Colonel Romuald served in the French army for 36 years. He has been on missions in Mali, Senegal and Togo, Afghanistan and Kosovo. He is now fighting in eastern Congo – even though he could be enjoying his retirement at home.
The retired colonel is in charge of a sensitive mission in Goma. That’s why Romuald doesn’t want his last name to be made public. He heads a team of 20 people for the Bulgarian security firm Agemira. The soldier advises the Congolese army on how to wage war against the M23 militia and how to bring order to its own ranks. The firm also provides technical support for aircraft and drones, looks after the soldiers’ supplies and arranges arms deals.
Familiar allies
Romuald relies on trusted people. Most of his employees are retired soldiers from the French army. Kinshasa hired Agemira from Bulgaria two years ago. A year earlier, M23 had started fighting again. According to UN experts, it is supported by neighboring Rwanda with up to 4,000 soldiers and weapons. M23 occupies large parts of the fertile and resource-rich province of North Kivu.
In addition to Agemira, the Congolese government has also hired the Romanian military company Romanii care au activat in legiunea franceza (RALF) with 800 fighters. Many of them have served in the French Foreign Legion. They are mainly from Romania and Belarus. The RALF fighters form a protective cordon around Goma and the strategically important city of Sake.
Slow progress
Agemira and RALF see themselves as a team. “We are fighting for a noble cause,” says Colonel Romuald with conviction. For him, the case is clear: Rwanda is occupying Congo in violation of international law, stealing its raw materials – for example, from the columbite (coltan) mine in Rubaya, about 50 km west of Goma – and forcing millions of people to flee their homelands. The retired European military men plan to liberate Congo from this situation. “I told my wife that I will not return until the refugees go home,” says Romuald.
In February, he announced that the occupation would end by the end of 2024, but now, just before the end of the year, fighting is still ongoing, despite a formal ceasefire in August. Romuald admits that he was too optimistic. He claims that the Rwandan army is superior in terms of technology and discipline. And discipline is lacking even at the highest level. A few months ago, many RALF fighters left the country because the Congolese government had not paid them their salaries on time.
“A bit racist”
According to the colonel, the salaries of foreigners range from $5,000 to $6,000 a month, depending on their rank. “That’s many times more than the few hundred dollars that Congolese soldiers earn,” says Onefor Sematumba, a Congolese analyst at the Crisis Group think tank in Nairobi. He considers the unequal treatment of local and foreign soldiers to be “a bit racist”.
Foreign officers stay in hotels or villas and travel in new military vehicles, while Congolese soldiers walk, he criticizes. This fuels envy. “These highly paid people don’t really contribute anything substantial,” the analyst notes, but he admits that it’s hard for them too, because eastern Congo is in chaos and everyone involved in the conflict wants to make a name for themselves.
War for fun
Colonel Romwald insists that the Europeans are not in Congo for the money. “That’s my job. And there’s adventure in it,” he explains. Romwald sees himself primarily as a consultant. “We’re not mercenaries,” he says. Agemira employees don’t even carry weapons. The RALF soldiers may have weapons, but they would only fight in self-defense.
Mercenary work is a crime in Europe. Secret services in France and Romania sometimes interrogate Agemira and RALF soldiers when the fighters are on leave, Romwald says. “If we start acting like mercenaries, they will arrest us,” he says.
A shady industry
The business practices of many private security companies are opaque. Human Rights Watch has accused Russia’s Africa Corps (formerly Wagner) and the US’s Academi (formerly Blackwater) of committing crimes. “They are destroying entire villages,” says Colonel Romwald. It is utopian that this industry will ever be regulated in a transparent way.
Human rights activists in Goma have so far presented no evidence that Agemira or RALF are committing crimes or trading in raw materials. “The context is different from the Wagner private army,” says analyst Sematumba. Mercenaries in Congo are not on the front lines and are not in the mining areas. Even when there is a fire on the front lines outside Goma, mercenaries sometimes barely manage to leave the city.