Kony, M23, and the Real Rebels of Congo

THOMAS MORTON: You notice the soil here is super dark, and that is because in addition to being surrounded by rebel groups, Goma also sits at the base of an active volcano. Even from the land up, this area is just in a constant state of That woman's shirt says *** Warrior. Goma's the capitol city of the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is situation in one of the world's worst geopolitical neighborhoods. To the southeast, there's the Rwandan border, which largely consists of mountain jungles through which scores of Hutu militants passed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, fleeing the revenge of President Paul Kagame's newly elected Tutsi government for their role in the massacre. This armed migration directly contributed to the escalation of the First and Second Congo Wars, in which an estimated 5 million people lost their lives. It was also through this transportation corridor that the Lord's Resistance Army, led by the infamous Joseph Kony, crossed the border from Uganda and drove deep into the heart of the Congo. While "Kony 2012" drew a lot of criticism for being less than diligent when it came to framing the quote unquote "facts" the documentary cited, what it did reveal is that the best way to reach jungle-bound dissidents wasn't through social media, but through good, old fashioned psychological operations-- mostly in the tried and true forms of leaflet drops and radio broadcasts. -We don't benefit anything if we lie to you. We want to make sure you see the facts. And I'm sure you're going to decide to enter the DDR process voluntarily. THOMAS MORTON: So when the United Nations extended an invitation to embed with their operation in several locations across the country, our team gladly accepted. IAN ROWE: DDR is the Desarmement, Demobilization, Repatriation, Reinsertion, and Reintegration Program. The focus of the program is on foreign commands that are operating in the Congo. There's national reintegration programs which take over and facilitate their reinsertion into their communities of origin. The main approach that DDRRR has for trying to convince voluntary surrenders for subsequent repatriation is by radio sensitization. This involves using radio messages over FM networks. THOMAS MORTON: FM Uruguay 106.7. Siempre presente only the hits. All rock, no talk. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] IAN ROWE: There's messages calling for them to lay down their weapons and return home. It lets them know that it is still possible to go home. THOMAS MORTON: Um-hm. IAN ROWE: Hope is not lost. Their families will be waiting for them and there's programs that will help them reinsert into their society. -This is one of our camps, the transit camp. And in this camp, we feed them three times a day. We provide them lodging, not this best one that you may think about, because we want to keep that temporarily so that they can go back to their country. We also give them access to telephone so that they can call their friends, relatives, and loved ones. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -Now, I will like to invite Mr. [INAUDIBLE] to address the ceremony. THOMAS MORTON: Oh, that's cool. I guess it's supposed to represent peace of some sort, but it kind of looks like one of those evil war birds from Pink Floyd's The Wall. So we're out on MONUSCO Base, the far eastern side, right on the border with Rwanda and Uganda. There's a whole bunch of rebel groups that kind of mix and merge and cross borders and take over this place. It's a real mess. The one most people know about, the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, are kind of the most notorious for their tactics, for using child soldiers, for abducting people, for setting entire churches full of folks on fire. There's another group called the M23, and are actually officially about 20 or 40 kilometers outside the city center, but we've heard closer to 10. These wars have been going on since the '90s in different little spurts. It's basically a permanent state of war for the Congolese people. It just varies, who they're fighting, at any one given time of the day. And so we're going to go with a little patrol, hopefully not get shot at. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: We got into Goma this morning. We just hooked up with a troop of Uruguay and UN soldiers who are going to give us a little tour of the city-- see what a town that's basically spent 20 years at siege of rebel warfare looks like Besides the fragmented Lord's Resistance Army, the Democratic Republic of Congo is also home to militant groups such as the Mai-Mai, the Raia Mutomboki, and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. But the greatest threat to regional stability could very well be a group known as M23. Led by Bosco Ntaganda, affectionately known by his troops as the Terminator, M23 mostly consists of Congolese Tutsis who defected from the army last April after alleging that the government in Kinshasa had violated peace accords signed on March 23, 2009, in which members of the now defunct CNDP were be absorbed into the country's regular army, the FRDC. The battle between M23 and government troops has raged so wildly that the United Nations has been forced to divert troops and resources sorely needed elsewhere in the country in order to get the government in Kinshasa a fighting chance. This, in turn, has created a security vacuum in which many of the armed groups in the area have rushed in to fill while reigniting the cycle of old tribal conflicts that were never really stamped out in the first place. These ethnic and geopolitical tensions are, in turn, exacerbating an already raging fight between local militias to control the illicit mining of cassiterite, wolframite, and coltan, minerals essential to the manufacturing of everything from smartphones to jet engines to airbags. Complicating matters further, it is widely believed that M23 is receiving aid from the governments of Rwanda and Uganda. And it has been reported that the FDRC has approached the Hutu Mai-Mai for aid in fighting the largely Tutsi M23, background information largely omitted when President Obama ordered 100 US Special Forces to support regional powers in their search for our favorite madman of Facebook. BARACK OBAMA: And when the Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, continued its atrocities in Central Africa, I ordered a small number of American advisers to help Uganda and its neighbors pursue the LRA. THOMAS MORTON: So I'm not a big fan of the UN, in general. The track record has been spotty for all the 65, 67 years. They're famous for bringing the sex trade. It's basically anywhere they set up shop. As our team's tank patrol policed the streets of Goma's poorest neighborhoods, as well as power plants, airstrips, and crossroads-- the kind of places a rebel army would likely attack-- it became clear the UN troops were not preparing for a jungle assault, but for a potential attack by M23 on Goma itself. So obviously, the UN's here, on what they describe as a peacekeeping mission. They're supposed to mediate between all the different rebel groups and end the factions of army. There's different sections. The Congolese army, the Rwandan army, and the Ugandan armies do come in here. So it's supposed to be, basically, the babysitter, the grown-ups here. At the time, you're in a tank and they're soldiers. Little boy's like it, but it makes it feel kind of a little weird, like you're in an occupying army. I can't help but notice we've only really been in town. And it's kind of weird just to do a city patrol. It's almost more like you're policing the local population than on the lookout for rebel groups. Maybe there's something to be said for trying to convince locals not to go take up arms with M23. In the weeks that followed our initial visit to Goma, skirmishes between M23, Congolese troops, and the UN increased with regularity at strategic locations surrounding the city, with rebels even beginning to attack food, fuel, and supply convoys into town. Later, the UN invited our team to visit a camp in Goma set up to house rebel combatants who had recent surrendered to both the UN and FDRC. IAN ROWE: When escapees do come out, they're typically, at the moment, received by a community member that they perhaps cross in the road, or in the jungle, on their route, or something like that, and brought to the FRDC or to our military camp, where they'll be kept in our transit camp for maximum a week, within in which time they'll be processed in terms of getting their information, details, start doing the tracing for their families. We make contact with the Amnesty Commission in Uganda. And our counterparts in Entebbe-Kampala will meet us at the airport and we'll do a hand-over, after which they'll be reintegrated via whatever systems Uganda has in place. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] IAN ROWE: From the women that have been abducted and kept as bush wives, oftentimes the reason that they're released is because they've been slowing down the LRA group that they're associated with. And so the fighters in the group made the decision that, for the purposes of allowing them to be more rapid moving, they would release these women and children. THOMAS MORTON: Now, when you say bush wives, that's a polite way of saying, like, sex slave, basically. IAN ROWE: Yes. These are women that have been abducted and used for sex as porters, all these most negative kind of uses that you could enumerate. THOMAS MORTON: Built on the ruins of a home previously belonging to deposed Congolese dictator Joseph Mobutu, the camp was split along ethnic and administrative lines with only a chain-link fence separating Hutu and Tutsi fighters, who out in the bush had been spilling each other's blood by the bucket for decades. The camp in Goma's indicative of the DRC's confusing geopolitical turmoil. Combatants staying at the campus must first surrender and hand over their weapons to UN or government troops, after which they are processed and held for 72 hours. A portion of the residents are from Rwanda, from which they fled to the DRC, joined a militia, became hired guns, and now want to return home. Other campers are Congolese who fought with local Hutu and Tutsi militias before surrendering. But there is also a contingent of Rwandan farmers who pose as ex-rebels in order to hitch a free ride with the UN back across the boarder. To determine their status and surmise their identities and countries of origin, they're quizzed on local facts and subjected to fingerprinting and retinal scans. The camp is an element of a UN program designed to transform rebels into civilians, reintegrating them back into society, or what's left of it. As the camp's public information officer, Sam Howard, gave us a walking tour of the side of the camp where some M23 fighters were housed, it became apparent that no one from the UN wanted to talk to our team about the confusing three-way battle raging between the M23 mutineers, the UN, and the FDRC. They were, however, more than happy to discuss other arm groups that are now less active, such as Joseph Kony and his LRA fighters-- just not the real rebels standing next to us. The crumbling security situation in North Kivu has forced the hand of the UN and sparked a massive reallocation of UN assets to Goma from places like Dungu, Duru, and Bangadi. In the Orientale Province, places where the LRA were, and to some degree, still are active. THOMAS MORTON: The village of Dungu sits beside the quiet Uele River. The ruin of a Belgian Colonial castle faces become Kabali Hydroelectric Power Plant, which has been defunct for nearly three decades now. Beginning in September, 2008, the Lord's Resistance Army launched a series of brutal attacks in Dungu, kidnapping dozens, killing hundreds, and displacing an estimated 87,000 people. In an unusual display of brutality, the LRA fighters put aside their usual AK-47s and RPGs in favor of the machete and club. This brutality is still being felt in the damage to the area's already fragile infrastructure. And with no standing power grid or mobile phone network, the only reliable method of mass communication are the FM radio transmitters made available by the UN's DDRRR program. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Our team first saw examples of the UN PSYOPS flyers with Sam Howard back at the transit camp in Goma. Each contain instructions in several languages directing LRA and other rebel combatants on the correction procedure for safely surrendering for repatriation. First, if you find a flyer, look for the correction FM radio station to tune into for instructions of where you can surrender. Next, when the LRA goes to bed, make your escape under the cover of darkness. Third, surrender to the UN, FDRC, or another approved African Union Force. And finally, you will be reunited with your strangely Asian-looking family. THOMAS MORTON: It's all just LRA, right? That's the dominant group. THOMAS MORTON: Would just leave the woods. THOMAS MORTON: Right. CAESAR ACELLEM: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHEIF MARC: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHEIF MARC: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: The question just was have their communities been affected by the LRA before working with DDR? Just how have the been affected? -Of course they're been affected. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] IAN ROWE: The escapees that come out, they're obviously very tentative when they come out. THOMAS MORTON: M-hm. IAN ROWE: Because in the past, the reaction from the community, the affected communities, the ones that they've attacked or terrorized in the past, their first reaction is to kill them. THOMAS MORTON: The next morning, our team awoke before dawn to take a 30-minute helicopter flight to Bangadi, an area where the LRA has been and, to some degree, are still very active. -So how long are you going to stay? THOMAS MORTON: I think we talked about being picked up at 13:20. -You must know the timing, also. THOMAS MORTON: OK. -So I will be arriving here at 13:20. THOMAS MORTON: Yeah, OK. -Before that, I'll expect that you finish your job and come back here by 1:20. -Yeah, as soon as we finish the [INAUDIBLE]. -OK? Because you should not be like that, because I'm coming, waiting, and you're not there. OK? -I know, of course. -Because time is calculated like that. And we follow the datas. -Thanks. THOMAS MORTON: Our team made our way into Bangadi Center, where Tahir, our DDR man in Orientale, had arranged for us to meet with community leaders and get a better sense of the current situation on the ground. -We have to go over there, yeah? -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Welcome, welcome. THOMAS MORTON: Thank you. JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] BARACK OBAMA: Finally, never again is a challenge tenacious. It's a bitter truth. Too often the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted by the atrocities that we did not stop. THOMAS MORTON: What was it like before the camp? Were there UN soldiers? Was there any sort of presence? -No. No. THOMAS MORTON: Defensive presence? No. THOMAS MORTON: Mhm. THOMAS MORTON: Even though it's Congo? DANIEL: Yes. Yes. THOMAS MORTON: They were over here. THOMAS MORTON: Further evidence of LRA movement could be found in trail markers that the under-equipped rebels have been using to communicate information between their small groups. JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Mhm. JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Mhm. JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] JOSEPH: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Interested in hearing a firsthand account of the LRA's *** and grab tactics in the area, our UN handlers arranged for us to meet Bolobo, a young man who had been abducted by the LRA as a teenager, at one point, had come face to face with the elusive Joseph Kony. BOLOBO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] BOLOBO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] BOLOBO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] IAN ROWE: The amnesty law that used to allow those that came out of the LRA voluntarily a degree of amnesty has now been removed. And so that's another issue which has also been brought to the fore. This has effectively removed the best incentive we have in trying to encourage LRA combatants to come out. -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Mhm. So just in the middle of the road. Did you bury them after that? JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]? JEAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: For the purposes of kind of disarming these people and getting them to surrender, this ain't helping, you know? European-style colonialism first made its way into the Congo in 1876, after famed explorer Henry Stanley, employed by Leopold II of Belgium, forced tribal chiefs to sign treaties at gunpoint that essentially granted all of their land rights to the European monarch. Until 1908, Leopold ran the Congo as the Congo-Free State, a private corporation with him as the sole shareholder and as chairman. It soon became clear that the corporation's profits were built on a brutal occupation of the local people and plunder of the Congo's natural resources-- namely, rubber. In 1965, following a series of coups that ended the relative stability of the newly independent nation, Laurent Mobutu seized control of the state, changed the country's name to Zaire, and for over 30 years, lead a brutal regime built on Mobutu's own cult of personality. By way of example, under Mobutu in a children's school, Ronald Reagan would have been referred to as the American Mobutu. In May, 1997, Laurent Desire Kabila, father of the DRC's current executive Joseph Kabila, ascended to the presidency of Zaire and changed the country's name, yet again, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabila the elder achieved this regime change through a rebellion backed by Rwanda and which included a grand march from the Kivus across 1,000 miles of some of the world's densest jungle-- the same feat now threatened by the rebels of M23. IAN ROWE: There's a very big difference from the work that DDR does in the Kivus to the work that they do in Orientale. Whereas in the Kivus, most of the combatants that we're trying to reach are more easily reachable. There's a mobile network system here. There's the possibility to reach out and discuss and try to negotiate with people to come in. That doesn't exist in Orientale. Up there, you're in the middle of the jungle. There's no more mobile network. There's no contact with anybody within the LRA. There's no peace agreement. So much of the work is based a lot on the belief and the faith that the message is getting through them. There's now a new African Union initiative to implement a strategy towards countering the LRA problem. We also use our troops on the ground when they do their patrols. So we make a point of having only armed elements doing that, whether it's from our side or the FRDC. THOMAS MORTON: During the patrol, we had persuaded the convoy to drop our team off in Duru, a village hit hard by the LRA's 2008 Dungu Offensive. It is also where, according to local rumors, a small band of fighters have been recently raiding local farms. There goes our convoy. There's American J-Op Special Forces here who are being a little bit cagey about what they're doing. They just took off all of their insignia before crossing into South Sudan, including their little flag patch, which seems a little intriguing. There was a national policemen from Burkina Faso. He confirmed what we have kind of been picking up on this whole time. The LRA's weak and dead at this point. I think it's kind of hype-driven. I think the Kony 2012 Facebook campaign thing has sort of swayed foreign policy towards sending troops here instead of somewhere like Goma, where there's a huge buildup of M23 troops, which is basically where we're kind of needed down here, instead of pursuing this dead, sort of starving army of 400 people who only attack, at this point, to get food. We'll hang out here and see how people are doing four years after the massacre. CHIEF CLAUDE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Go talk to them and see what the LRA's looking like these days. We've heard it isn't so hot. OYO DIEUDONNE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHIEF PAUL: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Martin circled the LRA encampment at a safe distance and waited for the moon to rise. After his first shot rang out across the night sky, the LRA men, lulled into a false sense of comfort, laid down their weapons and promptly went to sleep. After the promised knock against the tree echoed in the darkness, Martin's son fled. And the pair made their way safely back to the village. THOMAS MORTON: Right. THOMAS MORTON: Right. MARTIN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] CHRISTIAN KILUNDU: They saw a yellow paper. And these guys, they tried to read that then. They got we through the paper and they just read it. And then they throw. And then they said-- [LAUGHING] THOMAS MORTON: That's pretty definitive. Almost everywhere we went, our team seemed to encounter conflicting opinions regarding the reallocation of troops and equipment across the country. Regions where the LRA were still active feared the security vacuum the had been left in by the UN and FDRC movement of troops in support of the Kivus. Back in the Kivus, for fear of showing of their hand to M23, officials chose to focus on operations in provinces like Orientale while seemingly ignoring the wolf at their doorstep. It seems that both fears were well-founded. I just walk back over every piece. It's funny. I was expecting to see one in the dog's mouth, and the little kid's. OK. You ready? Morning. We're out looking for hippos before our flight. We're leaving town today. No hippos so far. I think they might still be in the grass, which is disappointing, but also kind of an apt metaphor for the LRA up here. One thing that's sort of becoming clear, especially seeing all the NGOs here, all the UN presence, all the different agencies, Invisible Children are a good organization, despite the fact that "Kony 2012" is a *** up piece of ***. And there's this attitude that you see with all sorts of NGOs, that they have, you know, a very narrow focus. They're focused on one issue in a region, which is the way you do things. You concentrate, and you specialize. But in an area as complex as Eastern Congo, where everything's connected, you focus your troops up in the north, where the LRA is. You beat them in a manner of speaking, but all they've really done is, as I keep saying, atomize the troops. They split off into little groups of one and three. They hid in the bush. And now taking them down as a force is going to be impossible. It's going to take years and years and years. These guys are going to stay here, and they've reverted to banditry. At the same time, the groups in the South, like the Mai-Mai and the M23, have taken advantage of the focus of attention on LRA to build up their forces. Now, they're a major threat to the Lake Kivu area. BOUDOUIN NGARUYE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] -[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] BENJAMIN MBONIMPA: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] THOMAS MORTON: Day by day, we can solve one piece at a time. And there's no real way to do that. Solutions will come. The situation will improve eventually. But this is 20 years of war. That *** lingers. People take it in. And it becomes part of their lives. War and retribution and the cycles that are continuing to make it worse are a part of life here. This camp's going to be here for a while. These soldiers are all going to be here for a while. People are going to be fighting and dying for a long *** time, no matter how many people sign a Facebook petition. [TROOPS CHANTING]