepers but felt they were more interested in excusing their failures than taking on advice and seeking to improve.
"The peacekeepers justify themselves and claim that they are only a support force that have come to support our Congolese soldiers," Nzingene said. "Indirectly, they ask us to hold our government forces responsible."
Lo said MONUSCO has implemented several mechanisms to engage with communities in Beni, including deploying national staff to work as community liaison assistants in all six of its military bases in the territory.
The national staff act as intermediaries between MONUSCO's military personnel, local authorities, and the local population, who they support to develop protection plans and manage a community alert network, Lo added.
Airstrikes and sexual abuse
While the peacekeepers are accused of inaction during active attacks, their pre-planned military operations against the ADF have also been criticised by local residents and researchers.
Aggressive operations that strayed away from traditional peacekeeping principles provoked deadly reprisal attacks on peacekeepers and escalated overall violence against civilians, researchers have argued.
The mission's strategy of partnering with the Congolese army also proved counterproductive at certain times, as senior army officials were accused of recruiting participants to engage in attacks alongside the ADF.
Aerial bombardments have, meanwhile, been carried out by the mission on ADF camps hidden away in dense jungle canopy where it is hard to determine whether strikes might hit the scores of women, children, and other civilian hostages kept there.
Three former hostages told The New Humanitarian that they experienced what they believe were MONUSCO aircraft bombing the camps where they were held, and said far more hostages than rebels were killed on every occasion.
"During my captivity, we were attacked at least six times by MONUSCO helicopters," said a 14-year-old girl who was held as a sex slave in ADF camps before escaping in late 2022. She said women and children were among the casualties.
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Papy Kasayi, a youth leader from Beni
Lo said MONUSCO undertakes "extensive efforts" to minimise harm to civilians during its military operations, adding that the mission has not conducted any air raids in Beni over the past few years.
Lo did not say whether MONUSCO was aware of any civilian casualties resulting from its aerial strikes, and did not provide further details of assessments taken before raids, as was requested by The New Humanitarian.
Almost everyone that The New Humanitarian spoke with also mentioned sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers as a major issue affecting communities in Beni. Two women said they had had relationships and children with MONUSCO troops.
Interviewees said UN troops bribed the families of some women with peacekeeper-fathered children to pay for their silence, while others cited cases where women struggled to identify perpetrators because they had used false identities.
The two women said survivors of abuse and exploitation have received little support from MONUSCO and the UN member state countries where the implicated peacekeepers are from.
"We have always demanded two things: either substantial compensation that can help us guarantee good care for our children, or that MONUSCO gives the children to their fathers," one of the women said, asking for her name not to be used.
Papy Kasayi, a youth leader from Beni, called on MONUSCO to deal with outstanding paternity cases and other allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation before completing its disengagement from DRC.
"They have had children with our sisters. It is important that they settle before they go, to avoid leaving us with problems," Kasayi said. "What will become of these children without a father?"
Lo said MONUSCO has strengthened efforts to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct by holding contingent commanders accountable for enforcing strict discipline, and by holding regular training programmes on misconduct prevention.
Lo said UN police conduct patrols to see if peacekeepers are visiting prohibited areas or have unauthorised passengers in their vehicles, while a conduct and discipline team conducts risk assessment visits to areas where the risk of misconduct is higher.
The spokesperson said efforts to address sexual exploitation and abuse involving peacekeepers will be a priority for UN agencies that remain in DRC following MONUSCO's withdrawal.
"While the disengagement of the peacekeeping mission is ongoing, the UN country team will remain and will receive and address any new reports of sexual exploitation and abuse, including paternity claims," Lo said.
It is unclear when MONUSCO will fully withdraw from Beni. The government had asked all peacekeepers to leave DRC by the end of the year, though officials recently called for a pause given the security crisis triggered by the M23 and its Rwandan backers.
A drawdown from the war-scarred South Kivu province was completed earlier this year - residents there expressed more mixed feelings about the withdrawal to The New Humanitarian - and troops have already left the regions of Kasai and Tanganyika.
Kasayi, the youth leader, said communities in Beni feel the peacekeepers are less committed than they were previously given their mission is nearing its end, preferring to patrol national roads rather than deep in the forest "where the enemy is hiding".
Nzingene, the youth leader from Mbau district, said the mission will leave DRC in a similar position to when it came. "They found us at war and want to leave us at war," he said. "They have been here too long to have done nothing."
Edited by Philip Kleinfeld.
