Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and expert on security issues in the Middle East and South Asia, says the DR Congo government led by incompetent leader Félix Tshisekedi are to blame for the ongoing insecurities in the eastern part of the country.
Dr. Rubin says the M23 rebels are not to be blamed for the situation in the east which the Tshisekedi regime have failed to manage to protect its population and territories.
He writes:
Rhetorically at least, the Biden administration has prioritized Africa. In December 2022, President Biden hosted a US-Africa Leaders Summit, bringing almost 50 African heads of state to Washington, DC. “Africa’s success is the world’s success,” Biden declared. African leaders returned for Biden’s democracy summits, and many African leaders attended this year’s US-Africa Business Summit in Dallas.
While southern Africa thrives, the Biden administration’s response to crises in the Sahel, central Africa, and the Horn of Africa lags. Sometimes, as with Sudan, currently the world’s deadliest conflict, the response goes little beyond virtue signal by statement and perhaps some humanitarian relief. More often, the State Department embraces zombie policies, inherited legacies of earlier times diplomats embrace unquestioningly even though the policies no longer tether themselves to reality. Here Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s hostility to Somaliland is a case in point.
The U.S. position on the conflict in eastern Congo is likewise outdated and counterproductive. At issue is the March 23 Movement (M23) that emerged in 2012 as a protest against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s refusal to abide by a March 23, 2009 peace deal. The protest quickly morphed into a rebellion demanding democracy and good governance. Critics allege the M23 engages in human rights abuses. Quickly, M23 took Goma, the third largest city in eastern Congo. Congolese soldiers and police defected to M23 en masse. A peace deal led M23 to withdraw from Goma and, ultimately in 2013, the group retreated to Uganda. That same year, the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned M23. However, in 2021, as DRC President Félix Tshisekedi cynically incited ethnic violence against Congolese Tutsis, M23 returned with vengeance. The United Nations and an incestuous network of academics, human rights groups, and international organization accuse M23 of looting Congolese resources, receiving support from Rwanda and/or Uganda, and various human rights abuses. Even as the groups amplify accusations that journalists uncritically report, core evidence remains sparse or exaggerated. Nevertheless, the State and Treasury Departments continue to pile sanctions on M23 and its allies, and Blinken has repeatedly condemned the group.
Increasingly, however, it seems Washington has it wrong. Tshisekedi is among the world’s most corrupt leaders. As infrastructure crumbles around the country, Tshisekedi grows rich. Today, the amount of money stolen likely exceeds the total value of International Monetary Fund loans that continue to keep the country afloat. As underdeveloped as DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, can be, cities like Goma are exponentially worse, lacking paved roads, basic sanitation, and reliable water and electricity. Perhaps this is why Congolese now flock to M23.
My Time in M23 Territory
After a hike through highland forests, I snuck into eastern Congo and spent a week inside M23 territory, transiting its control area, visiting the frontlines, and interviewing prisoners. What I saw was far different from what officials told me in Washington and Kinshasa.
What is most striking about M23 is its calm. In Kinshasa, security is mediocre during the day, but decreases precipitously after dark. While bars and restaurants boom in more affluent Gombe near the presidential palace, even Congolese avoid being out alone. Rutshuru, the border town of Bunagana, and even Kibirizi, an important market that was the focal point of a battle between M23 and government forces and their allied militias just a month ago, appeared secure both during the day and at night. On the roads in between, motorcycles, cars, and lorries drove unescorted. This is important because, as in the Islamic State-threatened Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique, vehicles convoy for their own protection when they worry about hijacking, terrorism, or theft. The same holds true in the Central African Republic and elsewhere in the DRC.
Driving through M23 territory, I saw NGOs like Médecins sans frontiers and World Vision vehicles operating unmolested and without visible security. Checkpoints were minimal. In Rutshuru, peacekeepers assigned to The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) patronized some of the best restaurants.
Many residents compared their experience under M23 favorably to their experience when the DRC government or Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) controlled the territory. (FDLR is the reconstituted group composed of the génocidaires who perpetrated the 1994 anti-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda). Villagers and farmers complained that FDLR forced them to work without pay as virtual slaves. This was especially true with the Twa (once called pygmies by Europeans) whom the Hutu FDLR treated as slaves. Both farmers and FLDR prisoners said they received no salaries, but simply extracted money from farmers and villagers at the barrel of the gun. M23 also taxes, but only when farms are productive and in a manner that allows them to continue planting crops and profiting. In the Rutshuru prison where local authorities screen defectors and prisoners, I met captured FDLR prisoners as young as 13. Many of those who were in their later teens said they had been in the group for years before their capture or defection. All said they joined not by choice but because the FDLR kidnapped them; they looked relieved to be out of the fight.
Truck drivers reported that FDLR and DRC checkpoint duties were arbitrary and extortive. Every checkpoint would make its own assessment and force payment, again at gunpoint. The same businessmen say they must pay M23 but through a regular system that allows them to transit the entirety of the territory.
Both M23 and local businessmen dealing with everything from sugar to hardwood to minerals vociferously reject the notion that they or the Rwandans or Ugandans loot Congolese resources; rather, they say they engage in normal trade as Congolese seek to sell their products, though M23 does not remit customs it collects to Kinshasa. Instead, it applies that money to road repair, a hydroelectric project, and other public works. The Congolese government, meanwhile, brings in Blackwater mercenaries and East European soldiers of fortune to prop up its lines.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the current Biden administration policy is despite its environmental rhetoric, it now sides with those doing the most damage. When the FDLR swept through North Kivu, they took land and clear-cut portions Virunga National Park, through which the frontline still lies. The park is famous for both its wildlife and its active volcanoes. The FDLR and Congolese soldiers poached and sold mountain gorillas, lions, and hippos to Chinese middlemen. Where they deforested the park, they harvested hardwood, burned the underbrush, and planted maize and cassava that they then forced locals to harvest without pay. They also established households and farms inside the park that they taxed. Today, Virunga is a shadow of its former self. While M23 has not expelled those who settled inside the park both to avoid conflict and to keep governments and NGOs from twisting the action as ethnic cleansing, they have begun replanting the forest.
The vast fields of cassava and maize, meanwhile, largely rot. M23 does not force labor. Its areas have a surplus of food. The tragedy here is that Goma suffers scarcity. M23 does not prevent traders from selling food to Goma, but the Congolese government does.
Perhaps the best metric by which to gauge M23 is the desire by locals of all ethnic groups to return to the area. I met Mai-Mai colonels who defected with the bulk of their squads. I repeatedly asked defectors from FDLR, the DRC military, and other militias about the process of defection and the fates of their families left behind.
Several said they had heard about security and local reconciliation from cousins, merchants, and captured prisoners since reintegrated into society. Many put feelers out in advance to ensure their welcome. Repeatedly, they expressed concern about parents and siblings remaining in Goma, and several said the DRC government had imprisoned family members or confiscated property when the soldiers abandoned their posts to try their luck on the other side. Journalists and NGO workers acknowledge that many Goma residents want M23 to take the city to restore order and trade.
There are weaknesses within M23, however. While the group approaches civil affairs, eager not to repeat past mistakes, there is little discussion of governance. Because of the history of ethnic persecution in eastern DRC, M23 will not disband because to do so would invite genocide against Congolese Tutsis. Rather than isolate and sanction M23, therefore, it would be better for Washington, USAID, and NGOs like the International Republican Institute or National Democratic Institute to work across its territory in the North Kivu province to build capacity and help its transition from a militia to a democratic and accountable government.
Regardless, the White House and State Department should consider three points before continuing their kneejerk rejection of M23: First, when the United States finds itself on the same side as the Wagner Group, perhaps it is time to reconsider its position. Second, when locals seek to move to the M23 zone, but the DRC prevents their movement, the problem is likely less M23 and more the government itself. People flee toward security and freedom and away from exploitation and disorder, not the other way around. Third, as the Islamic State establishes a presence further north in the DRC, it behooves Washington to counter it. After all, the resources available to the Islamic State in the DRC dwarf what the group had in Iraq and Syria. American auto-drive diplomacy may work for Europe, Australia, and Japan, but the State Department embraces it at its peril in Africa. American policy toward the Democratic Republic of Congo is overdue for assessment and revision.
