M23 Rebellion in the Congo

In 2013, a good friend and I made our own international press badges in Kigali and got into DRC's eastern provincial town of Goma soon after it was taken over by M23 rebels. Our Congolese fixer took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to a commander on a hilltop east of the city, and in one day we photographed three separate armies scattered along Lake Kivu: the victorious M23 rebels in the north, the Mai-Mai rebels 10 kilometers south – a ragtag guerrilla group known for sticking tree branches in the barrels of their AK-47s to give them invincibility –  and the retreated Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo furthest south.