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“There areMFDLRFDLRMMUNMMMUNMONUSCOUNUNMMMMYour browser does not support the element. no more places for the dead,” says Marie Kavira-Nvungi, a nurse at a hospital in Goma, the largest city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The morgue is full. Wounded patients lie on the floor waiting for treatment. Among them are children injured by shrapnel and explosives. The pharmaceutical depot has been looted, depriving patients of medicines. “The situation is becoming difficult,” adds Ms Kavira-Nvungi, with stoical understatement.The scene is the result of the invasion of Goma on January 27th by 23, an armed group under the control of Rwanda, Congo’s neighbour, which abuts the city. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, has escalated a crisis whose origins go back decades. More instability in Congo, which saw two catastrophic wars between 1996 and 2003, is almost certain. As African and Western states are distracted or indifferent, there is little to stop a wider conflict.Goma is more than 1,500km east of Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, but just 100km west of Kigali, the Rwandan one. It is the hub of what Mr Kagame sees as Rwanda’s sphere of influence. He claims the Congolese state has failed to get a grip on its war-torn east and co-operates with his country’s enemies. Mr Kagame singles out a militia known as the , which has its roots in the ethnic Hutu groups that tried to exterminate Mr Kagame’s Tutsis in the genocide of 1994. Those close to him add that the infrastructure Rwanda has built near the border—including luxury tourist lodges for seeing gorillas—is at risk from any group or Congolese army division with an armed drone.Yet what remains of the is a motley assemblage that presents little threat to Rwanda’s army. Rwanda is the main sponsor of instability in the region that Mr Kagame claims Congo is failing to pacify. Its elites harbour dreams of a “Greater Rwanda”, arguing that its colonial borders do not reflect its history. Congo’s vast mineral wealth is another motive to meddle. 23 controls coltan supply chains. Congolese gold is regularly smuggled out of Rwanda.When Félix Tshisekedi became president of Congo in 2019, Mr Kagame welcomed his victory in dubious elections. But relations soon soured. In late 2021 23, a Congolese Tutsi-led group that had been dormant for almost a decade, re-emerged. Despite denials coming out of Kigali, experts say that 23 is funded and armed by Rwanda, which has thousands of troops fighting alongside it. The group has steadily gained territory in North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital, committing murder and gang rape along the way.The rhetoric on both sides has long been rising. Mr Kagame has implied support for the idea of a greater Rwanda. Mr Tshisekedi has likened Mr Kagame’s territorial ambitions to those of Adolf Hitler, and suggested he wants to change the regime in Kigali. In December diplomatic talks led by Angola and backed by America ended in failure. Rwanda says this is because Congo would not talk to 23. But Mr Kagame may never have been serious about diplomacy.In Goma 23 has seized full control, after some brief resistance from Congolese special forces and pro-government militias known as Wazalendo. Some Congolese soldiers and militiamen ditched their uniforms before hiding or fleeing. Your correspondent found uniforms that had been thrown over the wall of his hotel. Foreign troops meant to help the Congolese army have melted away. Romanian mercenaries procured by Congo have left by bus for Rwanda. A deployment of southern African forces has been humbled; South Africa says 13 of its troops have died in recent skirmishes. Members of one of the world’s largest peacekeeping missions, known as , are either sheltering in their bases or have left the country.The city has been devastated. Mark Mundalama, a local resident, says he counted 30 corpses on the ground as he left his house to find a safer hideout with his children. “Many people were injured because they were going to look for water and food,” he says. Most of the city is without internet, water and electricity. Hospitals are full. Many residents have taken to looting what they can find, sometimes from abandoned facilities.Rwanda’s incursion has been widely condemned, including in meetings at the Security Council on January 26th and 28th. Marco Rubio, America’s new secretary of state, has spoken to Mr Tshisekedi and Mr Kagame, calling “for all parties to respect sovereign territorial integrity”. Europeans are considering whether to halt aid for projects in Rwanda.Yet Rwanda calculates that the West will not enforce sanctions that would compel it to reverse course. Nor does any African country have the focus or clout to stop the bloodshed. William Ruto, Kenya’s president, asked for talks on January 29th, but Mr Tshisekedi sees him as too close to Rwanda, so declined to take part. Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, whose troops are dying at the hands of Rwandan-backed forces, is unlikely to be seen by Mr Kagame as a neutral arbiter.What happens next? 23 seems set to administer Goma, presumably with Rwandan assistance. But Mr Kagame may go further. A Rwandan official suggests that 23 will advance on South Kivu, raising the risk of further conflict between Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi, whose troops have also been fighting against 23. There is a possibility that Mr Kagame wants a reprise of the 1990s, when his army marched all the way to Kinshasa to topple Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of what was then Zaire.That is unlikely. But Mr Tshisekedi seems keen to use an upsurge in jingoism for his own ends; some fear he wants to try to remove a constitutional limit on his staying in office beyond the end of his second term in 2029. His opponents, by contrast, will see his humiliation as an opportunity to get rid of him. They include political groups that are closely allied with 23.Either way, the fall of Goma is a seismic moment in the modern history of the Great Lakes. Rwanda’s actions will continue to be met with disapproval. But Mr Kagame thinks he can get away with it. The past 30 years suggest that he is right.
