attacks on Ngadi, Eringeti, and Oicha can be attributed to the ADF’s need to reinvent itself in the aftermath of Operation Sokola.This joint offensive of FARDC and MONUSCO devastated the group’s camps and reduced it to an estimated 100-200 members divided across different bands, according to senior MONUSCO analysts.The operation disrupted access to arms and ammunition, which can explain the shift to machetes as tools of violence. It also fractured relations between the ADF and the local population, which could have motivated increased brutality toward civilians.Residents of Beni cite ADF attacks against civilians as reprisals for having provided FARDC and MONUSCO information on ADF camps, or as punishment for local combatants who defected or businesspersons who defaulted on payments to the group (as other armed groups, the ADF had become important local moneylenders).As such, attacks form the culmination of a pattern of reprisal attacks by the ADF in response to military operations, such as Operation Rwenzori in 2010, and to severed social ties, as seen in the summer 2013 Watalinga attacks