As a group of vehicles winds along a dirt road to a military checkpoint in the hills of eastern Congo, a soldier beckons from the shade of a line of eucalyptus trees, a radio in one hand, an AK-47 in the other.

“Welcome to our territory,” he says, belying the government uniform he wears. The checkpoint is in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province where renegade general Laurent Nkunda commands several thousand troops.