African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review

In her ethnography Hutu Rebels, Swedish anthropologist Anna Hedlund provides a fascinating and rare inside view of life in a rebel group, the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). This group, mainly consisting of Rwandan Hutu that fled their country of origin in the wake of the 1994 genocide, is one of the most notorious and long-lived rebel groups active in the messy and tangled warscape of Eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). It stands accused of grave human rights violations, including rape and massacres, which have usually been the focus in discussions of the group. Hedlund, in contrast, argues for the “need to move beyond the stage of compiling catalogues of atrocities and start to explore the ‘ordinary life’ and ideologies of the combatants” (6). With this aim, the author sets out to explore “how fighters, their military leaders, and their civilian dependents experience their life situations in the heart of one of the world’s most long-standing war zones” (17).

The insights presented in the book are built on ethnographic data collected during many months of fieldwork between 2000 and 2016, most importantly during three months spent inside “Rainbow Brigade,” a remote and isolated FDLR camp of roughly three hundred inhabitants, located in the depths of Itombwe Forest in South Kivu. Through observation of, and participation in, daily life in the camp, as well as (in)formal interviews, Hedlund gathered rich material on various aspects of rebel life. Building on this ethnographic data, the author discusses the [End Page 152] organization and routines of daily life in the camp; the transmission, production, and reproduction of ideology; the interplay of commitment and strong collective identities on the one hand and strict control and surveillance on the other hand; and interactions with neighboring civilian communities, ranging in nature from terror, intimidation, trickery, and lies to more equal collaborations. While the author also addresses methodological and ethical issues, this discussion is rather brief, considering the extraordinary research context and the extreme challenges and specific risks it entails.

In many respects, the image of rebel life conveyed in the book challenges, or even contradicts, common assumptions and depictions. This begins with the very nature and composition of the rebel camp. As Hedlund highlights, Rainbow Brigade is not simply “a barracks for soldiers,” but “also a community of uprooted and displaced families, people who left their homes as refugees in the 1990s, women who married soldiers, teenagers who grew up in an armed rebel camp, and newborn babies” (24)—not simply a military camp, but “also a community, a hiding place, a refuge, a sanctuary” (193). In short, the camp is a complex social space. The daily life in the camp, as Hedlund describes it, is also a far cry from popular conceptions and imaginations, which are often anchored in images of blind frenzy and endless and senseless violence. What Hedlund instead observes are monotonous and banal daily routines, order and discipline, relentless boredom, and a “perpetual struggle against dirt, cold, hunger, and sickness” (68). While noting the normalization of violence, the author perceives fighting spirit as low and the military character of the camp as largely symbolic, “expressed through uniforms, guns, and satellite phones” (82). Formal training, military operations, and offensives, however, seem rare.

The author also sheds light on the significant question of why the inhabitants of “Rainbow Brigade” have stayed with, and fought for, the group for so many years. The reasons seem complex and ambiguous. Protracted and constant insecurity, fear, isolation, and disorientation seems to render the group all the more important for its members—not only as a source of security, but also of a meaningful collective identity and a sense of belonging. Hedlund shows how the latter is (re)produced by, and expressed through, a shared political ideology, revolving around a common enemy in the person of Rwanda’s president Kagame, a collective history that defies the official narrative by downplaying the genocide and stressing their own victimization...