On February 10th, 2025, activists Milain Fayulu and Jeffrey Smith wrote in Foreign Policy that in regard to the Eastern Congo Conflict, “Kagame is an arsonist masquerading as a firefighter.” Such an attack on Rwandan president Paul Kagame, long accused of backing M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), encapsulates the dominant narrative of illegal Rwandan meddling in the region. It is also dangerously deceptive.
To be clear, M23 offensives since January have seriously worsened an already dire security situation in the Eastern part of the DRC. In the last four months, rebel fighters have captured Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in the region, as well as valuable gold and coltan mines. Thousands have been killed by both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced. 1.6 million children are out of school, and sexual violence has spiked in recent months. However, it is misleading to attribute these atrocities directly to M23 when patterns of violence often point towards the Congolese government. Bukavu and Goma were ravaged in the days before M23 troops arrived, and the mining hub of Walikale was recently looted by government militias after M23 withdrew. On the battlefield, M23 has proven to be a professional and efficient fighting force, with summary executions being the primary complaints lodged towards them. Instead, it is the Congolese army commonly known as FARDC that seems to resemble a ragtag militia, plagued with graft, desertion, and accusations of abuse. Furthermore, since 2023, the capital Kinshasa has increasingly relied on loosely organized and notoriously brutal local militias known as Wazalendo, as well as former Rwandan genocide perpetrators known as FDLR. Perhaps it is less surprising, then, that M23 columns often march into towns and villages to locals cheering in the streets.
Of course, Rwanda’s illegal meddling in the DRC is sincerely problematic. Though never explicitly admitted, it is a well established fact that Rwandan soldiers are supporting (if not outnumbering) M23 fighters in the Eastern DRC. Logistical, armament, and training support from the Rwandan Defence Force are also likely why M23 has proven so professional in the field. In return, M23 facilitates the smuggling of precious minerals across the border, including nearly 280 tons of coltan that was recently exposed in a Luxembourg commodity scandal. Additionally, Rwanda’s largest net export by far is gold, which at $885 million in 2023 dwarfs any possible domestic production. Along with neighboring Uganda, which exported over $2.2 billion in likely-smuggled gold in the same year, Rwanda has benefited substantially from the looting of resources from the DRC. However, OEC data reveals that net Rwandan gold exports grew mostly in the years between 2014 ($10 million) and 2018 ($709 million)—years when M23 was not active—implying that such illegal profiteering may not be linked to military intervention. If anything, rising resource smuggling can be viewed as a product of the Congolese state’s receding control over its eastern provinces at large, and M23’s influence only a streamlining of already-established black market trade routes. While this data does not absolve Rwandan culpability, it does expose crucial inconsistencies in the narrative that Rwandan intervention is driven primarily by capitalist greed.
Fundamentally, ending Congo’s cycle of physical and economic injustice is more complicated than curtailing Rwandan involvement not least because the fates of these two nations have been interconnected for decades. As Kagame’s ethnic Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front advanced through Rwanda in spring 1994 to clear out the murderous bands that killed 800,000 Tutsi in 100 days, thousands of genocide perpetrators and nearly a million ethnic Hutu civilians fled into neighboring Congo, formerly Zaire. Hosted by then Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko and abetted by the French military, the now-infamous Interahamwe began planning a counter invasion—something the post-genocide Rwandan government could not accept. When Mobutu refused to hand perpetrators over, RPF soldiers invaded Zaire, killing an estimated 25,000 to 45,000 refugees and fomenting rebellion in the process. In decades since, continued conflict has convinced successive Congolese governments to consistently incorporate Hutu genocidaires into the national army whilst excluding Tutsi from citizenship rights. The M23 movement is merely the latest manifestation of this exclusion, named after a March 23rd, 2009 peace agreement which the rebels claim has been violated by the government. So although most genocide perpetrators have long since hung up their weapons, anti-Tutsi sentiment in the Congo is as strong as ever. As such, Rwandan interference in Congolese affairs, while likely disproportionate, can not be quickly dismissed for the security of both Rwandans and Congolese Tutsis.
Ultimately, the conflict can best be understood internally. Viewed as a threat to political power, the Mobutu and Kabila regimes kept FARDC as weak and ineffectual as possible for decades. Watching the state retreat from every aspect of governance except resource extraction left peripheral regions in the East a tinderbox of discontent. When sectarian violence overflowed into the region from Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s, armed groups sprung up by the dozen; most of them were fighting against the government until M23’s recent offensives. In fact, of the seven million displaced persons in the Congo, six were displaced in the years when M23 was dormant. Moreover, UNICEF complaints about M23 forcing children out of school are arguably voided by the fact that the Congolese government hasn’t funded such public services since the Cold War. Indeed, when Congo’s current president Felix Tshisekedi took office in 2019, he practically inherited a failed state.
Unfortunately for Congolese citizens, Tshisekedi’s leadership has been equally disastrous. He only won the presidency by striking a deal with outgoing despot Joseph Kabila to rig the election, compromising what little legitimacy the longtime Belgian resident had to begin with. Until 2024, his choice for deputy minister of defense had spent more time imprisoned in the Hague than in domestic politics. Other cabinet positions are filled with business partners and cronies alike, leading to widespread criticism from NGOs such as Amnesty International. Tshisekedi was slowly becoming an international pariah, that is, until M23 overran Goma in January.
Since then, the pendulum of criticism has swung completely and unjustifiably towards Rwanda. Groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have abandoned criticism of Tshisekedi and called for overwhelming international pressure against the alleged invaders. Western media has demonized M23 as public enemy number one in the Congo despite the presence of Islamic State groups and continued activities of Hutu genocidaires. The Economist went so far as to compare Kagame’s policies to Putin’s irredentist ambitions in Ukraine—a laughable analogy for anyone familiar with a map. The very humanitarians so eager to point out the Goma prison fire and mass rape that occurred during fighting between M23 and the army forget to mention that a nearly identical incident occurred in a Kinshasa prison months earlier and has become an epicemic across the country. Moreover, in deriding Rwanda’s appalling human rights and press freedom records, journalists conveniently gloss over the fact that the DRC consistently ranks lower on every index. And for all the valid criticism of Rwanda plundering Congolese minerals, Tshisekedi’s solution has been to offer those same minerals to Western companies at even more exploitative terms. In fact, the president has seemingly spent more time lobbying congress and the EU than governing. Thus far, the results of lobbying have been mixed, but it is frankly pathetic that the largest Western proponent of sanctions against Rwanda is the very entity responsible for murdering Patrice Lumumba, inciting ethnic divisions in Rwanda, and genociding millions in the Congo Free State.
Thus, even if one were to generously acknowledge all of Rwanda’s wrongdoings, international media should have equal if not more qualms with the Congolese government. None of M23 and Rwanda’s exploitation, abuse, or misinformation compares to Tshisekedi’s shamelessly advertised persecution complex. Indeed, global sympathy and plump aid cheques have made conflict a handsomely profitable endeavor for his regime, perhaps explaining his refusal to engage in talks with M23 until April. Tshisekedi is a corporatist despot who has consistently failed to deliver on promises, and at a certain point, the West must recognize his scapegoating behavior for what it is. This conflict is not a question of Rwandan exploitation or Congolese peace but exploitation from which direction, and the sitting Congolese president has proven himself willing to exploit his own people to the maximum.
Ultimately, long-term prospects for recovery depend entirely on the ability for the state to govern effectively. It remains to be seen how well M23 can govern its territory, but early signs imply a harsh but efficient and stable administration. On the other hand, the current regime in Kinshasa is an unmitigated disaster in statecraft. At the current rate, a Rwandan withdrawal will do nothing but line the pockets of Kinshasa elites. As the Africa Center for Strategic Studies recognizes, until Tshisekedi and the current government are replaced by genuine reform and national dialogue, conflict in the Congo will likely never abate. Any media analysis of the region should recognize this reality.Why, then, has Western media seemingly accepted Kinshasa’s ruse? Revisiting Fayulu and Smith’s article in Foreign Policy points towards a possible cause for such widespread defamation of Rwanda: self interest. Milain Fayulu’s father happens to be Martin Fayulu, an opposition politician in the DRC who delusionally blames Rwanda for his 2018 electoral loss (as mentioned above, outgoing president Joseph Kabila helped Tshisekedi rig that election). Jeffrey Smith is the founder of Vanguard Africa, a prominent backer of Rwanda’s long-discredited and genocide-questioning opposition figure Victoire Ingabire. Yet an abundance of overzealous Rwanda critics should not be allowed to distort the fact that the Congo conflict is a fundamentally internal problem. For all of Kagame’s faults, the real arsonist is Congolese president Felix Tshisekedi, and he has built a career masquerading as a firefighter.
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Members of the M23 rebel group provide security for their leaders during a public walkabout in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Image sourced from EPA Images | CC License, no changes made
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