Commanders of the armed group Codeco walk through Linga village on January 13, 2022, in Ituri province, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo | File
In north-eastern Ituri province, CODECO militiamen killed 10 people, including nine minors. That was on Monday September 17. But this was neither new violence nor unexpected.
In Djugu, a territory in Ituri Province, at least 32 civilians have been killed in the space of a week with everyone pointing a finger at the CODECO and Zaïre militias.
These have been two deadly militias in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But it is Codeco, more than the Zaïre group, that is more associated with atrocities including the beheading of civilians.
Its origin wasn’t always violent. In fact, its bloody crimes were only a recent addition to its spots. It originally started as an agricultural development cooperative, way back in the 1970s.
Before this week, some 30 civilians had been killed in the various territories of Ituri since January. Codeco and the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militant group, proscribed in Uganda and the DRC, are the biggest killers, far ahead of other armed groups.
So frequent have been their raids that Congolese authorities sometimes look helpless. Critics, however, say, the government must do more.
“We also want to call on the provincial authorities to get involved, because it’s not normal to see people dying and do nothing about it,” Dieudonné Lossa, Ituri’s civil society coordinator, said.
In Ituri, the government introduced a state of siege three years ago to tame the violence. It has had little impact on the militia, who dress like civilians, live among civilians and infiltrate them once they have committed acts of violence.
This form of guerrilla warfare as its modus operandi prevents the Congolese army, the FARDC, and the UN peacekeeping troops, Monusco, from waging real combat against the militiamen.
Behind the murderous activities of the Codeco militias is the race for gold. They battle for control of the mining areas in Ituri, pitying Codeco and Zaïre.
“We know that since time immemorial, even before the state of siege, certain armed bandits have been exploiting some mining areas illegally—because our objective is to cut off the supply lines,” said Lt Jules Ngongo, spokesman for the FARDC in Ituri.
Sometimes the Codeco militiamen clash with the rival Zaïre group, and sometimes there is a community conflict between the two groups: The Lendu, which the Codeco group claims to defend, against another, the Hema, which the Zaïre group claims to protect.
Since the state of siege was declared in Ituri in May 2021, military governor Johnny Luboya has always tried to influence Codeco to surrender. But it served to splinter the group into factions.
Several factions have surrendered to the Congolese army and the province’s military authorities.
In April 2023, 101 of them agreed to lay down their arms at the launch of the government’s disarmament, demobilisation, community rehabilitation and stabilisation programme (P-DDRCS) in Ituri, but the most radical remained in a position of permanent attack against civilians.
When the DRC, under the aegis of the East African leaders, launched the peace talks in Nairobi in 2022, Codeco took part in the dialogue.
To date, despite CODECO’s relentless atrocities against civilians, the Congolese government has not shown itself to be all that virulent in the face of the killings perpetrated by Codeco, however.
In fact, it has been rare for the subversive and bloody actions of these militiamen to elicit the same reaction in terms of a communiqué from the government.
Officials in Kinshasa have repeatedly denounced the activities of M23, which they consider the biggest threat to peace in eastern DRC, and because they believe M23 is also backed by Rwanda.
Moïse Nyarugabo, a political activist in the DRC, condemned this dual tendency on the part of the government: Some kind of lower energy in condemning the Codeco massacres while charging at M23.
