At least eight Ugandan youths are known to have died while fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, having been conscripted by agents working closely with Gen Laurent Nkunda.

The dead youths were part of a 42-strong group comprising mainly Ugandans of Rwandan origin who were trafficked into Congo between January and April 2008.

Some 10 have since escaped or been rescued by the United Nations Mission in Congo (which has now been renamed United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in Congo, Monusco).

These rescued fighters were returned to Uganda, where two of them were picked up by Ugandan security and imprisoned.

Militias from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo have made the Ituri and North and South Kivu Provinces ungovernable, but this is the first time that information comes through that militias have recruited directly from Uganda.

Confidential medical papers and pictures of the returnees seen by The EastAfrican reveal that most recruits served stints ranging from 12-19 months with Nkunda’s army from early 2008 to late last year.

Drawn from several districts of Uganda, they initially bought into the idea that they were being taken to work in UN jobs, but the script changed quickly once they were on Congolese soil.

Victims who returned mid last year say that a good number of their colleagues are still stuck in eastern Congo, if they are lucky to be still alive, at all.

They were taken by bus from Kampala to Kisoro and met Gen Nkunda at the Ugandan border point of Muhabura, then they were taken through the Congolese town of Rutshuru and eventually settled in Rumangabo barracks. 

“We were promised a salary of $3,000 per month and an advance of Ush5 million (about $2,500) to leave with our families. I was excited.

I though I was going to be an IGG in Nkunda’s government. I had even carried my laptop, ready to work. But when we crossed into the Congo town of Rutshuru, the officers threw us onto a lorry.
That’s when I started doubting. What sort of UN staff would be hiking on a lorry? We were taken to Rumangabo Barracks and while there, the officers took everything in our possession —my laptop and money… and then we started rolling,” says Daniel Manzi, 29.

Manzi was released to return for a hernia treatment after a year with Gen Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).

Several of his colleagues escaped and hitched flights with Monusco back to Uganda, but failed to qualify for amnesty and are now lying low. 

In 2007, the then Kigali- and Washington-backed Nkunda established a government in the area under his control in the North Kivu region.

It is in this area that the Ugandan recruits were promised jobs in the newly formed government and with the UN, as well as chunks of land for large-scale grazing of livestock and settlement.

Sources told The EastAfrican that the land controlled by Gen Nkunda was five times the size of Rwanda.

Rwanda is the common denominator in this issue. At the centre are two Rwandese who used their influence in a local non-governmental organisation that brings together Ugandans of Rwandan origin. One of them was at the time chairman of the NGO.

According to some of the petitions by the returnees have written to the NGO, the youths — all of whom are Ugandan Banyarwanda — were allegedly recruited by the two, working for Nkunda.

Following the house arrest of Gen Nkunda by the Kigali government last year, North Kivu has become a dead end for the young Ugandans.