The M23 militia group attacked the town of Saké in North Kivu last month, wounding eight UN peacekeepers and sending much of its population fleeing towards the provincial capital, Goma. The fall of the town in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) means the M23 now controls all roads in and out of Goma – and, by extension, critical mining sites and trading networks.
If the M23 wanted to overrun the capital, as it did in 2012, it would have done so by now. So why hasn’t it? The militia would struggle to keep hold of the city without the support of neighbouring Rwanda. Three UN investigations, the latest in December, have concluded that the M23 is armed and supported by President Paul Kagame’s regime. The UN imposed sanctions on the group in February.
It appears the militia is attempting to choke the Congolese people into submission by disrupting movement of goods and people, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid including medicine, food and water to those trapped in Goma. Is Kagame’s plan to force the DRC government into a power-sharing agreement? That would give Rwanda access to and control of critical Congolese mines and business networks in North Kivu.
If more evidence was needed for the west to act to end this violence, then the fall of Saké must surely provide it. The number of M23-related displacements across North Kivu has risen to 1.7 million. Many, including more than 200,000 who have fled in recent weeks, are living in makeshift tents or at the homes of friends or relatives in Goma, which was already home to about 780,000 people, with almost a million more living on its outskirts.
Disease is adding to the misery. The World Health Organization documented more than 52,400 cholera cases in the country last year – the highest since 2017. Measles rates have more than doubled, exceeding 320,000 cases, while deaths from the disease have tripled, from 1,800 in 2022 to more than 6,000 in 2023.
The conflict in DRC is different from those in Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen. There is no Russian or Chinese influence on the ground or veto at the UN security council, and there has never been any threat to US, British, European or Canadian citizens or interests. What is happening in DRC is perhaps the only conflict in the world that the international community could resolve relatively simply, costing British, US or EU taxpayers almost nothing. And because we can do so, we must.
The US and UK should back the creation of an international criminal tribunal for the DRC. Congolese people have been calling for this for more than 20 years – in 2003, the then president, Joseph Kabila, made a plea at the UN general assembly, and most recently in 2022 when the government petitioned the UN security council. We have tried everything else, including peacekeepers and peace deals, and the only thing that people and leaders have been asking for is the tribunal. Let’s give it a go.
The world must also immediately end support to Kagame’s regime. The UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are clear that without Rwanda’s backing, the M23 couldn’t have killed, raped, tortured and displaced as many as it has.
We know this works because when the US, UK and others briefly stopped arming and funding Kagame in 2012 – after media coverage – the M23 was defeated and a brutal Rwandan-born warlord called Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed “the Terminator”, was tried at the international criminal court where he was jailed for 30 years for 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
If Kagame is not stopped, the M23 will turn Goma – and, by extension, South Kivu’s provincial capital Bukavu, which relies on Goma for food and economic activities – into a pressure cooker of disease, starvation and despair that many defenceless Congolese people will not be able to escape.