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Malawi soldiers part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) military mission for eastern Congo, wait for the ceremony to repatriate the two bodies of South African soldiers killed in the ongoing war between M23 rebels and the Congolese army in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo February 20, 2024.
Congolese ceasefire collapsing as peacekeepers’ mandate extended
Fighters from the M23 rebel group in northeastern Congo have been targeting civilians in violation of a July ceasefire agreement, according to the Southern African Development Community, whose peacekeeping mandate there will expire on Dec. 15.
Background: For two years now, M23 forces backed by neighboring Rwanda have been fighting to establish control over mineral rich provinces in the region. The conflict has so far displaced at least 7 million people, and killed unknown thousands.
The SADC forces haven’t been able to push back the M23, but have at least managed to hold on to the key city of Goma, where hundreds of thousands of refugees are sheltering. Leaders from SADC countries are meeting in Zimbabwe on Thursday to discuss extending the mission, but should they fail to agree, M23 will have the upper hand.
UN Peacekeepers in the region are widely scorned by locals for their inability to keep ordinary people safe, while the DRC’s own army is poorly trained and deeply corrupt. Without SADC troops, Goma will likely fall, and Rwanda’s proxies will consolidate their hold on the region.
What does the Trump administration mean for the DRC? President Félix Tshisekedi has expressed excitement about working with Trump to deepen US-DRC relations, amid hopes the US will provide greater resources to help stabilize the country. However, what scant attention Trump gave to Congo on the campaign trail was overwhelmingly negative: Axios found that he cited Congolese migrants as criminals at least 29 times between Sept. 2023 and Oct. 2024, and accused the DRC of emptying prisons to send violent criminals to the US.
A renegade Congolese soldier stands at an outpost in Eastern Congo deserted town of Kanyabayonga December 16, 2004 which is deserted due to clashes in the area. The Democratic Republic of Congo has replaced its army commander in the eastern province of North Kivu, the scene of days of fighting between government reinforcements and rebel units, authorities said.
Humanitarian truce extended in Congo
A humanitarian truce in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between government troops and M23 rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda was extended by 15 days, to Aug. 3, but fighting in the area continues, and the prospect of a wider conflict looms.
The background: Over a hundred rebel groups are fighting for control of mineral-rich regions in the eastern DRC along the Rwandan border. M23, formed by deserters from the DRC army, is the most powerful of the groups – its decision to launch an offensive to capture the provincial capital of Goma in 2022 reignited a decades-long conflict in DRC that has so far displaced more than 3 million people.
Rwanda’s history of ethnic tensions is part of the story. Thirty years ago, Rwanda’s Hutu majority committed a genocide against the Tutsi minority. Rwanda says some of the DRC-backed militias around Goma, such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, are composed of Hutu genocidaires who escaped across the border to avoid justice.
The UN, meanwhile, says Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, has deployed up to 4,000 troops to fight alongside the M23, against DRC forces.
Risk of regional outbreak. Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has threatened war against Rwanda in retaliation for Kagame’s involvement.
Suspended Jewish Columbia and Barnard students participate in a press conference outside the president of Columbia University’s house on April 23, 2024, in Manhattan, New York.
Hard Numbers: Columbia punishes deans, Iran boosts missile output, UN accuses Rwanda of fighting in Congo, Colombia protects the forest
3: Columbia University on Monday removed three deans from their positions over antisemitic text messages they exchanged in a group chat during a late-May event about Jewish life on campus in the wake of protests about Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. The three have been placed on indefinite leave. For our complete on-the-ground coverage of the upheaval at Columbia this spring, led by GZERO’s Riley Callanan, see here.
2: Iran has been ramping up its output of ballistic missiles at two key production facilities, according to satellite imagery. Tehran’s most prominent buyers of the missiles include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah paramilitaries in Lebanon and, of course, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which signed a missile deal with Iran in 2022.
3,000-4,000: A new UN report alleges that 3,000-4,000 regular Rwandan Army forces are fighting alongside M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a serious allegation that follows years of accusations that Rwanda is deliberately destabilizing its neighbor. Alarmingly, the report also implicates Uganda — which had deployed a force to fight the rebels as part of a regional military intervention to support Congo — in providing support for M23, essentially playing both sides of the conflict.
305: Deforestation in Colombia fell by more than a third last year, to just 305 square miles, the lowest figure on record. The decline comes atop a 20% fall the previous year. About half of the deforestation was in the Colombian Amazon. President Gustavo Petro has sought to rein in corporate access to the rainforest, but orders from local guerilla groups to stop cutting down trees have also helped. Experts warn that despite progress, droughts caused by the hot-weather El Niño weather pattern this year could push up deforestation.
A Congolese soldier stands guard as he waits for the ceremony to repatriate the two bodies of South African soldiers killed in the ongoing war between M23 rebels and the Congolese army in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo February 20, 2024.
Congo demands world boycott of Rwanda’s mineral exports
The Democratic Republic of Congo has called for a global embargo of mineral exports from Rwanda, which it accuses of backing rebel groups along their shared frontier. Congo says that because Rwanda allegedly uses violent proxies to seize mines in Congo before exporting their products as though they came from Rwanda, all Rwandan ore should be considered “blood minerals.”
Two weeks ago, the M23 rebels, which have strong ties to Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsi elites, seized the mining town of Rubaya, a town in eastern Congo with deposits of the mineral tantalum. Tantalum is used in all sorts of high-tech applications, from the camera in your phone to the semiconductor chips crucial to the AI revolution, but it’s hard to find, and Congo is one of the richest sources in the world. In a letter last month, the Congolese government directly confronted Apple over its alleged use of pilfered tantalum, among other minerals, but the tech giant says an internal review revealed no blood minerals in its supply chains.
The logic of the boycott is simple: If Rwanda cannot profit from its alleged support of armed rebel groups in eastern Congo, it has significantly less incentive to fund the violence there. Nearly 6 million Congolese have already had to flee fighting, with 1.4 million swelling the encircled city of Goma. If the world heeds Congo’s call — and no major economy thus far has assented — it could tackle one of the root causes of this long-running tragedy.Participants hold a candle light night vigil during a commemoration event, known as "Kwibuka" (Remembering), as Rwanda marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide, at the BK arena in Kigali, Rwanda April 7, 2024.
30 years since Rwanda’s genocide, ethnic violence continues to plague Central Africa
Rwandan President Paul Kagame led a memorial ceremony on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide that killed more than a million people. Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups are no longer in open conflict in the country, but the legacy of the 100 days of slaughter that began on April 7, 1994, carries on in a conflict in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The background: Conflict between Rwanda’s major ethnic groups dates back to the colonial period, when German and Belgian authorities privileged ethnic Tutsis over Hutus for choice jobs and social status. Hutus dominated government after achieving independence in 1962, leading to a long-running war meant to end with a power-sharing agreement in 1993.
However, the day after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, Hutu extremists launched a long-planned assault against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Over the next 100 days, over a million people were butchered in the violence before an ethnic Tutsi militia, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, invaded and overthrew the genocidaires. The Tutsi victory pushed over two million Hutu civilians into exile in neighboring countries.
The present: One of those neighboring countries was the Democratic Republic of Congo (also home to an indigenous Hutu population). Rwandan Tutsi-led forces invaded their gargantuan neighbor twice to chase down alleged genocidaires between 1994 and 2003.
Now, Rwanda backs the Tutsi-led M23 militia in the DRC, which Kigali allegedly uses to extract valuable mineral resources. Rwanda, in turn, accuses Kinshasa of backing the Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which seeks to overthrow Kagame. Civilians in the DRC are forced to bear the brunt of it: 250,000 civilians have been displaced in the last month as M23 presses toward the key city of Goma.Peter Navarro, who served as U.S. then-President Donald Trump's trade adviser, talks to the media before turning himself in at a federal correctional institution to begin his prison sentence for defying a subpoena from a panel that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in Miami, Florida, U.S.
Hard Numbers: Former Trump adviser goes to jail, Cambodia bans musical car horns, DRC suffers M23 siege, Afghanistan endures dire drought
38: In a move straight out of "Footloose," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has banned musical horns after videos surfaced on social media showing people, especially youths, engaging in impromptu dances on roads to tunes emitted by truck horns. Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, has directed the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation and police to enforce the ban nationwide, aiming to curb what he views as a public order and traffic safety issue.
230,000: Goma, a resource-rich city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is under siege from M23 rebels reportedly backed by Rwanda. With nearly all supply routes controlled by M23, the conflict is asphyxiating the city, causing a surge in basic commodity prices. Over 230,000 people fled Goma in February, with aid agencies warning of humanitarian disaster and the increasing risk of a wider regional conflict.
21 million: Afghanistan, one of the nations most susceptible to climate change, faces a dire situation as a fourth straight year of drought displaces entire villages, leaving fields barren and stomachs empty. The drought has deprived 21 million Afghans, almost half of the country's population, of access to potable water.
FILE PHOTO: Members of Burundi's National Defence Force (FDN), part of the troops of the East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), arrive to their deployment as part of a regional military operation targeting rebels, at the airport in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo March 5, 2023.
Burundi detains troops who refused to fight in Congo
The Burundian government has been detaining troops for refusing orders to deploy to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Burundi is trying to stop the advances of a rebel group backed by Rwanda. The focus now is on the key border city of Goma.
The background: The area around Goma is rich in minerals, which armed groups and their backers have vied to control for years. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group began taking territory two years ago and funneling the spoils back to their patrons. UN peacekeepers have been largely unable to stop violence that has pushed hundreds of thousands of people into dangerous refugee camps.
A Kenyan-led intervention force managed to hold Goma last year, but withdrew in November, opening the way for M23. In December, Burundi intervened, but troops say they are fighting blind, hence the desertions. That leaves a South African-led coalition as Goma’s best bet.
What’s next? The fighting will be brutal, with 2 million residents of Goma in the crossfire. M23 is angling to cut the city off from the rest of the DRC. If they succeed, the rebels – and their Rwandan supporters – will be in a commanding position to extract concessions from Kinshasa.A “combustible situation” in the eastern DRC
At least 17 people — including three UN personnel — have died after three days of violent protests against the UN peacekeeping mission in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Demonstrations in the region have now spread to other cities.
On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of people surrounded and looted the UN base in Goma, demanding its forces withdraw from the eastern DRC. After the Congolese cops were unable to quell the protests, the UN decided to bring its peacekeepers home.
How we got here. The latest iteration of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC was established in 2010 to protect civilians in the eastern part of the country. But locals believe the UN peacekeepers have failed to do their job.
Bordering both Rwanda and Uganda, the eastern DRC is one of the most resource-rich yet conflict-ridden regions in sub-Saharan Africa. It suffered the chaotic exodus from the 1994 Rwandan genocide (committed by the majority ethnic Hutus against the minority Tutsis who now run the country), followed by two wars in 1996 and 1998. An estimated 120+ armed groups are now fighting there.
Things have gotten even worse since November 2021, when the M23 — a DRC-based rebel group claiming to defend DRC Tutsis against the Congolese military — began its latest offensive. Many in the DRC blame the M23's recent gains on Rwanda, which has long been accused of supporting the rebels (which the Rwandans deny).
A month ago, the DRC and Rwanda agreed to de-escalate tensions. But the violence persists, and people are getting tired — which in part explains the rage against the (UN) machine.
Why it matters. “Volatility in that region is kind of the executive status quo,” says Eurasia Group analyst Connor Vasey. But “any sort of intensification of that does create issues.”
And perhaps this time what’s happening is more troubling than the violence the region has seen for so many years.
This popular unrest is precisely what we should be watching out for, says Phil Clark, a professor at the SOAS University of London. The M23’s territorial gains have diverted attention away from what’s happening at the local level.
Never before, he explains, has the eastern DRC seen such popular active opposition, directed against several actors — Rwanda, the DRC government, the UN, and Tutsis — all at once.
“The thing that I think is worrying is how organized [it] is,” says Clark. “You’ve got these local leaders at the provincial and the village level very happily on camera, saying — go out and kill the Tutsis.”
If the protests managed to throw the UN out, it might spur more local unrest that could further worsen an already “combustible situation”.