DR Congo’s failed gamble on Romanian mercenaries

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

Their surrender following a rebel assault on the eastern city of Goma has also shattered the dreams of those who signed up for the job to earn big money.

The BBC has seen contracts that show that these hired soldiers were being paid around $5,000 (£4,000) a month, while regular military recruits get around $100, or sometimes go unpaid.

The Romanians were contracted to help the army fight the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, who say they are fighting to protect the rights of DR Congo’s minority ethnic Tutsis.

When the offensive on Goma started on Sunday night, the Romanians were forced to take refuge at a UN peacekeeping base.

“The M23 rebels were supported by troops and state-of-the-art military equipment from Rwanda and managed to reach our positions around the city of Goma,” Constantin Timofti, described as a co-ordinator for the group, told Romanian TVR channel on Monday.

“The national army gave up fighting and we were forced to withdraw.”

Romania’s foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Țărnea told the BBC that “complex” negotiations followed, which saw the M23 hand over the Romanian fighters – whom he described as private employees of the DR Congo government on an army training mission – to Rwanda.

Goma sits right on the border with Rwanda – and the mercenaries were filmed by journalists as they crossed over, surrendering to body searches and other checks.

Before they crossed over, phone footage shows M23 commander Willy Ngoma berating one of the Romanians in French, telling him to sit on the ground, cross his legs and put his hands over his head.

He asked him 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 yelled, pointing out the disparity between that and a Congolese army recruit’s pay.

“We are fighting for our future. Do not come for adventure here,” he warned.

It is not clear where Ngoma got the $8,000 figure, but the contract shown to the BBC by a former Romanian mercenary in October detailed that “strictly confidential remuneration” for senior personnel started at $5,000 per month during active duty and $3,000 during periods of leave.

The agreement outlines an “indefinite period” of service, with contractors scheduled to take a one-month break after every three months of deployment.

I had met the ex-mercenary in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, where I had gone to investigate Asociatia RALF, which a group of UN experts say is a Romanian enterprise with “ex-Romanians from the French Foreign Legion”.

It is headed by Horațiu Potra, a Romanian who describes himself as a military instructor.

In June while in Goma, I had noticed such mercenaries at checkpoints and deployed around the city, working closely with army.

Over the last three years, others have reported seeing them driving Congolese troops in army vehicles.

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

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

In fact, Asociatia RALF may also work across Africa – its contract stipulated that it had various “operational locations”, including “Burkina Faso, DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea”.

The UN experts say that two private military companies were brought on board to bolster its forces in 2022, not long after the M23 had regrouped and begun capturing territory in North Kivu.

The province has been unstable for decades with numerous militias operating there making money from its minerals like gold and coltan – used to make batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.

The first firm that was signed up was Agemira RDC, headed by Olivier Bazin, a French-Congolese national. The experts say the company employed Bulgarian, Belarusian, Georgian, Algerian, French and Congolese nationals.

This outfit was tasked with refurbishing and increasing DR Congo’s military air assets, rehabilitating airports and ensuring the physical security of aircraft and other strategic locations.

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

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

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

When I spoke to Mr Potra in July about the extent of his group’s involvement on the ground and whether it had engaged in fighting, he said: “We have to protect ourselves. If M23 attacks us, they won’t simply say: ‘Oh, you’re just instructors – go home’.”

Mr Potra was hands-on during the DR Congo mission until a few months ago when he returned to Romania – and has since been embroiled in a controversy amid the annulled presidential election there.

He was dramatically arrested in December and has since denied providing security for the pro-Russian, far-right candidate Călin Georgescu. And since October, he has refused to return the BBC’s calls.

The ex-mercenary, who was in his late forties and spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, said he had resigned because he was unhappy about how Asociatia RALF was operating.

He said the Romanians did much more on the ground in North Kivu province: “Only a very small number of us were actually trainers.

“We worked long shifts of up to 12 hours, guarding key positions outside Goma.”

He maintained the pay was not worth the risks the military contractors had to take.

“Missions were disorganised, working conditions poor. Romanians should stop going there because it’s dangerous.”

He also claimed that proper background checks had not been done, and some of the Romanian recruits had no military training – citing as an example that one of his former colleagues was a firefighter.

DR Congo’s government has not replied to a BBC request for comment on whether background checks were carried out, or about the pay disparity between the private contractors and Congolese troops.

The family of Vasile Badea, one of two Romanians who were killed last February when an army convoy was ambushed by the M23 fighters on its way to Sake, a frontline town near Goma, told the BBC he had been a police officer.

The 46-year-old had taken a sabbatical from the force and took up the role in DR Congo because of the lucrative salary offer.

The policeman was struggling to pay for an apartment he had just acquired and needed more money.

Many more Romanians were lured by the prospects of a well-paid job.

I met one man in Bucharest in October, who was back home looking for more recruits to go to Goma. He had a military background and had done Nato tours in Afghanistan with the Romanian army.

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

He said he did not work for Asociatia RALF, but refused to say which outfit he was with.

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

When asked about the recruitment process, he emphasised its confidentiality.

“Such jobs are not published anywhere,” he said, adding that networks like WhatsApp were preferred.

He showed me a WhatsApp group where more than 300 Romanians had signed up, many of whom were ex-military personnel.

In June last year, Rwanda’s government spokesperson Yolande Makolo hit out about the presence of mercenaries in eastern DR Congo, saying it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use of hired combatants.

In response, Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya dismissed what he called Rwanda’s perennial complaint.

“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 I met in June expressed his dismay over the army’s strategy.

“The pay is unfair. When it comes to fighting, we are the ones sent to the front lines first,” he told the BBC on condition of anonymity.

“They [the mercenaries] only come as back-up.”

He confirmed his pay was set at around $100 a month but was often delayed or unpaid altogether.

I was last in contact with him a week ago when he confirmed he was still stationed in Kibati, near Goma, where the army has a base.

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

I have not been able to get hold of him since – and the Kibati base has since been overrun by the M23 with many soldiers killed, including his commander.

Observers say the quick fall of Goma points to DR Congo’s fractured defence strategy, where overlapping forces and blurred lines of command have ultimately played into the hands of M23.

Richard Moncrief, International Crisis Group’s project director for the Great Lakes, points out that as well as mercenaries, the Congolese army works with troops from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), a local militia known as Wazalendo, as well as soldiers from Burundi.

“It creates a situation where it’s impossible to plan military offences where chain of command and responsibility is muddied,” he told the BBC.

“I think that it’s important to work towards far greater coherence in the armed effort in North Kivu, probably involving a reduction in the number of armed groups or armed actors on the ground.”

For the ex-mercenary, the fate of his former Romanian colleagues has not come as a surprise.

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