Why conflict in eastern DRC is unlikely to end soon as history repeats itself

Residents walk next to a vehicle with M23 fighters in Bukavu on February 16, 2025. M23 fighters entered the DR Congo provincial capital of Bukavu on February 14, 2025. [AFP] For decades, Congo's eastern regions of North and South Kivu have been a tinderbox waiting to catch fire - and those willing to light a match were many and varied. History has been rhyming in that vast country, where the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. The players of the ongoing war that started in earnest last month - Tutsis and Hutus and their allies, including Rwandan and Congolese governments, as well as mercenaries - are more or less the same. The setting is the same as it was in the 1990s. Yesterday's accusations, counter-accusations, grievances and modi operandi are the same as today. As ever, Congolese civilians are being killed in their thousands and displaced in their hundreds of thousands. And the international community is as confused and complicit as before. If in the 1996 war, forces from Uganda, Angola, Burundi and African American mercenaries fought alongside Rwanda. Today, Burundi, South Africa and European mercenaries are fighting for Congo. Unlike the past, though, Rwanda and its Tutsi proxies, who're tacitly supported by Uganda, are fighting alone this time around. The ongoing war in eastern Congo has many similarities to the 1996 Rwanda-led offensive that eventually toppled Mobutu Sese Seko a year later. At the time, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame argued that Hutu militiamen, many of whom were perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in his country, were using refugee camps in Eastern Congo as bases to try to retake power from his Tutsi-led government. To avert such a possibility, Rwanda trained and armed Congolese Tutsis, who were victims of Congolese Hutus and their government, and finally sent its troops across the border to finish the job. Whether Kagame harbours similar intentions now is far from clear. Nor is it clear whether the current war would spark a regional war, as it did in 1998. But, ominous signs are everywhere: Rwanda and Congo are trading accusations. The world's big powers are distracted by wars in Europe, the Middle East and Sudan. The US that once acted as the world's police is more concerned about its own internal affairs, as President Donald Trump is busy remaking his country. On Feburary 7, 2025, almost two weeks after Rwandan-backed rebel group, M23, seized the major city of Goma, James Ngango, Rwanda's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said that an "imminent" large-scale attack against Rwanda was being hatched in Congo before the rebels captured Goma, a city of two million people. Ngango accused a Kinshasa-backed coalition of stockpiling a large number of weapons and military equipment near Rwanda's border, especially around Goma's airport. Ngango's claim was akin to Kagame's 1996's raison d'etre that Hutus were trying to invade Rwanda. Prior to the 1996 invasion of Congo, Rwanda had two main concerns: refugee camps in eastern Congo that were housing Hutu extremists and laxity by the UN. "It is my strong belief that the United Nations people are trying to deflect the blame for failures of their own making onto us," Kagame, who was then vice president and defence minister, told a Washington Post reporter in 1997. "Their failure to act in eastern Zaire (now Congo) directly caused these problems, and when things blew up in their faces they blamed us. These are people who want to be judges and nobody can judge them." Rwanda's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation said the war "was triggered by constant violations of ceasefire by the Congolese Armed Forces in coalition with UN sanctioned militia FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), European mercenaries, ethnic militias (Wazalendo), Burundian armed forces, SMIDRC (the Southern African Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) forces, as well as Monusco (the French meaning of United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo)." To Rwanda, the war in eastern Congo was inevitable. "Is there anybody among us who did not see this coming," Kagame told his East African counterparts during a virtual meeting on January 29, 2025, that Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi skipped. "I, for one, saw it coming to be where we're now. I saw it coming because I didn't see who was taking charge of the process, who was listening, who was trying to provide any guide as to what we should be doing from one thing, from one day to another." For years, Kigali has voiced its displeasure with Kinshasa's approach toward the M23 movement, a Tutsi ethnic group whose presence in eastern Congo served its interest. Last month, Kagame accused East African leaders of not matching their words with action. "We're on one hand assuming or pretending we're coming together over an issue and trying to find a solution, while at the same time each country is pulling in its own direction, different from others," he said. "This is the fact of the matter." Our people He accused Tshisekedi of bringing Burundi and Southern African Development Community (SADC) forces to Congo to fight his war. "SADC was, without any doubt, coming to assist Tshisekedi to fight alongside FDLR, these murderers of our people in this country, to fight against mercenaries and to have Burundi on ethnic political basis,'' Kagame said ''They have displaced people, they have murdered people, they have persecuted on a daily basis for who they're." The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) lack of consistency - at one time accepting M23 as a local rebel group and another time characterising it as a foreign terrorist organisation - is the core difference between Kinshasa and Kigali, which ethnic Tutsis in East Africa look up to as their protector. M23's name was inspired by the unfulfilled peace treaty between the Tutsi rebel group, National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), and the Congolese government on March 23, 2009. That deal called for, among other things, the transformation of the group into a political party and integration of its fighters into the Congolese army. The deal fell apart after Kinshasa failed to honour it, touching off a new rebellion by a Tutsi group, now rebranded as M23. In 2023, the M23 agreed to withdraw its fighters from North Kivu and to sue for peace during talks with Kenya's former President Uhuru Kenyatta, who led an East African Community's process aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Congo. A year earlier, the bloc deployed a force in Congo and successfully facilitated the M23's withdrawal from about 80 percent of the territories under its control. But, Kinshasa, dissatisfied with the force's lack of military action against M23, expelled it and replaced it with another force from SADC that, according to Rwanda, worked with European mercenaries and FDLR, a group made up of the remnants of the militia that sought refugee in eastern region after carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. "There was never any discussion with East African Community about this," a Rwandan government's spokesperson wrote in an email to The Standard. On December 15, 2024, weeks before the eruption of the war, Kagame skipped a scheduled meeting with Tshisekedi in Angola's capital, Luanda, after Kinshasa rejected his request that it hold direct talks with M23. The two leaders were expected to sign an agreement calling for the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from eastern Congo and neutralisation of FDLR. "That summit couldn't take place because the only item on the agenda (that was important to Rwanda) was no more," Rwanda's Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe told Al Jazeera in a recent interview. The cancellation of that meeting deepened the diplomatic row between the two neighbours and may have, retrospectively, turbocharged M23's offensive that led to the capture of Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, on January 26. Since then, the group has been scything through villages and towns in eastern Congo. The group, which now calls itself the Congo River Alliance (or its French acronym, AFC), has recently taken control of Bukavu, which points to the likely hood of the group pushing to other towns of South East DRC. It had already driven DRC forces and their allies from most of North Kivu. Its leader, Corneille Nangaa, said his aim was to "liberate" the country from its current leaders and "give a good life" to Congolese people with "no exclusion, no discrimination." "Our struggle has an objective: Our objective is to go to Kinshasa because we have a vision for the people of DRC," Nangaa told Rwanda's New Times newspaper in an interview. He said his group's vision was "to make Congo a business land." Both the UN and DRC have accused Rwandan forces of playing a role in the Goma takeover, something Rwanda didn't explicitly address. Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye has also accused Rwanda of expansionism and of training Burundian Tutsi fighters to destabilise his country. "People get lost in the blame game - this and that - and forget to address the root causes of the problems we have and find a solution," Kagame said in a press conference on January 3. "And then you have geopolitics being played into all this." The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said nearly 3,000 people have been killed and 2,880 injured in attacks by the M23 and their allies since January 26, 2025, "with heavy weapons used in populated areas, and intense fighting against the armed forces of the DRC and their allies." On February 7, 2025, the World Health Organisation (WHO)said more than 70 (or six per cent) of the health facilities in North Kivu have been affected, with some completely destroyed and others struggling to restart operations." The rapid collapse of DRC forces is likely to weaken its bargaining power in any future negotiations with M23, a group it has been trying to eradicate since its emergence in 2012. "Right from the start, it was evident that we're not looking at a repeat of 2012 in terms of the type of the warfare, in terms of the brutality of the warfare, in terms of the sophistication of the weaponry that was used," said Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, DRC's Foreign Affairs minister, in an interview with Sans Frontieres Associates on February 10. Kayikwamba said "this is not reminiscent of 2012 (when M23 captured Goma), but this is reminiscent of Rwanda and its tactics in eastern DRC in the late '90s." "We are looking at IDP camps being forcefully disbanded, we're looking at people being disappeared. We're looking at thousands of people being killed in a span of a few days," she said, claiming that Kagame was being "emboldened by impunity" of ruling Rwanda for more than 30 years. Rwanda's alleged involvement in DRC echoes the 1997 invasion to overthrow Mobutu and installation of Laurent Kabila as his replacement. That war started from eastern Congo. Then, as now, Rwandan forces and their allies swept through large swathes of the vast country without much resistance. For its part, Rwanda has accused Kinshasa of collaborating with FDLR and of persecuting ethnic Tutsis, using regional armies and mercenaries. "Three fundamental issues must be addressed: First, the FDLR must be neutralised as a threat. Second, Congolese Tutsi communities must be protected from persecution. Third, refugees must be able to return home safely," said Rwanda's government in a statement to The Standard. The DRC has since the mid 1900s been a geopolitical plaything for foreign countries, with some as far as Eritrea and South Africa at one time meddling in its affairs. An estimated 5.4 million people died in DRC as a result of what is called the African World War between 1998-2003 in which nine African countries took part. The International Rescue Committee said "in terms of fatalities" the DRC war and its aftermath surpassed any other since World War II. The mineral-rich eastern Congo, as most of DRC's regions, has been a scene of suffering for its inhabitants and a sphere of influence for international companies and nations trying to loot its resources. More than a dozen countries, including Burundi, Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania, as well as European mercenaries, operate in eastern Congo. As of October 2024, the UN had 10,183 soldiers and 1,324 police forces. That force was as powerless and inept as it was in 2012 when the M23 first captured Goma. More than 100 armed groups operate in the country due to its lawlessness and the almost nonexistent infrastructure. Rwanda's government told The Standard that it's ready to "work with all parties who are committed to finding a lasting solution to the instability in the region." It also welcomed the recent joint communique by leaders of East African Community and SADC that called for the "cessation of hostilities and an immediate ceasefire" and peaceful resolution of the conflict through the Luanda/Nairobi process." The leaders of the two blocs "emphasised that political and diplomatic engagement is the most sustainable solution to the conflict in eastern DRC" and directed their chiefs of defence forces to meet within five days and provide a technical direction on how, among other issues, hostilities could be ended and immediate ceasefire could be realised. They also called for the "neutralization of FDLR," a long-held demand of Rwanda, which was asked to disengage its forces from Congo as agreed in the Luanda process. Hubert Kabasu Babu, a Congolese writer and analyst of African politics, said Tshisekedi's refusal to talk to M23 to address its grievances and to deal with the issue of FDRL that threatens Rwanda was "incomprehensible" that only exacerbated the crisis. He said DRC is suffering from "state degradation" that was worsened by Tshisekedi's "predatory and oppressive authoritarian drift." The International Crisis Group urged European Union and its member states to press Rwanda "to accept a deal to withdraw the M23 from Goma, with its troops and proxies desisting from further advances." If Rwanda maintains its aggressive military posture, the group said, "Brussels should withdraw its support for the Rwandan army mission (in Mozambique) to signal its growing concern about the escalating conflict in North Kivu." It said two issues are vitally important for relations between Kinshasa and Brussels. "First, tensions are mounting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and the opposition over his plans to change the constitution and potentially remove the current two-term limit so as to extend his stay in office," said the group. "Secondly, while Europe is interested in enhancing its access to the DRC's minerals, these remain a source of corruption and illicit financial flows that are hurting the country's development." President Tshisekedi has repeatedly threatened to attack Rwanda and has even entertained ousting the regime there, which, in essence, could mean a new genocide in Rwanda as any potential seizure of Rwanda by Hutus is likely to trigger another bloodbath.

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Why conflict in eastern DRC is unlikely to end soon as history repeats itself

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