Border war erupts in Congo

Trucks covered with white tarps stopped at the Rwandan border city of Gisenyi this week. Throngs of displaced residents poured out—some carrying suitcases and others hauling mattresses and personal belongings in plastic bags and backpacks.

Long lines of white buses transported them to a makeshift camp after fighting escalated this week across the border in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On Monday, rebels with the Rwanda-backed March 23 Movement (M23) seized control of eastern Congo’s largest city, Goma. About 1 million displaced people from across the region had already sought refuge there. The capture escalates a yearslong conflict that has left the region unstable. Aid agencies warn of a worsening humanitarian situation as other countries enter the fray.

Before Monday’s conquest, the M23 rebels seized other towns such as Minova this month before setting sights on Goma. Congolese Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said more than 500,000 people are newly displaced this month across the the North and South Kivu provinces.

“Rwanda cannot be allowed to continue to act with impunity,” she said.

The rebels are now in control of Goma’s airport and have restricted residents’ access to water and electricity.

M23 is one of the most active of some 100 rebel groups seeking to control the region’s access to gold, cobalt, and other natural resources. Congo’s eastern region has seen increasing conflict hub since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and other minorities. The M23 rebels are mostly led by the Tutsis, who insist they took up arms to defend the rights of their minority ethnic group. M23 briefly took charge of Goma in 2012 before resurfacing again in 2021. The group caused nearly three out of every four displacements last year, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

The persistent tribal tensions, lack of government presence, and natural resources in the region have created a setting in which armed groups can thrive. The United Nations estimates M23 generates about $300,000 a month from taxes on production of the metal ore coltan, used in electronics manufacturing, in two Congolese towns.

The fighting this time around has also cost lives. At least 17 foreign peacekeepers, 13 of them South Africans, have died in the unrest. United Nations workers on the ground have also reported seeing “many dead bodies in the streets.”

On Monday, the aid group Save the Children said an explosion hit its office in Goma. Bullets also struck a staff member’s house.

“We have heard horrific reports of gang rape and violence against young children in recent weeks, and we hold grave fears for the wellbeing and safety of the children remaining in Goma or fleeing for their lives,” Greg Ramm, the group’s country director for Congo, said in a statement. On Wednesday, several World Bank employees joined other fleeing foreigners and locals to cross into Rwanda.

Congolese authorities have accused Rwanda of backing the rebels to get access to the region’s resources. Rwanda claims it is hunting down members of the rebel group behind the genocide in Rwanda. But a United Nations report in 2022 concluded that Rwandan troops were fighting alongside the rebels and supplying them with weapons.

The escalation has drawn in other international players. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Tuesday with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and pushed for a ceasefire. Germany also canceled upcoming aid talks with Rwanda over the violence, while U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy warned the country is risking more than $1 billion of global aid it receives annually. Foreign aid funds more than 40 percent of Rwanda’s national budget.

Angola’s attempt to mediate talks between Congo and Rwanda failed in December. Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy advisor at The Sentry, an investigative policy group, told me Rwandan and Congolese officials did not face much concrete international pressure ahead of the latest warnings.

“The reality is no mediation process is going to succeed unless it’s leveraged with strong financial pressures from outside,” Lezhnev said. “The United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom need to come up with much more concrete measures including targeted sanctions, withholding of … funding that could have an impact.”

In the meantime, the M23 rebels have tightened their grip on Goma and are now heading towards the region’s second-largest city, Bukavu. The group’s leaders have threatened to advance all the way to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital.

“With the M23 practically controlling all of North Kivuand pressing deeper into South Kivu, the region may be witnessing the start of a campaign aimed at achieving a larger set of military objectives and, potentially building new alliances,” Paul Nantulya, research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said in a statement.