In the Ugandan refugee camp where he has been sleeping for three months, Jean (names have been changed), a 42-year-old father, is worried. Since fleeing his native region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, his daughter, Elise, has been acting strangely. “The camp teachers told me she doesn’t play with others, and I also see that she isolates herself,” he said. For Jean, it’s not a mystery: at just 3 years old, “Elise had already heard gunshots and seen corpses on the streets. When the ADF [Allied Democratic Forces] came to our home, they caused so many casualties that it could take half a day to collect the bodies,” he sighed wearily.
Elise was born in the Beni territory, in the far north of North Kivu. The province is known for being torn apart by the conflict between the Congolese Armed Forces and the M23 rebel group. However, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is home to no less than 266 armed groups, according to a 2023 census by authorities. In Beni, a government-controlled city, it is mainly the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) who kill, loot, and plunder. Since the beginning of the year, these fighters, numbering between 1500 and 2000 according to a report from the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), have killed over 100 people, after killing at least three times as many in 2025.
A Jihadism of “opportunity”
Formed in 1995, the ADF have been.
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