The M23 crisis

The crisis in eastern DRC is often portrayed as being driven by the M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, who are fighting against the Congolese government. But the reality is far more complex. Can you unpack the motives, alliances, and dynamics driving the current violence?

M23 is indeed one of the most important and powerful belligerents in the current conflict, and it operates in alliance with Rwanda’s national army, the RDF. Since M23’s return to the battlefield in November 2021, they have been fighting the Congolese army (Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or FARDC). The FARDC has crafted an alliance to counter M23, comprising various Congolese armed groups currently known as “Wazalendo” (Swahili for patriots), a Rwandan armed group called FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) with roots in the genocidal forces of 1994, thousands of Burundian soldiers and private security contractors. The latter fled or surrendered as M23 entered Goma. UN peacekeepers from MONUSCO (the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and a SADC (Southern African Development Community) regional force manned by South Africa and other countries also support the Congolese army – but both have suffered losses and supply shortages during M23’s took Goma.

In a nutshell, M23 has engaged in an alliance with one robust, highly organised and well-equipped national army. The FARDC, in turn, is an army with structural problems due to overlapping chains of command and logistic weakness and relies on a selection of allies with dubious levels of commitment (mercenaries), variable levels of training and cohesion (Wazalendo), and unclear mandates (UN and SADC forces).

M23’s motives are not always easy to disentangle because they are interspersed and overlap with Rwanda’s interest in the region. There is strong alignment between M23, which is essentially a Congolese armed group, and Rwanda to fight the FDLR and other armed groups harbouring similarly extremist ideologies, such as some of the “Nyatura” (Kinyarwanda for “those who hit hard”) groups hailing from the Congolese Hutu community. M23 and Rwanda also both advocate for the full return of Congolese Tutsi refugees, some of whom had been displaced since the early 1990s, and justify their fight with the discrimination against Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese.

On other points, M23 and Rwanda likely differ. M23’s political leadership around disgraced former DRC elections chief Corneille Nangaa said the rebels intend to march to Kinshasa and take power. Rwanda, in turn, may be primarily interested in safeguarding economic and political influence in eastern Congo and achieving security guarantees around its borders. A lot of mostly Western pundits claim that M23’s and Rwanda’s lust for eastern Congo’s minerals is a key motivation in the current conflict. This view is rooted in false, outdated assumptions that greed alone drives war in eastern Congo. This assumption does not match Rwanda’s heavy investment in comparison with yields secured with mineral trade. The larger conundrum of conflict and insurgency that began in the early 1990s is intimately connected with geopolitics, identity politics and the regional political economy – all of which extend far beyond minerals.

What is M23’s endgame? What are their broader economic and political ambitions?

Looking at how the conflict evolved since late 2021, M23 is more driven by tactical than strategic considerations. The group’s operational positioning and communications evolve incrementally, often due to military and political dynamics. Their continuous territorial expansion across North Kivu and into South Kivu, specifically the conquest of Goma, has certainly given M23 an appetite for more, and the group has broader ambitions than it had in 2012. Nonetheless, a quick and seamless march all the way to Kinshasa (reminiscent of M23’s oldest predecessor, AFDL, in 1996) would be surprising.

In the short run, M23 will aim to strengthen its administrative and political grip over the areas it controls, appointing its own state officials and mainstreaming its conception of government. Many voices, in Congo and elsewhere, equate this with “balkanising” the country – creating a de facto partition comparable to the Second Congo war, where Kabila’s central government, Jean-Pierre Bemba’s MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebellion and the RCD (Congolese Rally for Democracy, another predecessor to M23), divided the DRC into three parts.

M23’s ambitions broadly align with the ideology of Rwanda’s ruling RPF party. This may look like proof of Rwandan influence, but it has more to do with long-term socialisation factors instead. Many senior M23 members began their insurgent careers as young combatants fighting with the RPF against Rwanda’s genocidal government in the 1990s and emulated politics similar to the RPF.

However, although M23 is a Congolese entity, Rwanda’s military and political influence is considerable. Compared to 2012, the political and ideological substance of the rebellion seems less articulated today, with some of its then-thought leaders not as closely involved. Militarily, the group is stronger than in 2012, but this is in fair parts down to stronger RDF support.

The last time M23 captured Goma, in 2012, they were swiftly pushed back. What’s different this time around? We aren't seeing much effective pushback from foreign governments and multilateral institutions, at least not compared to 2012. Where do we go from here diplomatically?

A lot has changed since 2012. M23’s recent capture of Goma takes place in the midst of a government transition in the US – the country that exerted the most pressure in 2012. The EU is divided over its approach to the region and consumed by Ukraine and Gaza. The African Union is reluctant to abandon its neutrality, and the position of sub-regional African bodies, such as the EAC and SADC (Southern African Development Community), tend to neutralise themselves.

After the fall of Goma, the EAC called upon the DRC — its newest member state — to negotiate with M23. Kinshasa considers this option humiliating and politically unacceptable. This follows the short-lived EAC peacekeeping deployment in 2023, which the DRC sent back for refusing to fight M23.

The SADC – whose peacekeeping force, SAMIRDC (the SADC Mission in the DRC), replaced the EAC’s – is backing Kinshasa but has been ambivalent. South Africa, which lost over a dozen troops during M23’s assault on Goma, hardened its tone against Rwanda but is uncertain about entering an open conflict.

In sum, numerous regional and international players seem either reticent to take sides or are undecided. Most Western countries, but also China and Russia for different reasons, appear to have little appetite to take sides. They fall back on denouncing M23, seeing that as the least politically costly option. The UN, which also lost troops in the fighting around Goma, has been more vocal about M23 and RDF. Still, its political clout has been curtailed after years of mixed performance, popular disavowal and political marginalisation.

Negotiations and sanctions are two main political instruments that resurface in public debate and official statements. Negotiations refer predominantly to interstate processes such as the Luanda talks, brokered by Angola on behalf of the AU, but also renewed EAC-led initiatives under Kenyan President Ruto. While the Luanda talks temporarily broke down in mid-December – precisely over whether the DRC should talk to M23 – Kinshasa looks at the new EAC efforts with suspicion.

The DRC, in turn, opened the door for M23 to potentially re-join the Nairobi process, a series of talks convening the bulk of armed groups in eastern Congo, but which has been paused since 2022 and mostly served as a recruitment fair for Wazalendo factions.

Some commentators, unconvinced of either process, suggest revitalising the 2013 Addis Ababa Framework Agreement. This agreement is more comprehensive in addressing longstanding conflict drivers but has not been respected by any of the key parties.

Finally, sanctions remain a contested issue. While suspending aid for Rwanda certainly had an impact in 2012, the lack of concomitant work to address more fundamental drivers of conflict that have remained unresolved for decades — such as land, identity, and regional tensions — makes sanctions appear as a short-term, insufficient fix.

The media seems very focused on the M23 crisis, but this isn’t the only cause of violence and displacement in the region. Can you get into some of these other dynamics?

Yes, the conflict involving M23 is traditionally salient in both local and foreign coverage. There are understandable reasons for this. From a Congolese perspective, M23 reflects a three-decades-long history of armed insurgencies, which have all, to different degrees, been allied to Rwanda and also Uganda.

In this context, the so-called six-day war of Kisangani in 2000 is crucial. Back then, Rwanda and Uganda fell out, leading to a split in the RCD rebellion (which both countries had supported) and a confrontation between Rwanda and Uganda on Congolese soil – with a devastating humanitarian impact on civilians. This and other collective memories, including the infamous 1998 massacres in Makobola or Kasika and the 2004 siege of Bukavu, inform collective trauma and extreme sensitivity towards armed mobilisation with actual or presumed links to Rwanda. This sensitivity mixes legitimate grievances with xenophobic sentiment and disinformation. This is already evident in the ongoing crisis, especially on social media. This is the first episode of a Rwanda-allied insurgency occurring in a fully democratised digital age where social media is widely accessible to many Congolese.

Foreign media and international discourse also tend to single out M23 and its predecessors amidst a wider topography of armed groups. This is somewhat understandable, but it also showcases the world’s laziness and refusal to try to understand the conflicts more thoroughly.

First of all, M23’s alliance with Rwanda makes this particular bit of eastern Congo’s conflicts both an intra-state and an inter-state war. In the broader international system, cross-border conflict dynamics are generally taken more seriously than internal conflicts. Moreover, whatever the stance of commentators, the M23 crisis offers numerous opportunities to piggyback on dominant stereotypes surrounding eastern Congo and African conflicts more broadly. International media indulge in foregrounding mineral exploitation as a presumed driver of conflict, leveraging the tangible association with the mobile phones everyone holds in their hands. M23’s outspoken objective to protect Kinyarwanda speakers, which it says are threatened by Kinshasa, rhymes as much with Western clichés about ethnic wars as anti-Rwandan positions that leverage longstanding xenophobic conspiracy theories such as the “Hima-Tutsi empire”.

So, the M23 conflict is indeed highly salient and crucial – but violence and displacement go far beyond the M23 conflict. If you want to believe the statistics, those will tell you that Congo, alongside Sudan, tops every count of displacement with an estimated 7 million people driven out of their homes. However, only 10% of those are estimated to be around Goma and around 40% in the broader area where M23 and allies are fighting FARDC and allies. M23 and RDF have little to do with the mass killings in Beni and Irumu, where the jihadi-inspired ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) insurgency continues to operate despite significant Ugandan military operations. Ituri, where conflicts re-emerged in late 2017, belongs to the most violent regions of the DRC. Finally, conflicts have continued in South Kivu’s highlands since 2015, in a mix of homegrown drivers of violence and the fallout of Burundi’s then-political crisis. There is also the so-called Mobondo insurgency near the capital Kinshasa and the violence surrounding the Kamuina Nsapu uprising in Kasai between 2016 and 2018. Violent conflicts are by no means limited to eastern Congo.

Which are the most underreported humanitarian and social consequences of the conflict?

The conflict in eastern Congo is generally underreported compared to other wars and crises in the world, second to it perhaps only the Central African Republic or Sudan. More generally, certain aspects of the humanitarian cost have received regular coverage. One example is sexual and gender-based violence, which indeed plays a massive role, but the overemphasis on this in international reporting sometimes obscures other humanitarian and social consequences.

The impact of displacement, for instance, remains under-appreciated, in particular the traumatisation that stems from the continuous and repetitive displacement of populations, who are also indirectly traumatised by previous family generations that have been displaced in the wars of the 1990s. News coverage, analysis and advocacy often fail to adequately talk about these dynamics, which affect the region’s entire population regardless of political or other cleavages.

Alongside the rampant regionalisation of the current conflict, such aspects continue to be met with relative indifference and political inaction. This reflects a more longstanding tendency of neglect consistent with patterns for the past 30-plus years. It also reflects the failure of analysts and academics to more meaningfully influence international politics and public narratives beyond short-lived peaks of attention and stubborn clichés. In retrospect, the world may one day look back at decades of war and violence and reckon with the fact of how badly it has failed eastern Congo.