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The many faces of a rebel group:
the Allied Democratic Forces in
the Democratic Republic of Congo
KRISTOF TITECA AND DANIEL FAHEY
International Aairs 92: () –
©
The Author(s). International Aairs © The Royal Institute of International Aairs. Published by John Wiley & Sons
Ltd, Garsington Road, Oxford , UK and Main Street, Malden, MA , USA.
Between October and December , a series of massacres that killed more than
people took place in Beni territory, in the north-east of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) near the border with Uganda. The DRC government
and the UN stabilization mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) quickly identified
a Ugandan rebel group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) as the sole
culprits, despite strong indications of the involvement of other actors, including
Congolese soldiers. Around the same time, the Ugandan government blamed
the murder of several Muslim leaders in Uganda on the ADF, although there was
scant supporting evidence.
This article explores how dierent actors have framed the ADF and why, and
what these dierent framings tell us about the political and economic motives of
each actor. In doing so, the article analyses the politics of knowledge construction
on rebel groups—specifically the ways in which narratives about a rebel group
may reveal more about the intentions of the actor framing the group than about
the group itself. The article also shows how processes of knowledge construction
are not only related to active instrumentalization by the actors involved, but are
also the result of organizational dynamics.
The next section discusses the literature on framing, in particular how wars are
framed. After a brief history of the ADF, the article examines how the Ugandan
government, Congolese government and MONUSCO framed the ADF, and why:
while both governments largely instrumentalize the rebel movement for political
and economic reasons, MONUSCO’s framing is largely influenced by organiza-
tional shortcomings. The final section brings these issues together, showing how
particular images of the ADF are constructed through the processes of extraver-
sion and introversion.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR condemns massacres in Beni, in DR Congo and calls for
humanitarian access, Dec. ,http://www.refworld.org/docid/d.html. (Unless otherwise noted
at point of citation, all URLs in this article were accessible on July .)
Congo Research Group, Qui sont les tueurs de Beni? Rapport d’enquête, no. (New York: New York Univer-
sity, March ), p. .
John Agaba, Josephine Ganyana and Diana Ankunda, ‘Muslim clerics murder suspects linked to ADF’, New
Vision, Jan. .
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International Aairs 92: 5, 2016
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2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
The framing of wars
Wars can provide an excellent context for a diverse range of political and economic
actors to pursue ‘violent, profitable and politically advantageous strategies ...
with a great deal of impunity’. The ‘greed and grievance’ literature has (over)
emphasized the economic functions of conflicts, while other work, particularly
that of David Keen, has shown how war serves a variety of objectives unrelated to
the goal of winning the war. Without ignoring the economic dimensions of war
he highlights their important political functions, such as the building of a political
constituency and the unification of a particular group.
A wide range of terms has been used to refer to the process of understanding
and interpreting events. Early approaches relied on the psychology of analogical
reasoning to highlight ‘knowledge structures’—such as analogies or schemas—
through which people ‘order, interpret, and simplify, in a word, to make sense of
their environment’. Knowledge structures both help policy-makers to arrive at
certain choices and play a role in justifying these choices. Similarly, Vertzberger
called this ‘information processing’, referring to a ‘range of cognitive and motiva-
tional phenomena of great significance in human judgment and decision making
in general and foreign policymaking in particular’.
The concepts of knowledge structures and information processing are further
developed in the literature on frames and framing, which highlights the main
function of frames as organizing information in a coherent fashion through which
the world is understood. Frames have not only a ‘passive’ side in understanding
the world, but also an active side, highlighting how information and knowledge
are constructed for particular aims, ‘as a tool to legitimize and rationalize certain
propositions’. Through framing, actors are able to exercise power in drawing
attention to a specific issue, and in determining how such an issue is viewed:
‘A successful framing exercise will both cause an issue to be seen by those that
matter, and ensure that they see it in a specific way.’ By this means, actors will
try to influence particular target audiences, and to encourage actions on a certain
issue. Framing can therefore be considered a ‘rhetorical weapon’ used for ‘political
manipulation’, and a ‘method that actors use to manipulate the decision process’.
David Keen, Useful enemies: when waging wars is more important than winning them (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, ), p. .
David Keen, ‘A rational kind of madness’, Oxford Development Studies : , , pp. –; ‘War and peace:
what’s the dierence?’, International Peacekeeping : , , pp. –. See also Mats Berdal and David Malone,
eds, Greed and grievance: economic agendas and civil wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, ).
Roger Schank and Robert Abelson, Scripts, plans and knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), p. .
Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at war (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. .
Yaacov Vertzberger, The world in their minds (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), p. .
Marvin Minsky, ‘A framework for representing knowledge’, in P. Winston, ed., The psychology of computer vision
(New York: McGraw-Hill, ).
Schank and Abelson, Scripts, plans and knowledge, p. ; see also Maurits van der Veen, Ideas, interests and foreign
aid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
Morten Bøas and Desmond McNeill, ‘Introduction: power and ideas in multilateral institutions: towards
an interpretative framework’, in Bøas and McNeill, eds, Global institutions and development: framing the world?
(London: Routledge, ), p. .
Jean Garrison, ‘Framing foreign policy alternatives in the inner circle’, Political Psychology : , , pp. ,
, .
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The many faces of a rebel group: the ADF in the DRC
International Aairs 92: 5, 2016
Copyright ©
2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
In other words, frames are able to locate blame and suggest lines of action, and
are strategically useful for a range of political and economic functions.
Two additional factors are particularly germane to the purpose of this
article. First, much of the literature on framing deals with the eorts of social
movements, or with how western governments frame their foreign policy. As
Fisher highlights, scant attention is paid to how national actors in the global
South frame information about war to achieve diverse objectives. These actors
are particularly important given the fact that many national governments in the
developing world actively seek to ‘control what information external actors can
access on events and developments in their countries and what options on poten-
tial interventions they view as feasible or desirable’. In doing so, national actors
in foreign states engage in various image management strategies. Titeca and
Costeur have developed this observation by showing how various governments—
in particular the Ugandan and Congolese governments—frame events dierently
for dierent audiences. More concretely, they show how one particular rebel
group—the Lord’s Resistance Army—is framed dierently for dierent intended
audiences, such as the local population or western governments. These insights
are particularly useful for this article, in which we analyse how the Congolese
and Ugandan governments, and the UN mission(s) in the DRC, have framed the
ADF, and why.
Second, the literature on framing shows the importance of the political context
in which the framing takes place. Amenta and colleagues, for example, have shown
how the framing eorts of social movements have to ‘fit political circumstances’ in
order to be eective. The political context ‘intersects with the strategic choices
that movements make’, and dierent political settings will determine the impact
of particular messages. This article builds further on these insights: it aims to
show how dierent structural circumstances—the dierent political contexts—
have an impact on how national governments frame a particular rebel group. More
specifically, we will show how the Congolese and Ugandan governments have
strategically framed the ADF rebel group at dierent political levels—interna-
tional, regional and national—in order to achieve objectives at these various levels
See esp. Robert Benford and David Snow, ‘Framing processes and social movements’, Annual Review of Sociol-
ogy , , pp. –.
Regula Hänggli and Hanspeter Kriesi, ‘Frame construction and frame promotion’, American Behavioral Scientist
: , , pp. –.
Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, eds, Comparative perspectives on social movements: political oppor-
tunities, mobilizing structures and cultural framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
Jonathan Fisher, ‘Framing Kony: Uganda’s war, Obama’s advisers and the nature of “influence” in western
foreign policy-making’, Third World Quarterly : , , pp. –.
Fisher, ‘Framing Kony’; Jonathan Fisher, ‘When it pays to be a “fragile state”: Uganda’s use and abuse of a
dubious concept’, Third World Quarterly : , , pp. –.
Fisher, ‘Framing Kony’.
Kristof Titeca and Théophile Costeur, ‘An LRA for everyone: how dierent actors frame the Lord’s Resist-
ance Army’, African Aairs : , , pp. –.
Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren and Sheera Joy Olasky, ‘Age for leisure?’, American Sociological Review : , ,
p. .
Ryan Cragun and Deborah Cragun, Introduction to sociology (Tampa, FL: Blacksleet River, ), p. .
Marco Diani, ‘Linking mobilization frames and political opportunities’, American Sociological Review : , Dec.
, pp. .
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2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
that may or may not be related to the reasons why they are fighting against the
ADF.
Finally, this article explores how framing happens not only for strategic polit-
ical and economic reasons, but also because of particular organizational processes:
we will show how the UN missions’ understandings of the ADF have largely been
influenced by organizational shortcomings that led to poor analysis.
The ADF: a brief history
In the National Resistance Movement (NRM), led by Yoweri Museveni,
took power in Uganda after a five-year civil war. Among the challenges facing
Museveni was how to manage discord in the Muslim community, which was
deeply divided and politicized by the late s. The divisions within the commu-
nity were exacerbated by the emergence of the Tabliq movement, in which Saudi-
schooled Ugandan clerics advocated ‘a stricter form of Islam, and started to
challenge the traditional [Ugandan] Muslim scholars’ understanding of Islam’.
Museveni’s eorts to control the leadership of the Muslim community led to a
violent confrontation in , after which the government arrested and jailed
Tabliqs, including a leader named Jamil Mukulu. Upon his release from prison
in , Mukulu and other Tabliqs established the Salaf Foundation (SF), which
had an armed wing: the Uganda Muslim Freedom Fighters (UMFF). The UMFF
reportedly established ties with the government of Sudan. In February ,
the Ugandan army (Ugandan People’s Defence Force—UPDF) overran UMFF’s
training camp and killed many of the UMFF fighters, but a few dozen survi-
vors including Jamil Mukulu fled to the DRC (then known as Zaire). With the
consent and support of President Mobutu, the UMFF remnants re-formed at
Bunia as the Allied Democratic Forces, and in June formed an alliance with
the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU).
NALU had been formed in , drawing upon former political movements
and marginalized populations in western Uganda who shared opposition to the
new Ugandan government led by Yoweri Museveni. To evade Museveni’s reach,
NALU largely operated across the border in Zaire’s Beni and Lubero territories,
where its members shared ethnic ties and longstanding political and economic
Abdin Chande, ‘Muslim-state relations in East Africa under conditions of military and civilian or one-party
dictatorships’, Historia Actual Online, Fall , p. ; see also International Crisis Group (ICG), Eastern Congo:
the ADF/NALU’s lost rebellion, Africa briefing no. (Nairobi and Brussels, Dec. ), pp. –.
Mike Ssegawa, ‘The aftermath of the attack on Uganda Muslim Supreme Council’, Daily Monitor, Aug. .
This group is also referred to as the Uganda Muslim Liberation Army (UMLA).
Kristof Titeca and Koen Vlassenroot, ‘Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland? A biography of
the Allied Democratic Forces’, The Journal of Eastern African Studies : , , pp. –.
Testimony of Mr Benz Tushabe to the Uganda Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Illegal
Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
, CW//, Sept. .
Gerard Prunier, ‘Rebel movements and proxy warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (–)’, African
Aairs : , , p. . For more on NALU, see Lindsay Scorgie-Porter, ‘Militant Islamists or borderland
dissidents? An exploration into the Allied Democratic Forces’ recruitment practices and constitution’, Journal
of Modern African Studies : , , pp. –.
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2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
links with Zaire’s Nande community. Between and , NALU carried
out several attacks within Uganda, but remained an ineectual fighting force
until its alliance with the ADF. From the moment the alliance began, the ADF
appears to have dominated the leadership, and by the Ugandan government
was already describing the ADF as ‘the successor organization to NALU’. By
the mid-s, the few remaining NALU elements had either left or converted to
Islam and remained with the ADF. For simplicity, this article refers to the ADF
except where NALU was specifically involved.
ADF/NALU launched their first joint attack in November on the border
post at Mpondwe, Uganda, during the First Congo War. The ADF and UPDF
fought a series of battles in eastern DRC and western Uganda during and
. At the same time, the ADF carried out several attacks in Uganda, including
one in June on a school, in which the rebels killed at least young people
and captured more. By August , the UPDF had , troops involved in
an operation against the ADF, and appeared to be on the verge of defeating the
group.
Additional elements of ADF’s history are discussed in the sections that follow,
but a few key points about the period between and deserve mention.
First, the Ugandan army invaded the DRC in August and remained as an
occupation force for nearly five years, but failed during this time to defeat the
ADF. Second, between and , the Congolese army carried out several
operations against the ADF, but in each case failed to defeat them. Third, UN
peacekeepers provided direct and/or indirect support to the Congolese army
during each operation, but were generally more concerned with other armed
groups in the eastern Congo during this period than with the ADF.
ADF leaders consistently claimed their goal was to overthrow the Ugandan
government and create an Islamic state, but over the past decade at least their
actions have not demonstrated a clear commitment to this goal beyond using it as a
narrative to maintain cohesion among their members. By the early s, the ADF
had established a well-organized society in the forest north-east of Beni town
that was supported by international networks and sustained by local connections
with the area’s Nande community forged decades earlier by NALU. Although
Lindsay Scorgie, ‘Rwenzori rebels: the Allied Democratic Forces conflict in the Uganda–Congo borderland’,
dissertation. University of Cambridge, Oct. , pp. –.
International Court of Justice (ICJ), ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Demo-
cratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), counter-memorial submitted by the Republic of Uganda’, vol. ,
April , p. .
Kristof Titeca, ‘The “Masai” and Miraa: public authority, vigilance and criminality in a Ugandan border
town’, Journal of Modern African Studies : , , pp. –.
J. Tumusiime, ‘Museveni shues Kazini, Mugume’, The Monitor, June .
ICJ, ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v.
Uganda)’, General List , Dec. , paras –.
Daniel Fahey, Rethinking the resource curse: natural resources and polywar in the Ituri district, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Ph.D dissertation, UC Berkeley, Fall , pp. –.
In , , , , , and .
UN Security Council, ‘Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’,
S//, Jan. , para. .
UN Security Council, ‘Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’,
S//, Jan. , paras –.
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the ADF faced regular military operations, first by Ugandan and later by Congo-
lese and UN troops, its leaders nonetheless created and maintained a series of
camps that contained mosques, schools, health centres, courts, a police force, an
internal security force, a prison and even a marriage counselling committee. The
ADF’s leaders also maintained regular relations with local business and political
leaders, as well as episodic contacts with national and international actors. By
January , just before a major military operation devastated and fractured the
group, the ADF consisted of ,–, men, women and children, led mainly
by Ugandan nationals but with a sizeable Congolese component.
As the ADF’s leaders focused on survival in the Congo rather than overthrowing
Uganda’s government, they became highly secretive, which both concealed their
activities from outside observers, and made their image susceptible to manipula-
tion by outsiders for diverse purposes. Specifically, by the late s, the ADF’s
leaders had ceased making public proclamations, stayed away from social media
and harshly punished people caught trying to escape, leading to a sharp reduction
in escapees. Also, the ADF tightly controlled movement within and between
its forest camps, allowing very few members to travel ‘outside’ to places such as
Beni; these restrictions also enabled them to minimize interactions that might shed
light on the ADF’s objectives and activities. By , when it came under attack
from the Congolese army in its forest strongholds, the ADF was functioning more
like a criminal group than a rebellion still pursuing the quixotic goal of taking
over Uganda.
In March or April , Tanzanian authorities arrested Jamil Mukulu, who
had reportedly been living since June in Dar es Salaam. Ugandan authorities
requested Mukulu’s extradition on the grounds of his alleged involvement in the
murder of Muslim clerics in Uganda in late and early . Ugandan govern-
ment ocials hailed Mukulu’s arrest as ‘the latest in a string of victories we have
registered against ADF’, which included recent arrests of people. Neverthe-
less, as of mid-, the ADF continues to operate in the DRC.
The framing of the ADF
The ADF and Uganda
The Ugandan government has fairly consistently framed the ADF as a terrorist
group that poses an existential threat to the country. This frame has served
multiple objectives, most of which have little to do with eliminating the ADF.
ICG, Eastern Congo, pp. –.
UN Security Council, S//, para. ; S//, para. .
UN Security Council, S//, para. .
UN Security Council, ‘Midterm Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’,
S//, June , annex .
Most press reports indicated the arrest took place in April , but one suggests it was in March: Risdel
Kasasira, ‘Who is ADF’s Jamil Mukulu’, Daily Monitor, Aug. .
There are several versions of how Mukulu was arrested. See Risdel Kasasira, ‘Aide betrayed ADF’s Mukulu’,
Daily Monitor, May ; ‘Who is ADF’s Jamil Mukulu?’, Daily Monitor, Aug. .
Charles Etukuri, ‘Kayihura parades two more ADF suspects’, New Vision, July .
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The many faces of a rebel group: the ADF in the DRC
International Aairs 92: 5, 2016
Copyright ©
2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
The ‘terrorist’ frame accurately describes the ADF’s actions from to ,
a period during which it carried out attacks in Uganda, but the government has
invoked this label for a variety of reasons, depending on the particular context: on a
regional level, it was used to justify invading and occupying the DRC; on an
international level, it was used to gain a place in the US-led ‘war on terror’; and
on a national level, it was useful to rationalize arrests and acts of torture, to assign
blame for unsolved murders and to slander opposition politicians.
When the government of Uganda sent thousands of troops into eastern DRC
beginning on August , it publicly denied the invasion for several weeks.
On August , President Museveni stated: ‘If unilateral intervention intensi-
fies [in the DRC] Uganda may be forced, after due internal consultations, to take
its own independent action in the protection of its own security interests.’ Later,
after Uganda’s involvement in the Congo wars became clear, the government
justified its action as a legitimate response to a national security threat, arguing
to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that ‘as long as the ADF and other
anti-Uganda insurgents remained armed and mobilised in Congolese territory,
the security of Uganda and its citizens—especially the most helpless and vulner-
able of them—remained tenuous’. It is interesting to note that this framing of
the ADF as an immediate threat to national security was not invoked at the time
of the invasion, but was developed ex post facto when the government needed to
rationalize its action to the ICJ and the international community.
The ICJ ultimately rejected Uganda’s claim, stating that its actions were not
‘proportionate to the series of transborder attacks it claimed had given rise to the
right of self-defence, nor ... necessary to that end’. The ICJ determined that the
government of Uganda was responsible for wide-ranging violations of human
rights, as well as ‘looting, plundering, and exploitation of Congolese natural
resources’ by the Ugandan army.
After the September terrorist attacks in the United States, the Ugandan
government found new utility in reframing the ADF as a group with links to
international terrorist networks. Thus it was able to claim a place in the new,
US-led ‘war on terror’, and thereby to gain new political and economic opportu-
nities. In December , the US government added the ADF (but not NALU)
and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to its ‘Terrorist Exclusion List’, thus
transforming a local conflict along the DRC–Uganda border into part of the
rapidly evolving ‘fight against terrorism’. Four months later, in March , the
Ugandan parliament passed an Anti-Terrorism Act that designated the ADF (but
not NALU) and the LRA as terrorist groups.
Emmy Allio, ‘DRC crisis: what you didn’t know’, New Vision, Aug. .
‘Museveni threatens to join Congo war’, Sunday Monitor, Aug. .
ICJ, ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v.
Uganda), counter-memorial submitted by the Republic of Uganda’, vol. , April , para. .
ICJ, ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v.
Uganda)’, General List no. , Dec. , para. .
ICJ, ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v.
Uganda)’, General List no. , Dec. , para. .
IRIN, ‘LRA, ADF on American terrorist list’, Dec. .
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2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
During the s, the Ugandan government repeatedly asserted that the ADF
had links with terrorist groups, or blamed it for specific attacks. As early as , it
was claiming that the ADF was linked to Al-aeda, a claim it has been repeating
ever since. In , the Ugandan authorities claimed to have thwarted an ADF
attack on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in
Kampala; media accounts identified the ADF as linked to Al-aeda, and suggested
they had colluded on the planned attack. On July , two terrorist bombings
in Kampala killed more than people. While Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility
for these attacks—which were reportedly in retaliation for Uganda’s participa-
tion in the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM)—Ugandan authorities
quickly asserted an ADF link and suggested that the ADF and Al-Shabaab had
collaborated. In , on the anniversary of the bombings, the Ugandan
authorities announced a manhunt for ADF leaders, and alleged that the ADF was
working with Al-aeda in the Maghreb, Al-Shabaab, and Al-aeda in the Horn
of Africa. In , a UPDF spokesman stated: ‘There is no doubt; ADF has a
linkage with Al-Shabaab. They collaborate. They have trained ADF on the use of
improvised explosive devices.’ Other Ugandan authorities have since repeated
this last claim.
Despite these varied assertions, evidence of a clear link between the ADF and
other terrorist groups has never materialized. The UN Group of Experts in ,
and found no evidence of links between the ADF and Al-Shabaab or
Al-aeda. The findings of the Group are particularly convincing because
they are based on a large amount of primary source information that emerged
from a major military operation against the ADF, as well as on the statements of
DRC government ocials and the UN panels on Al-aeda and Somalia. Explo-
sives experts have also doubted any link between the ADF and Al-Shabaab or other
foreign terrorists, based on their examination of the ADF’s homemade bombs.
Notwithstanding the absence of credible proof for these links, the alleged
connection between the ADF and terrorist groups has attracted considerable polit-
ical capital and financial assistance to the government of Uganda, particularly in
Fawzia Sheikh, ‘New danger from Ugandan rebel group?’, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, June ,
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/new-danger-from-ugandan-rebel-group-.
Grace Matsiko, ‘CHOGM: how security averted a terror strike’, Daily Monitor, Dec. ; Grace Matsiko,
‘Terror suspects still in detention’, The Daily Monitor, May .
Sudarsan Raghaven, ‘Arrests made in bomb attacks on World Cup fans in Uganda’, Washington Post, July
.
Max Delany, ‘Uganda bombings’, Christian Science Monitor, July ; ‘Security find new clues on the terror
attacks’, Independent, July .
‘Terrorism is alive in region, says CMI boss’, Daily Monitor, July .
IRIN, ‘DRC-based Uganda rebel groups “recruiting, training”’, July , http://www.irinnews.org/
report//drc-based-ugandan-rebel-group-%E%%Crecruiting-training%E%%D.
IRIN, ‘DRC-based Uganda rebel groups “recruiting, training”’, July .
Human Rights Watch, Open secret: illegal detention and torture by the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force in Uganda (New
York: Human Rights Watch, ), pp. –.
UN Security Council, ‘Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’,
S//, May , para. ; UN Security Council, S//, para. ; UN Security Council, S//,
para. .
Alan Barlowe, C-IED Assessment Report (Mogadishu, Somalia: United Nations Mine Action Service), June
, p. .
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2016 The Author(s). International Aairs © 2016 The Royal Institute of International Aairs.
the context of the ‘war on terror’. According to the US Congressional Research
Service, ‘The State Department considers Uganda to be a key regional partner and
a valuable ally in combating terrorist threats in the region.’ Indeed, between
and overall US military and economic assistance to Uganda rose steadily from
US$ million to US$ million. This included substantial military training,
equipment and financing allocations to the UPDF.
The US government has collaborated with the Ugandan government on
several ‘anti-terrorist’ endeavours. Most importantly, Washington has financially
and militarily supported Uganda’s participation in AMISOM. The US has also
provided key financing, military training, intelligence and US special forces for
the Ugandan government’s war against the LRA. The fight against the ADF, as
well as the war against the LRA, allows the Ugandan government to increase its
defence budget. For example, in , government ocials justified a per cent
increase in the defence budget in part by claiming the resources were needed to
fight the ADF.
The Ugandan government is alleged to have perpetrated a range of human
rights violations under the cover of fighting terrorism and terror groups. Uganda’s
Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force ( JATT)—created in to deal with the ADF—
has been accused of a variety of abuses including illegal detention and torture.
Others have criticized the Ugandan government for having ‘used the rhetoric
of counterterrorism and anti-terrorism laws to suppress freedoms of expression
and assembly’. The US State Department’s annual human rights reports contain
numerous mentions of the Ugandan government’s actions, including harassment
and arrest of Muslims during and , and the torture and murder of an
alleged ADF collaborator in . The State Department reports also contain
numerous examples of attacks on and arbitrary arrest of members of the political
opposition in the name of fighting terror.
More recently, the government of Uganda has tried to blame the ADF for
a series of murders and attacks in and around Kampala. In December and
January , after unknown assailants killed three Muslim clerics in Kampala,
Ugandan authorities blamed the killings on the ADF and arrested six alleged
ADF agents. However, the government did not disclose any evidence that
Lauren Ploch, Countering terrorism in east Africa: the US response (Washington DC: Congressional Research
Service, Nov. ), p. .
US Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook), https://explorer.usaid.gov/reports-greenbook.html. Values are
current year US$.
Princeton N. Lyman, ‘The war on terrorism in Africa’, in John H. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild, eds, Africa
in world politics: reforming political order (Boulder, CO: Westview, ), pp. –.
US State Department, ‘Cable KAMPALA_a; Uganda: continued US support for anti-LRA eorts criti-
cal’, Jan. ; posted on Wikileaks, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/KAMPALA_a.html; Kristof
Titeca and Theophile Costeur, ‘An LRA for everyone’, pp. –.
Levi Ochieng, ‘World Bank backs Uganda on increased defense cash’, East African, Sept. .
Human Rights Watch, ‘Open secret’, p. .
Open Society Foundations, Counterterrorism and human rights abuses in Kenya and Uganda: the World Cup bombing
and beyond (New York, ), p. ; Human Rights Watch, ‘Open secret’, pp. –.
US State Department, country reports on human rights practices, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/
index.htm.
Agaba et al., ‘Muslim clerics’.
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linked the ADF to the crimes. Similarly, after an unknown gunman killed govern-
ment prosecutor Joan Kagezi on March , government spokesmen initially
blamed the ADF, and then shifted blame to Al-Shabaab, but again oered no
evidence for these claims.
In sum, the Ugandan government has consistently portrayed the ADF as a
terrorist movement that poses an existential threat to the government. In this
master frame, the rebel movement has served a range of objectives, diering
according to the political context and more particularly to the level of interac-
tion. At the regional level, the Ugandan government invoked the actions of the
ADF in Uganda as a pretext for invading the DRC, although its actions demon-
strated that after the invasion it was less interested in the ADF than in various
political and economic objectives. At the international level, the Ugandan govern-
ment secured a spot in the US-led ‘war on terror’—and the political and financial
benefits this provided—by alleging links between the ADF and organizations such
as Al-aeda and Al-Shabaab. Lastly, on a national level, the framing of the ADF
has served a range of political purposes, including human rights violations and
assigning blame for various murders and attacks.
The ADF and the DRC
The DRC has adopted not one uniform master frame for the ADF but rather
multiple framings that suit diverse political and economic interests. An early
DRC government framing of the ADF countered the Ugandan government’s
characterization of the group as a puppet of the DRC state, while more recent
framings have portrayed the ADF as a group that presented a grave danger to
local communities, as the group responsible for a series of massacres, and as the
group that murdered a national hero. As noted above, the government of Zaire
played an important role in the creation of the ADF in as a force that could
harass the government of Uganda, and potentially defend the Mobutu regime.
Following Mobutu’s defeat in , the new regime of President Laurent Désiré
Kabila allowed Ugandan troops into eastern DRC to fight the ADF; in some cases
the Ugandan troops collaborated with Congolese forces in attacking the ADF.
With the ADF at the centre of Uganda’s defence in the ICJ case, the DRC
government responded by denying such control, and succeeded in convincing
the ICJ not only that it was not controlling the ADF, but also that Uganda was
invoking the ADF merely as a justification for the pursuit of other objectives,
including access to the DRC’s resource wealth. In this way, the DRC govern-
ment turned Uganda’s framing of the ADF on its head, and achieved a symbolic
victory in winning the ICJ case against the Ugandan government.
Haggai Matsiko, ‘Prosecutor Kagezi case puts focus on target killings’, The Independent, April .
ICJ, ‘Aaire relative aux activités armées sur le territoire du Congo (République Démocratique du Congo c.
Ouganda), réplique de la République Démocratique du Congo’, vol. , May , para. ..
ICJ, ‘Aaire relative aux activités armées sur le territoire du Congo (République Démocratique du Congo c.
Ouganda), réplique de la République Démocratique du Congo’, vol. , May , para. ..
ICJ, ‘Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v.
Uganda)’, General List , Dec. , paras –, .
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After the Ugandan army withdrew from north-east DRC in May , the
Congolese state slowly re-established its presence and control in the region where
the ADF was active. Over the next decade, the DRC government repeatedly
attacked the ADF, but paid more attention to other rebel groups. The operations
against the ADF were partial successes, each weakening the group but all failing
to defeat it. Whether this outcome was intentional or the result of corruption or
incompetence is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worth noting that by its
actions, the DRC treated the ADF as an enemy whose continued existence was
tolerable, at least to the government.
The ADF acquired new utility to the DRC government in , when the latter
came under strong pressure—particularly from Rwanda, but also the United States
and MONUSCO—to attack another rebel movement: the Forces Démocratiques
de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR). During the second half of , the Congolese
armed forces FARDC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo)
and MONUSCO’s Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) were fighting the Rwandan-
backed M (Mouvement du mars) rebels in North Kivu. There was widespread
speculation that the FARDC and the FIB would (or should) attack the FDLR after
defeating the M.
However, the DRC authorities decided to attack the ADF instead. The reasons
for this decision are complex, and extend beyond the collaboration between the
FARDC and the FDLR. The latter was in eect a tool in the continental power
struggle in which Rwanda competed with Tanzania, South Africa and the DRC.
On November , shortly after the M’s defeat, President Kabila ‘denounced
harassments against the civilian population [by the ADF] and promised urgent
measures before the end of the year’.Although these harassments had been going
on for years, Kabila found it useful to invoke them only in late , when he was
under pressure to attack the FDLR. Kabila thus reframed the ADF from an enemy
whose presence had largely been tolerated into an enemy that posed a grave threat;
the ultimate objective appears to have been to avoid having to attack the FDLR.
In January , the FARDC launched operation Sukola I against the ADF; this
too, like past such operations, weakened but failed to defeat the ADF.
In October , the ADF’s survival after the operation became very useful to
the DRC government, which created new framings of the group as mass killers,
insurrectionists and assassins. Starting in October , a series of massacres and
killings took place in the Beni area, which DRC government ocials—and
MONUSCO chief Martin Kobler—attributed to the ADF. Although the ADF
Most notably in , and .
Stuart A. Reid, ‘Did Russ Feingold just end a war?’, Politico, March ; ICG, Eastern Congo, p. .
ICG, Eastern Congo, pp. –; UN Security Council, S//, paras. –, , –.
MONUSCO report, November .
UN Joint Human Rights Oce (UNJHRO), ‘Rapport du Bureau conjoint des Nations Unies aux droits de
l’homme sur les violations du droit international humanitaire commises par des combattants des Forces alliées
démocratiques (ADF) dans le territoire de Beni, province du Nord-Kivu, entre le er octobre et le décembre
’, May , para. .
Daniel Fahey, ‘New insights on Congo’s Islamist rebels’, Washington Post, Monkey Cage, Feb. ;
MONUSCO, ‘Martin Kobler, Head of MONUSCO, is in Beni to express his support to the families of the
victims of massacres perpetrated by ADF’, press release, October .
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had a long history of attacking civilian populations, information soon emerged
suggesting that it was not responsible for all of the attacks. For example, in some
cases, attackers spoke languages that were not used by the ADF, and some attacks
took place far from the area where the ADF was active. From various sources,
information emerged that individual FARDC soldiers were directly involved
in some of the massacres, and possibly indirectly involved in others through a
failure to protect civilian populations.
Nevertheless, the Congolese government clearly framed the ADF as being solely
or predominantly responsible for the massacres. This not only limited under-
standing of the true nature of the violence and the identities of the attackers, but
also enabled the government to link the ADF to its political opponents and critical
media outlets. In October and November , the DRC authorities arrested
approximately people, including members of the political opposition, and on
November the government shut down five radio stations in Beni-Butembo for
alleged complicity with ‘negative forces in acts of terrorism’. In December ,
the DRC authorities arrested dozens more people and claimed that the ADF was
working with other rebel groups as part of a new insurrection against the DRC
government. ADF elements were thus framed as mass murderers, an identifica-
tion that not only provided a ready attribution for these attacks, but also justified
a range of politically useful arrests.
Lastly, the ADF was also politically useful as a scapegoat for the murder of
FARDC Colonel Mamadou Ndala, who was assassinated in an ambush in Beni
in January . Mamadou had become a national hero just months before, in
November , after leading the Congolese Army to its greatest victory in years,
against the Rwanda-supported M rebel group. However, Mamadou’s popularity
became a threat to some within the Congolese politico-military establishment.
From various sources, information emerged that some FARDC ocers were
involved in his death, but the government deflected this suspicion, producing a
mysterious witness called only ‘Mr X’ (see further discussion below), who deftly
accused several ‘rogue’ FARDC ocers of collaborating with the ADF in the
assassination.
UN Security Council, S//, paras. –.
UNJHRO, May , para. ; UN Security Council, ‘Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Demo-
cratic Republic of the Congo’, S// , May , paras –.
UNJHRO, ‘Rapport’, May , para. ; UN Security Council, S//, paras –; République
Démocratique du Congo, Assemblée Nationale ème législature de la ème République, ‘Rapport de la
mission d’information et de réconfort auprès des populations de la ville de Beni et des agglomérations du
territoire de Beni. Victimes des Tueries du au Octobre ’, Nov. .
UNJHRO, ‘Rapport’, May , para. . Radio France International, ‘RCD: que se passe-t-il à Beni?’,
Nov. ; UN Security Council, S//, para. .
Radio France Internationale (RFI), ‘Tueries à Beni: Kinshasa annonce des dizaines d’arrestations’, Dec.
.
Juakali Kambale, ‘DR Congo: was Col. Mamadou Ndala’s death a conspiracy?’, Africa Review, Jan. ;
Kris Berwouts, ‘Congo after M: the prophet Mukungubila and the death of Colonel Mamadou’, African
Arguments, Jan. .
Lea-Lisa Westerho, ‘RDC: aaire Ndala, un témoin clé charge un colonel congolais’, RFI, Nov. ;
UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, S//, Dec. , para. .
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To summarize, then, the DRC government has been framing the ADF in
dierent ways: it did not use a particular master frame, but instead adapted its
framings to particular political contexts and objectives. At the regional level, the
ADF has been useful in averting military action against the FDLR. More gener-
ally, between and , the DRC government found the ADF to be useful for
justifying the occasional military operation but not so important that it needed to
be eliminated. That changed in and , when the ADF took on new impor-
tance as a group that could be framed as mass murderers, insurgents and assassins,
thus enabling the DRC government to divert attention from and subvert investi-
gation into the role of its army and other local actors in the violence and insecurity
in and around Beni. Moreover, it allowed the government to take action against
the political opposition. In other words, it also played an important domestic
political role, further demonstrating how the framing of a rebel movement is
determined by the particular political context.
The ADF and MONUSCO
Up to now, we have shown how governments have politically instrumentalized
the ADF as a ‘useful enemy’. In other words, there has been clear strategic intent
on the part of particular actors—the Ugandan and Congolese authorities—to
invoke the ADF in dierent ways to achieve various political and economic objec-
tives. We now wish, through a discussion of the UN peacekeeping force in the
Congo (MONUSCO), to show how the framing of the rebel movement is related
not only to strategic intent or instrumentalization, but also to organizational and
individual dynamics; or, more particularly, how information is collected and
analysed by an organization. To put this another way, both the politics and the
process of knowledge production help to explain how MONUSCO understood,
described and reacted to the ADF.
The initial UN mission in the Congo, called MONUC (–), displayed
only marginal interest in the ADF. During , when MONUC started to
expand its footprint in the eastern Congo, the mission leadership accorded greater
importance to neutralizing armed groups in the Ituri district and the FDLR than
to dealing with the ADF. An August MONUC briefing on armed groups
noted: ‘Ugandan claims that the ADF constitute a serious threat to their stability
are exaggerated as reports indicate that the ADF have little equipment other than
basic infantry weapons and light mortar [sic]’. The MONUC leadership viewed
ADF as a ‘lesser threat to destabilization in North Kivu’ than other armed groups,
and by was describing the ADF as ‘largely inactive’. When the FARDC
launched a unilateral operation against the ADF on June , MONUC (which
Keen, Useful enemies.
MONUC, ‘Division commander’s operational directive’, May , pp. –.
MONUC, ‘Update and assessment of armed groups operating in the DRC’, Aug. .
MONUC, ‘Division commander’s operational directive’, May , p. B-.
UN Security Council, ‘Twenty-ninth report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, S//, Sept. , para. .
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became MONUSCO on July ) had troops in the area, but remained passive
as , people were displaced, and as both the FARDC and ADF committed
human rights violations against local populations.
During and , MONUSCO continued to pay little attention to the
ADF, focusing instead on the M and FDLR rebel groups. Following the joint
MONUSCO–FARDC defeat of the M in November , MONUSCO was
planning to support a new operation against the FDLR, but the Congolese
government chose instead to attack the ADF unilaterally. MONUSCO provided
limited support for the Congolese operation, which failed to defeat the ADF.
In August , MONUSCO chief Martin Kobler told the Security Council:
‘FARDC—at great cost to its troops—has reduced the ADF to a shadow of its
former self.’ In the same speech, Kobler also rearmed MONUSCO’s focus on
the FDLR over and above the ADF, stating: ‘The first priority of the Mission has
been to put an end to the FDLR.’
For nearly a decade, MONUC and MONUSCO repeatedly framed the ADF
as a relatively minor group, and a local nuisance. MONUSCO viewed claims of
its strength as ‘exaggerated’, and considered the group a ‘lesser threat’, at times
‘largely inactive’ and by mid- reduced to a ‘shadow of its former self ’. Then,
however, this framing underwent a radical change.
Starting in August , internal MONUSCO reports began to describe
the ADF as having extensive links to international terrorist groups including
Al-aeda, Al-Shabaab, Hezbollah, Al-aeda in the Maghreb, Boko Haram and
the Taliban; the reports also claimed the ADF was working with the governments
of Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan. Moreover, MONUSCO reports stated that the
ADF leader Jamil Mukulu had travelled to Pakistan to pick up Taliban-trained
Boko Haram jihadists; the reports added that, after collecting these terrorists,
Mukulu would return to Beni in September and attack MONUSCO.
After October , when the mass killings in the Beni area began,
MONUSCO’s intelligence units and leaders routinely identified the ADF as an
international terrorist movement (embracing the framing of the Ugandan govern-
ment) that was uniquely responsible for the massacres (reiterating the framing
of the Congolese government). For example, MONUSCO chief Martin Kobler
repeatedly referred to the ADF as ‘terrorists’ and denounced their deeds as acts
UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, S//, Nov. , paras –; ICG, Eastern Congo,
p. .
UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, S//, March , para. .
UN Security Council, S//, para. ; UN Security Council, S//, paras –.
Martin Kobler, ‘Statement to the United Nations Security Council’, New York, Aug. , p. .
Kobler, ‘Statement’, Aug. , p. .
Daniel Fahey, ‘Congo’s “Mr X”: the man who fooled the UN’, World Policy Journal : , Summer , pp.
, ; authors’ interviews with former UN ocials, non-governmental organization ocials and academics,
Feb.–Oct. .
Daniel Fahey, ‘Congo’s “Mr X”’, p. .
AFP World News, ‘UN warns of long fight against DR Congo massacres’, Dec. ; MONUSCO, ‘Beni:
le chef de la MONUSCO visite les lieux des massacres des civils à Eringeti’, A la une / MONUSCO, http://
monusco.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?ctl=Details&tabid=&mid=&ItemID=
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of terrorism. In February , Hervé Ladsous, the Head of the UN’s Depart-
ment of Peacekeeping Operations, singled out the ADF as responsible for the
killings in the Beni area and stated that it had clear links to Al-Shabaab.
This profound shift in MONUSCO’s framing emerged from MONUC/
MONUSCO’s history of downplaying and ignoring the ADF, which left it largely
ignorant about the group and its goals. MONUSCO’s intelligence analysts—who
were primary filters of information for the MONUSCO leadership—had focused
for several years on other armed groups (specifically the CNDP—Congrès National
pour le Développement et la Paix, M and FDLR) in geographic regions at some
distance from the ADF; one consequence of this was a lack of any permanent
intelligence presence in Beni, where the ADF was active, which aected the
quality of the information available to MONUSCO leaders. The MONUSCO
leadership compounded this problem in February , when it instituted strict
security measures in Beni following the murder of a Congolese UN disarma-
ment worker; this further limited MONUSCO’s access to primary sources of
information on the ADF and made them reliant upon information of dubious
quality provided by the Congolese Army and Ugandan military ocers operating
in Beni. In October , Martin Kobler acknowledged MONUSCO’s limited
knowledge of the ADF, telling the Security Council that MONUSCO had been
preoccupied with the FDLR ‘even possibly to the detriment of our focus on the
ADF threat’.
In June , the UN Group of Experts expressed concern about the poor quality
of MONUSCO’s intelligence on the ADF, noting that ‘unverified or unsubstan-
tiated claims about ADF allies, actions, capabilities and intentions may lead to
misguided and ineective decisions at the strategic and operational levels’. In
July , MONUSCO created a Joint Intelligence and Operations Centre (JIOC)
in Beni to address this criticism; but the JIOC, which became MONUSCO’s
primary source of information about the rebels, was staed by military ocers
who had no prior understanding of the ADF or the Beni area. Our field research
found similar problems in MONUSCO’s intelligence units, including sta with
little or no intelligence training, little or no prior knowledge of conflict in the
Congo and Uganda, and little or no skill in French or local languages. Moreover,
the regular rotation of UN sta limits institutional knowledge and memory, and
results in assemblages of analysts who often have only a superficial understanding
of the conflict in the DRC. Compounding these limitations is the phenomenon
noted by Autesserre, in which MONUC and MONUSCO have often relied on
Martin Kobler, ‘Overcoming the stalemate’, statement to UN Security Council, Oct. .
Christophe Boisbouvier, ‘Mali, RDC, RCA: le chef des casques bleus fait le point sur les missions en cours’,
RFI, Feb. .
‘Nord Kivu: un agent de la MONUSCO tué à Beni’, Radio Okapi, Feb. .
Author’s interview with UN ocial, Brussels, Feb. .
Kobler, ‘Overcoming the stalemate’.
UN Security Council, S//, para. .
This included interviews with UN ocials, Congolese sources, journalists and independent researchers
conducted during in the DRC and Uganda, as well as remotely through social media and email and
Skype communications.
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a very limited pool of informants when gathering and analysing information,
leading to partial and superficial assessments, as well as an inability to distinguish
between relevant and irrelevant actors and messages.
The limitations of MONUSCO’s abilities to collect and analyse informa-
tion became particularly evident in August , when a self-proclaimed ADF
commander surrendered to MONUSCO. This man, called ‘Mr X’ in a DRC
government report, became the sole source for MONUSCO’s new framing
of the ADF as a group with extensive terrorist links that was importing Taliban-
trained Boko Haram jihadists to attack MONUSCO. Mr X’s claims built upon
the longstanding Ugandan narrative about the ADF, which MONUC and
MONUSCO had downplayed or ignored for more than a decade. Although
Mr X’s claims were not deemed credible by local sta and other analysts,
MONUSCO’s intelligence analysts believed his stories, and made his claims the
centrepiece of their understanding of the ADF and its intentions.
In October , when the massacres began in the Beni area, MONUSCO’s
analysts believed Mr X had prophesied the attacks. As noted above, Martin
Kobler denounced the ADF as terrorists, and MONUSCO portrayed the group
as directly or indirectly responsible for virtually all of the killings. In response to
MONUSCO’s embrace of these dubious framings, giving them credibility and
international visibility, some analysts questioned this narrative; they included the
UN Group of Experts, which noted that ‘as of late November [], there is still
a lack of independent and critical analysis of ADF and the causes of violence in
the Beni area’. Nonetheless, the problems continued, and in a rather spectacular
example of MONUSCO’s intelligence shortcomings, in May the mission
blamed ADF ‘terrorists’ for an ambush near Beni that killed two and wounded
Tanzanian peacekeepers, when in fact it was later shown that Congolese Army
soldiers were responsible for the attack.
To summarize, then: starting in late , MONUSCO’s narrative about
the ADF shifted radically. After years of marginalizing and downplaying the
group’s capacities and threats, suddenly the UN mission presented the ADF as a
rampaging terrorist force with ties to half a dozen international groups. We have
shown how these new framings were rooted in MONUSCO’s flawed intelligence
Séverine Autesserre, Peaceland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –, , –.
The DRC court decision refers to this man as ‘Mr X’: Government of DRC, Operational Military Court of
North Kivu, ‘Pro-Justicia, Arret,’ RP nos , and /; RMP nos , and ; BBM/, undated
(), p. . In , the UN Group of Experts identified this man as being Adrian Muhumuza: UN Security
Council, S//, para. .
Authors’ interviews with Congolese sources, non-governmental organization leaders and independent
researchers, Oct.–Dec. . Local sta, who doubted Mr X’s claims because of their own extensive knowl-
edge of the ADF, remained silent because they believed their opinions were not valued, and because they
believed speaking up could aect their job security: authors’ discussions with MONUSCO sta, Oct.–Dec.
.
Internal MONUSCO report, Oct. ; Fahey, ‘Congo’s “Mr X”’, p. .
Authors’ interviews with independent researchers by phone and email, as well as in Goma, DRC, July and
Oct. .
UN Security Council, S//, para. . See also Caroline Hellyer, ‘Congo/Uganda: high profile military
operations against ADF will not rebuild local stability’, African Arguments, Oct. .
UN Security Council, ‘Group of Experts progress update’, Jan. , p. . For the mission’s viewpoint, see
Radio Okapi, ‘La MONUSCO annonce “une action très forte” contre les rebelles des ADF’, May .
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assessments, which are indicative of what Yarhi-Milo calls ‘selective attention’ by
political leaders and intelligence agencies in understanding an adversary’s inten-
tions. By basing its analysis on very limited information—most particularly
a single dubious source—and consequently repeating questionable government
claims about the ADF, MONUSCO’s political and intelligence leadership exhib-
ited ‘individual perceptual biases and organizational interests and practices’ that
influenced ‘which types of indicators observers regard as credible signals of the
adversary’s intentions’.
The available evidence, then, suggests that MONUSCO embraced politically
charged—but inherently flawed—narratives about the ADF’s allies and actions
because of shortcomings in the process of knowledge production by MONUSCO
analysts, rather than as a result of strategic intent. The intelligence failure that
began in mid- was rooted in a history of institutionally marginalizing the
ADF, and flourished as a result of bias, groupthink and poor leadership.
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how a dynamic process of knowledge construction
has framed the ADF rebel group in myriad ways for a variety of purposes. As
highlighted in the introduction, while the framing literature pays extensive atten-
tion to this process, little attention is given to how national actors in the global
South frame information. Written from a dierent perspective, Bayart’s concept of
‘extraversion’ looks at a similar phenomenon in the African context, specifically
‘the creation and the capture of a rent generated by dependency’, a phenomenon
in which image construction plays an important role. Bayart has shown how Afri-
can states can successfully export a particular ‘institutional image’ in a ‘game of
make-believe’ in ‘communication with their Western sovereigns and financiers’.
With respect to the DRC, Kevin Dunn’s work shows how former President
Mobutu consciously used particular constructions of national identity for various
audiences, and to achieve particular aims. Dunn has shown how Mobutu
managed to articulate a ‘counter-discourse’ on Zaire and alter the dominant image
of the country ‘through the appropriation of Third World discourses on nation-
alism, Western philosophical rhetoric, colonial imagery and the narratives of Cold
War competition’. In doing so, Dunn managed to demonstrate how internal
actors have ‘discursive agency and do not passively have their identity written for/
upon them’. Jourde similarly noted the ‘process of identity construction and
Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘In the eye of the beholder’, International Security : , , pp. –, –.
Yarhi-Milo, ‘In the eye of the beholder’, p. .
This does not preclude that MONUSCO’s intelligence analysts were driven by political forces to create certain
narratives, but the authors do not have any evidence that this was the case; more evident and glaring are the
individual and organizational limitations that resulted in flawed analyses.
Jean-François Bayart, ‘Africa in the world: a history of extraversion’, African Aairs : , , p. .
Bayart, ‘Africa in the world’, p. .
Kevin Dunn, ‘Imagining Mobutu’s Zaïre’, Millennium : , , pp. –.
Dunn, ‘Imagining Mobutu’s Zaïre’, p. .
Dunn, ‘Imagining Mobutu’s Zaïre’. See also Jonathan Fisher, ‘Managing donor perceptions: contextualizing
Uganda’s intervention in Somalia’, African Aairs : , , pp. –, for a description of Uganda.
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representation, by which decision makers simultaneously define the identity of
their own state and interpret the identity of other states’.
This article has further contributed to the understanding of knowledge
construction, framing and extraversion by analysing how two states and the UN
missions have understood and described a particular rebel group—the ADF. First,
we have shown that knowledge production on a rebel group can facilitate rent-
seeking behaviour in a process similar to Bayart’s notion of extraversion. This is
particularly evident in this case in respect of Uganda, which obtained various
political and economic ‘rents’ through the ‘war on terror’. This extraversion
happened primarily through the construction of a particular image of the ADF, in
which certain elements were emphasized and others neglected, in a process used to
‘authorize, enable, and justify specific practices and policies ... while precluding
others’.
Second, this article has shown how particular framings of the ADF equally
enable a process of what can be called ‘introversion’: the domestic political use of
a rebel group. Rent-seeking in this way primarily happens along political lines: for
both the Congo and Uganda, we have shown how the construction of knowledge
about a rebel group provides access to a range of national political benefits, such
as the suppression of opposition or the finding of a scapegoat.
Third, this article has demonstrated how MONUSCO’s intelligence failure
interacted with pre-existing processes of extraversion and introversion in ways
that enabled rent-seeking behaviour by regional governments.
One clear eect of the various forms of framing has been a failure to protect
civilian populations, most recently (and currently) by MONUSCO and the
Congolese government. Indeed, during years of operations by and against
the ADF, thousands of people in the Congo and Uganda have been killed or
wounded, and tens of thousands more have been displaced, imprisoned, tortured
or otherwise aected. We do not suggest that the failures to protect civilians
are entirely attributable to the way in which each entity framed and understood
the ADF; but, to the extent that narratives inform policies and operational plans,
we argue that MONUSCO’s intelligence failure and governmental actors’ disin-
formation campaign contributed to a failure to protect civilians, as well as to a
failure to hold perpetrators accountable.
‘Knowledge production’ is not merely fodder for academic theorists: it can
and does have real and grave consequences for civilian populations in places such
as the DRC. The politics and processes of knowledge production are thus impor-
tant considerations in understanding both the context of armed conflict, and the
nature and consequences of interventions on the ground.
Cédric Jourde, ‘The international relations of small neoauthorian states’, International Studies Quarterly : ,
, p. .
Séverine Autessere, ‘Dangerous tales: dominant narratives on the Congo and their unintended consequences’,
African Aairs : , , p. .
See ICG, Eastern Congo, pp. –; UN Security Council, S// paras , –; UN Security Council,
S//, paras ,
Cf. UN Security Council, S//, paras –.
Cf. UN Security Council, S//, paras –.
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