Who’s behind the bloodbath in DRC’s Beni?

Beni. The official explanation for a two-year wave of massacres in a restive corner of DR Congo centres on a shadowy rebel group accused of having ties to the global jihadist underground.

But some basic details about the alleged killers of more than 700 victims -- the latest over the Christmas weekend -- haven’t quite convinced observers and experts.

The truth, they say, is more complicated and may lead all the way to the halls of power in the vast, mineral-rich and chronically unstable central African nation.

UN experts, referring to the claimed jihadist links in past reports, have simply stated: “There is no proof of this allegation.”

But that has not stopped the Democratic Republic of Congo’s leadership and the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO from blaming the bloodbath around the town of Beni, in the country’s strife-torn northeast, on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

Secrecy shrouds the group, which is dominated by hardline Ugandan Muslims who were initially focused on overthrowing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.

The group went on to absorb other rebel factions into its ranks and started carrying out attacks in 1995. Gradually pushed westwards by the Ugandan army, the ADF relocated most of its activities to DR Congo.

When the Beni massacres started in October 2014, with most of the victims hacked to death, the ADF was quickly branded the culprit by both Congolese authorities and MONUSCO. 

More than two years on, the government and the UN have been unable to protect civilians from the attacks, and the ADF remains the only official explanation -- with Kinshasa insisting on a jihadist link to the killings.

 Army troops involved?

Many ADF recruits -- who were drawn this year from Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and as far as Somalia -- were not hardcore ideologues but young Muslims lured by the promise of going to study in Saudi Arabia, an intelligence agent and civil society source told AFP.

Meanwhile, the ADF has not claimed any of the Beni massacres, and no experts working on DR Congo have found a link between the group and the global jihadist underground.

“It’s paradoxical,” a civil society source in Beni told AFP, pointing to groups like Islamic State’s claims of violence committed in its name.

Pinning the blame on jihadists “seems too simplistic”, he said on condition of anonymity fearing for his safety, like most Congolese who spoke to AFP.

Others have gone further, alleging that government agents have a role in the killing. (AFP)