The Allied Democratic Forces insurgency was an insurgency waged by the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces against the governments of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, starting in 1996. By 2018, the ADF insurgency had left over 3,424 people killed and over 150,000 displaced.
Background[]
The downfall of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin led to the emergence of several rebel groups in the country during the Ugandan Bush War, among them the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU). In the early 1990s, the Ugandan Muslim convert Jamil Mukulu was radicalized in Saudi Arabia and formed the Allied Democratic Forces from Muslim converts in central Uganda in 1989. The ADF crafted a narrative that it sought to create an Islamic state, and it merged with the remnants of NALU and other rebel groups, uniting behind their goal of overthrowing Yoweri Museveni and creating an Islamic state in Uganda. The ADF established 15 well-organized camps in the Rwenzori Mountains, and, with help from the Sudanese government and from the ousted Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the ADF amassed an armory of imported weapons and ammunition hidden in the mountains and periodically brought to the ADF camps. The ADF collaborated with the Somali al-Shabaab terrorist group and with the Christian fundamentalist Lord's Resistance Army, which provided training and logistic support to the ADF.
Insurgency[]
In 1995, six years after its formation, the ADF began its insurgency against the Ugandan government. In 1996, ADF attacks on Bwera and Mpondwe-Lhubiriha left 50 dead and forced 25,000 townspeople to flee until the towns were recaptured by the military. In February 1998, the ADF abducted 30 children from a Seventh-day Adventist College in Mitandi. In an 8 June 1998 attack on the Kichwamba Technical College, the ADF killed 80 students and abducted 80 more. In 2002, a Ugandan offensive forced the ADF to relocate to the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was already a rebellious and lawless hotbed of insurgency. There, the ADF engaged in several kidnappings of Congolese children, forcibly converting them to Islam and putting them in training camps to become ADF fighters. There were also many children born in the bush, and they were raised to become ADF fighters as well. The ADF went to war with United Nations peacekeepers in addition to the local governments, ambushing United Nations convoys and killing peacekeepers, whom they accused of being "Crusaders".