to analyse. Never in the thirty years following the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 in the former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – that is, South Kivu and North Kivu as well as the administrative regions of Ituri – has known no lasting peace. Fighting thus resumed in November 2021, with the return of an insurgency that many believed to be extinct: the March 23 Movement, or M23, formed in 2010 officially to defend Congo’s Tutsi. As ten years ago, Rwanda is accused of fomenting this insurgency. Kigali’s responsibility for the latest violence, which, in just a few months, has already thrown 450,000 people into the streets and killed dozens of others, cannot, however, hide other causes: the chronic weakness of the Congolese state and other Areas of ambition to neighboring countries DRC, Uganda.
In some offensives, the M23 has actually driven the Congolese army from several of its bases under the passive gaze of the blue helmets from the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which deploys a contingent of about 15,000 men. Is. DRC from 2002 to a rather inconclusive result. The rebels control a large area north of the city of Goma, which borders Uganda to the east. Uganda, where many “historic” M23 fighters took refuge after their military defeat in 2012.
Rwanda has been explicitly designated as the logistical and ideological sponsor of the M23 by Kinshasa and by the UN group of experts in charge of the crisis. The United States and France have also called on their Rwandan partners to stop interfering. On 19 January, by telephone, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, again expressed his concern to the Angolan President, João Lourenco, under whose auspices the plan for a December 2022 ceasefire and the encampment of the M23 was drawn up.
Congolese impotence
Since then, the implementation of this agreement has stalled. That’s why the Congolese people call on the international community to put more pressure on Rwanda. In vain This impotence of the Congo is a manifestation of an adverse balance of power. Although to the east Zaire is 90 times larger than its neighbor, it is eight times as populous. It has considerable untapped mineral resources, where Rwanda’s main asset, agriculture, is saturated by its record density of population (511 inhabitants per square kilometer).
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