An African War in the Congo

The news out of the Democratic Republic of Congo is grim.

For a long time, multiple wars have been ravaging the country, especially in the East.

At a recent count, there were about one hundred insurgent groups fighting in different areas. The Congo countryside has arguably the highest rate of rape in the world. A local gynaecologist, Dr Denis Mukwege, won the Nobel Peace Prize some years ago after becoming the world’s leading specialist in the treatment of wartime sexual violence and a global campaigner against the use of rape as a weapon of war.

“But just a few weeks on, they are sweeping into the second largest city in Congo in the same, all-too-easy, almost cavalier fashion.”

The ‘central’ Congolese government often appears to be part of the problem, instead of offering a solution. Government soldiers are among the worst rapists and looters of defenceless local populations. In the capital, Kinshasa, sanctimonious statements are regularly churned out, railing against ‘terrorists’ and the various outside forces supporting them. Most recently, the bête noire of these denunciations has been Paul Kagame, president of neighbouring Rwanda, and, in many people’s eyes, the principal sponsor of the M23 rebel force.

The history of relations between the various ‘nations’ of East, Central, and Southern Africa, like the rest of Africa, can be very difficult for outsiders to comprehend. They illustrate the arbitrariness of the demarcation of territories into ‘countries’ by colonial powers, often without any effort to ensure that ‘national’ boundaries are reflective of actual boundaries between different ethnic groups. The result is that people of the same ethnic ‘family’ end up in different countries with different colonial traditions, while different ethnic groups with long histories of intertribal conflict are artificially ‘welded’ together as one country.

For the second time in their history, the rebel M23 group, supposedly made up mainly of Congolese Tutsi fighters drawn from areas close to the Rwandan border, recently swept grandly into Goma, an important town in the mineral-rich East. They met little resistance. The government forces and their supporters melted away, and the rebels strolled casually into the city, to the sporadic cheers of some sections of the population. Initially the M23 announced they had no intention to go any further and that they wanted negotiations with the government. But just a few weeks on, they are sweeping into the second largest city in Congo in the same, all-too-easy, almost cavalier fashion.

Read also: Paul Kagame and the war in Congo: Here’s what we know

It is appropriate to ask – What is really going on?

The First Congo War, otherwise known as Africa’s First World War, took place from October 1996 till May 1997. It involved multiple neighbours, including Uganda and Sudan. It resulted in the overthrow of President Mobutu Sese Seko and his replacement by rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila. The name of the country also changed from ‘Zaire’ back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Second Congo War (1998-2003) erupted when Kabila turned against his former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, who had helped him to seize power. It eventually engulfed nine African countries and involved twenty-five armed groups. It resulted in a ‘multi-party’ government headed by Joseph Kabila, some of Laurent, and the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force (MONUSCO) in the country. MONUSCO has remained in the Congo to the present day, trying to keep an elusive peace. An estimated 3-5 million people died in the aftermath of the Second Congo War, mostly due to disease and malnutrition.

The ‘March 23’ (M23) movement was formed in 2012 and took its name from March 23, 2009, the date of a peace accord signed by a precursor Congolese Tutsi rebel group—CNDP—with the government, which was quickly broken. It first took control of Goma in November 2012 but was persuaded to withdraw from the city and engage in peace talks with the government by the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).

The recent, seemingly easy capture of Goma and the rapid advance to capture Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province, have raised the fear in some circles of a Third Congo War, similar to the one that led to the overthrow of Mobutu. There is also a fear that the entire region may be destabilised and another ‘African World War’ set in motion.

Apart from a presumed urge to control the mineral resources of East Congo, the Rwanda connection to the conflict is traced back to the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis like Kagame, were killed by the Hutus, their neighbours. As Kagame’s rebel army took over the government, some Hutu militias fled into the Congo. The FDLR, one such force that contained many people who took part in the Rwanda genocide, is still active in the Congo.

Congo is intrinsically complicated. It is at the intersection between East Africa and Southern Africa, economically and politically between the East African Economic Community (EAEC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In addition to UN MONUSCO peacekeepers, the SADC deployed troops in the region in December 2023 to keep the peace ‘offensively.’ There was also a short-lived Kenya-led peacekeeping force (EACRF) deployed by the East African Economic Community. Three MONUSCO peacekeepers and 19 Southern African peacekeepers, including 14 South African soldiers, were killed in the most recent fighting.

Expectedly, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Angolans, and other Southern Africans are livid, blaming Kagame for his support of the rebels. In East Africa, the sentiment is more in favour of M23, or at least ‘actively neutral.’ President Kagame, for his part, insists the war is a Congolese problem, and the government should negotiate with the M23 instead of treating it as a proxy.

The Congo situation is a ‘fine mess’ and a tinderbox. Will M23 march all the way to Kinshasa? Will President Felix Tshisekedi eat humble pie and talk to the rebels to make peace? Will the blame game continue, even as the people and resources of the Congo are raped and plundered, literally and metaphorically? Africa, and the world, wait and watch.