“We Are Not Part of Their War”: Hutu Women’s Experiences of Rebel Life in the Eastern DRC Conflict

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of women in The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group currently active in the Eastern DRC conflicts. The FDLR is a group that consists of mostly Rwandan Hutus and is one of the largest military forces active in the eastern DRC. Some of the hardliners of the FDLR can be linked to the orchestration of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The majority of the group’s current members are today refugees or post-genocide recruits drawn from the Congo. While human rights reports and the current literature on the FDLR have focused on the group’s military activities, including its leadership structure, warfare methods and political ideologies, this chapter is offering a gendered analysis of the FDLR, focusing on how the “civilian” refugee women who move about with the rebels experience their life conditions in the rebel movement. Building on anthropological fieldwork and qualitative data collected in a rebel camp in the Congo forest, this chapter analyzes the diverse roles women hold in the group depending on individual history, background, age, ethnicity and how they were recruited to the group. By including women’s voices into the analysis of the FDLR it will show that some women are victims under FDLRs’ control and have traumatic memories and experiences of forced recruitment and violence, whereas other women are active participants in mobilizing violence and share the group’s military, ideological and political goals to return to their home country, Rwanda. Looking at gender roles in the FDLR, I argue, is essential for understanding how the FDLR are organized from the inside. While offering a critical view on gender roles in the FDLR the chapter will help to provide a better understanding of the Rwandan genocide, and its aftermath. The chapter aims to provide policymakers and organizations working to prevent violence and genocide with a better understanding of how gender and societal roles are lived and acted out inside an armed group in contexts of ongoing violence. Only in this way can we find strategies to prevent atrocities and mass violence in the future.