The International Business Times UK writes about the apparent Islamic agenda of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
World Watch Monitor recently highlighted a UN report stating the same concern.
Three decades since its start in Uganda in the 1990s, “the mysterious rebel group is reported to be using terror tactics – abductions and killings – to establish a caliphate in the eastern province of North Kivu, where fighters claim to own land”, its Africa reporter says.
‘They told us that these lands belong to them, that they have documents proving that they had bought [land] around Beni during [President] Mobutu’s era,” Adam Kyala Lungalunga, 59, who was kidnapped in November, told IBT UK. “They want to claw back the authority of these lands.”
A Beni-based newspaper editor, Nicaise Kibel Ben Oka, claims the ADF is exercising “barbarity in the name of Sharia… Islamic terrorism is already very fierce”. He adds that the rebels refer to their base as “Medina”.
While he agrees with the editor’s depiction of “the dawn of jihad in DRC”, the president of the civil society of Beni, Kizito Bin Hangi, says little is known about the coordination of the regional groups, populated by thousands of Ugandans, Tanzanians, Rwandans and Congolese fighters. The identity of the ADF’s leader also remains a mystery.
“We don’t know who heads the groups, we don’t know who is providing them with funding or weapons,” he told IBT.