Beneath the tangled green canopy of North and South Kivu, where the earth glistens with veins of coltan and gold, a familiar chaos has returned. The resurgence of M23 rebels, armed to the teeth, organized and unrelenting, has once again plunged eastern Congo into a vortex of violence and geopolitical maneuvering.
It’s a war where minerals are currency, alliances are shifting sands, and international diplomacy hangs on threadbare truces. More than three decades after the Rwandan genocide detonated a regional chain reaction, Congo’s east remains a haunted theatre of unresolved histories and freshly drawn battle lines.
Goma Falls, Again
The latest conflagration flared in early 2025. In January, the M23, a Tutsi-led rebel group born from broken promises and ethnic grievance, stormed Goma, a city of over one million perched at the northern tip of Lake Kivu. Within weeks, Bukavu to the south, another provincial capital vital to Congo’s eastern lifelines, was under their control.
The rebel advance was swift and symbolic. Goma is more than a border city; it’s the gateway to a trillion-dollar treasure trove buried under volcanic hills. From tin to tantalum, the minerals extracted here feed the circuits of the global economy. Yet the city’s conquest was a clarion call that peace in this region remains painfully elusive.
By March, the rebel group was reportedly eyeing Kinshasa, 2,600 kilometers away. That possibility, however distant, evoked traumatic memories of the past: the two “Africa’s World Wars” in the 1990s, when foreign armies and local militias fought over Congo’s land and riches, costing millions of lives.
The M23, Redux
M23’s name recalls the failed peace deal of March 23, 2009. The peace deal was a pact struck to end a previous cycle of violence. Its leadership, composed of Congolese Tutsis, claims the government has betrayed its commitments, especially those guaranteeing the protection and inclusion of their ethnic minority.
Their leader, Sultani Makenga, a Congolese Tutsi with a past in the Rwandan Patriotic Army, has reemerged as a commanding figure. Charismatic and elusive, he personifies the shadowy overlap between national conflict and cross-border intrigue. After suffering defeats and exile in 2013, Makenga’s forces are not just back, they are emboldened.
Critics accuse the M23 of war crimes and systematic violations of international law. Human Rights Watch and UN panels have documented patterns of civilian abuse, forced recruitment, and illicit trade. Yet to many Tutsis in the Kivus, the M23 is also a bulwark against ethnic marginalization and reprisal.
Rwanda’s influence
No player looms larger in this crisis than Rwanda. For years, Kigali has denied any direct involvement with the M23. But satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and field reports from UN investigators tell a different story.
According to a December 2024 report by UN experts, up to 4,000 Rwandan troops have operated inside Congolese territory, supporting the rebels with weapons, intelligence and logistics. France, the United States, and the United Kingdom have all acknowledged Rwanda’s complicity. The UK even suspended a tranche of aid over the matter.
Rwanda’s government insists it is merely safeguarding its borders and preventing attacks by the FDLR, a Hutu militia whose ranks include perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. “We are not the aggressor,” Rwandan spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in February. “We are acting in self-defense.”
It’s a position fraught with both truth and deflection. Rwanda’s security concerns are real. So too, experts argue, is its economic interest in Congo’s minerals. Multiple investigations have traced the path of illegally mined coltan and gold from M23-controlled zones into Rwanda, where it is laundered into the global supply chain.
In recent months, the M23 has seized several mining corridors in North Kivu. A UN report from late 2024 estimated that 120 tones of coltan were being routed to Rwanda every four weeks. The Congolese government has repeatedly called this “state-backed looting.” Rwanda calls the accusations politically motivated.
A Fragile Peace in the Making?
Despite the bloodshed, a fragile web of diplomacy has emerged. In March, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame met in Qatar and called for an “immediate ceasefire.” A series of follow-up agreements, brokered by Qatar, the United States, and Angola, aims to de-escalate tensions.
On April 25, in Washington, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed a bilateral agreement pledging mutual respect for sovereignty and promising a draft peace deal. Days earlier, the Congolese government and the M23 had agreed to halt fighting until peace talks conclude.
Yet, as with so many past accords, the ink was barely dry when gunfire resumed. By early May, reports from South Kivu confirmed that M23 rebels had taken several more villages. Aid groups noted a spike in displacement. The ceasefire, for now, remains theoretical.
Still, regional leaders, such as Angolan President João Lourenço, who chairs the African Union, continue to push for a diplomatic breakthrough. His Luanda Process, alongside the Nairobi and Doha initiatives, form a tripartite framework for what many hope will become a turning point.
UN Special Envoy Huang Xia remains cautiously optimistic. “All these efforts show that peace is still possible,” he told the Security Council last week. But he warned: “A ceasefire alone is not enough. We need coordinated action to address the root causes of instability.”
MONUSCO’s Waning Relevance.
Meanwhile, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUSCO, finds itself caught between fading legitimacy and dangerous irrelevance.
With over 10,000 troops, it is one of the most extensive UN operations in the world. But only a fraction of those forces known as the Force Intervention Brigade are authorized to engage offensively. It was this brigade that helped crush the M23 in 2013. Today, its impact is negligible.
Public frustration has boiled over. In towns like Beni and Butembo, protests have turned deadly, with demonstrators accusing MONUSCO of standing by while civilians are massacred.
President Tshisekedi had requested the mission’s withdrawal by the end of 2024. That timeline has now shifted, and MONUSCO’s mandate has been extended through 2025. Yet its exit seems inevitable. Regional forces, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) contingent, were supposed to fill the vacuum. But in April, after losing 14 South African soldiers, SADC began to pull out too.
Minerals and Motives: A Children’s Crisis Amid the Crossfire
At the heart of Congo’s torment lies its mineral wealth. The irony is painful: the very abundance that could fund development instead fuels destruction.
As the drums of war echo across the verdant hills of eastern Congo, the most haunting toll is being paid not by soldiers or politicians, but by the region’s children. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports a sharp increase in grave violations against children recruitment by armed groups, sexual violence, and the targeting of schools and hospitals. Over the last year alone, hundreds of minors have been conscripted into militias, many lured by false promises of security or coerced under threat of death.
“In some areas controlled by armed groups, children don’t go to school; they go to war,” says a Congolese child protection officer based in Goma, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal. “And when they return, if they return, they carry wounds that no medicine can heal.”
The United Nations has listed the M23 among the groups most responsible for these abuses. While the M23 denies targeting civilians, human rights organizations have documented repeated violations, including arbitrary executions and sexual violence, especially in newly captured territories. The pattern, experts argue, is consistent with the group’s behavior during its earlier offensive in 2012.
“Conflict in eastern Congo is not new, but its consequences are evolving in deeply troubling ways,” notes Graça Machel, the Mozambican humanitarian and former First Lady of South Africa. “We are witnessing a generational unravelling; what does it mean for a child to grow up in perpetual war?”
The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo remains one of the most mineral-rich places on earth, home to vast deposits of cobalt, gold, coltan, and tantalum. These minerals fuel everything from smartphones and laptops to electric cars and military technology. But for decades, they have also financed militias and fueled cycles of violence. According to UN experts, around 120 tons of coltan are smuggled out of the conflict zones every month, with much of it allegedly laundered through Rwanda.
In Kigali, officials have long rejected these accusations. “Rwanda is not stealing minerals,” insisted government spokesperson Yolande Makolo during a BBC interview earlier this year. “We are protecting our border and our citizens.” Yet satellite data, cross-border trade records, and eyewitness accounts collected by the UN and NGOs suggest otherwise. Mineral trade routes have increasingly shifted toward Rwandan-controlled territories in DR Congo, particularly following M23’s resurgence.
An investigation by Global Witness indicated that Rwandan-registered companies have significantly increased exports of coltan and tantalum over the past 18 months; numbers that experts say far exceed Rwanda’s known reserves. “This is classic conflict resource laundering,” said one Western diplomat familiar with the UN’s sanctions committee. “And as long as international companies keep buying, the incentive for violence remains.”
A Region on the Edge
As international diplomats shuffle between capitals, the humanitarian situation on the ground deteriorates. Over 6.9 million people are now displaced within the DRC, the majority of them in North and South Kivu provinces. Camps swell daily with new arrivals fleeing fresh battles, and basic services like water, food, and health care are in freefall. Aid agencies warn of a looming famine, exacerbated by blocked humanitarian corridors and targeted attacks on aid convoys.
“The level of need is staggering,” said a representative for Médecins Sans Frontières in Bukavu. “But the world is fatigued. There are too many crises, and Congo despite everything still struggles to compete for attention.”
Yet as the planet continues to depend on cobalt and coltan, ignoring Congo is not an option. Every smartphone, every electric vehicle, every digital camera bears a fingerprint of this conflict, a mineral trail that winds through blood-soaked hills and stateless zones.
This is not just a Congolese crisis. It is a global reckoning with the cost of progress and the price of indifference.
Written by Olivier Noudjalbaye Dedingar, USA/UN Correspondent.
