The Crisis in Eastern Congo Didn’t Start With M23’s Resurgence

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo—Barihuta Twagirayezu was holding his 4-year-old daughter’s hand tightly when the bullet hit him in the knee. A skirmish had broken out between rebels from the March 23rd Movement, known as the M23, and the Congolese army in his village in eastern Congo in late June. Twagirayezu and his family were trying desperately to reach safety. “Many people have been shot. I was just one of the victims,” he said, his voice steady and unchanging.

It was around 5 p.m., he recalls, and the light outside had begun to grow dim. After being shot and falling to the ground, he heard his wife crying out for help and felt men lift and carry him toward safety. Twagirayezu was subsequently taken to a Red Cross-supported hospital in Goma, where he spoke to World Politics Review while awaiting surgery to remove the bullet from his knee.

“I am suffering, so I can’t do anything for my family,” he said, sitting in a sunbaked tent set up to deal with the hospital’s overflow of patients. “It is very sad.”  

---

As a nonprofit journalism organization, we depend on your support to fund more than 170 reporting projects every year on critical global and local issues. Donate any amount today to become a Pulitzer Center Champion and receive exclusive benefits!

---

Hospital staff said they treated nearly 2,000 victims of the war between January and June 2024, most of them injured by bombs and bullets. Goma, where Twagirayezu is recovering, is the largest city in eastern Congo. It is also the last refuge left in the region amid the fighting with the M23.  

Formed from the remnants of past armed groups in 2012, the M23 reemerged two years ago after almost a decade of inactivity, wreaking havoc on farming communities like Twagirayezu’s. Since then, almost 2 million people have been uprooted in the ongoing fighting. Neighboring Rwanda and Uganda stand accused of backing the M23, with members of the Rwandan Defense Forces, or RDF, even charging into battle alongside the rebels, according to a report from the United Nations Group of Experts.

The M23’s resurgence, which is escalating and exacerbating the humanitarian crises already faced by embattled civilians in eastern Congo, reflects contemporary tensions and rivalries between Congo and neighboring states. But it is also deeply rooted in the volatile history of the Great Lakes region, and any efforts to bring peace there must take into account that history.

Conflict After Conflict

For many people in eastern Congo, this is not their first time fleeing violence, but their second or even third, sometimes dating back decades. “There is no one in this camp who has not been traumatized,” said Furaha S’engage Francoise, looking out from her tent with an unflinching gaze over the camp for internally displaced persons, or IDPs, where she lives on the edge of Goma.

S’engage Francoise first fled fighting 20 years ago, when rebels from the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP—a precursor of the M23—attacked her village on the border between Congo and Uganda.

Although the CNDP’s leader, Laurent Nkunda, was born in Congo, he first took to the battlefield in 1994 alongside Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front to stop the genocide in Rwanda against ethnic Tutsis by Hutu extremists. As a stream of Hutu genocidaires and refugees alike fled over the border in the aftermath of that bloodbath, Nkunda pursued them alongside Rwandan national forces. In 1997, Rwanda also helped an insurgency led by Laurent-Desire Kabila topple Mobutu Sese Seko, the long-time dictator of Congo, then known as Zaire.

Less than a year later, Kabila began to chafe against his international backers, with the tensions exploding into what is known as the Second Congo War. This time, Nkunda served as a major in the Rally for Congolese Democracy, or RDC, which fought against Kabila’s government alongside allied troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, in a conflict that ultimately drew in nine neighboring nations.  

By the time the Second Congo War drew to a close in 2003, Kabila had been assassinated by one of his teenage bodyguards and replaced as president by his son Joseph. According to the accords that ended the war, the belligerents were to be integrated into Congo’s new national army, but Nkunda refused. Instead, he formed the CNDP alongside other former members of the RDC, taking up arms against the Congolese government again. His insurgency resulted in widespread violence and human rights abuses, including massacres, forced displacement and the recruitment of child soldiers, devastating communities like S’engage Francoise’s. The International Rescue Committee estimated that 5.4 million people died in Congo between 1998 and 2008, both as a result of the war and the illness and hunger it brought.

By 2009, Nkunda had fled to Rwanda, where he was arrested and is believed to remain today. The CNDP was demobilized and incorporated into the national army. But this détente, too, did not last long. Just three years later, angry ex-CNDP members launched the M23 insurgency, claiming that the Congolese government had not kept its promises and naming the new rebellion for the date the failed peace accords had been signed.

With support from Rwanda, the guerillas managed to capture the city of Goma in 2012. S’engage Francoise fled her home for the second time during that war. After a year of fighting, facing an effective offensive by the Congolese military and a U.N. peacekeeping force, the M23 ceased its activities, announcing it would achieve its goals politically. That period of dormancy ended with the group’s resurgence in 2022, which sent S’engage Francoise fleeing for a third time, joining the thousands sheltered on the edges of Goma.

“We are tired of praying,” she said of eastern Congo’s repeated conflicts, as other camp residents made their way slowly to church. “We have been praying, and God has done nothing.”

Caught in the Crossfire

“If you look at why that conflict happened, how that conflict happened and what the prospects are, it is still the very same factors that are key,” said Kristof Titeca, a political scientist at the University of Antwerp, comparing past violence in Congo to the current fighting. Titeca identified those factors as the Congolese government’s weak state capacity and its hostile relations with Rwanda and Uganda. 

Nevertheless, civilians bear the brunt of the violence in the ongoing war. Angele Mbale fled fighting in the town of Sake with her family in February 2024. Once seen as the last bulwark on the road to Goma, Sake was surrounded by M23 rebels early this year. Today, it is a ghost town populated by soldiers.

Mbale hoped that she and her seven children would be safe in a displacement camp on the western edge of Goma, but once she arrived there she found that they never had enough to eat.

On May 3, Mbale left the camp briefly to look for work. While she was gone, bombs fired from the positions of the M23 and RDF fell on the camp. Mbale returned to find charred tents in the area where her family had been sheltered. When a neighbor told her that four of her young children had died, Mbale fell unconscious to the ground in shock.  

“There is no life,” she said bitterly. “People are dying like animals, and there is no assistance.”

The bombs killed 36 people in total, according to the Congolese government. The attack was criticized by the U.N., which called it “a flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law that may constitute a war crime.” The U.S. State Department also decried the bombing, while laying blame at the feet of the M23 and Rwanda. “We are gravely concerned about the recent RDF and M23 expansion in eastern DRC … and call on both parties to respect human rights and adhere to applicable obligations under international humanitarian law,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Mbale’s children were buried with the other victims in a cemetery north of Goma, their graves marked with white wooden crosses, in a ceremony arranged and paid for by the Congolese government. A large sign condemning Rwandan aggression in Congo casts a shadow over the modest burial plots. The graveyard is far from the camp where Mbale lives, and she not been able to return and visit since the funeral in May.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied any connection to M23 and any involvement in the bombing of the IDP camp specifically. In a statement posted on X, a government spokesperson shrugged off responsibility, directing blame instead at the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, an armed group operating in eastern Congo formed by Rwandan Hutus who had participated in the genocide. Kigali has long justified its involvement in eastern Congo by the need to counter the group.  

As tensions between Rwanda and Congo rise, other countries have been drawn into the maelstrom. In a June report, the U.N. Group of Experts found that Uganda had joined Rwanda in providing political and diplomatic support to M23. Meanwhile, a range of multilateral missions have deployed over the years to help the Congolese army battle the M23 and other armed groups operating in the area. An East African Community regional force came and left in 2023. Forces from the Southern African Development Community remain in eastern Congo. And Congolese ministers have asked the decadeslong U.N. peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo to pause its planned withdrawal. 

Nevertheless, the M23 continues to gain and hold new territory in eastern Congo. As recently as August, the rebels captured villages near the Ugandan border. Despite these advances, some divergences exist between the M23 and its Rwandan backers, with Kigali intent on protecting its security and economic interests in eastern Congo and the unpredictable rebels purporting to defend Congolese Tutsis from what they portray as a predatory Congolese state.

But this has not stopped Rwanda from providing personnel and equipment to the M23. According to the U.N. Experts’ report, between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan troops fight alongside the group, potentially exceeding the number of rebel fighters. The report also revealed that the M23 and its Rwandan allies have increasingly used drones and guided mortars in firefights.

At the same time, Kinshasa has invested heavily in the Congolese military’s capacity and technological capabilities. “M23 is fighting a very different Congolese army than it was in 2012,” said Daniel van Delan, an analyst at the South Africa-based monitor Signal Risk. “We’ve seen huge military spending under [Congolese President Felix] Tshisekedi, especially in the past two years. They’re relying on strategy and less on direct confrontations.”

The higher-intensity conflict also means greater risk for civilians caught in the crossfire of the escalating war. “The longer M23 remains there, the more dangerous the conflict becomes, because more and more neighboring countries will feel they have to do something,” Titeca, the political scientist, explained. In a best-case scenario, “doing something” would mean pushing for peace talks. “The worst-case scenario,” he added, “would be a broader regional war.”

Militia Members

When the Rwandan government spokesperson denied responsibility for the May 3 bombing of the displacement camp, she also blamed the attack on the Wazalendo, or “patriots” in Kiswahili, a loose coalition of armed groups united with the Congolese army and government against the M23.

In 2022, Tshisekedi called on all Congolese young people to join the national army or at least acquire weapons to defend themselves against the M23. A subsequent government decree legalized the presence of militia forces within the army.

In an interview with WPR, Guillaume Njike Kaiko—the spokesperson for the military governor of North Kivu—described the Wazalendo as partners of the Congolese army. “These are the young people who see their sisters being raped, their children being massacred. Without being a part of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, they stand together to take up weapons to protect their areas of origin,” he said.

As such, the Wazalendo are often at the vanguard of each battle, rushing toward the fighting ahead of the Congolese army. But the same groups have been accused of committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary executions, illegal taxation and the recruitment of child soldiers, according to the United Nations. “There is widespread impunity for the Wazalendo groups, who feel morally and materially boosted,” said Judith Verweijen, an assistant professor at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. “It has created a very volatile situation.”

North of Goma, Nibunda Kakuru leads a brigade of the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo, or APCLS, an armed group that has operated in eastern Congo since 2006 and is part of the Wazalendo forces. The 36–year-old Kakuru has been at war for nearly half his life, working his way up through the ranks of various armed groups since he was only 16.

Along the way, he managed to marry and have four children. He claims his current activities are perfectly compatible with his family life. “When I got married, I was still a combatant. When I had my children, I was still a combatant. They know everything. There’s nothing to hide,” he said, sipping lightly from a bottle of Heineken on the roof of a bar overlooking Goma. “They are proud.”

War has become routine to Kakuru, who was shot in both legs during a recent clash with the M23. “We have to bleed our blood,” he said.

For each battle he has fought, Kakuru blames Rwanda. “There is no difference between the first M23 war and this one, because they are the same people. We know that they are all coming from Rwanda, and they have support from the Ugandan and Rwandan governments,” he said.

Kakuru claims he is fighting for “peace and development, so that the Congolese may be proud of their country.”

But the proliferation of Wazalendo groups adds a complex dimension to the growing conflict in Congo, where some 120 armed groups are active. In addition to stoking Rwanda’s anger, members of the Wazalendo are hesitant to demobilize, even if the war with M23 ends.

Noella Sengiyumva—a pseudonym to protect her identity—is a child soldier in the Wazalendo. Currently fighting for the Union of Forces for the Patriotic Defense of Congo, or UFPDC, the 17-year-old intends to spend the rest of her life with the rebels. “I’ve gotten used to the Wazalendo,” said Sengiyumva. “Even if peace is recovered, I’d prefer to stay with the military.”

The Congolese government has said it intends to integrate members of the Wazalendo into the reserves of the national army. For Verweijen, it is reminiscent of the period after the Second Congo War, when former militia members were integrated into the Congolese army, only to foment new rebellions when they were dissatisfied with their positions.

“We can predict many similar problems,” she said. “These groups will be reluctant to be put under a unified command structure, and they are going to massively vie for officer ranks and command positions.”

Once again, history stands to repeat itself.

Hope for the Future

These political and regional developments perhaps matter less to people huddled in displacement camps, desperate above all else for safety, enough food to eat and the moment when they can return home.

Sitting in his hospital bed, Twagirayezu’s somber eyes lighten slightly when he speaks of his daughter and his other children. “My hope is that we recover peace and my children go back to school,” he said simply.

After a May visit to Goma, however, Ted Chaiban, deputy director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, described the situation for this next generation in blunt terms. “The scale of the conflict in the east has reached new heights, displacing millions of people and creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the country since 2003,” he said a press statement. “Children are being killed, maimed, abducted, and recruited by armed groups with verified grave violations the highest-ever; their rights to education and a safe childhood have been shattered,” he added.

From her displacement camp on the edge of Goma, S’engage Francoise complained that her daughter had not been able to return to school since running from the war. With nothing else to occupy her and no way to get an education, the 15-year-old decided to get married. S’engage Francoise seethed with anger, but also felt that there was nothing she could do to stop her. 

“I ask the world to put an end to this war,” she said, seeming to speak not just for herself and other uprooted people, but for the whole country. “We have suffered a lot. It’s time to go back to our village, to our home.”