Solidarity with Congo Requires Avoiding the Traps of Oversimplification

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT

Since late 2023, calls for solidarity with the Congo, particularly from the diaspora, have become increasingly pressing. Countless social media posts talk about hundreds of thousands—even millions—of killings in Kivu, genocide, a Rwandan invasion, Western extractivism… This text, commissioned from Onesphore Sematumba, who fled Goma a few hours before the invasion of the city by the M23, is the first outcome of our long learning process of a “political blind spot”—obscured by our understanding of the Great Lake region through an imaginary mostly influenced by the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. We wanted a reference text that would allow us to unravel the multiple layers of complexity in the situation, which Onesphore has generously provided.

The Return of the M23 ///
Since November 2021, the March 23 rebellion—better known as M23—has resurfaced in Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), bordering Rwanda and Uganda. Defeated in 2013 by military pressure from the Congolese army and an intervention brigade from the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), in combination with strong diplomatic pressure on Rwanda (which was already accused at the time of supporting the group), the M23 disintegrated shortly before its fighters and political leaders went into exile in Uganda and Rwanda. Since returning to Congolese territory from the Virunga National Park region on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC, the well-structured and heavily armed M23 quickly gained the upper hand over the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), once again benefiting from strong support from Kigali. At that time, FARDC was undermined by structural problems such as lack of training, disparity in command, low pay for troops, corruption, and profiteering by officers.

Faced with the obvious ineffectiveness of this army, Félix Tshisekedi quickly resorted to external military support. In 2023, the regional bloc of the East African Community (EAC), which the DRC had joined a few months earlier, deployed a regional force (EACRF) made up of Burundian, Kenyan, Ugandan, and South Sudanese contingents under Kenyan leadership. The EACRF, which was deployed with difficulty, did not remain on Congolese soil for long. President Tshisekedi was eager to see results against the M23 in an election year where he was running for a second term. The security problems in the east—of which the M23 rebellion is only one aspect—were the president’s Achilles’ heel in the face of his rivals.