Chaos in the Congo: Shaykh Musa Seka Baluku – The Mysterious Leader of the ADF
Chaos in the Congo: Shaykh Musa Seka Baluku – The Mysterious Leader of the ADF
Shaykh Musa Seka Baluku, an Islamist militant leader operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has recently taken steps to rebuild and strengthen the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Baluku has led the terrorist group for the past five years.
Under his direction, ADF fighters have stepped up attacks, killing thousands of civilians, army soldiers, and peacekeepers in the restive eastern region of the DRC. The insurgency, under his leadership, has continued to destabilize the region, which is the base of several armed rebel groups.
The surging violence has brought the 50-year-old militant leader, a.k.a. Mzee Kajuju, into focus. Baluku has been steering the group since 2015, when Shaykh Jamil Mukulu, the former leader and founder, was arrested in Tanzania. Since then, Baluku has risen to become the emir, and consolidated his power. He eventually became the sole decision-maker for a group best for known for massacres, crucifixions and beheadings in the eastern DRC (Joramjojo, June 11, 2019).
Baluku has 20 years of experience as a fighter and Islamist, beginning his career when ADF first emerged. In 1995, Mukulu—a convert from Roman Catholicism—merged an Islamist sect known as Tabliqhi Jamaat with a rebel group known as the National Army of the Liberation of Uganda (NALU) to form the ADF. He immediately assumed the role of supreme leader of the new group.
Mukulu, at a meeting in Beni, brought together three sects—the Uganda Muslim Freedom Fighters, the National Army of the Liberation of Uganda and the former Rwenzururu—to create a 6,500-strong force. The merger was made possible following the assassination of Amon Kabunga Bazira, a politician who founded NALU, by an unknown assailant in Nakuru, Kenya in 1983. Ugandan intelligence services were blamed for his murder (Daily Monitor, August 6, 2016).
Under Mukulu, the new Islamist rebel coalition continued its insurgency against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s government, aimed at replacing it with one governed by sharia. The initial financial and logistical support came from former Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko. By 2002, pressure from the Uganda People’s Defense Force had pushed ADF into the DRC (New Vision, November 21, 2019).
Now under Baluku, the ADF has been widely described as a rebel group without a direction or clear ideology. It seems only to terrorize civilians while avoiding direct contact with the Congolese army. Its former leader and founder Mukulu remains in a Ugandan prison awaiting trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC). He is facing several charges, including murder and crimes against humanity, from his time as leader of the ADF.
Baluku, like his predecessor, is accused of brutalizing the people of the DRC. Recently, he became the subject of UN sanctions for terrorist activities in the region. He is also included on a list of people wanted by Interpol and the ICC.
In announcing sanctions on February 6, the U.N. Security Council reported that, since 1995, Baluku had committed, planned or directed repeated attacks, targeted killings, maimings, rape and other sexual violence. He had also abducted civilians, including children, as well as attacked health facilities, in particular in Beni territory. He is accused of recruiting children during attacks and subjecting villagers to forced labor (Daily Monitor, December 12, 2019)
On June 22, the militant group killed at least 19 people in eastern DRC, while the bodies of nine people kidnapped were found in North Kivu. In Ituri Province, ADF fighters attacked the village of Bukaka on June 20 and killed 10 civilians. In late May, the militant group killed at least 40 people in Makutano village with machetes and looted food and other valuables. Most of the killings are believed to be revenge attacks by the group following the continued Congolese army assault on their bases.
Reports indicate that the organization had killed over 1,000 people between January 2014 to April 2019. At least 315 killings took place between June and September 2018. By then, the group had changed its name to Medina at Tauheed Wa Mujahedeen (MTM). The Arabic name translates to, “The City of Monotheism and Holy Warriors.” Analysts have viewed the change of name as an attempt to align itself more closely with established Islamist terrorist groups. It appears to indicate the group’s changing interest from overthrowing the Ugandan government to a struggle for Islam. Recently, the group displayed the same flags as al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram (Daily Monitor, April 25, 2019).
Bakulu was born in 1970 in western Uganda’s Kasese district. He is believed to have become a jihadist at an early age and at one time served as an imam at the Malakaz, Tablighi Jamaat Mosque in the Ugandan capital Kampala. Tablighi Jamaat is a missionary movement of Islam that urges Muslims to return to the practices of the Prophet Muhammad.
While there are few details about his early life, he is believed to be one of earliest members of ADF, joining the group in the late 1990s. While most of the ADF leaders hailed from the Basonga, a western Ugandan tribe, the militant leader is a member of the Konzo or Konjo, a tribe that lives in the Rowenzori Mountains. Baluku is reported to have taken several wives in Uganda and the DRC, two of them being the daughters of the former leader, Mukulu.
Reports quoting ADF defectors have described Baluku as violent and short tempered. He has ordered the abduction of children to serve as child soldiers and has presided over mass killings. Baluku has also been known to consolidate his power within the ADF through brutal intimidation tactics, and has executed suspected dissidents by beheading or crucifixion.
Before becoming its leader, Bakulu served in several leadership positions within the ADF, including as Mukulu’s chief lieutenant. He also held the position of ADF’s chief Islamic judge. Those who attacked civilians, killed innocent people or stole were considered to have broken the law. He also served as the group’s political commissar, and was in charge of teaching new recruits ADF’s ideology. This also included leading daily prayers in the camp (Joramjojo, June 11, 2019).
Before Mukulu’s arrest in 2014, the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) launched Operation Sukola I against the ADF. Hundreds of ADF fighters were killed, while others surrendered and a large number of others were captured.
Reports have quoted the FARDC as saying that it has captured an ADF headquarters and killed five of the group’s main commanders. Although combined statistics on ADF casualties are not available, on February 17, 2014, the Congolese army announced that it had killed 230 ADF fighters after a month-long offensive. On December 8, 2017, 72 insurgents were killed in a firefight when the ADF launched an attack UN camp in North Kivu. On May 26, 2019, at least 26 ADF fighters were killed when they attempted to run over a joint FARDC-UN camp in the village of Ngite, near Mavivi. On January 13, 2020, at least 40 ADF fighters were killed, including another five top commanders in an intense battle that ensued after the Congolese army raided the Medina Camp. On February 9, 40 insurgents surrendered to the FARDC.
The operation split the rebel force into two, with Mukulu fleeing with one group and Bakulu moving deeper into the Congolese forest with a much larger group. He evacuated his group from Medina I, the group’s main headquarters in the eastern DRC, after it was captured by the army, moving to Camp Kajuju in Medina II, in the Beni region (Chimpreports, February 13).
The operations weakened the group, but Baluku has succeeded in re-constituting and rebuilding it, placing the ADF under his single command. At the moment, he is believed to command between 400 and 1,000 fighters. The group reportedly remains largely stable and in position. (Kharon, February 7, 2020).
In December 2017, Baluku is believed to have been badly wounded when the Ugandan military attacked an ADF camp in the eastern DRC. He is thought to have survived the attack, but with serious injuries.
Unlike the ADF’s former leader, Baluku has expanded the group’s outreach in social media, targeting new recruits using tactics similar to other militant groups, like al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. He has also aligned the ADF with better known jihadist groups like Islamic State (IS) and al-Shabaab (People Pill, Jan 1, 2020).
Although links with al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, is largely a matter of speculation, Baluku’s ADF is also alleged to have links to IS links. In early April 2019, while in Washington, DRC President Felix Tshisekendi claimed that ADF was working with IS and declared war against the group. While in Washington, Tshisekendi sought a strategic partnership with the United States in order to gain military support for the country’s fight against IS (The Nile Wires, April 19, 2019).
In April 2019, Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for two attacks on villages in eastern DRC, the region where ADF has been operating. Several soldiers were wounded in the attack on Kimango village in Beni near Uganda’s border with the DRC. Around the same time, the militant group claimed responsibility for another attack on the village of Bovata, also in Beni. IS used the attacks to announce the formation of its new Islamic State-Central Africa Province (ISCAP) affiliate, operating in the DRC.
The attacks on the villages, according to some government officials, were similar to past actions by the ADF (The East African, April 19, 2018). The group reportedly received financial support from at least one IS financier (The East African, April 19, 2019).
Waleed Ahmed Zein, an ISIS financier was arrested in Kenya in July 2018 on terrorism financing charges, and placed under US sanctions in September 2018. Uganda officials claimed that Zein was in touch with ADF and one defector told the Congo Research Group (CRG) that a man with such a name had sent her money in Kampala
Around the time, in August 2018, the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hinted a possible ISIS link in DRC. It was until April and May 2019, however, when ISIS ran media claimed the first attack in the country. Later in 2019, al-Baghdadi formally recognized the existence of the province. (Modern Ghana, May 13, 2019).
Thus far, it is clear that the ADF under Baluku is not going away. In the group’s 20 years of existence, the ADF has shifted ideologies from ethnic and secessionist, to Islamist. This has helped it find new alliances and recruits to further its ability to survive. The group is one of the least understood terrorist organizations in the DRC, and therefore, a sharp focus on its activities and leadership is needed if Baluku is to be defeated.
