Introduction Conflict and Violence in the Congo In 1961 Hannah Arendt, a German philosopher, traveled to Jerusalem to witness the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust. Eichmann faced a court in Israel, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. During the Nazi period, Eichmann had been in charge of logistics for the mass deportations that sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death (Stearns 2012a:6). The Eichmann trial received widespread attention. Journalists, academics, and the public all around the world closely followed the trial, waiting for Eichmann to explain the evil acts he had committed. During the proceedings, Eichmann showed little remorse for his crimes. He believed he had done nothing wrong and that he was acting morally by honoring the oath that he had signed with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Eichmann argued that he was just a paper shuffler; he had only been following orders from his superiors.

Eichmann''s refusal to take responsibility led to tense reactions among those witnessing the trial. They argued that Eichmann was a coldhearted man, the personification of evil. Why would he regret his actions? Hannah Arendt, observing the trial, argued that indeed, the crimes committed by Eichmann were evil and the consequences of his deeds were devastating. However, contrary to what other commentators said, Arendt claimed that Eichmann had none of the typical characteristics that made a personality evil or diabolic. She argued instead that Eichmann was a somewhat dull, conventional bureaucrat who lacked the ability to reflect on his own thoughts and actions. He was certainly not a passionate anti-Semite but an ordinary man who signed papers and followed orders without question. According to Arendt, the fact that Eichmann sanctioned his own actions as though they were quite normal was a demonstration of what she called the "banality of evil." Evil, she said, is not radical but intrinsically banal.

Many Nazis, just like Eichmann, did not willfully become evil. Rather, Arendt claimed, through a process of dehumanization, which during the Holocaust was made possible by bureaucratization, personal principles can be readily suspended. Obedience becomes the supreme virtue. Arendt''s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1964), which was first published as a series of articles in the New Yorker in 1963, was controversial at the time. Her ideas were provocative simply because she argued that there are no clear distinctions between "us" and "them" or "good" and "evil." In her book, Arendt looked beyond personal acts of brutality and tried to understand mass violence by exploring the political structures, and the bureaucratic duties assigned to ordinary individuals, that made the atrocities possible. Since the publication of her articles on the Eichmann trial, Arendt''s banality of evil theory has become widely cited in commentary on human behavior in conditions of war. Her theory has helped to show that when military power is consolidated and distributed among the masses, when a top-down administrative process coordinates duties, and when the victims become anonymous and dehumanized, any "ordinary" person''s ethics and morals might be set aside in favor of compliance--thus he or she may become an accessory to murder in the wider orchestration of war (see, for example, Bauman 2001; Browning 1992; Goldhagen 1997).

While the conditions and political formation governing the war in the eastern Congo are very different from those that prevailed in Nazi Germany, the essential question provoked my interest: why do ordinary people commit brutal acts of violence, or, more precisely, how do ordinary people get caught up in extraordinary situations and structures that shape and reproduce an everyday routine of violence? Fieldwork in the Congo A few days before I began my fieldwork in the volatile eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I was in Kigali, the capital of neighboring Rwanda. While there I visited one of the places where massacres had taken place during the genocide in 1994. It was a hot day and the sun was beating down. I followed a shady path leading to a church at the Ntarama memorial site. Almost 23 years previously, a group of Hutu extremists'' called the Interahamwe (those who attack together) had attacked a church in which hundreds of civilians were hiding when the rebels entered the village. Following orders from high-ranking military commanders and bombarded with radio propaganda, the rebels'' goal was to eliminate the ethnic Tutsi population. Throwing grenades into the overcrowded church, the Interahamwe rebels massacred hundreds of the people seeking shelter there from the relentless mass slaughter. I went inside the remains of the church.

It took a few seconds before my eyes adjusted to the dark, and then, by the light from a broken window, I saw the skulls and bones of victims who had been so brutally massacred there two decades ago. Hundreds of skulls had been set aside and arranged on shelves next to the walls. I walked across the church. The victims'' clothes and personal belongings--pots, pans, shoes--had not been removed from the floor but were left as they had been found the day after the attack. There were still bloodstains on the wall, and a damp and moldy smell filled the room. A few months later, I thought about the visit to the memorial site as I sat beside Colonel Frank, one of the senior rebel officers in a forest military camp of predominantly Hutu fighters belonging to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), that was currently engaged in the Congo conflict. We were sheltering in the colonel''s bamboo hut in a rebel camp called Rainbow Brigade, which was located on a mountain peak deep in the Itombwe Forest of the South Kivu province of the eastern Congo, about five days'' trek from the nearest town. Colonel Frank was a Rwandan of ethnic Hutu origin.

Like most of the fighters in the camp, he had arrived in the Congo in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was also a known génocidaire , a term used by the Rwandan government to identify the people responsible for organizing and perpetrating the genocide. As an Interahamwe rebel and member of the former Hutu army, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), Colonel Frank and others in this group are held responsible for the mass killings of the genocide, a period of three months during which almost one million people were killed. After the establishment of the new Tutsi regime under its current president Paul Kagame, these Hutu extremists fled across the border from Rwanda and made the DRC their base of operations with the goal of recapturing power in Rwanda. More than 23 years have passed since the Rwandan genocide took place, yet for these Hutu fighters living in the Congo mountains, the Rwandan war is not over. By day the landscape surrounding the rebel camp was stunning, overlooking misty mountains, hilltops, and miles of thick forests. But now it was pouring with rain and water leaked in through the roof of leaves, bamboo, and grass. It was getting increasingly dark and chilly, and the only light we had came from our flashlights and from the fireplace in the middle of the hut.

Colonel Frank wore a yellow jacket, a pair of blue jeans, and military boots. His personal belongings--a razor blade, a toothbrush, and a mirror--were hanging askew on the wall next to the small bamboo bench where he sat. On the wooden table in front of him were a Bible and a satellite phone. His Kalashnikov was propped against the wall next to him. From his vantage point, he reminded me, he could spot any approaching intruders. The colonel''s face was friendly and his body language vivid. He said that he had returned earlier that afternoon from a military operation and, on his way back, he had prayed in the bamboo church further down the slope where he served as one of the pastors for the military camp. Although he said he was tired, we continued to talk about his life as a rebel leader in the forest.

When he spoke about his childhood memories of Rwanda, his face lit up and he talked with longing of his dream to return to his country of origin. Colonel Frank''s personal bodyguard, a young combatant, entered the hut carrying firewood. He said that his name was Gérome and that he was 29 years old. He wore a camouflage-colored military uniform, and a gold watch gleamed on his wrist; his boots were covered with mud. Kneeling down, he blew onto the embers of the fire. The flames came to life, crackled, and lit up the hut. Gérome went out again returning shortly carrying plastic cups filled with warm tea made of roots and sugar. Working quickly and efficiently, he served us the tea and then disappeared once more into the rain.

The camp at which I was based is one of a number established by Hutu fighters who still circulate between the military camps and battlefields in the provinces of the eastern Congo. These rebels move from place to place in the remote and inaccessible mountainous regions together with their civilian dependents, many of them refugees from Rwanda. In the eastern Congo, the Hutu fighters have a long and complex history of violence. For over 20 years they have been a military force in the ongoing conflict, accused of attacking, raping, and killing the local civilian population (see, for example, Human Rights Watch 2009). They have fought alongside the Congolese army, known by the French acronym FARDC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo) but have fought against them as well; they have captured young boys and trained them to be soldiers; they have abducted and violated Congolese civilians; and they are accused of plundering entire communities in the North and South Kivu provinces. For many years, the Hutu fighters have been regarded as one.