Foreign fighters from Europe hired to protect DRC’s resource-rich east from M23 rebels

Retired military officers from Europe are protecting the highly-prized resource-rich North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from falling to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels, according to a recent report by the Deutsche Welle (DW).

Some of them pointed out, in an interview, that while the job is well paid, they must often deal with a better-armed adversary. One of them, a paratrooper who had served in the French army for 36 years, was deployed in conflicts from Mali, Senegal, to Togo, Afghanistan to Kosovo. He admits that instead of enjoying his pension at home as a veteran, he has chosen to head a 20-member team at the Bulgarian private security company, Agemira, to fight the M23 rebels in eastern DRC. President Felix Tshisekedi’s government hired Agemira, which employs mostly retired French army officers, for the job two years ago.

Another company hired by the Congolese government is the Romanian military company “Romanii care au activat in legiunea franceza” (RALF), which has around 800 fighters, mostly from Romania and Belarus, many of whom had served in the French Foreign Legion. According to the DW report, the RALF soldiers, who call themselves “Romeos”, form a defensive ring around Goma and the strategically important town of Sake. Both Agemira and RALF private security companies closely collaborate and see themselves as a team that fights “for a noble cause”, as put by an ex-member of the French army. And since mercenaryism is a criminal offense in Europe, these Europeans hired to work in eastern DRC stress that they are primarily “consultants” and “not mercenaries.”