Dr. Congo’s failed bet in Romanian mercenaries

It has been a humiliating week for almost 300 Romanian mercenaries recruited to fight the army side in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

His surrender after a rebel assault to the Eastern rubber city has also destroyed the dreams of those who enrolled in the work to earn a lot of money.

The BBC has seen contracts that show that these contracted soldiers were paid around $ 5,000 (£ 4,000) per month, while regular military recruits obtain around $ 100, or sometimes they did not pay.

The Romanians were hired to help the Army fight against the M23 rebels backed by Rwanda, who say they are fighting to protect the rights of the minority ethnic tutsis of Dr Congo.

When the rubber offensive began on Sunday night, the Romanians were forced to take refuge in a UN peacekeeping base.

“The M23 rebels were supported by Rwanda’s latest military troops and teams and managed to reach our positions around the rubber city,” Constantin Timophti, described as group coordinator, told Romanian TVR Channel on Mondays.

“The National Army stopped fighting and we were forced to retire.”

The spokesman of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, Andrei țțrne Army training, to Rwanda.

Rubber sits right on the border with Rwanda, and the mercenaries were filmed by journalists while crossing, surrendering in body searches and other controls.

Before crossing, the phone images show the M23 Willy Ngoma commander, rebuking one of the Romanians in French, telling him to sit on the ground, cross his legs and put his hands on his head.

He asked about his military training: it was with the French foreign legion, the Romanian replied.

“They recruited you with a salary of $ 8,000 a month, you eat well.” Ngoma shoutedpointing out the disparity between that and the payment of a recruit of the Congolese army.

“We are fighting for our future. Don’t come by adventure here,” he warned.

It is not clear where NGOMA obtained the $ 8,000 figure, but the contract shown to the BBC by a former Romanian mercenary in October explained that “strictly confidential remuneration” for the senior staff began at $ 5,000 per month during active service and $ 3,000 during license periods.

The agreement describes an “indefinite period” of service, with the contractors scheduled to take a break of a month every three months of implementation.

I met the former mercenary in the capital of Romania, Bucharest, where Ralf’s association had gone to investigate that a group of UN experts say it is a Romanian company with “former Romanians of the French foreign legion.”

He is headed per hourțiu Potra, a Romanian who describes himself as a military instructor.

In June, while he was in rubber, he had noticed such mercenaries at the control points and deployed in the city, working closely with the army.

In the last three years, others have informed having seen them driving Congolean troops in army vehicles.

“When they arrived, everyone referred to them as Russians,” Fiston Mahamba, co -founder of the Check Congo misinformation group, told the BBC.

“I think this was linked to the Russian mercenary group, Wagner with presence in several African countries.”

In fact, Associatia Ralf can also work in Africa: his contract stipulated that he had several “operational places”, including “Burkina Faso, Dr Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea”.

UN experts say that two private military companies were brought on board to reinforce their forces in 2022, shortly after the M23 regrouped and began to capture territory in northern Kivu.

The province has been unstable for decades with numerous militias that operate there earning money with their minerals such as Gold and Coltan, used to make batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.

The first firm that was registered was Agemira RDC, headed by Olivier Bazin, a French-confrontal citizen. Experts say that the company used Bulgarian, Belarusian, Georgian, Algerian, French and Congolese citizens.

This outfit had the task of restoring and increasing the military air assets of DR Congo, rehabilitating airports and guaranteeing the physical security of aircraft and other strategic locations.

A second contract between Congo Protection was signed, a Congolese company represented by Thierry Kongolo and Ralf associatry.

According to UN experts, the contract specified that Associatia Ralf had experience and extensive experience in the provision of security management services.

It would provide training and instruction to Congolese troops on the ground through a contingent of 300 instructors, many of them Romanians.

When I talked to Mr. Potra in July about the reach of the participation of his group in the field and if he had involved in the fight, he said: “We have to protect ourselves. If M23 attacks us, they will not simply say: ‘Oh, only They are instructors, go home. ‘”

Mr. Potra was practical during the DR Congo mission until a few months ago, when he returned to Romania, and since then he has been involved in a controversy in the middle of the Presidential elections canceled there.

It was dramatically arrested in December and since then has denied providing security to the pro-ruso and extreme right-wing candidate Călin Georgescu. And since October, he has refused to return BBC calls.

The former mercenary, who was about forty years old and spoke with the BBC on condition of anonymity, said he had resigned because he was not happy with how Ralf’s associatry was operating.

He said that the Romanians did much more in the field in the province of northern Kivu: “Only a very small number of us were coaches.

“We work long shifts up to 12 hours, protecting key positions out of rubber.”

He argued that the salary was not worth the risks that military contractors had to run.

“The missions were disorganized, poor working conditions. Romanians should stop going there because it is dangerous.”

He also said that no appropriate background verifications had been made, and some of the Romanian recruits did not have military training, citing as an example that one of his former colleagues was a firefighter.

The Government of Dr. Congo has not responded to a BBC request for comments on whether background verifications, or on the salary disparity between private contractors and Congolese troops.

Vasile Badea’s family, one of the two Romanians who were killed last February when an army convoy was ambushed by the M23 fighters on the way to Sake, a first -line city near rubber, told the BBC that it had been A police officer.

The 46 -year -old man had taken a sabbatical year of force and assumed the role in Dr. Congo due to the lucrative salary offer.

The policeman was fighting an apartment that had just acquired and needed more money.

Many more Romanians were attracted to the prospects for a well -paid job.

I met a man in Bucharest in October, who was back at home looking for more recruits to go to rubber. He had military history and had toured NATO in Afghanistan with the Romanian army.

“We are very busy trying to find 800 people who need to be mentally prepared for work and know how to fight,” said the mercenary recruiter to the BBC.

He said he did not work for Ralf Associatory, but refused to say what outfit he was.

“The recruits will be placed in positions corresponding to the level of their training, winning between $ 400 and $ 550 per day,” he explained.

When asked about the recruitment process, he emphasized his confidentiality.

“Such works are not published anywhere,” he said, added that networks such as WhatsApp were preferred.

He showed me a WhatsApp group where more than 300 Romanians had registered, many of whom were former military personnel.

In June of last year, the spokesman of the Government of Rwanda, Yolande Makolo, hit the presence of mercenaries in the east of the Congo, which was a violation of the Geneva conventions, which prohibits the use of contracted combatants.

In response, the spokesman of the Congolese government, Patrick Mujah, dismissed what he called the perennial complaint of Rwanda.

“We have some instructors who come to train our military forces because we know we have this urgent situation,” he told the BBC.

But a Congolese soldier that I met in June expressed his dismay for the army’s strategy.

“The salary is unfair. When it comes to fighting, we are first those who are sent to the front line,” he told the BBC on anonymity.

“They (the mercenaries) only come as support.”

He confirmed that his salary was set at around $ 100 per month, but it was often delayed or did not refer completely.

I was in contact with him a week ago when he confirmed that he was still parked in Kibati, near rubber, where the army has a base.

“Things are very bad,” he told me in a voice note.

I have not been able to get it since then, and the Kibati base has been invaded by the M23 with many murdered soldiers, including its commander.

The observers say that the rapid rubber drop points to Dr. Congo’s fractured defense strategy, where overlapping forces and blurred command lines have played in the hands of M23.

Richard Moncrief, director of the International Crisis Group Project for Los Lagos, points out that, as well as mercenaries, the Congolese army works with troops from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), a local militia known as Wazalendo, so as soldiers of Burundi. .

“Create a situation in which it is impossible to plan military crimes where the chain of command and responsibility is confused,” he told the BBC.

“I think it is important to work towards much greater coherence in the armed effort in North Kivu, probably implying a reduction in the number of armed groups or armed actors on the ground.”

For the former mercenary, the fate of his former Romanian colleagues has not been a surprise.

“The bad command leads to failure,” he told the BBC.