The M23 rebel group, which is mostly comprised of ethnic Tutsi militiamen, has advanced further into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) mineral-rich east, tightening its grip after capturing the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu.
With backing from Rwanda, fighters seized Goma in January, the largest city in North Kivu province and Bukavu fell soon after. North and South Kivu together span roughly 124,000 square kilometres, nearly five times Rwanda’s size.
M23 is now closing in on Uvira, near the Burundi border. Another contingent pushes north from Goma toward Butembo.
Other locations now under M23 control include Masisi, Rutshuru and Katale.
The Rwanda-backed rebels had reached Nyabiondo, a village along the road to Walikale — a strategic town housing the DRC’s only industrial mine, a vital source of state revenue in the form of tax payments.
For over three decades, conflict has plagued the mineral-rich east of DRC, which is home to gold, coltan, and copper deposits, collectively estimated to be worth $24 trillion.
The region’s vast reserves of gold, coltan, and copper have fuelled rivalries, as a myriad of armed groups vie for control, challenging the authority of the central government.
But M23’s ambitions may extend beyond minerals.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance, claims M23 is fighting for Congo, not minerals. Meanwhile, the government has placed a $5 million bounty on Nangaa, along with M23’s top leaders, as it struggles to contain the rebels.
With rebel forces surging and alliances shifting, Kinshasa’s grip on the east seems to be slipping further away.
However, to understand today’s conflict, one must trace it back to 1994 — and the Rwandan genocide.
Seeds of discord
In just 100 days, Hutu extremists massacred 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis. The killing ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, seized Kigali.
But the violence didn’t stop—it just moved across the border.
Fearing retribution, nearly two million Hutus fled into Zaire (now the DRC), among them the perpetrators of the genocide.
In the refugee camps of North and South Kivu, they regrouped into militias.
Tensions between Hutu and Tutsi armed groups escalated, and by 1996, Rwanda invaded, kicking off the First Congo War.
At the time, Zaire was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Rwanda accused of harboring Hutu extremists, or what came to be known as Interahamwe, a Hutu paramilitary organisation.
Backed by Uganda, Angola, and Burundi, Rwanda helped opposition leader Laurent Kabila oust Mobutu. Kabila took power, renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, in theory, the conflict should have ended in May 1997.
But Kabila, facing domestic backlash over Rwanda’s influence, quickly turned on his former allies. He expelled Tutsis, ousted foreign troops, and tolerated Hutu militias.
In August 1998, Rwanda invaded again, launching the Second Congo War—also known as Africa’s First World War.
The conflict sucked in armies from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Sudan, and dozens of militia groups proliferated.
A 1999 report by the International Crisis Group noted that the war was “in reality made up of several other conflicts with the result that six separate disputes are being waged on Congolese territory.”
“On the other side, you had Rwanda, Uganda, and at that moment, Burundi. They wanted exactly to take lands, and each of them had some interest, particular interest,” Professor Dady Saleh, Kinshasa-based political analyst, tells TRT World.
The three countries were pitted against the DRC, which was backed by Angola (who didn’t want Uganda and Rwanda taking control of Central Africa), Zimbabwe (Mugabe sent troops to safeguard his economic interests in mines, Namibia (in interest of its regional alliances) and Sudan (in retaliation for Uganda’s support of Sudanese rebels).
Laurent Kabila’s assassination in 2001 by his bodyguard brought his son, Joseph, to power.
The younger Kabila ended the war in 2003, brokering peace deals between the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda. By then, around three million lives were lost.
The agreements required the DRC to disarm Hutu and ex-Rwandan army militias, with help from a UN force. In return, Rwanda would withdraw its troops.
However, eastern Congo remained volatile, especially with Tutsi militias still active — chief among them was the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
On March 23, 2009, the CNDP and the Congolese government signed a deal: CNDP fighters would be integrated into Congo’s army in exchange for peace.
But, as history shows, in the DRC, peace deals rarely hold.
M23 and the waves of action
By 2013, former CNDP fighters, disillusioned and frustrated, splintered to form M23, named after the failed 2009 accord. The rebel group, composed primarily of Tutsis, opposes the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia with roots in the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.
Formed in 2012, M23 quickly seized large swathes of territory, including the city of Goma.
Backed by Rwanda, they briefly captured key areas in eastern DRC. But regional forces pushed them back, international pressure mounted on Rwanda, and M23 faded into dormancy.
But they waited.
In March 2022, M23 resurfaced, reigniting an insurgency that has since been simmering – until it boiled over in January 2025, when the Rwandan-backed group began snatching up key cities.
According to Saleh, this is because of the training fighters have been receiving in Rwanda.
“Because at this moment, some people are also, some Congolese even, are also trained by Rwandese either in Congo or in Kigali,” Saleh tells TRT World. “They call a rash training for two weeks or three weeks and then you come back. These are the training sessions and it’s official.”
Backed by Rwanda, M23 rebels seized Goma, the largest city in North Kivu, in January.
Days later, they captured Bukavu on the southwestern tip of Lake Kivu and are now advancing towards Uvira, near Burundi’s border on Lake Tanganyika. Another faction is pushing north from Goma towards Butembo, tightening the group’s grip on eastern Congo.
A UN report states that in 2024, M23 exported at least 150 metric tonnes of coltan to Rwanda from DRC mines.
According to the report, the rebels established a mining ministry in occupied territory in the Rubaya area, which produces minerals used in smartphones and computers. That’s where they maintained a monopoly for the export of coltan to Rwanda from Rubaya, contaminating the supply line with “ineligible” minerals, the report said.
The Kivu region appeared to be ripe for the picking for M23 as DRC’s national army, weakened by years of absorbing rebel groups, struggled to hold ground.
Experts attribute a diminished Congolese army to numerous integrations of rebel groups into the army, which maintained parallel command chains and chipped away at the discipline and hierarchy necessary for a functioning military. But soldiers are also underpaid, the military underfunded and believed to have been kept intentionally weak out of fear of a coup.
“If the country was led very well, I think it would be possible to be able to protect our country… The problem is that we don’t have an army, so it is very difficult to protect ourselves” Congolese activist Steward Muhindo tells TRT World.
They aren’t just fighting each other, either.
Regional chessboard
Kinshasa has been recruiting domestically, and rallied local militias into a coalition called the “Wazalendo” — meaning “patriots” in Kiswahili. Since President Félix Tshisekedi’s call for citizen vigilance in 2022 in fighting M23, the military has trained 40,000 recruits.
DRC has also been recruiting internationally, like now-evacuated Romanian mercenaries from the private military company Congo Protection.
Burundi’s troops are also in the country to support Kinshasa in staving off M23 advances.
This is a stark shift to the first Congolese war in 1996, where Burundi armed forces helped to oust Mobutu from power, allied with Rwandan and Ugandan troops under Kabila’s leadership.
Saleh suggests Burundi’s current interest is economic.
“It means that they are just supporting Rwanda to also have a part of the cake,” Saleh tells TRT World.
The DRC also hosts foreign troops on a shaky basis.
Rwandan ally Uganda recently seized Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which sits right on top of North Kivu province, apparently to counter Daesh-linked Allied Democratic Forces in the Kivu regions.
Yet, analysts note that this coincides with M23 movement in the direction of Bunia, sparking concern about coordination between M23, its Rwanda backers and its Ugandan allies.
"Uganda also has troops in Congo with the agreement of the Congolese government, and they are fighting against the ADF,” Muhindo says.
“Uganda supports M23 when it’s the M23 crisis, but also they support the [Rwandan] government in fighting the ADF,” he adds. “It just shows how… the government of Congo is not serious.”
Meanwhile, soldiers from South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania serve under the Southern African Development Community Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC). But after losing 14 troops in combat, South Africa faces domestic calls to withdraw.
Deployed in May 2023, after approval from the Southern African Development Community, the troops are tasked with supporting the DRC government, as outlined in the SADC Mutual Defence Pact.
The agreement mandates that armed attacks against one of the 16 States’ Parties “shall be considered a threat to regional peace and security and shall be met with immediate collective action.”
Led by the South African National Defence Force, the SADC deployment is shaping up to be a knot of discord with South Africa, after losing 14 South African soldiers, prompting domestic calls to withdraw troops from the DRC.
Even Kenya has strained relations with Kinshasa after hosting M23 leaders.
Kinshasa has accused Kenyan peacekeeping forces on the ground in DRC of being sympathetic to rebel groups there.
“True architects of war?”
The DRC’s war is not a purely domestic affair.
It is a conflict shaped by regional rivalries, foreign ambitions, and global markets. And for all its mineral riches, the DRC may hold little power over its own fate.
As Saleh argues, the war’s true architects may lie beyond Africa.
He points to a 2009 speech by Nicolas Sarkozy, where the French president proposed a shared regional market for DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. During a trip to the DRC, he heavily advocated for a single market in the region, akin to the European Union, suggesting that DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi pool their resources, share them, and jointly develop their infrastructure.
“Structured cooperation brings the certainty that everyone will benefit,” Sarkozy told DRC’s parliament in Kinshasa. “Why not provide more momentum to something already advancing? Why not go even further?” Sarkozy said.
According to Saleh, this vision endures. “One of the deputies of Rwanda last week said exactly in front of everybody that now they are getting back their land from DRC.”
“Ma’am,” Saleh emphatically asks this writer. “Can you understand that?”
The embattled country is not only fighting a war against M23, but against a broader geopolitical chess game where decisions made in Kigali, Kampala, Pretoria, and even Washington and Brussels dictate its future.
The question remains: with a weakened military and fragile leadership, how much control does Kinshasa truly have over the country’s future?
