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Is tiny Rwanda the Svengali of chaos and violence in central Africa?
February 28, 2025
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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could be fabulously wealthy. The estimated value of its vast untapped mineral wealth is estimated to be US$24 trillion. However, DRC is one of the world’s five poorest countries.
DRC’s eastern region, bordering Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania, is particularly endowed. Some of the important minerals are tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold, cobalt and copper. All are crucial for green energy.
DRC’s eastern region is not just poor – it has also known no peace for three decades. The Rwandan genocide destabilised the region and set the scene for the First Congo War. This was fought between 1996 and 1997 with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi collaborating to topple Mobutu Sese Seko. Thousands died. The Second Congo War (1998-2003) claimed about 3 million lives with many dying from hunger and disease.
A history of instability
DRC is about the size of Western Europe and is inhabited by about 250 tribes. It was bound to be a challenge to forge the country into one cohesive whole. In its fledgling years, two eastern mining provinces tried to secede. Tamping down the separatist factions took no small amount of bloodletting becoming yet another battlefield for the Cold War. Getting his timing right and helped by the US, so claims Michela Wrong in her biography, Mobutu brought all of Zaire (Mobutu’s Congo) under his kleptocratic grasp.
Mobutu’s hold of the east was tenuous so he ensured he had the ultimate electricity power button in Kinshasa. Then he lined the pockets of his rivals in the region, allowing them to take as much as they could while he kept the lion’s share.
Then the Rwandan genocide took place. Fearing reprisals, about two million Hutu refugees streamed into Zaire. Tutsi-led Rwanda then made incursions into Eastern Congo to neutralize the genocidal paramilitary group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Rwanda believed – and still believes – that FDLR numbers amongst its ranks the organizers and executors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Thus, the scene was set for the First Congo War.
Since then, Rwandan troops have probably never left Eastern Congo.
Consider the looting of epic proportions that Mobutu and his cronies, and the Kabilas after him, carried out. Then add that the Congolese army has been engaged in fighting for nearly 30 years. The result is an ill-equipped, poorly-trained, low-morale army. It cannot protect Eastern Congo.
Enter the militias. An estimated 120 armed groups operate in the Eastern region of Congo. In vying for control of various mines, these groups terrorise civilians. Over the decades peacekeepers from the UN, the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) have been deployed there. But they have failed to stop the militias.
The March 23 Movement, Rwanda and the DRC
One of the most powerful militias is the Mouvement du 23 mars, the March 23 Movement, or simply M23. On January 27, M23 captured Goma, the most important city of Eastern Congo and home to about a million people. Not long after, it captured the second most important city, Bukavu. The DRC army has scuttled away. M23 has announced that it is conscripting the former DRC soldiers. There is talk of marching to the capital, Kinshasa.
How did M23 come to be? On 23 March 2009, a Tutsi-led rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) signed a peace agreement with DRC’s government. But in 2012 former rebels claimed that the agreement had been broken and set up M23. Its aims are largely to protect the Congolese Tutsis from persecution from government and militia.
Over the years, UN officials have accused Rwanda of organizing, funding and even commanding M23 – which Kigali consistently denied. But there is evidence that Rwanda has about 4,000 of its own troops in DRC. Recently, Rwandan President Paul Kagame changed tack and said, “I don’t know”. Now, he has declared that Rwanda has a ‘right to interfere’ in DRC to protect itself from Hutu enemies.
On the surface, all this is surprising. A small rebel militia and a small country are defeating a huge country like DRC. DRC is 88 times bigger than Rwanda and its population is more than seven times as large. But Rwanda has a well-oiled military machine. It is currently the third largest police and troop contributor to UN peacekeeping operations. The loss of Goma and Bukavu was to be expected.
Rwanda’s expansionist agenda
In 2022, months after M23 resurgence, the African Union (AU) invited Angola’s president to mediate the conflict. A cease-fire brokered in July 2024 quickly broke down. Rwanda demanded that DRC negotiate directly with M23 and DRC flatly refused. For Felix Tshisekedi, DRC’s president, M23 is a puppet of Rwanda. He wants to deal with Rwanda directly.
Kagame has been termed the ‘Putin of Africa’. The parallel is striking; Putin armed militias in the Donbas region in the name of protecting Russians from persecution and denied that Russian troops were helping local militias. M23 claims that it wants to protect the Congolese Tutsi.
Last October a former Rwandan general, James Kabarebe, said that North and South Kivu provinces in Eastern Congo were originally part of Rwanda and ended up as part of Congo by an historical accident during the colonial period. It is possible that Rwanda wants the eastern region for itself. If so, the danger of another full-blown war in the Great Lakes region looms too large.
Will sanctions do the trick?
Western powers are aware of the problem. Last week, Kabarebe was sanctioned by the US over his alleged links with M23. The UK has announced that it will halt bilateral aid to Rwanda until it takes resolute steps to ensuring peace. The European parliament has deliberated on suspending its February 2024 minerals supply agreement with Rwanda – although it has decided that this would be “self-defeating”.
According to the agreement, Rwanda will supply Europe with minerals crucial to the green transition in exchange for €900 million for improving Rwanda’s mining supply chain and infrastructure. If it were suspended, Rwanda may quickly get funding from someone who does not fret about minerals being stained by blood. Europe might fall behind in the technological race.
DRC President Tshisekedi remarked that the agreement was “a provocation in very bad taste”. He claims that Rwanda is looting DRC – and he could be right. Since M23 appeared on the scene in 2021, Rwandan exports have increased significantly.
In a bold move this week, Tshisekedi offered to give the US and the EU greater access to its minerals in exchange for peace. He asked them to buy minerals directly from DRC rather than getting them from Rwanda. “Setting the record straight: President Tshisekedi invites the USA, whose companies source strategic raw materials from Rwanda, materials that are looted from the DRC and smuggled to Rwanda while our populations are massacred, to purchase them directly from us the rightful owners,” said a spokesperson.
At the moment, the West’s ability to sanction Rwanda remains the most viable option for DRC. What is clear, however, is that after decades of instability, war, looting and ethnic tensions there can be no quick fixes.
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Francis Nyatundo is a young Kenyan, a graduate quantity surveyor. After work he moonlights as an intellectual. He enjoys philosophy, theology and classic literature.
Image: Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame
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Igor Mbayo Mbayo commented 2025-02-28 22:29:52 +1100There’s a very important factor that we forget in the conflict in the DRC: the poor governance of the often non-elected authorities, and consequently corruption, combined with a very poor population.
The authorities are holed up in the capital, ignoring the needs of the population. The news appearing every day concerns the misappropriation of public funds. In addition, the authorities and their families, starting with the President, are becoming inexplicably wealthy. This climate is conducive to the proliferation of instrumentalized armed groups.
Internal factors are of great importance. For example, corruption is preventing the formation of a republican army, with motivated soldiers ready to fight, given that their salaries are pitiful, while members of parliament earn 300 times more. -
Paul Bunyan commented 2025-02-28 18:17:50 +1100Rwanda knows the horrors of genocide first-hand. What they may not know is that hunger, privation and poverty led to the slaughter in the first place.
http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2021/07/hunger-both-a-cause-and-a-consequence-of-genocide/
If they want to avoid further cycles, they need to learn to live in harmony with the planet. They need a long-term outlook. -
