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The Land Forces, also called the Congolese army, are the ground component of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Much of the army troops are former members of rebel groups fighting in the eastern DRC. Corruption and incompetence of soldiers is rampant, and many of them commit crimes against local populations. The United Nations maintains a large force in the country to aid the Congolese army in the North Kivu province, where they have been fighting the M23 group. In October 2013, the M23 rebellion surrendered to the Kinshasa government. ==History== The land forces are made up of about 14 integrated brigades, of fighters from all the former warring factions which have gone through an ''brassage'' integration process (see next paragraph), and a not-publicly known number of non-integrated brigades which remain solely made up from single factions (the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD)'s Armee National Congolaise, the ex-government former Congolese Armed Forces (FAC), the ex-RCD KML, the ex-Movement for the Liberation of Congo, the armed groups of the Ituri conflict (the Mouvement des Révolutionnaires Congolais (MRC), Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (FRPI) and the Front Nationaliste Intégrationniste (FNI)) and the Mai-Mai). It appears that about the same time that Presidential Decree 03/042 of 18 December 2003 established the National Commission for Demobilisation and Reinsertion (CONADER), '..all ex-combatants were officially declared as FARDC soldiers and the then FARDC brigades (to ) rest deployed until the order to leave for ''brassage.'' The reform plan adopted in 2005 envisaged the formation of eighteen integrated brigades through the ''brassage'' process as its first of three stages.〔International Crisis Group, Security Sector Reform in the Congo, Africa Report No. 104, 13 February 2006, 17–18〕 The process consists firstly of regroupment, where fighters are disarmed. Then they are sent to orientation centres, run by CONADER, where fighters take the choice of either returning to civilian society or remaining in the armed forces. Combatants who choose demobilization receive an initial cash payment of US $110. Those who choose to stay within the FARDC are then transferred to one of six integration centres for a 45-day training course, which aims to build integrated formations out of factional fighters previously heavily divided along ethnic, political and regional lines. The centres are spread out around the country at Kitona, Kamina, Kisangani, Rumangabo and Nyaleke (within the Virunga National Park) in Nord-Kivu, and Luberizi (on the border with Burundi) in South Kivu. The process has suffered severe difficulties due to construction delays, administration errors, and the amount of travel former combatants have to do, as the three stages' centres are widely separated. Following the first 18 integrated brigades, the second goal is the formation of a ready reaction force of two to three brigades, and finally, by 2010 when MONUC is anticipated to have withdrawn, the creation of a Main Defence Force of three divisions. In February 2008, the current reform plan was described as:〔(Retrieved 1 November 2008 )〕
Amid the other difficulties in building new armed forces for the DRC, in early 2007 the integration and training process was distorted as the DRC government under Kabila attempted to use it to gain more control over the dissident general Laurent Nkunda. A hastily-negotiated verbal agreement in Rwanda saw three government FAC brigades integrated with Nkunda's former ANC 81st and 83rd Brigades in what was called ''mixage''. ''Mixage'' brought multiple factions into composite brigades, but without the 45-day retraining provided by ''brassage'', and it seems that actually, the process was limited to exchanging battalions between the FAC and Nkunda brigades in North Kivu, without further integration. Due to Nkunda's troops having greater cohesion, Nkunda effectively gained control of all five brigades - not what the DRC central government had been hoping!〔Henri Boshoff, The DDR Process in the DRC: a never-ending story, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2 July 2007〕 However after Nkunda used the ''mixage'' brigades to fight the FDLR, strains arose between the FARDC and Nkunda-loyalist troops within the brigades and they fell apart in the last days of August 2007. The International Crisis Group says that 'by 30 August () Nkunda's troops had left the mixed brigades and controlled a large part of the Masisi and Rutshuru territories' (of North Kivu).〔International Crisis Group, Bringing Peace to North Kivu, Africa Report No.133, 31 October 2007, p.13〕 Both formally integrated brigades and the non-integrated units continue to conduct arbitrary arrests, rapes, robbery, and other crimes〔Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR620012007?open&of=ENG-COD Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) and the Reform of the Army], 25 January 2007, AI Index: AFR 62/001/2007〕 and these human rights violations are "regularly" committed by both officers and members of the rank and file. Members of the Army also often strike deals to gain access to resources with the militias they are meant to be fighting. The various brigades and other formations and units number at least 100,000 troops.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=monuc.org: FARDC troops estimated at 100,000, says EUSEC ::: 20/03/2006 )〕 The status of these brigades has been described as "pretty chaotic." A 2007 disarmament and repatriation study said "army units that have not yet gone through the process of brassage are usually much smaller than what they ought to be. Some non-integrated brigades have only 500 men (and are thus nothing more than a small battalion) whereas some battalions may not even have the size of a normal company (over a 100 men)."〔Hans Romkena De Vennhoop (Opportunities and Constraints for the Disarmament and Repatriation of Foreign Armed Groups in the DRC ), Multi Country Demobilization and Recovery Program, April 2007, p.32〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Land Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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