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CWA # 1596, 18 February 2025
NIAS Africa Studies
Conflict in the DRC: Possible Expansion and Failed Peace Efforts

  Ayan Datta

The M23 rebels’ offensive in January marked the latest phase of a three-decade-long crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) restive North Kivu region. The rebel offensive was a continuation of the M23’s ongoing campaign since December 2024, with its fighters aiming to expand their area of operations by capturing the two strategically valuable district capitals of Lubero and Masisi in the DRC’s North Kivu province. While being halted near Lubero by the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC), the M23’s successful capture of Masisi presented the risk of an expanding conflict in eastern DRC. With Masisi’s location along the RN3 highway connecting the district capital with the country’s interior, control over the town gave the rebels both offensive and defensive advantages. The M23 is now positioned to expand its area of operations and take the fight into the DRC’s heartland. Additionally, by controlling the entry point into Masisi, the armed group now controls a key FARDC resupply route, making it difficult for the latter to replenish its undisciplined and corrupt army. The M23 subsequently withstood a FARDC offensive, consolidating its control over the thriving conflict mineral trade in the region that helped fund its war effort. 

The rebel campaign coincided with the collapse of the latest Angola-backed peace process between DRC and its eastern neighbour, Rwanda, which Kinshasa claims to be supporting the M23. Beginning in 2022, the new Luanda process held the promise of a long-elusive peace for the DRC, even leading to a ceasefire in August 2023. Furthermore, both sides reached a consensus on the need to counter Hutu supremacist groups, especially the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). The November 2024 Key Agreement went another step forward, establishing a ceasefire monitoring committee. A framework to address mutual security concerns appeared to be emerging.

However, a summit formalising the peace had to be called off with the potential for direct negotiations between Kinshasa and the M23 collapsed. The differences between Rwanda and the DRC proved intractable. Kigali insisted that the M23 was a fundamentally domestic problem of the DRC, born out of Kinshasa's failure to integrate the rebels into the FARDC and persistent discrimination against Congolese Tutsis who dominate the rebel group. Without directly taking sides, Kagame tacitly identified himself with the rebels by framing them as a necessary counter against the Hutu armed group FDLR. Accordingly, Kagame urged Congolese officials to hold direct negotiations with the M23 and focus on the FDLR threat, even offering his assistance against the latter. The DRC’s representatives, however, labelled the M23 group as a Rwanda-backed “terrorist organisation” with which there could be no negotiations and cited Rwanda’s extensive military presence in the DRC’s eastern frontier. Most importantly, Kinshasa accused Kigali of stealing its resources, especially critical minerals, from the Kivu provinces, with Rwanda’s illegal revenues of their sales allegedly amounting to USD one billion per year. Alarmed by these activities, DRC representatives accused Kagame of trying to balkanise their country and seize the mineral-rich Kivu provinces. 

Why did the peace efforts fail?
First, Kagame’s support for the M23. With its beginnings in eastern DR Congo’s disaffected Tutsi communities, the M23 initially served a noble purpose, helping Kigali eliminate participants of the Rwandan Genocide who fled to neighbouring DRC when Kagame’s Tutsi-led Rwandan People’s Front (RPF) assumed power. However, it increasingly became a Rwandan proxy, helping further Kigali’s destabilisation agenda in the DRC. Kinshasa’s claims of the M23’s foreign backing and resource extraction operations aligned with the 2022 UN Expert Group Report on the Congo, which provided a scathing expose of Kagame’s involvement with the rebel group. The UN discovered a brigade-sized presence (3000-4000 troops) of Rwandan troops deployed alongside the rebels, uncovering Kagame’s plans to keep DRC unstable through a campaign of subconventional warfare against the latter’s poorly integrated peripheral regions. Although the UN report did not substantiate Kinshasa’s USD  one billion figure, it did find Rwanda guilty of illegally exporting critical minerals, including coltan, gold, and tin ores, from its M23-controlled mines and transport routes in Kivu. In any case, the actual value of illegal exports can be estimated to be substantially large, given the UN’s estimates that Rwanda’s illicit earnings from coltan alone amount to around USD 800,000. With critical minerals becoming the cornerstone of advanced technology in recent years, Kigali’s resource theft operations indicated an unstated policy on Kagame’s part. The Rwandan leader appears to be supplementing his country’s service-led economy and intensifying Rwanda’s linkages with the West by developing an underground export industry of these minerals. While bolstering Rwanda’s regional position, Kagame’s geopolitical and economic aspirations have put the country at odds with the DRC’s leadership, which seeks sovereignty over its resources.

Second, DRC’s structural weaknesses. The DRC’s modern woes can be traced to structural weaknesses originating in the country’s colonial roots and postcolonial mismanagement, which makes it vulnerable to internal strife and outside interference. Unlike certain postcolonial African states — for example, Ghana, South Africa, and Algeria — the DRC’s (formerly “Belgian Congo”) independence movement never received countrywide support and was rooted primarily in the Belgian-controlled urban centres, including the capital Leopoldville (today Kinshasa) and Stanleyville (now called Kisangani). Its first native Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, won a mere 33 out of the 137 seats in the country’s inaugural parliament. This political divide was exacerbated by Belgium’s “divide and rule” politics, leading to the formation of over 130 rebel movements since the country’s independence in 1960, initially in southern DRC’s Katanga and later in its eastern provinces. To make matters worse, the Belgian colonisers did not cultivate a native comprador class who could exercise bureaucratic and technical expertise in its absence. The resulting lack of talented professionals left the Kinshasa government incapable of dealing with complex governance issues. Even the Congolese army, one of the only sites of high-quality native human capital, had no fully commissioned native officer until 1960, leading to poor border control after independence. Mobutu Sese-Seko’s military rule (1965-1997) worsened the situation. With political power in hand, the FARDC became increasingly complacent and corrupt, rendering it ineffective against the rebels’ sub-conventional attacks and their collaboration with outside actors. Combined with the country’s resource-rich character, the persistent disunity and porous frontiers transformed Congo into one of the world’s most “transnationalised” states, with foreign actors routinely collaborating with local ethno-political players to secure their interests with the government powerless to stop them. 

Third, the West’s role. With its structural weaknesses and vulnerability to rebels and outside actors alike, the Kinshasa-based Congolese state (no matter who rules it) is caught in a legitimacy crisis with no end in sight. Rwanda has taken advantage of its vulnerabilities and is de-facto annexing its resource-rich Kivu province. However, past experience shows that international pressure can deter Kigali. In 2012, western countries led by the US temporarily halted aid to Rwanda, 40 per cent of whose budget comes from foreign assistance, for supporting M23. The aid embargo proved effective. Kigali drew down its support for the group, leading to an immediate drop in attacks. This time, however, Washington has not come to Kinshasa’s rescue. Despite the US suspending military aid to Rwanda in 2022-2023, once again, for backing the rebel group, M23 attacks continued. The cut involved a mere USD 200,000 — a relatively minor and purely symbolic. Between 2012 and 2024, Kagame made Rwanda a lynchpin for the US efforts to combat Jihadism and maintain peace on the continent by sending troops and peacekeepers to ISIS-ridden Mozambique, instability-ridden South Sudan, and civil-war-ridden Sudan. These deployments made Rwanda the world’s fourth largest contributor of peacekeepers and an ally in Washington’s fight against Jihadism in the continent, lowering the likelihood of Kigali suffering future aid cuts. 

In a twist of geopolitical irony, Rwanda, a source of instability for its immediate neighbourhood, has convinced Washington that it is indispensable to peace in Africa. The results, however, will be serious for Kinshasa. With Washington unwilling to restrain Rwanda, the conflict in eastern DRC will continue during the foreseeable future. Rwanda’s aid to M23 will continue to draw Kinshasa’s scarce resources away from its development priorities.

About the author
Ayan Datta is a postgraduate student at the University of Hyderabad.

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