Behind The Story
Beni DRC: Ground zero in the battle for $24 trillion
Long Read
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Map of the Democratic Republic of Congo, alongside details on the nation’s natural resources.
Source: AFP
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the northeastern town of Beni has seen a recent upsurge in violence, which shows no signs of abating. Surrounded by thick jungle, hundreds of the town’s residents have been murdered at the hands of foreign rebel forces.
Situated in the resource-rich Kivu region, the town has become a hotbed of instability with the local population undergoing food insecurity, Ebola outbreaks, kidnappings, sexual assault and forced militia enlistment. A sizeable UN peacekeeping presence in Beni has done little to halt the frequent incursions of rebel militias into the town.
Last year, November and December were the bloodiest months recorded since 2017 within the Kivu region. 397 civilian deaths were recorded over the two months by the Kivu Security Tracker, a joint incident tracking project by the New York University Congo Research Group and Human Rights Watch. In November 2019, the World Health Organisation confirmed the murders of at least four Ebola health workers and injuries to a further five at the hands of rebel militias.
Within the same month, a United Nations peacekeeping force camp in Beni was stormed by irate residents, who have been calling for the UN to leave the region. Beni protesters also set their Town Hall and Mayor’s Office alight. The town’s residents remain frustrated at the local government and UN forces for allowing rebel militias in the region to kill hundreds of residents at will.
A DRC militia patrol passes a woman.
Source: Africa Centre for Strategic Studies
UNHCR DRC figures
4.5 million internally displaced people.
800,000 fled violence to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.
WHERE IS THIS OCCURRING?
Map of the Democratic Republic of Congo, highlighting the resource-rich North Kivu province. Although without a scale, the map shows Beni’s relative proximity to neighbouring countries said to house many of the rebel militias driving the instability within North Kivu province.
Source: Go South
The Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa is one of the continent’s largest nations, by both land mass and population. The country is relative in size to the whole of western Europe. Beni lies within the North Kivu region of eastern DRC. The economic centre within the Kivu region is Goma, 400km south of Beni.
The region serves as ground zero for the Ebola outbreak which the DRC government, World Health Organisation and other NGOs have struggled to contain and combat, in the face of fighting between armed groups. Beni lies 50km west of the Uganda-DRC border, which is dominated by the remote Rwenzori mountain range. 100km north-east of Beni along the same Ugandan border lies Lake Albert, used by hundreds of thousands of Congolese to flee to relative safety in Uganda.
With Uganda nearby and the Rwanda border a mere 200km south of Beni, the isolated location of the town within DRC has made it a prime target for groups from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi wishing to establish a foothold in the Kivu region's mining economy. Beni houses thousands of internally displaced people from neighbouring small villages, taking the town’s population above 200,000.
Beni is surrounded by dense forest, an ideal hiding ground for assailants. The Rwenzori mountain range which runs along the DRC-Ugandan border is known to house several groups under the rebel Allied Democratic Force (ADF) umbrella.
WHO IS INVOLVED?
Source: Kivu Security Tracker
The Allied Democratic Force (ADF) is a merger of several Ugandan Islamist insurgency groups and other regional militias who seek to undermine the DRC government’s control of the Kivu region. In 1996, Uganda sided with the secessionist state of South Sudan against Sudan (Khartoum). In return, Sudan funded the ADF in a bid to strengthen Ugandan insurgencies embolden anti-government sentiment within the western Uganda corridor. The ADF group is known to have loose links with what remains of the Islamic State (IS), yet the levels of cooperation are unknown. It has been reported that the original aim of the ADF was to establish an Islamic caliphate within the DRC-Uganda-Rwanda region, nevertheless, it is no longer evident as to whether the group still has this aim or any cohesive ideology. In the spring and summer of 2019, SITE Intelligence Group reported that IS claimed responsibility for ADF terrorist attacks against civilians in towns bordering Beni.
The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FADRC) have been tasked with preventing rebel force incursions into the Kivu area. Former successes such as the offensive operations which drove back the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel alliance have been quickly forgotten due to the high numbers of civilian casualties from rebel attacks. The FADRC have struggled to produce a cohesive strategy to counter the current violence caused by the rebel militias in the northern Kivu region. Some FADRC soldiers have been known to sexually assault and kill civilians, as well as provide support to their adversary, the ADF. Reported cases of extortion and sexual assault by the FADRC and rebel militias are high. To counter this, local chiefs have formed their armed groups along ethnic lines tasked with protecting their people. The Mai-Mai is a broad term used to describe numerous armed community groups within the DRC. Aligned along ethnic lines and headed by warlords and chiefs who insist that they are protecting their local population from the ADF and other forces, the Mai-Mai make up a large number of the armed groups within the Kivu region.
MONUSCO patrol in Beni.
Source: Africanews
More than 100 armed groups operate in the eastern region of DRC, despite the presence of tens of thousands of UN peacekeepers and FADRC forces. In Beni, MONUSCO, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been authorised to conduct pre-emptive military operations against rebel groups. MONUSCO’s Force Intervention Brigade conduct patrols, raids and other offensive engagements against groups hostile to the local population. In Beni, both the FADRC and MONUSCO forces are regarded as ineffective peacekeepers and benign onlookers to the widespread violence.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
A soldier stands guard at a Kivu artisanal mine.
Source: VICE News
The DRC’s untapped mineral resources are said to be worth more than $24 trillion. More than 60% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC. During the Congo Wars of the 90s and insurgencies thereafter hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold and other minerals were smuggled to Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda. They were then sold as their own in international markets. It is estimated that last year alone, over $500 million gold was mined in the Kivu region and illegally trafficked across DRC’s eastern borders into neighbouring countries. The Kivu region is particularly rich in pewter, gold and coltan. All of these commodities are in extremely high demand in international markets, with the increased use of electric vehicles and electronic devices driving coltan demand. One of the major mining companies in the Kivu region, Kilo Goldmines, is headquartered in Beni.
It is now believed that the ADF, as well as other armed groups, are funded by international backers, DRC politicians and regional strongmen alike, seeking to mine and traffick resources out of the Kivu region. Estimates cite that 40% of working adults in the Kivu regions work in the mining industry, with many of them paying an illegal tax to local strongmen just to be able to venture back and forth from work. The strongmen then pay taxes to powerful militias and the cycle of extortion continues.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the Beni area. The UN has stated that they wish to withdraw from the region. There are over 6,000 rebels from over 30 groups operating around Beni, yet no conclusive government strategy to combat them. The protests against the UN presence continue as the civilian death toll rises. The future for locals in Beni remains shrouded in uncertainty and instability.