Can regional war be avoided?
NO PEACE IN SIGHT: SOLDIERS FROM SA, BURUNDI AND UNITED NATIONS SUFFER CASUALTIES
Seven million Congolese displaced due to the DRCRwanda crisis.
In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South African, Burundian and Tanzanian troops are fighting against the Rwandan army, which has deployed in support of the rebellion by the March 23 Movement, or M23.
Soldiers from South Africa and Burundi, as well as from the United Nations peacekeeping mission, have recently suffered casualties. In the crossfire, civilians have fled: seven million Congolese are now displaced due to this and multiple other crises in the DRC.
Rwanda, which has denied backing M23, says the Rwandan rebel group – Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) – which includes combatants who participated in the 1994 genocide, has been fully integrated into the Congolese army. It also claims that the Congolese government is engaged in “massive combat operations” aimed at expelling Congolese Tutsi civilians.
The Congolese government has mounted a campaign against Rwanda. In December, while he campaigned for re-election, President Félix Tshisekedi compared his Rwandan counterpart to Adolf Hitler and accused him of expansionist aims.
In January, Burundi President Evariste Ndayishimiye closed his border with Rwanda and accused the country of backing rebels against him.
This wave of violence resembles previous ones, but is also different. At the root of the M23 conflict are countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, intent on projecting power and influence into the eastern DRC, while the Congolese government seems incapable and often unwilling to stabilise its own territory. Donors and United Nations peacekeepers provide humanitarian aid, but do little to transform these dynamics.
During the early days of his presidency, Tshisekedi’s army collaborated intensely with the Rwandan army, allowing troops to conduct operations against the FDLR on Congolese territory in 2019 and 2020. In late 2019, his government even recommended dropping charges against the M23 commanders, then in exile.
Less than three years after winning power, however, Tshisekedi changed his approach, breaking his coalition with his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and moving to cement his position in power. He declared a state of siege in two eastern provinces, shuffled generals around in the army and sidelined key securocrats.
By mid-2021, Tshisekedi had begun to privilege relations with Uganda, then a bitter rival of Rwanda. Notably, Tshisekedi gave permission to the Ugandan army to deploy between 2 000 and 4 000 troops to hunt down Allied Democratic Forces rebels, an Islamist Ugandan rebellion based in the eastern DRC.
Shortly after that, he did the same for the Burundian army, which had its sights on REDTabara, rebels based in the DRC seeking to overthrow the government of Ndayishimiye.
Rwanda suddenly felt isolated, even vulnerable, surrounded by hostile neighbours. According to United Nations investigators, it probably resumed throwing its weight behind the M23 in November 2021. Since then, the regional fault lines have shifted.
Rwanda has patched up relations with Uganda and the East African Community intervention force – Kenyan, South Sudanese, Burundian and Ugandan troops – that deployed in 2022 to help quell the violence was asked to leave just a year later. This is because their hosts saw them as dragging their feet.
Beginning in late 2023, a new force from the Southern African Development Community began deploying troops from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi to take the fight to the M23, alongside the Burundian army.
Already, these forces have begun to take casualties. Meanwhile, the Congolese army has partnered with private security contractors as well as with an array of local militia, collectively dubbed Wazalendo, or patriots.
And yet, the Congolese government has been unable to make much headway. In early February, M23 forces surrounded the lakeside town of Sake, just 30km west of the provincial capital Goma.
Unlike the previous M23 crisis, influential foreign actors have sent mixed signals. At the UN Security Council on 20 February, the US and France called on Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the DRC. The US has gone the furthest of all of Rwanda’s donors, sanctioning a Rwandan general, suspending all military aid and attempting to broker a ceasefire in December 2023.
While the M23 rebellion was going on, the British Commonwealth held its big biannual meeting in Kigali in 2022 and the UK struck a controversial asylum deal with Rwanda.
The EU gave $22 million (about R400 million) to support the deployment of the Rwanda Defence Force in Mozambique. On 19 February, the EU announced a deal to boost mineral exports from Rwanda.
The DRC government will need to undertake a host of reforms to quell these cycles of conflict. They include reforming the Congolese army, a new demobilisation programme for armed groups and an economic development programme that would allow Congolese to benefit from their resources. But none of that can happen as long as Congo’s neighbours continue to destabilise it.
Stearns is assistant professor, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University Walker is Director of Programs, Congo Research Group, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University This article first appeared in The Conversation