More than 100 people have already died this year in an ongoing campaign of violence by Islamist fighters in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in what the organisation Open Doors has described as a “neglected tragedy”.
Illia Djadi, Open Doors' Senior Analyst for Freedom of Religion or Belief in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared the events to the violence in Northern Nigeria: “Christian communities are being attacked by an Islamist extremist group with a clear expansionist agenda.
“This is remarkably similar to what groups like Boko Haram are doing in northeast Nigeria. The ideology, the agenda of establishing a 'caliphate' in the region, and the way they operate is the same. We can see how they afflict terrible suffering on innocent people. This is deeply worrying; we really need to pay attention to these events.
“At Open Doors, we are urgently calling on the national government and the international community to do everything they can to protect innocent lives and to restore peace in this troubled region.”
The attacks are being carried out by the so-called “Alliance for Democratic Forces” (also known as “Muslim Defence International”) which has long targeted Christians for murder and abduction, as well as training jihadists for attacks in other African nations. Since the DRC’s army started an offensive against the group in 2019, the number and severity of attacks has only escalated with as many as 1,200 civilians believed dead at the hands of the group.
Unlike Northern Nigeria however this is a country in which 95 per cent of the inhabitants identify as Christian, and the existence of an Islamist insurgency in the region speaks to the growing ambition and impunity of Islamist fighters in Africa. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has said that: “In my opinion the ADF today is part of a network that starts in Libya and stretches to the Sahel, to the Lake Chad region, and which is present in Mozambique”. Despite lacking any formal ties to the group, Islamic State has referred to the Congo as the “Central African State of the Caliphate”.
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