Wounded DR Congo soldiers rehabilitating after combat with Islamic Rebels in the ADF (Credit: Missionary and Wire source working in DR Congo).
An FAI Wire source in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) reports that at least 46 people from the Pygmy tribes in the nation’s restive eastern Ituri province were massacred recently. While the men of the tribe were gone hunting, rebels from an Islamic militant group murdered their wives and children, decapitating many of the victims. It’s the latest atrocity in a larger, multi-layered conflict across the province which has claimed almost 650 lives since May, 2020.
The large, resource-rich nation of DRC has been mired in civil war and insurgencies since the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, especially in the densely-forested and ungoverned eastern provinces which border the countries of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Besides the ongoing tribal conflict between Hutu, Tutsi and Pygmy which spilled over Rwandan border, a radical Islamic movement from Uganda has also sought to exploit the power vacuum in eastern DRC. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) jihadists have been deadlocked in an insurgency with the Congolese military for several years, as it terrorizes the non-Muslim people groups around the Ugandan border. At least 73 women and children were murdered by the group in late 2019, while thousands more were kidnapped into slavery. In December, 2020, the ADF attacked a local prison with a force of 120 men, freeing over 1350 convicts, hundreds of which are hardened militants who have since joined their ranks.
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Our source describes the ADF campaign in Congo as “a concerted effort [in] carving out a Sharia state inside Eastern Congo that operates under Sharia Law.” Evidence surfaced in 2018 that Waleed Ahmed Zein, a terrorist financier sanctioned by the US State Department for his ties to ISIS, had made at least one payment to the militant group, making the ADF part of a larger program of Islamic jihadism in sub-Saharan Africa which stretches from Nigeria to Somalia.
We would ask the global Maranatha family to be in prayer for a divine hedge of protection around the Pygmy tribes and other civilians in eastern DRC, as they live with the threat of war, genocide and ethnic cleansing on several fronts. We pray for field labors such as Don and his wife, who have decided to remain and continue ministering to the eastern Congolese tribes, despite the dangers of conflict and disease. As Don related in a recent dispatch, “Maybe part of the reason I like serving the Lord here is because of the darkness and difficulties. There are more opportunities to shine more brightly for Jesus here than in most places. In America, rarely would you need to take in orphans, clothe the naked, feed the truly starving.”
You can learn more about Don’s ministry, “Love Your Neighbor Africa,” by clicking here.
Maranatha.
Sources:
Local sources in Eastern DR Congo associated with Ésaïe 61 and Love Your Neighbor Africa ministries
