The M23 is a very well organised and equipped army. The UN peacekeepers do not have the means to confront them.
This was the essence of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message to French media in 2022.
At the time, the rebel group, which had been dormant since its return to Congo in 2017, was at war with the DRC government again, following unprovoked attacks on its positions by the Congolese army, the FARDC, in late 2021. Much has happened since then, including Kinshasa throwing caution to the wind and sending an East African peace-keeping force packing, breaking the ceasefire the East African Community had championed, and vowing to defeat the rebels, only to find that Guterres was right. Over time the M23 has expanded its territorial control despite Kinshasa bringing in reinforcements in the form of European mercenaries, French instructors, Burundian and SADC troops, and seeking the help of a plethora of local militias as well as drafting in the notorious FDLR, remnants of the executors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
Regrettably, the UN Secretary-General has gone on to push an unhelpful and mendacious narrative that seeks to cast the rebel group as a negative force similar to the CODECO, ADF, FDLR and Wazalendo conglomerate. Judging by Guterres’ September report to the Security Council on the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), he would rather stick to this narrative than seize the unique opportunity presented by the M23 as the strongest and most disciplined force in the DRC, to end the country’s three-decade crisis.
M23 is the better version of the FARDC
The M23 has achieved what the FARDC and MONUSCO have failed to do for more than two decades, and in the process has shown a degree of ideological maturity long absent from DRC politics. In the areas under its control, it has neutralised all other armed groups, established administrations or maintained and strengthened existing ones, set up a police force operating in remote villages, carried out repairs to damaged infrastructure such as bridges, put an end to the daily extortion that ordinary Congolese face when dealing with their own security forces, and even pressured operators to increase workers’ revenues in the Rubaya mines with prices going up from US $30 to 70 per kilogramme of coltan. None of these achievements, the evidence for which is available online, is mentioned in Guteress’ report. But in short, with limited forces, the M23 is establishing a monopoly on violence in an area probably the size of Rwanda or even larger. This is something the Congolese government, even with the help of MONUSCO, has failed to achieve. Instead, it has often chosen to let armed groups roam and kill civilians freely. Ideally, the M23’s control would translate into state authority, if Kinshasa could harness this capacity instead of portraying the rebels as terrorists. It would make a lot of sense if the professionalisation of the FARDC were to be built around the M23. But alas!
The M23 is not a terrorist group. Mediators, Uhuru Kenyata and João Lourenço, the president of Angola, have been trying to hammer this into Tshisekedi’s head, to no avail. The situation in M23-controlled areas is such that even Guterres was forced to report to the Security Council that in June “tens of thousands of internally displaced persons returned to Kanyabayonga, Kirumba and Kayna,” just days after these territories had fallen under M23 control and that “in August, around 380,000 persons reportedly returned to their areas of origin in North Kivu”. In other words, people in North Kivu no longer believe reports they receive from their government and the UN panel of experts portraying the M23 as a group that indiscriminately attacks civilians. So they vote with their feet and seek refuge in areas under rebel control.
The M23 is also the perfect buffer between Congo and Rwanda. For one thing, it rejects tribalism as a basis for politics, seeks to provide security for all Congolese regardless of their sub-national identities, and has even tried to negotiate peace with various armed groups. In this respect alone, there is a clear difference between the M23 and the FARDC which stirs up ethnic animosities. Also, where M23 is present, genocidal forces like the FDLR, which have poisoned relations between the two countries for three decades, disappear, vacating areas where they had established a de facto state within a state, collecting taxes, poaching, selling timber, smuggling gold and organising terror attacks against Rwanda. Currently the M23 are doing exactly what the FARDC were doing in joint operations with the Rwandan army in 2009. That was before the Americans threw a tantrum and sabotaged that cooperation. Any actor seeking peace in the DRC, with the exception of the US, of course, should see this development in a positive light, even as it lays bare MONUSCO’s impotence.
Consider this: if even Guterres acknowledges in his report that the M23 is busy hunting down the FDLR and its ideological twin, Nyatura, why does he not encourage such laudable actions instead of pinning his hopes on the elusive prospect that Kinshasa, which has made a habit of breaking every agreement it has signed, will finally neutralise a genocidal force it sees as an ally?
While Guteress’ report mentions that the M23 may be collecting an estimated $300,000 a month from its taxes on the Rubaya mines, this clearly isn’t enough for the law enforcement mission the group has set for itself. It would make more sense to consider redirecting the millions wasted on MONUSCO to a more efficient force, but sadly, we must stick to the single story: the M23 are the bad guys.
Not letting the facts get in the way of a “good” story
Guterres cannot be blamed entirely. He has boots on the ground, a team of experts and a head of mission who feed him stories about the M23 that ‘coincidentally’ and religiously reflect US hostility to the rebel group. But even taken at face value, allegations concerning M23’s crimes pale in comparison to those committed by the FARDC and its allies, according to Guterres’s own report. It is unfair that the report maintains these allegations when the UN teams had the opportunity and an invitation from the M23 to confirm or refute them. They chose not to investigate. This is not new.
The propaganda campaign against the M23 intensified as it became clear that they were making significant gains on the ground. In November 2022, news broke of an alleged M23 massacre in Kishishe. The UN’s preliminary ‘investigation’ (read hearsay) put the number of civilians killed at 131. The words ‘mass graves’ were thrown into the air. More than 2000 km away, Kinshasa claimed that 300 had been killed. The fact that Kishishe was an FDLR stronghold was not taken into account, although in such a case extreme caution should have been exercised about the credibility of ‘witnesses’. When no evidence of mass killings was found, the story changed slightly, although it didn’t get as much media coverage as publications rarely contradict their reports. Amnesty International put forward the figure of 20 men killed (similar to the number admitted by the M23), but added a twist to the story: 66 women raped.
This is not to say that the M23 never commits crimes. It’s a war, not a movie. So it was important to establish whether most of the 20 people killed were civilians, as Amnesty suggested, or combatants, as the M23 claimed, and whether they had been summarily executed or caught in crossfire.
It’s also hard not to believe allegations of rape when it involves a group of men, especially armed men in times of war. After all, Congo is a country where, according to Guterres’ report, most actors, including UN peacekeepers, are guilty of this crime. But it is also difficult to understand why the UN investigators and human rights organisations refused to travel to Kishishe to verify these allegations, as the M23 promptly invited them to do. There was something fishy about this behaviour. A story had been created and everyone had to stick to it.
Similar behaviour took place in May this year, when refugee camps in Mugunga and Lac-Vert (10-15 km from Goma) were shelled. Without any investigation, the US pointed the finger at Rwanda and the M23. Of course, the ‘savage’ Africans were expected to believe that the US had impeccable technology to monitor their movements in the Congolese jungle 24/7, that it had reliable intelligence, and that it would never lie again after failing to confirm the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The events that followed the shelling suggested that the Americans had once again lied through their teeth.
MONUSCO, which had not received the memo from Washington, issued a communiqué stating that it expected the Congolese government to bring the perpetrators to justice – something Kinshasa was in no position to do if MONUSCO was referring to Rwandan troops or M23 fighters. It didn’t help that MSF also issued a statement condemning the placement and use of artillery near refugee camps by the FARDC and its allies, a war crime that put helpless civilians at risk.
Worst of all, refugees took to the streets that day to protest against the FARDC’s actions. Soon after, videos emerged of the FARDC shooting and killing protesters.
In the region, it was a PR disaster for Washington and Kinshasa. Their story seemed to have died a quiet death. SADC tried to use it as a pretext to launch military operations against the M23 and was quickly beaten back to its barracks. But a few days ago, the US mouthpiece HRW resurrected the story as members of the UN gathered in New York for the Summit of the Future 2024. This was not surprising. HRW is an organisation whose “discourse on Rwanda is a threat to that country and to peace and stability in Central Africa,” according to retired American diplomat Richard Johnson.
Suffice it to say that almost five months later, no credible investigation has been carried out into the shelling of the camps and, as in the case of the Kishishe ‘massacre’, the M23 and its alleged backer, Rwanda, remain, in the eyes of many, the culprits of horrific crimes. The aim is clear. To prevent a negotiated solution to the crisis in which the M23 retains control and perhaps even expands its operations into other regions affected by armed militias and terrorist groups. For the Americans, the DRC should remain a scene of chaos and destruction, where MONUSCO is deployed in perpetuity, and Rwanda is the perfect scapegoat while the US helps itself to Katanga’s riches at the lowest cost.
But what if the M23 moved into Katanga? Would Washington and Kinshasa finally listen to reason?
Some might argue that the M23 cannot be a solution, since Kinshasa has made it clear that it will never talk to the rebels, despite Angola’s best efforts to mediate, and Tshisekedi seems bent on spending foolishly on military equipment and arming militias to fight where his army cannot. This is a false argument. The main reason the fighting would continue is because Kinshasa feels vindicated by Western moral support. Most actors on the ground do not want this war to continue. SADC troops are risk-averse, as they proved in Mozambique. Burundian troops have lost access to the Rubaya mines, the proceeds of which were used to reward their leaders for sending cheap cannon fodder. Congolese army officers have discreetly expressed their frustration at a pointless war that serves no purpose other than to preserve Tshisekedi’s fragile political standing and shield a foreign genocidal force while they fight their former colleagues, now commanders of the M23. In fact, they and their Rwandan and Angolan counterparts had reached an agreement on how to neutralise this force, until Kinshasa’s political elite got in the way, again!
As for the Wazalendo conglomerate, coexistence with the Congolese army is becoming more difficult by the day, as the sporadic clashes between them show. If things get out of hand, the M23 might be needed to restore order.
In short, we know why the US doesn’t want order in Congo and therefore why it doesn’t support the M23. The question is: why doesn’t everyone else, especially Guterres, support the M23?
