It was established after Belgian Army officers travelled to the Free State to found an armed force in the colony on Leopold II of Belgium's orders.

Soon afterwards, in early 1886, Captain Léon Roger (of the Belgian Army's Regiment of Carabiniers) was sent to the Congo with orders to establish the force.

They comprised a mixture of Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries who were drawn by the prospect of wealth or simply attracted to the adventure of service in Africa.

To these men, service in the Congo Free State offered military experience, adventure and—as they saw it—an opportunity to participate in a humanitarian endeavour.

Many were recruited or conscripted from “warrior tribes” in the Upper Congo, others were mercenaries[6] drawn from Zanzibar and West Africa[4] (Nigerian Hausas).

[6] As time went on, the Force Publique began to increasingly recruit and to rely on Belgian officers and native Congolese soldiers, so that the white and black foreign mercenaries had been mostly phased out by 1908.

Reports from foreign missionaries and consular officials detail a number of instances where Congolese men and women were flogged or raped by soldiers of the Force Publique, unrestrained by their officers and NCOs.

With many Force Publique detachments being stationed in remote areas of the territory, some officers took to using soldiers under their control to further private economic agendas rather than focusing on military concerns.

As result, the proportion of commissioned Belgian officers to askaris (about one to a hundred) was very low by the standards of most colonial armies of this period.

[4] The weaponry of the Force Publique also remained mostly outdated due to the tight budgetary constraints on the colonial administration.

[18] The Force Publique was organised into 21 separate companies (originally numbered but later known only by their names) each between 225 and 950 men strong, along with an artillery and an engineers unit.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the Katangese units were organised in battalions (Ie, IIe, and IIIme) for military service in Northern Rhodesia and the eastern frontier districts of the Belgian Congo.

The Force Publique performed well on the battlefield, winning the respect of their British and Portuguese allies, as well as that of their German opponents.

However, it did take until late 1915 for the Force Publique to finish preparations for a large scale offensive on German East Africa.

The allied powers, the British Empire and Belgium, launched a coordinated attack on the German colony; by 1916 the Belgian commander of the Force Publique, Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur, had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers and advanced to Kigali.

[21] After the First World War, as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to cede "control" of the Western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium.

On 20 October 1924, Ruanda-Urundi (1924–1945), which consisted of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi, became a League of Nations mandate territory under Belgian administration, with Usumbura as its capital.

[23] After Belgium had surrendered to Nazi Germany on 28 May 1940, Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans decided that the colony would continue to fight on the side of the Allies.

Already prior to the war uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine had been shipped to New York; it was later used in the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bomb for Hiroshima.

The 3rd Brigade of the Force Publique, together with the XIth battalion (5,700 men), took part in the campaign in Abyssinia in Italian East Africa, arriving from the Congo via the Sudan.

[21] The Force Publique then helped to establish an overland route from Lagos through Fort Lamy and the Sudan to Cairo.

[28] During the confusion inherent in jungle fighting, the Belgian medical unit found itself on one occasion in advance of the front line troops.

The immediate incident sparking the mutiny was reported to have been a tactless speech made by the Belgian general commanding the FP to African soldiers in a mess hall at the main base outside Léopoldville, in which he stated that Independence would not bring any change in their status or role.

The outbreak caused fear amongst the approximately 100,000 Belgian and other European civilians and officials still resident in the Congo and ruined the credibility of the new government as it proved unable to control its own armed forces.

For example, the white community in Luluabourg was besieged in improvised fortifications for three days until rescued by a Belgian Army paratroop drop.

Avimil's roles included the transportation of passengers, medical supplies and other goods, as well as undertaking connecting flights and recognition duties.