Vol. 8 Issue 7 - Public International Law & Policy Group

Aid workers and human rights activists are watching the phenomenon with trepidation. In a
part of Congo with dozens of militias and rebels, they fear these self-defense groups could
transform into a menacing force.
Congo's army, cobbled together from various rebel groups and the defeated troops of ousted
dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, has never been cohesive and has suffered repeated defeats at the
hands of the rebels. The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo, but it has been
largely ineffective in a country more than twice the size of California and Texas combined.
The Lord's Resistance Army has been waging an insurgency in northern Uganda for more
than 20 years, and the conflict spilled over into Congo about five years ago.
Before dawn on Oct. 19, Bangadi became the rebels' target.
They descended first on the former abbey on the outskirts of town, killing its residents.
But as the fighters tried to advance, they were surprised by more than a half-dozen ambushes
by residents armed with makeshift weapons, some hiding in ditches. Before the rebels
reached the central market, they had been defeated and took flight.
Akoyo said residents counted 43 rebels who came into town. Seven got away and the rest
were killed, he said. The civilian toll was 16 dead.
Today, the abbey is abandoned. Survivors, along with thousands of people from surrounding
villages, are camped in Bangadi; its population has exploded from 15,000 to 35,000.
About 20 miles (30 kilometers) outside Bangadi, lies evidence of what happens when there is
no one to resist an attack by the Lord's Resistance Army: More than a mile (About two
kilometers) of huts along a dirt track have been burned to the ground.
For months after the October attack, the rebels steered clear of Bangadi. Then, after a
combined military operation by forces from Congo, Uganda and Sudan began in December,
aid groups say the rebels began massacring civilians in retaliation.
In coordinated attacks on three towns, the rebels killed hundreds of people in just three days,
according to aid workers and the U.N. More than 900 have been killed since Christmas in the
region of Haut-Uele, in northeast Congo.
Bangadi residents were particularly alarmed by the story told by the sole survivor of a
massacre in a village where rebels locked people into the church, Akoyo said. The rebels
saved their bullets and brought the victims out two by two. Some were bludgeoned to death
while others had their throats slit with machetes, said the man, who escaped death because he
was busy in his field and arrived at the church service late.