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Intense negotiationsAUMMUNMM MMAUFDLRFDLRMMMMMFDLR FDLR FDLR MMYour browser does not support the element. in the past six months to end decades of chaos and bloodshed in eastern Congo collapsed in mid-December, when at the last minute Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, refused to endorse a new deal. He had been expected to shake hands on it with Congo’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, in Luanda, capital of Angola, whose president,João Lourenço, has been entrusted by the African Union () with the task of mediation. The upshot is that a Rwandan-supported rebel group known as 23, as well as an array of lesser guerrilla outfits, will continue to immiserate eastern Congo’s people. At least a million of them in the North Kivu district have fled since a resurgence of fighting in recent years (see map).The 23 is a well-armed group named after the date of a long-abandoned peace deal signed on March 23rd 2009. It is led by Congolese Tutsi officers. Sharing the same ethnicity as Mr Kagame, they hark back to their families’ flight from the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, when at least half a million people, most of them Tutsis, were murdered by the regime that then governed the country. The group gets arms from Rwanda and some help from Uganda. It is supported by 3,000-4,000 Rwandan troops, though Mr Kagame has never openly admitted this in the face of numerous reports, including those issued by the and America’s State Department.Congo’s government began in earnest to pursue a dialogue a year ago, after repeatedly failing to defeat 23 by force of arms. The 23 rebels and their Rwandan allies continue to surround the city of Goma, the region’s hub, and have recently captured swathes of North Kivu. In April23 conquered Rubaya, which hosts tantalum mines that are said to account for a good 15% of the world’s supply of a mineral used in smartphones; its sales fill the group’s coffers.Congo’s regular army, which is riddled with corruption, has been no match for 23, though it is propped up by a ragtag bunch of local militias known as , a Swahili word meaning “patriots”.In the past year international pressure to end the fighting has grown. In July 2024 America brokered a humanitarian truce which widened in August into a general ceasefire declared by Angola, the ’s mediator. The ceasefire has been endlessly broken but Congo’s government has continued to argue that it must be upheld.As clashes persisted, Congolese and Rwandan spy chiefs hammered out a plan to defuse the conflict. The government in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, agreed to eradicate the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (), a militia active in eastern Congo whose original leaders included Rwandan army officers of the majority Hutu ethnicity responsible for the genocide of 1994. Rwanda considers the continued existence of the an existential threat. In return, Mr Kagame is said to have promised to withdraw from North Kivu the Rwandan troops who have been helping 23, despite his previous denials that they were there at all.The issue that scuppered the deal was Mr Kagame’s last-minute insistence that Congo’s government should talk directly to 23 as part of an overall deal, a course that Mr Tshisekedi has consistently refused to follow. “Between peace and the 23, Rwanda has chosen the 23,” said Congo’s foreign minister, Thérèse Wagner, after the deal collapsed.Rwanda’s government argues that it has always promoted the idea that Congo should negotiate directly with 23, though apparently this was never formalised in the draft agreement. It has also repeatedly complained about links between the Hutu-led and senior Congolese army officers. Independent observers reckon that Congo’s notoriously incompetent and venal army would find it hard to curb the even if it tried to. Moreover, the observers say, the is a key part in the Congolese coalition preventing 23 from capturing Goma.Daniel van Dalen, an analyst for Signal Risk, a South Africa-based consultancy, says Rwanda wants to drag out a diplomatic to-and-fro for as long as possible: “They knew dialogue with 23 was never going to be accepted [by Congo],” he says. “It’s a stall tactic.” That is little comfort to the people of eastern Congo.
