Exile Warriors

Beskrivning

In 1994, almost one million ethnic Tutsis were killed in the genocide in Rwanda. In the aftermath of genocide, some of the top-echelon Hutu o cers who had organized the genocide  ed Rwanda to the eastern Congo (DRC) and set up their base for military operation, with the goal of retaking power in Rwanda. Twenty years later, these rebel forces comprise a diverse group of refugees, soldiers and civilian dependents who operate from mountain areas in the Congo forests and have a long and complex history of war and violence. While media descriptions and human rights reports portray this rebel group as one of the most brutal rebel factions operating in the eastern Congo region, this dissertation paints a more complex picture. Drawing on ethnographic  eldwork in a rebel camp located deep in the Congo forest, this study explore the micro politics and practices of everyday life among a community of Hutu rebel soldiers and their families, living under the harshest of conditions.  is dissertation describes the Hutu rebels as a military unit with a vision of return to Rwanda, and as a community in the Congo con icts. It focuses on how they perceive their own life conditions twenty years after the genocide in Rwanda, how they remember and articulate these events, and why they continue to  ght in what appears to be an endless and brutal con ict.