📬Rwanda-Backed Rebels Threaten the Stability of Central Africa🌍

📚The TL;DR📝

1. Rwanda: 13,623,302 people, GDP of $42.701 billion, neighbors the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi. President Paul Kagame has ruled since 1994.

2. Kagame, despite the country’s high degree of dependence on foreign aid and consistent support for UN peacekeeping operations, has interfered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s politics since the end of the Rwandan genocide.

3.  Rwanda has invaded the Congo twice and since have sponsored a series of rebel groups that have violently destabilized the region.

4. This interference is driven by a desire for strategic depth against the remnants of the genocidal forces which they fought, and a fear that the Congolese government is sponsoring these forces.

5. A destabilized Democratic Republic of the Congo threatens critical mineral supplies and has the potential to create a cascading crisis that fuels extremism in the region.

📌Rwanda-Backed Rebels Threaten the Stability of Central Africa.📌

The M23 rebel movement stormed the Congolese city of Goma last week, representing a high point in the group’s recent offensive in the eastern Congo. Blame quickly fell on the Rwandan government, which has been accused by international organizations of equipping and even fighting alongside the M23 rebels. The Economist compared Rwanda’s leader, Paul Kagame, to Vladimir Putin, drawing parallels between the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government’s support for Congolese Tutsi rebels and Putin’s backing of ethnic Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine prior to the full-scale invasion in 2022. Of course, Rwanda is one of the smallest countries in Africa, and Russia is the largest country in Europe.

The important question, then, is what has given Rwanda the confidence to interfere relatively openly in the Congo, and how they have managed to dodge the broad international condemnation that mobilized in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, Rwanda’s invasion into one of the most resource-rich regions of the Congo threatens the stability of supply chains for critical minerals.

The root of the conflict is long-running ethnic tension throughout the region. Rwanda has three major ethnic groups, although all of these groups live across the African great lakes, including in Burundi and eastern Congo. The smallest of these is the Twa, a pygmy people closely related to other African pygmies. The next-smallest are the Tutsi. The Tutsi are pastoralists who measured wealth in heads of cattle and Tutsi clans ruled Rwanda since before colonization. The Hutu, meanwhile, were farmers who lived as client farmers on the lands of Tutsi aristocrats.

Belgian and German colonizers collaborated with the Tutsi ruling class in a formalized and legalized arrangement, provoking resentment among Hutus. This resentment culminated in the Rwandan Revolution shortly prior to independence, where Hutu nationalists abolished the monarchy and laid the foundations for an independent, Hutu-dominated republic. A smoldering insurgency, conducted by Tutsi nationalists, wracked post-independence Rwanda, which escalated into a full-scale civil war in 1990. Although a Tanzanian-negotiated agreement ended the war in 1993, the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was killed when his plane was shot down approaching Kigali. The assassination remains unsolved, but Hutu extremists quickly blamed Tutsi guerillas and escalated their rhetoric, setting the stage for the Rwandan genocide. The genocide would claim 800,000 mostly Tutsi lives and re-start the civil war.

The second round of the civil war was much more swift. The Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded in the midst of the 1994 genocide, overthrowing the Hutu-led government in a lightning offensive and establishing a Tutsi-led government. Paul Kagame assumed the presidency and has ruled Rwanda in a dictatorial manner since. The remnants of the Rwandan army, along with génocidaire militia groups like the Interahamwe, fled into the eastern Congo (then Zaire), where they began a cross-border insurgency, sheltered by the government of military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. These groups, along with the Congolese army, targeted Tutsi residents in the Eastern Congo and harassed the Rwandan military along the shared border. Combatting this insurgency has emerged as Rwanda’s chief foreign policy objective. In 1996, Rwanda, along with Uganda, began sponsoring proxy rebel groups and invaded the Congo from the east. Mobutu’s government quickly crumpled and the Rwandan-backed rebels installed Laurent-Desire Kabila to the presidency.

Kabila quickly broke with the Rwandans, however, and by 1998 Congolese Tutsi were waging a new guerilla war against the central government, backed by Rwandan arms and advisors. Rwanda and Uganda planned a new, daring intervention in the Congo. Hijacking civilian airliners in Goma, they flew to Congo’s Atlantic coast, seizing Kitona and marching westward along with defected Congolese soldiers. This was the opening act of the Second Congo War, which grinded on for 5 years and drew the intervention of countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. Kabila was assassinated and his son was chosen as president in the process of peace negotiations, while Rwanda secured the dismantling of the Interahamwe remnants on the border. Nevertheless, Rwanda continued to sponsor rebels even after the peacekeeping agreement was signed. They continued to sponsor a new series of proxy military forces, which enjoyed limited success until 2012, when the M23, by far the most successful Rwandan-backed force, rose up and occupied much of North Kivu province, including Goma.

The prospect of UN intervention checked M23, who promptly negotiated with the Congolese government and operated a relatively low-level insurgency that only began to escalate late last year when, alongside disguised Rwandan troops, they seized a series of critical border cities and began marching towards Goma. M23 enforces harsh taxes on critical minerals, and every mine they seize excludes its product from the licit trading mechanisms. This means that U.S. sanctions should block their usage further in the supply chain, although the impact has been somewhat dented by Rwandan efforts to evade sanctions.

At the same time that Rwanda was repeatedly destabilizing the Congo, they were aligning themselves with the notional premises of the international order. Rwanda is one of the most active participants in UN peacekeeping, beginning in 2005, just after the end of the Second Congo War, when Rwandan peacekeepers were deployed to Sudan. Since then, they have become one of the highest per capita contributors to UN peacekeeping operations. Kagame also made an effort to make Kigali hospitable to international organizations, which now hosts 32 offices of international organizations. More important to the Rwandan regime itself is the government’s severe dependency on foreign aid, which accounts for 40% of Rwanda’s budget.

The outline of Kagame’s strategic policy is clear. On the one hand, the trauma of the Rwandan genocide, coupled with the constant instability of often unfriendly Congolese governments, demands that Rwanda move aggressively to establish strategic depth within the Congo. At the same time, in order to sustain his government and grant it international credibility despite its bellicose behavior in the Congo, it provides extensive support to international institutions, allowing them to operate more effectively in Africa. Nevertheless, Kagame faces a threat from the inherent contradictions of this strategy. If international organizations or Rwanda’s foreign aid backers were to increase their pressure on the small state, the fiscal solvency of the Rwandan government would be immediately under threat. Finding an individual state patron is a difficult matter. A stable and relatively neutral Congo, capable of exporting its vast supplies of critical minerals, is important to Russian and Chinese interests. Their actions have reflected this. On January 29, China rebuked the Rwandan government and urged them to cease sponsoring the M23 rebels. Russia, similarly, called for negotiations and a ceasefire.

Severe international pressure, then, could get Rwanda to temporarily halt their offensive. This worked the last time that M23 seized Goma, but the United States has not displayed interest in applying its leverage against Rwanda. International organizations and businesses may be a more viable force. A Formula 1 race is set to happen in Rwanda in 2027, a critical moment for the Rwandan government’s efforts to promote tourism in the country, but the Congolese government has been lobbying the Federation Internationale d’Automobile to halt the race. The United Nations condemned the fighting and called for a ceasefire but has not displayed any interest in relocating its office or organizing yet another multinational coalition against Rwanda.

See You Next Tuesday For 🌎The Beyond Borders Brief!🌎

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