DRC: Tensions still rife in Ituri despite progress in DDR

BUNIA, 22 August 2008 (IRIN) - Despite considerable progress in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) in Ituri district, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), pockets of resistance by militia groups are causing tension in a region recovering from years of civil war, officials told IRIN.

Leaders of these militiamen have established links with rebels from neighbouring Uganda who are supplying them with guns and ammunition, Congolese army officials said.

"There are four [militia] leaders behind this new resistance," Charles Boyeka, the spokesperson of the national army, Forces Armées de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC), in Ituri, said.

According to government sources, Front de Resistances Patriotiques en Ituri (FRPI) militias are heavily armed and have set up base in the mountainous region near the Ruwenzori Mountains, where rebels from the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU) are also operating.

"They are getting arms and ammunition from NALU and the Allied Democratic Forces," Boyeka said.

He added that FRPI militias were also getting their supplies from the strife-torn neighbouring province of North Kivu.

In July, government officials tried to hold negotiations with one of the remaining armed groups in Bunia, but its officials changed their mind at the last minute.

"They said their leader was sick, but we know it was there way of avoiding the negotiations. We suspected they were preparing for an attack so our headquarters called for reinforcements from the 82nd Brigade," Boyeka said.

Clashes did indeed break out on 12 July, in a village named Zunguluka, a village in Ituri, 120km south of the region's main town, Bunia.

"We were doing our patrols when we found them [the militia] looting a village. We opened fire and they shot back," Boyeka said.

Following the incident, residents reported that the militiamen had warned of "revenge" attacks on them for allegedly "betraying" them.

Madnodje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, MONUC, said UN troops were not involved in the recent conflict in Zunguluka.

"The FARDC fought alone, they did not ask for our help," Mounoubai said in Ituri.

A number of militia groups in Ituri have blamed the government-led forces for the sporadic fighting in the district.

"Every time we leave the bush they arrest us, this time we are giving them conditions before we leave," a militiaman, who declined to be named, told IRIN.

The militiaman said these conditions include the immediate release of FRPI, FNI, UPC soldiers who had been arrested in the towns of Bunia, Kisangani and Kinshasa.

Several leaders of Ituri-based militia groups are currently behind bars - three of them in the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

Those in Kinshasa include Mathieu Ngujolo of the Front des Nationalistes et Integrationnistes (FNI) and Germain Katanga of the FRPI.

Mounoubai told IRIN that MONUC was not directly involved in the disarmament process, as this was the responsibility of the national programme for the disarmament, demobilisation and reinsertion, known by its French initials, PNDDR.

The programme offers training to some of the soldiers who are integrated into the local army.

PNDDR official Col Xavier Duku said the DDR process in Ituri was near completion.

"For us, the negotiations are finished, the accords have been signed, all their [the militias] demands have been met," he said.

"We have given them amnesty," he said, adding that the remaining militia groups willing to join the programme were still welcome.

Since the beginning of the disarmament, demobilisation and reinsertion programme in 2004, at least 25,000 ex-combatants have been disarmed, with more than 10,000 children being demobilised in Ituri.

Some US$74.5 million will go into the programme from August, and is supported by the African Development Bank, the Congolese government and the Multi-Country Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme (MRDP).

However, despite this DDR progress, government forces in the district are still anticipating more conflict.

"To be honest these groups should be no more, we are giving them two options, they dispose of their arms and rejoin the disarmament process, if they refuse, we will have to take military action," Boyeka said.

However, an FRPI leader, who requested anonymity, told IRIN on the telephone that the group would continue its resistance.

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