Alternative agency: Rwandan refugee warriors in exclusionary states

Abstract

The Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have been framed as one of the key spoilers to peace in the African Great Lakes—challenging the stability of both Rwanda and the DRC, and accordingly becoming the target of several UN-supported operations to disarm them. This article examines how, despite nearly two decades in exile in the Congo, the Rwandan Hutu refugee warriors of the FDLR have managed to survive and remain an active and potent rebel group. Drawing on an analysis of the FDLR's changing and multi-faceted identity, and its deployment of this identity as ‘tactics’, I attempt to demonstrate how the FDLR have become citizen-like agents in the Congo. As such, the article challenges the common framing of the FDLR as a ‘foreign armed group’ by demonstrating that Rwandan Hutu militants in the eastern Congo are integrating into Congolese life in creative ways. Through an understanding of the varied strategies they have adopted to survive and integrate, one which acknowledges but does not solely focus on their acts of violence and human rights abuses, this article attempts to characterise the FDLR in a new light which may in turn lead to new approaches to reducing their belligerency.