Mapping Report > Section I. Inventory of the most serious violations > CHAPTER II. July 1996 – July 1998: First Congo War and AFDL Regime
From July 1996, Tutsi/Banyamulenge150 armed units who had left Zaire to pursue military training in Rwandan army, the APR (Armée patriotique rwandaise), in Rwanda, along with APR soldiers, began their operations to infiltrate the province of South Kivu via Burundi and destabilise North Kivu via Uganda. The first serious clashes between the FAZ and the infiltrés took place on 31 August 1996 near Uvira in the province of South Kivu. On 18 October, the conflict took a new turn when an armed movement, the AFDL (Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo), was officially formed in Kigali, asserting its intention to topple President Mobutu.151 Under the cover of the AFDL, whose own troops, weapons and logistics were supplied by Rwanda, soldiers from the APR, the UPDF (Uganda People’s Defence Force) and the FAB (Forces armées burundaises) entered Zaire en masse and set about capturing the provinces of North and South Kivu and the Ituri district.152
During this lightning offensive, units of the AFDL, APR and FAB attacked and destroyed all the Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugee camps set up around the towns of Uvira, Bukavu and Goma. Several hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees returned to Rwanda, but hundreds of thousands of others, like the ex-FAR/Interahamwe, fled towards the territories of Walikale (North Kivu) and Shabunda (South Kivu). For several months, they were pursued by AFDL/APR soldiers, who went about systematically destroying the makeshift refugee camps and persecuting anyone who came to their aid.
From December 1996, the Kinshasa Government attempted to launch a counter-offensive from Kisangani and Kindu with the aid of the ex-FAR/Interahamwe. However, it proved impossible to reorganise the ailing Zairian army in such a short space of time. The AFDL/APR/UPDF troops, who were reinforced from February 1997 by anti-Mobutu Katangese soldiers who had served in the Angolan Government army (the ex-Tigers) since the 1970s, and by children involved with armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAG),153 commonly known as the Kadogo (“small ones” in Swahili) and recruited during the conquests, took control of Kisangani on 15 March 1997 and Mbuji Mayi and Lubumbashi in early April. After the fall of Kenge in Bandundu province, the AFDL/APR troops and their allies reached the gates of the capital and President Mobutu had to resign himself to stepping down. On 17 May 1997, AFDL/APR troops entered Kinshasa, and on 25 May, the AFDL president, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, declared himself President of the Republic and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Within a few months, however, President Kabila’s authoritarian measures, his reneging on contracts signed with a number of foreign companies and his refusal to cooperate with the special Team sent by the UN Secretary-General to investigate the massacre of refugees in the East of the DRC lost the new regime its main international allies.
150 The term “Banyamulenge” came into popular use in the late 1960s to distinguish ethnic Tutsis historically based in South Kivu, the Banyamulenge, from those arriving from the 1960s onwards as refugees or economic migrants. Banyamulenge means “people of Mulenge” and takes its name from a city in the Uvira territory with a very large Tutsi population. Over time, however, the use of the term Banyamulenge has become increasingly more generalised and has been used to designate all Zairian/Congolese and occasionally Rwandan Tutsis.
151 From the second half of 1995, the Rwandan authorities, in cooperation with those in Kampala, began their preparations to facilitate a mass military intervention of the Zairian territory by the APR and UPDF, under the guise of a domestic rebellion. To enable the rebellion to surface, Rwandan and Ugandan leaders requested the help of Tutsis in Zaire who had served in the FRP and APR for several years to mass recruit in North Kivu and South Kivu to start a Banyamulenge rebellion. They also made contact with the leaders of small Zairian rebel groups that had been foes of President Mobutu for decades (André Kisase Ngandu’s CNRD (Conseil national de résistance pour la démocratie) and Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s PRP (Parti de la Révolution Populaire)) to give the rebellion a national dimension. In addition to the CNRD led by André Kisase Ngandu, AFDL President until his assassination in January 1997, and the PRP led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the AFDL also included the ADP (Alliance démocratique des peuples), led by Déogratias Bugera, and the MRLZ (Mouvement révolutionnaire pour la libération du Zaïre), led by Anselme Masasu Nindaga.
152 Given the high numbers of APR soldiers among AFDL troops and at AFDL headquarters – a fact later acknowledged by the Rwandan authorities (see footnote on page 1014) – and the great difficulty experienced by witnesses questioned by the Mapping Team distinguishing between AFDL and APR members in the field, this report will refer to AFDL armed units and APR soldiers engaged in operations in Zaire between October 1996 and June 1997 under the acronym AFDL/APR. In cases where, in certain regions, several sources have confirmed high numbers of Ugandan soldiers (in some districts of Orientale Province, for example) or the Forces armées burundaises (as in some territories in South Kivu) under the cover of the AFDL, the acronyms AFDL/APR/UPDF and AFDL/APR/FAB or AFDL/UPDF and AFDL/FAB may also be used.
153 Children associated with armed groups and armed forces (CAAFAG) designates children who were enlisted in regular or irregular armed forces or armed groups either of their own free will or by force, regardless of their role.
