The Forgotten War in Congo

Last year, the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo turned 30. It is a grim milestone, and one that received almost no global attention. The silence isn’t a surprise. Since its inception, the war in Congo has excelled at evading international recognition. Few people noticed when the M23 Movement, the region’s biggest militia, rounded up and executed 171 civilians, in November 2022. The world was quiet when Doctors Without Borders declared that they had treated 25,000 survivors of sexual violence in Congo last year. Almost no one outside Africa remembers that, in June, an armed Islamist group massacred 41 people in Congo’s northeast. Today, more than seven million Congolese are displaced, more than at any other time in history, and yet the war still barely features in global media. The New York Times has written 54 articles about Congo in the past 12 months, including ones on the environment and the country’s recent election. It has, by contrast, run 2,969 articles on Ukraine.

This neglect has always been disheartening. The war in eastern Congo is among the world’s most devastating, and it deserves widespread attention. But the disregard is particularly inexcusable right now, when the conflict is escalating. In the past year, the M23 has increased its territory by 70 percent. It has surrounded Goma, one of eastern Congo’s largest cities, and taken control of key roads. The result has been a worrying deterioration in communal relations, as people mobilize along ethnic lines. Opportunistic politicians have piled on, further inflaming the region.

The war in Congo is overlooked, in part, because it is highly complex. There are more than 100 different armed actors fighting in the east, most of which are pursuing separate ends. The M23 itself, however, is easier to grapple with. The group is largely funded and trained by Rwanda, which sees the organization as a way to project power and gain access to Congo’s resources. Consequently, Congolese officials have responded to the M23’s success with escalating rhetorical attacks on Rwanda’s government and by backing an array of local militias, the wazalendo (or “patriots”). Congolese officials have also invited Burundi, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania to send troops into its eastern region for assistance. The conflict, in other words, is transforming from a low-grade internal clash to an expanding interstate and communal war.

Thankfully, the M23 crisis has a fairly straightforward solution. A third of Rwanda’s budget is supplied through aid and loans, much of it from the West, making Kigali highly vulnerable to U.S. and European pressure. That means if the United States and Europe threaten to reduce their support, the Rwandan government will likely have to rein in its partner. In 2013, for example, Rwanda cut off the M23 after western countries withheld hundreds of millions of dollars. The militia subsequently fell apart.

Today, however, Western governments appear reluctant to repeat this tactic. It is easy to see why: Kigali has become an important geopolitical partner. Rwanda provides the United States and Europe with competent military forces in central Africa that can counterbalance Russian mercenaries. It also helps guard their investments in the region. But the humanitarian costs of Rwanda’s behavior are not worth these benefits, and the country is too dependent on aid to switch allegiances in response to Western pressure. The United States and Europe, therefore, should use their leverage. If the M23 loses Rwandan funding, it will again collapse, opening the door to a broader peace process.

A SORDID PAST

The conflict in Congo has a long and messy history. As the long-standing dictator Mobutu Sese Seko faced an upswell of democratic ferment in the early 1990s, he and local politicians began fomenting ethnic divisions to cling onto power. In 1993, bloody feuds over identity and land broke out in eastern Congo, which were further aggravated by an influx of refugees and soldiers following the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Two years later, Rwanda and other countries invaded Congo to dismantle certain armed groups and to end Mobutu’s 32-year rule. But the government they installed quickly fell out with its backers—Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda—prompting all three states to invade in 1998.

Major combat came to an end in 2003, thanks to overwhelming international pressure. The result was a new Congolese constitution and a fledgling democracy. The conflict, however, raged on in Congo’s east, and Rwanda was still at its center. The Rwandan government backed various armed groups, including the National Congress for the Defense of the People, between 2006 and 2009, and a previous iteration of the M23, from 2012 to 2013. Rwanda’s interference elicited countermobilizations within the region, as different actors sought to protect their communities and extract resources.

In an attempt to solve the conflict, Congolese leader Félix Tshisekedi struck a series of deals with Rwanda’s government after becoming president in 2019. He allowed the Rwandan army to pursue rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group that includes some of the people who perpetrated the state’s 1994 genocide. He signed business deals with companies close to Rwanda’s ruling party. And he made a point of forging personal ties with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

For a time, the strategy worked. Congo stabilized relations with its eastern neighbor, and the fighting died down. But in mid-2021, this détente fell apart. With Kinshasa’s permission, Uganda began road-building projects in Congo close to the Rwandan border, infuriating Kagame, who saw the development as encroaching on his turf. Several months later, Uganda sent thousands of troops to Congo after a terrorist attack in downtown Kampala; both the Ugandan and Congolese governments blamed it on a militia based in northeastern Congo. In response, Kagame again threw Rwanda’s weight behind the M23, which then made a ferocious comeback. The militia began overrunning disorganized Congolese forces across much of the country’s east, from Lake Edward to South Kivu. By the summer of 2024, it had taken thousands of square miles of densely populated, verdant highlands.

Kagame has denied that Rwanda is behind the M23. But virtually every regional observer sees the country’s hand. According to a group of UN experts, the Rwandan government has deployed between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to Congo to support the M23 and has reinforced the group with drones, surface-to-air missiles, and antitank weapons. In response, Congolese officials have hired two Congolese paramilitary groups and recruited troops from nearby countries to fight back. Tshisekedi has even threatened to expand the war into Rwandan territory. During his reelection campaign, last year, Tshisekedi compared Kagame to Adolf Hitler and said he would meet the same end. In another speech, Tshisekedi threatened to march on Kigali. In June 2024, Kagame dared him to follow through. “We are ready to fight,” he said, in an interview with France 24.

PERVERSE INCENTIVES

The Congolese military is in no position to depose Kagame. Tshisekedi’s rhetoric, however destabilizing, is not primarily aimed at Rwanda’s leader. Instead, it is targeted at his voters. The Congolese people have endured repeated invasions by foreign forces over the past 30 years, especially from Rwanda. Railing against Kigali is a sure-fire way to earn domestic backing. Such declarations also distract Congolese from the failings of their own security services. Congo’s defense and policing budgets doubled to $795 million last year, and yet the country remains unable to stem the M23’s advance.

For Tshisekedi, fighting against Rwanda also serves a personal purpose: it protects him from being overthrown. Congolese leaders have long seen their own security forces as their greatest threat, and understandably so. Mobutu took power in a military coup d’état and then spent three decades fending off coup plots against him. The man who eventually ousted Mobutu, the rebel leader Laurent Kabila, was assassinated by his own bodyguard. Kabila’s successor, his son Joseph, managed to avoid the same fate but still faced multiple coup attempts. Given this history, Tshisekedi is happy to stash Congo’s troops around Goma—a thousand miles from the capital. For the same reason, he has also tolerated high levels of corruption within the armed forces.

It is more difficult to parse Rwanda’s motives. In explaining why Rwanda might interfere in Congo—while denying that it does—Kagame claimed that he needs to stop the FDLR and protect Congo’s ethnic Tutsis. But neither of those justifications holds up. The FDLR are a spent force, in large part thanks to previous Rwandan operations. It is true that Congolese Tutsis are subjected to hate speech and discrimination, but Kagame’s interventions have not helped their cause. Quite the contrary: violence against these groups rose after the M23 reemerged, as it has every time Rwandan-backed forces meddle in Congo. Rwanda’s many abuses are imprinted in the Congolese population’s memory and have created fertile ground for ethnic demagogues.

Congo is, almost literally, a gold mine for Rwandan businesses.

The real reason for Rwanda’s intervention is more complex. Given the centrality of the genocide in Rwandan memory and politics, the FDLR remains a symbolic threat that helps fuel a bunker mindset among security officials. As one Rwandan official put it to me, “What would the United States do if al Qaeda had a cell operating in Tijuana?” For Rwanda, eastern Congo is also an important arena for military competition with Burundi and Uganda.

But Rwanda is also driven by more debased motives. Congo is, almost literally, a gold mine for Rwandan businesses. Since 2016, Rwanda’s largest export has been gold, much of which is smuggled in from Congo. Rwanda also earns sizable sums exporting tin, tantalum, and niobium—much of it also mined in Congo, according to a UN expert group and Global Witness. Such profiteering is made possible by the M23, which keeps Congo’s state too weak to stop the theft.

Together, these dynamics make the Congolese-Rwandan conflict extremely hard to solve. One actor benefits politically from fighting. The other benefits materially. Such parties are unlikely to make peace on their own. If anything, their incentive is to ratchet up the conflict.

PULLING LEVERS

Thankfully, if the past is precedent, there is a way to break the cycle of escalation in eastern Congo. Between 2012 and 2013, the M23 came to control a similar amount of Congolese territory as it does today, including the city of Goma. In response, Western donors suspended $240 million in aid to Rwanda’s government. The economic effect was harsh: in 2013, Rwanda’s GDP was two percent lower than its central bank had projected. Kigali then cut off support to the militia, which quickly fell apart.

Today, however, Western donors seem to be taking the opposite approach. In 2022, as the M23 was seizing more land, the EU committed $22 million to support a Rwandan military deployment to Mozambique. The following year, European donors announced they were providing the country with $320 million in climate financing and $960 million in other investments. The United States has been much more critical of Kagame’s government; in October, it curtailed its modest training program for Rwandan military forces. Still, Washington remains the state’s largest donor.

In a sense, it is remarkable that a small country—Rwanda is home to fewer than 14 million people—can maintain such high levels of Western support. But Rwanda has invested heavily in promoting its reputation in wealthy countries. Kigali has spent millions on advertising, including with the leading European soccer teams Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain, and Bayern Munich, whose jerseys are emblazoned with the words “Visit Rwanda.” The country is at the heart of the National Basketball Association’s expansion into Africa. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and the businessmen Bill Gates and Howard Buffett have all invested in Rwanda through their foundations. They formed personal ties to Kagame. Last year, at an annual ceremony in Volcanoes National Park, celebrities Idris Elba and Kevin Hart presented baby gorillas with their names while standing next to the Rwandan president. Several months later, Kagame personally welcomed the U.S. rap superstar Kendrick Lamar to Kigali, where the musician played a sold-out show.

Rwanda has also avoided opprobrium by using its small but well-trained military to aid the West. The Rwandan military has deployed to bilateral and multilateral missions in the Central African Republic, where they provide a counterweight to Russian security contractors. They are also at work in Mozambique, where they help protect a $20 billion gas investment by TotalEnergies, a large French company. And Rwanda sends 5,900 troops to the UN’s peacekeeping forces, making it the largest African contributor. (This final fact helps explain why the UN secretary-general has been reluctant to call out Rwanda for its meddling.)

Rwanda has invested heavily in promoting its reputation.

But none of these investments justifies looking away as Rwanda destabilizes its neighbor. Natural-gas projects are not more valuable than the lives of millions of displaced people. Neither are comparatively small peacekeeping missions. Although the West may make some money investing in Rwanda, it loses cash cleaning up Kigali’s messes. The same donors funding large parts of Rwanda’s budget are also funding $1 billion in humanitarian relief for Congo. And while the Rwandan army fights in UN peacekeeping missions, it simultaneously fights against UN forces in Congo.

U.S. and European diplomats, then, need to increase pressure on Kagame and his government. This could take many forms, including sanctioning individuals (as the United States has already done with one Rwandan general) and suspending certain types of assistance. Western governments could also issue travel advisories and cut off military aid. These states, along with opinion leaders, might push the private sector to reject “Brand Rwanda”—pointing out that there are reputational hazards to being associated with a country engaged in a brutal war of aggression against its neighbor. In response to such measures, the Rwandan government would certainly complain. But it has no clear alternative source of funding, and so eventually it would have little choice but to again abandon the M23.

Doing so, of course, would not put a stop to all the fighting in eastern Congo. The war there rides on more than the M23 alone; many Congolese armed groups, generals, and politicians are also invested in the conflict. But solving the M23 crisis will free up significant bandwidth. Once it is no longer consumed with battling Rwandan proxies, Congo’s government and people can grapple with the long-term, structural dimensions of the war. They can begin devising a demobilization program for various militants, creating an economic-development plan that offers rural residents opportunities that don’t involve becoming soldiers, and working out transitional justice initiatives that provide dignity and reconciliation. The government also needs to punish predatory elites who have done little to instill accountability and discipline in the security services. As even Tshisekedi acknowledged, “There are many rackets that undermine our security forces. There is the mafia—this law of omerta, this law of silence. That’s what we have to tackle.”

Congo has what it takes to sort out these challenges. Despite its dysfunctional government, the country is pluralistic and has a strong, if raucous, civil society. Its democratic spirit runs deep. But it needs outside help with some of the obstacles standing in its path—which means it needs the West to rein in Rwanda.