A likely explanation for what triggered the escalation lies in Rwanda’s vexed relations with two other neighbors. In mid-2021, Félix Tshisekedi began strengthening ties with Uganda, signing road-building and investment agreements.
Then, on November 16, 2021, a trio of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the centre of Kampala, the Ugandan capital, killing 4 people and injuring 37.
The Ugandan government then deployed several thousand soldiers to the DRC to carry out joint operations against the ADF, which was held responsible for the attack.
This projection of Ugandan military and economic power into the DRC was perceived as a threat by Rwandan security officials.
At the same time, the Burundian government, which also had (and still has) strained relations with Rwanda, deployed its army in the DRC against a Burundian rebel group based on its territory.
Rwanda felt surrounded by hostile forces and reacted by deploying between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to the DRC in support of the M23.
Security and economic motives are difficult to disentangle. Rwanda, like Uganda and Burundi, profits from instability in the DRC. Even before the M23 crisis, it took advantage of the weakness of the state to project its own economic networks into the Congolese hinterland, supporting networks of smugglers who smuggle large quantities of gold, tin and tungsten into Rwanda.
Since 2016, gold smuggled from the DRC has been the main export for each of these three countries – in some years, it has accounted for up to half of their exports.
A similar argument can be made for the persecution of Congolese Tutsis. There is no doubt about it. Yet there was no upsurge in anti-Tutsi sentiment until the reappearance of the M23 in November 2021. Certainly, some 80,000 Congolese Tutsis live in refugee camps in Rwanda, some of them for almost thirty years.
It’s true that anti-Tutsi sentiment is being exploited by Congolese politicians to gain popularity and divert the attention of the Congolese people from their socio-economic failures, but it seems unlikely that this was Rwanda’s main motivation for supporting the M23—in all the meetings between Tshisekedi and Kagame prior to the rebellion’s revival, most recently in mid-2021, there is no public trace of this issue.
Nor do Rwanda’s protests about discrimination affecting Tutsis match the way its government has treated Congolese Tutsi refugees in its own country. For example, in 2018, police opened fire on a crowd of Banyamulenge refugees protesting the reduction of their food rations, killing at least twelve people.
The CNDP and M23 have also repeatedly carried out forced recruitment of Tutsi civilians, including children, in camps in Rwanda, which has been documented in several reports by UN investigators.
Rather, it was in response to the M23 rebellion that persecution against the Tutsi community increased, based on the same conspiracist arguments that Onana seeks to lend credibility to and infuse.
In November 2023, in the border town of Goma, a crowd lynched a Banyamulenge soldier, accusing him of being an M23 fighter because of his physical features.
According to the NGO Human Rights Watch, several Tutsis were killed in similar circumstances, while dozens of people were arrested because of their ethnic identity.
Rwanda was able to point the finger at these cases of hatred and extremism, arguing that these were the real sources of the conflict.
Finally, some influential Rwandan figures have justified intervention in the DRC by evoking a “Greater Rwanda” and pointing out that Rwanda has historical claims to parts of eastern DRC dating back to the nineteenth century.
There’s a famous precedent: as Rwanda launched its first invasion of Zaire in 1996, then-President Pasteur Bizimungu showed diplomats a map of Rwanda 50 per cent larger than its current borders, extending into the DRC.
Similar maps were shown at itorero, civic education programs held throughout the country during which participants were informed about Rwanda’s supposed pre-colonial golden age.
Kagame took up this theme in a speech in 2023, declaring: “As far as the M23 is concerned (…), you must know that the borders drawn during the colonial period cut our countries into pieces. A large part of Rwanda was left out, as well as eastern Congo and south-western Uganda. (This is the root of the problem.)
Even if the borders of the past justified military aggression (they don’t), Rwanda’s claim to eastern DRC is tenuous.
As historians have pointed out, Rwandan armies only briefly occupied small parts of this region in the nineteenth century, without ever fully controlling them. And while some local chiefs paid tribute to them, they were also often fiercely independent.
Unfortunately, these historical accounts also reinforce the idea in the Congo that the Rwandan government wants to establish a “Tutsiland,” a fantasy peddled by Charles Onana and others.
Despite his many inaccuracies, Onana has touched a nerve. Tired of endless wars and international interventions, many Congolese—judging by the hundreds of thousands who have seen his YouTube videos—seem to agree with this inverted rewriting of the causes of war.
If the Congo is in this disastrous situation after twenty-eight years of conflict, it’s because someone wanted it that way, they tell themselves. This logic of “cui bono” (“who benefits from the crime?”) is seductive.
The Congo’s suffering has been so colossal that it’s reassuring to think it’s the result of a global conspiracy.
It’s true that when it comes to Rwanda and its repeated interventions, the international community has been complicit. Rwanda is still largely dependent on aid.
According to the World Bank, the country received 1.25 billion dollars in official development assistance in 2021, representing 74 per cent of central government expenditure.
Its “Visit Rwanda” logo appears on the shirts of Arsenal (England), Bayern Munich (Germany) and Paris Saint-Germain (France) soccer clubs. In the M23 offensive in 2022, world leaders attended the biennial Commonwealth Summit hosted by Kagame.
In 2023, several celebrities—including comedian Kevin Hart, actor Idris Elba, and British Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell—were guests of honor at the government’s gorilla naming ceremony.
While the U.S., a traditional ally of Kagame’s Rwanda, is increasingly critical of his intervention in the DRC, many other countries continue to subscribe to the Rwandan thesis that he is merely protecting himself and the Tutsi community, or at least looking the other way.
But it’s hard to find evidence of the wider conspiracies Onana is trying to sell. Putting aside allegations of Tutsi empires, there’s the more credible question of corporate profiteering.
There’s no doubt that many have profited from the Congolese wars, from arms dealers to cynical politicians. But what about the multinationals?
When the Mining Code was drafted in 2002, with the support of the World Bank, its rationale was that privatization of mineral resources—all of which were under state control under Mobutu—would lead to greater prosperity.
To this end, the code provided generous tax incentives for foreigners to invest in a risky environment.
Over the following decade, companies ended up snapping up the most lucrative mining concessions, sometimes under dubious circumstances, with hundreds of millions of dollars disappearing into the pockets of middlemen and crooked politicians.
The Congolese treasury has also benefited: its national budget in 2024 is at least twenty times higher than it was in 2002.
And yet, the country remains a place where raw materials are extracted, where added value is low or non-existent, and where large amounts of capital flow to offshore tax havens.
However, these injustices are linked to the broader organization of the global economy and are not inherent to the DRC.
Mining is capital-intensive and requires political stability and quality infrastructure. So it’s hard to see how the M23 war could have favored international capital.
Moreover, this capital is not intrinsically linked to U.S. politics: the DRC’s largest mining company today is Glencore PLC, headquartered in Switzerland and listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges.
Most of the other major mining companies are Chinese; finally, the most important mining entrepreneur in the post-conflict period is without doubt Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire who was sanctioned by the U.S. government for corruption in the DRC.
What’s more, almost all of these large-scale mining operations are located far from conflict zones.
There, supply chains link the miners to traders and international buying groups based all over the world, who ship the ore abroad for refining.
Gold, by far the most valuable product today, is shipped to the United Arab Emirates via Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda. Tin is processed in East and Southeast Asia.
Many international players are thus profiting from the chaos in the DRC, even though much of the profiting is linked to the systemic injustices of the global economy, rather than a conspiracy to worsen the conflict there.
The apathy and exploitative nature of the international system, not criminal intent, are probably the main culprits.
This wait-and-see attitude brings us back to comparisons between the DRC and other major cataclysms of our time: Gaza, Ukraine, and Syria. The DRC crisis occupies a marginal media and diplomatic position compared to these conflicts.
This indifference has allowed personal relationships – such as those between certain members of U.S., French, and British institutions and Rwanda’s ruling elite – and the guilt linked to inaction during the 1994 genocide to influence political decisions.
The narratives of some of Kinshasa’s political elites, who sell a single story—that Rwanda is irredentist and imperial, and seeks to profit by waging war on its neighbor—have several harmful consequences: not only can this line of reasoning inflame ethnic stereotypes and persecution, but it also allows the Congolese government to absolve itself of its own failings and transgressions.
In Kigali, a contradictory but in many ways complementary scenario has also taken hold. Rwanda is portrayed as the misunderstood, hapless victim of crusading Western human rights activists and genocidal Congolese officials. Rwanda officially denies its involvement in the DRC, but claims that if it were, it would be as part of a noble struggle to defend itself and protect Congolese Tutsis.
These two mutually reinforcing visions fuel the violence and prevent solutions to the ongoing crisis.
There are also interests at stake: the elites of the DRC and Rwanda profit enormously from the conflict, as do the multinationals.
It’s also true that the governments of Europe and the United States have played an important role in exacerbating the crisis.
Yet, to resolve these conflicts, there is the need to look at how these discourses are told and legitimised, and why they appeal to political actors as well as to a wider public in the region and beyond.
As long as Kinshasa can blame “evil Rwanda” and Kigali can point the finger at xenophobic militias in the DRC, it will be difficult to find a lasting solution to the conflict. Concluded. (Reuters/NANFeatures)
