SUMMARY
The Ninjas was a Congolese militia group that was engaged in an armed conflict over government power in 1993 and then again in 1998. Furthermore, the group’s political leadership enjoyed a brief stint in power between 8 September and 15 October 1997, during which UCDP regards the Ninjas a part of the government side in the conflict.
The background to the formation of the Ninjas lay in the democratization process that was initiated in Congo in 1991 and the ensuing political turmoil. With the legalization of multi-party politics, ethnic groups who had been politically marginalized since independence got the opportunity to challenge the dominant position of the PCT (Parti Congolais du Travail, Congolese Labour Party), which was dominated by the northern Mbochi ethnic group. As elites sought to mobilize their ethnic constituencies to gain political power, the political climate hardened and ethnic relations deteriorated. After the country’s 1992-93 legislative elections, the political party UPADS (Union Panafricaine pour la Démocratie Sociale, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy), which represented the ethnic groups living in the southern provinces of Niari, Bouenza and Lékoumou (Niboklek), was awarded victory. The result was however rejected by the opposition, which claimed that the process had been fraudulent and called on a campaign of civil disobedience. In the ensuing ethnic violence all major political parties created militias, with the MCDDI (Mouvement Congolais pour la Démocratie et le Développement Intégral: Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development) establishing the Ninjas in July 1993.
Formed and led by MCDDI leader Bernard Kolelas, the Ninjas started out as a unification of a number of self-defense groups that had emerged in Brazzaville, the capital, during the post-election ethnic violence. During this time, Brazzaville had become increasingly ethnically divided, and these groups sprung up to protect people from the Lari ethnic group (a sub-group of the Bakongo), who by late 1993 dominated certain areas of the capital, such as the Bacongo and Makélékélé neighborhoods. It was thus the Lari ethnic group that formed the Ninja’s constituency, from which its fighters were recruited. While many of the original members were urbanized Laris, living in Brazzaville, much of the recruitment later in the conflict occurred in the home area of the group: the Pool region, which surrounds Brazzaville. Kolelas was himself a Lari, and aside from a shared ethnic identity, he also utilized the Laris’ propensity to adhere to messianic religions when mobilizing support for his cause, referring to himself as the new Moses who had come to liberate the Bakongo from oppression.
While loyal politically to Bernard Koleleas and MCDDI, the Ninjas were commanded militarily by Col. Nzalakanda, the former commander of the OAU forces in Chad, and Col. Philippe Bikinkita, brother of Kolelas, and a defector from the Congolese army. In September 1997, Kolelas and the MCDDI leadership opted to join the government of Pascal Lissouba, and UPADS. By October the MCDDI-UPADS alliance had lost, and Kolelas was forced into exile. The Ninjas subsequently remained nominally loyal to him, but the direct link between him and the Ninjas in Congo was tenuous. Kolelas leaving the country coincided with the Ninjas being expelled from Brazzaville, with a majority taking refuge in the Pool countryside, and after this it is difficult to identify a central military leadership of the group. Bernard Ntandou claimed that Kolelas had appointed him commander of the Ninjas from exile, but Ntandou himself was in exile in DR Congo and never asserted any influence over the fighters in the field. Instead, the Ninjas on the ground in Pool seem to have operated in different sub-factions that competed for influence.
There is little information on how the Ninja militia was organized. What is clear, however, is that during the period that the violence was localized to Brazzaville (1993), the fighters tended to be led by former military and police officers, who exercised relatively tight control over them. When the violence moved to the Pool region, from late 1997 and through 1998, the Ninjas split up in many sub-groups – as mentioned above – and these operated more or less independent from each other, almost completely lacking centralized control. The size of these groups varied, with the larger bands of up to 100 men continuing to be led by former military officers, whereas many of the smaller groups, which numbered around a dozen, were led by youths from Brazzaville who had risen in the organization’s ranks during the street battles in the capital.
It is difficult to estimate the size of the Ninja militia, as different sources give widely varying figures and as the number of fighters changed over the course of the conflict. In 1993, when the group was first formed, estimates ranged between 1500 and several thousand. After the signing of a ceasefire agreement in January 1994, all sides agreed to disarm their militias. Keeping a few hundred fighters, the MCDDI leadership subsequently ordered the rest to either disarm or be integrated into the security forces. When fighting resumed in 1997, and the MCDDI leadership opted to ally itself with then-President Pascal Lissouba, big changes took place within the group. At the same time as a faction of Ninjas broke away and joined PCT, recruitment drives were made, and at least 500 new recruits received military training. While some estimate the size of the Ninjas to have been roughly 1000 men in 1997, this figure is most probably too low. Reliable sources report that after being ousted from power, a small number of Ninjas laid down their arms, as many as 1000 Ninjas fled to Kinshasa, whereas a majority hid and re-grouped in Pool region.
Alliances shifted during the course of the conflict. During the first phase of violence, MCDDI and PCT constituted the opposition parties, who together claimed fraud and called for civilian disobedience. Of the two, it was MCDDI that first set up its militia, and that became engrossed in heavy fighting with regime forces in the Bacongo neighborhood in November 1993. When this happened, PCT had yet to create its Cobra militia, but the party still supported its MCDDI ally, with armed supporters assisting the Ninjas with both training and weapon deliveries across the river from Kinshasa. This alliance weakened quickly, however, and broke down completely in September 1997, when Kolelas switched sides and joined Lissouba’s government. Subsequently, after the fall of the UPADS-MCDDI government, the Ninjas found themselves allied to the militia of former president Lissouba, the Cocoyes. However, on the ground, there was little actual cooperation between the two, and there were even reports of Cocoyes and Ninja units attacking one another in order to steal weapons. The Ninjas instead received support from rebel outfits from outside of Congo; there were credible reports of Angolan rebel group UNITA training Ninja fighters in areas of the DR Congo where it had influence, and there were also indications that the Ninjas were allied to the separatist rebel group FLEC in neighboring Cabinda, which provided bases on territory under its control.
In August 1998, a new messianic rebel movement emerged in the Pool region: the Ntsiloulous. Led by the charismatic Pastor Ntoumi, the group gained in influence to the detriment of the Ninjas as the year passed. Just like Kolelas five years earlier, Ntoumi claimed to have been sent by God as the savior of the people in Pool, and through his preaching he was able to win over many Ninja units. Those that did not opt to join him, he forcibly attempted to gain control of. This process intensified in early 1999, and by the spring of that year, he had succeeded in hijacking close to the entire Ninja movement. The remaining scattered fighters subsequently fled Pool, finding refuge in the Nibolek region, across the Congo River in Kinshasa or even on government controlled territory. In November 1999, the previously mentioned Bernard Ntandou, the Ninja leader in exile in DR Congo, signed a ceasefire agreement with the government and a large number of Ninjas returned to Brazzaville and resumed their civilian lives.
