Some armed groups in DRC flirt with surrender

Some armed groups active in the territories of Lubero and Walikale in the North Kivu province have sent out feelers to switch from armed struggle to work for peace and stability in the region.

CAPE TOWN, May 7 (ANA) – Some armed groups who are responsible for human rights violations in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have announced their desire to abandon the armed struggle, news agency Anadolu reported on Friday.

This follows President Félix Tshisekedi’s recent announcement of new security measures. According to the co-ordinator of the disarmament process, these include ordering a military siege in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, bordering Uganda, to contain armed groups.

According to the presidential order, during the state of siege the provincial governments of Ituri and North Kivu will be led by the military governor, with the police chief as vice-governor, Anadolu wrote.

The UN-run Radio Okapi reported on Friday that some armed groups active in the territories of Lubero and Walikale in the North Kivu province support the president’s actions and have sent out feelers to switch from armed struggle to work for peace and stability in the region, according to Anadolu.

Late last month, Tshisekedi vowed to act against armed groups in the country’s east that have killed thousands of civilians and forced thousands more to flee their homes.

The Centre for African Journalists (CAJ) reported last month that at least 40 people were killed in an outbreak of ethnic clashes in north-eastern DRC. The violence included kidnapping, rape and torching homes.

This week, Tshisekedi ordered military and police officers to take over civil authorities in the two regions, following his declaration of the siege on May 3. He cited the need to restore peace and security to the two troubled provinces.

The country’s eastern North-Kivu and Ituri provinces have been subjected to violence carried out by dozens of armed groups.

An estimated 122 armed groups roam the eastern border provinces of the DRC, many of them a legacy of regional wars in the 1990s.

The bloodiest is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a historically Ugandan Islamist group that has carried out massacres in the past 18 months.

According to the Kivu Security Tracker, an NGO that monitors violence in the DRC’s troubled east, the ADF has killed more than 1,200 civilians in the Beni area alone since 2017.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher