Source: New York Times
By the time Sgt. Madot Dagbinza showed the photographer Michael Christopher Brown a handful of snapshots, she'd been fighting with the 42nd Commando Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo for four years.

A member of an elite unit, the baby-faced soldier in her mid-20s rarely left the front lines where the Congolese military (known as F.A.R.D.C.) was battling the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23.

Dagbinza was stationed along with more than 1,000 other soldiers at Hotel Invest, an abandoned resort overrun with bougainvillea at the edge of Virunga National Park, Africa's oldest and most diverse preserve. Among the postcolonial ruins, a swimming pool half-filled with rainwater glowed a virulent green with algae near the makeshift officers' quarters. Brown and his friend Daniel McCabe, an independent filmmaker, were staying there on a embed with the Congolese military, which typically doesn't welcome journalists or anyone with a camera.

Dagbinza knew McCabe well. She met the filmmaker three months earlier when her unit arrested him because he was driving his Toyota Land Cruiser at night on a nearby road. That arrest turned out to be his lucky break, giving him rare access to this rapid response unit.

On the December day in 2012 when Dagbinza met Brown, he'd tagged along on one of McCabe's embeds. Intrigued by the photos she showed him, Brown asked to see more and discovered that Dagbinza kept a personal photo album. For $100 and copies of each image, she sold Brown the pink album that appears in these pages. In it, she strikes various poses, from classic military mugging with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher slung over her shoulders to vamping, Congo-style, in a denim minidress and a pair of skintight silver jeggings.

Only one in 50 of F.A.R.D.C.'s 150,000 soldiers is a woman, and these photos provide an unusual glimpse into that world. Even among her fellow female commandos, however, Sergeant Dagbinza cut a striking figure. "I know that I am beautiful, and many men love me, I can see it wherever we move," she told Brown. "But for my first marriage, I choose my country."

The Congolese military is a chameleon-like entity, with recruits frequently integrated from other armed groups. Some of its soldiers are known to have committed crimes like looting and rape. Yet Dagbinza belonged to a relatively new unit — a product of reform engineered by the nascent democratic Congolese government — of which she was fiercely proud. "Men fight," she told Brown. "Why not us women? I love our country. You have to love your country to sleep outside, live under the sun and rains, cross rivers and forests when you know that many people don't care — they're enjoying their lives while you're on the front lines."

Dagbinza was 16 when military recruiters arrived in her hometown, Gbadolite, in Congo's northwestern province of Équateur and offered anyone 18 and older the chance to board a plane and become a soldier. Claiming to be 18, Dagbinza immediately volunteered and hopped a free flight. She hoped it would take her to Kinshasa, where she could look for her father, a soldier who abandoned the family when she was a child. Instead, the military transport landed in the middle of a war zone in eastern Congo. And Dagbinza ended up as a fighter.

From a distance, the Democratic Republic of Congo doesn't appear to be a state, and yet, largely because of the ingenuity of its people, it functions as one. In 1965, after its infamous leader, Mobutu Sese Seko, seized power (he renamed the country Zaire in 1971), he told his citizens, "Fend for yourselves." The idea, commonly referred to as "Article 15" of the Congolese Constitution, though no such article exists, boils down to this: When the state doesn't pay its soldiers, or any of its employees, they are to take from fellow citizens. Much of the state, from the post office to the barracks, still runs on this kind of informal graft.

In the eastern part of the country, the most recent war began more than 18 years ago, when the Rwandan genocide destabilized the region and drove victims and their persecutors over the Rwandan border into eastern Congo. It is now riven by as many as 60 armed groups represented by a stew of acronyms. At its height, the conflict drew in nine countries and claimed millions of lives, most because of illness and disease, in a scramble for political power, land, resources and minerals, including coltan for cellphones and hearing aids and tungsten for golf-club heads.

Over the past five years, however, there have been encouraging signs that there may soon be an end to this seemingly intractable struggle. For the first time in decades, following a peace process that led to elections in 2006, Congo has a functioning, if deeply flawed, democratic government. The International Criminal Court is preparing to try one of the region's worst actors, the rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda.

Sergeant Dagbinza came of age as a soldier at this hopeful moment in Congo's fraught history. The outlines of her story were patchy. She ­talked­ little of her life before the military and barely spoke of the young son she left with relatives in her village. Instead, she told a tale of the luck and tenacity by which she rose quickly through military ranks. According to Dagbinza, the South African and Chinese military trainers who taught her unit of the 42nd battalion noticed her skill and dedication. Her commanders also took notice. Several years ago, when she was about 20, she caught the eye of Col. Mamadou Mustapha Ndala, who, despite a past marked by suspected poaching and involvement with other rebel groups, became a widely admired figure in the fight against M23, then wreaking havoc in the east.

Dagbinza became his personal bodyguard, and in turn, Mamadou became a father of sorts for the young woman. Mamadou, one of Congo's few Muslims, was known for his personal discipline, and he discouraged his soldiers from drinking and smoking. Dagbinza, who favored high heels and hair extensions during her time off, followed his rules.

For decades, the people of eastern Congo watched in frustration and rage as blue-helmeted international peacekeepers stood by and did nothing while rebel groups laid waste to towns and villages. Then, in 2013, the United Nations agreed to have Mamadou work with its new Force Intervention Brigade, which gave peacekeepers the authority to carry out offensive operations — in other words, to fight back.

With Dagbinza alongside him, Colonel Mamadou became the face of this new effort: a defender of Congo and a much longed-for symbol of national pride. After battles, when Mamadou appeared on the rust-red laterite roads of eastern Congo, people turned out in droves to sing his praises: "Ma-ma-madou," they chanted.

On Jan. 2, 2014, Sergeant Dagbinza was riding in a military jeep with Colonel Mamadou when his convoy was ambushed. It's still unclear who was behind the attack. Mamadou was killed, and Dagbinza died alongside him. As she told Brown, "Wherever Colonel Mamadou Mustapha Ndala is — that's where you'll find me." Eliza Griswold