Fear, rather than loyalty or ideology, is what keeps many young Rwandan rebels holed up in the bush in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to men who surrendered from the insurgency.
”If they catch you trying to leave they kill you or they beat you up until you’re maimed. We asked for leave to go to the market and then we ran away,” Jean Damascene Nyitegeka, a former sergeant in the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) who gave himself up the DRC army a week ago, said in Goma, a DRC town on the Rwandan border.
”Nearly everyone wants to leave but there are a handful of leaders who were implicated in [Rwanda’s 1994] genocide and who do everything possible to stop people from leaving.”
The FDLR, created in 2000, is made up of Rwandan Hutus who fled their country after the genocide and who have from their bases in the DRC launched incursions into Rwanda with the aim of toppling the Kigali government.
Among the fighters are both extremists with blood on their hands from the genocide and boys who were recruited by force in the refugee camps in the eastern DRC.
The FDLR, which used to be allied officially to the Kinshasa government, is currently fighting DRC forces in the eastern DRC provinces of Nord and Sud Kivu.
”My heart hadn’t been in it for the past two years. But when the chiefs started to understand I wanted to go back to Rwanda they said I’d be killed there [in Rwanda] or that I’d be put in prison,” explained Ndayumujinya (31), another defector, sprawled in tracksuit and wellington boots in a chair on the terrace of the home of the local DRC army commander.
Morale in the FDLR ranks has been badly dented over the past two years by the landslide re-election victory scored in Rwanda by Paul Kagame in last year’s presidential polls, by the surrender of FDLR commander-in-chief General Paul Rwarakabije in November 2003 and by Kinshasa’s decision to stop paying the FDLR.
”Before, Kinshasa used to send us $100 a month. The leaders took nearly everything but we normally got to keep $10 a month. But we haven’t had any money since August 2002,” added Nyitegeka.
He and two other FDLR defectors spent the five months prior to their surrender at Kibua, a village in the middle of the forest about 70km northwest of Goma in Nord Kivu province.
They were part of a battalion that had received orders to clear the forest to grow food in preparation for the start of operations.
The last big wave of attacks on Rwanda launched by the FDLR was in 2001, when the severely undermanned and underarmed group proved no match for the well-equipped Rwandan military.
”Almost all of us have known since then that we stand no chance against the Rwandan army,” said Sergeant Jean de Dieu Ngendahimana, one of the three defectors.
All three regret the years spent in the bush. Nyitegeka has a wife in Rwanda but torments himself with the idea that she has perhaps gone off with another man.
”The other young men [who stayed in Rwanda] have settled down: they have wives and children and they have built houses. Me, I’ve lost 10 years of my life,” he noted sadly. — Sapa-AFP