By KT Reporter
The commander of UPDF’s Operation Shujaa, Major General Stephen Mugerwa, has proposed creating Local Defence Units (LDUs) in communities along the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to protect villagers from attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Mugerwa fronted the proposal during a strategic meeting with North Kivu military leaders and the provincial governor, Major General Somo Kakule Evariste, saying the move would plug a protection gap that emerges when joint UPDF-FARDC forces strike deep into rebel territory.
Mugerwa argued that LDUs would allow the main forces, which include the UPDF together with the Congolese army (FARDC), to continue offensive operations while communities left behind are safeguarded by locally based patrols.
He said the approach was tested during the campaign against the Lord’s Resistance Army and could be adapted to the eastern Congo. During the meeting, officials also discussed ways to involve communities directly in protecting their villages while joint troops concentrate on the frontline.
I came to see the governor in his office to study how to finish off the enemy. I recommended that the governor discuss with his superiors. If they allow it, we will have to create local defence units. We, the UPDF and the FARDC, are in the depths, and we need units to protect the populations. When we go deep, that is, when we strike the enemy in depth, they bypass us and come and fall back on civilians. But if we leave local defence units behind us, everything will be fine.
During the strategic meeting, the officials also discussed the means of involving local communities in protecting their villages while the joint FARDC-UPDF troops concentrated on the front against ADF rebels.
The proposal comes against the backdrop of renewed and brutal ADF attacks across Ituri and North Kivu provinces. On the night of 26-27 July 2025, assailants killed dozens of civilians in Komanda, Ituri, a strike that MONUSCO and other observers condemned and which prompted intensified patrols in the area.
Only weeks later, the United Nations reported that ADF attacks between 9 and 16 August 2025 killed at least 52 civilians in North Kivu’s Beni and Lubero territories, in assaults that included machete attacks, abductions and widespread looting, prompting international observers to call for stepped-up protection of civilians.
The ADF, originally driven out of Uganda in the early 2000s, has since entrenched itself in eastern Congo and is blamed for thousands of civilian deaths across multiple provinces. Despite the current joint UPDF-FARDC operation, the group continues to carry out deadly surprise attacks on villages and places of worship.
But Mugerwa reassured that there is perfect collaboration between the Congolese and Ugandan armies in this fight against the ADF, the alleged perpetrators of the massacres of thousands of people since 2014 in the Congolese territories of Irumu and Mambasa (Ituri), Beni and Lubero (North Kivu), Bafwasende (Tshopo).
He emphasised that coordination between the Ugandan and Congolese militaries is strong, and said he had asked the provincial governor to raise the LDU proposal with his national superiors for approval.
If accepted, the plan would formalise a local-protection layer meant to reduce the recurring pattern: conventional forces strike rebel positions, rebels slip past those operations and retaliate against undefended civilians. Local defence units, Mugerwa said, would aim to break that cycle.
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