Dramatic escalation in eastern Congo

The situation in eastern Congo is once again escalating dramatically. After long months of the planned advance of the M23¹ mercenaries – reinforced by other alliances of so-called rebels and units of the Rwandan army, all under Rwandan control – and for the third time in this endless war, Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, has now been completely captured by this guerrilla armada. Fierce fighting throughout the northern part of North Kivu province preceded this. In addition, there has been a violent occupation of the world’s largest coltan mine at Rubaya, near Sake. (See: “‘In war, the first victim is the truth’. Thirty-year economic war for raw materials in eastern Congo”, in: Current Concerns No. 27 of 31 December 2024). The capture of the nearby metropolis is also underway. The Congolese national army has evacuated its positions without resistance.
  In the days prior to the occupation, Goma was under artillery fire and thousands of desperate people were forced to flee from the invaders. But where to? The frontline town, located a few kilometres from the border with Rwanda, has survived several occupations and has been under siege for some time. In recent months and weeks, the numerous refugees from the northern districts have necessitated the creation of immense, improvised refugee camps in and around the city. These have grown once again in the last few days. The improvised tent camps, mainly made of plastic tarpaulins, have been erected on bare ground and stretch as far as the eye can see around the city. The number of refugees struggling to survive in this war – abandoned by the entire “Western world of values” – is in the millions.

Devastating dimensions of the
humanitarian disaster in Goma

International aid organisations are themselves in need of help. Artillery shells repeatedly hit the refugee camps, causing horrific injuries. In a news release titled, “The ICRC condemns attacks that left many civilians in North Kivu wounded or dead”, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross reports the following:
  “The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is alarmed by the devastating impact on the civilian population of ongoing armed clashes in and around the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Of special concern is the massive influx of people wounded by firearms and explosive weapons into ICRC-supported facilities, in particular the CBCA Ndosho Hospital in Goma.”
  The extent of the humanitarian catastrophe is illustrated in the following account given by Myriam Favier, head of the ICRC’s sub delegation in Goma:
  “Some of the wounded are transported by motorbike, others by bus, or with the help of volunteers from the DRC Red Cross. Civilians are arriving with serious bullet and shrapnel wounds. The whole hospital has been mobilized and three surgical teams are working around the clock to treat patients, some of whom have been forced to wait lying on the floor because of the lack of space. […] This situation has been caused by the use of artillery in densely populated areas – in particular, in large urban areas like Goma or in camps for displaced people – and by the devastating impact of intense clashes on the civilians caught in the crossfire. […]” (ICRC, news release 28 January 2025)

A senior surgeon
describes the situation

Dr Denis Mukwege, senior physician, and the founder and clinic director of the Panzi Surgical Hospital in Bukavu (South Kivu), describes the misery that this war has brought to the civilian population of eastern Congo for the past 30 years. The doctor and peace campaigner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. In 2022, he was one of the candidates in the rigged elections for Congolese president. Mukwege was not interested in the results of the election, but in the opportunity it provided to draw to the attention of the Congolese voters, the confused situation in their threatened country. He was the only candidate who resolutely and courageously named the real reasons for, and perpetrators of, this war against the Congolese people. The following excerpts are current views of a man who, as a specialist in the horrific injuries of women who have been systematically raped, has been doing all he can to help people in the clinic he founded, since the start of the wars in eastern Congo in 1996.

‘Finally put an
end to this economic war!’

Kagame, the autocratic head of state of Rwanda, cancelled a summit meeting with Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to resolve the ongoing crisis. This was accompanied by gestures that were degrading for Tshisekedi. The next day, the first strike of the current campaign towards Goma began. Dr. Mukwege reported these developments on his website:

I am very concerned after reading the latest report of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo². Despite the agreement for a humanitarian truce and a ceasefire, the Kigali regime continues to flout international law and pursue its policy of territorial expansion with its AFC/M23 coalition auxiliaries supported and controlled by 3,000 to 4,000 RDF elements. In a flagrant violation of the territorial integrity and Congolese sovereignty, those troops use sophisticated military equipment and high-tech weapons […]. It controls the conquered territories, in particular the Rubaya area, whose mines constitute one of the largest sources of coltan in the world.
  The experts mandated by the Security Council have reported, with supporting evidence, that the AFC/M23 coalition exercises a monopoly on the fraudulent extraction, trade and illegal export of minerals from Rubaya to Rwanda. This causes the most significant recorded contamination of the supply chains of “3T” minerals (tin, tantalum and tungsten) in the Great Lakes region for the last ten years.
  Experts estimate that the AFC/M23 coalition controls the trade and transport of approximately 120 tons of coltan per month and that the tax on the production and trade of Rubaya coltan generates at least USD 800,000 per month for the occupying forces.
  Faced with the critical situation prevailing in eastern DRC, we once again urge the community of States to no longer accept superficial condemnations and empty words. Strong sanctions must be adopted against the actors of destabilization. Immediate and decisive measures must be taken to ensure that Rwanda ceases its support for the M23 and immediately withdraws its forces from Congolese soil.
  It is time to put an end to this economic war and the illegal extraction and trade of strategic minerals in the heart of Africa […]. (Panzi News of 10 January 2025)

Congolese civil society
is under threat from within

In a statement on the Congolese news channel “congoflash infos” on 28 January, Patrick Mbeko, a politician with Congolese roots and author of two fundamental studies on the endless war in eastern Congo since its beginnings³, made the following points, among others: What is currently taking place in and around Goma is not a natural disaster, but a long-planned strategic step that will be followed by further acts of military aggression. One problem in the region is that the Tshisekedi government has neither sufficient information nor the necessary forces to effectively stop the international annexation of part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There is an unprecedented gap between the expectations of the Congolese and the passivity or even inability of the government in Kinshasa. Among the leading political class in Kinshasa, praise dominates, fuelled in part by ethnic tensions and clientelism. According to Mbeko, it is time to speak clearly with the Congolese. All Congolese must see clearly what is planned: the balkanisation of the Congo, the division of its coveted, strategically important natural resources among the sharks of modern finance, with Rwanda as a militarily secured international contact point.

* * *

What is currently taking place in and around Goma, combined with unbearable human suffering, has been planned for a long time, has strong international lobbies in the background and is being strategically and tactically led mainly by Rwanda’s army under the command of its autocratic head of state. This is done with the connivance and support of the authoritative states and organisations of the self-proclaimed “values West”, which supposedly stands for freedom, democracy, and prosperity for all.
  Kagame’s autocracy, and his role in the 30-year war in eastern Congo, is supported by the West. This is especially true of the EU, with Germany in the lead, which pumps hundreds of millions of euros into the country every year. In return for this support, the EU, and therefore also Germany, received a favourable contract concluded with the Rwandan leadership last spring. In it, Rwanda guarantees to supply the EU with raw materials, primarily cobalt, lithium and tantalum, which are essential for the automotive and weapons industries as well as computer technology.
  This is what is really at stake, and not the conjured-up “civil war” or “war of rebellion”. The fact that today the entire Western world speaks of the paid mercenaries in eastern Congo as “rebels”, as if from a single mouth, is yet another unacknowledged rule in the international media war for opinions, one almost certainly enforced by various secret services. It is a historical lie in short form. The so-called rebels are well-paid mercenaries under the command of unscrupulous profiteers, both domestic and foreign. They are named in hundreds of UN reports, well organised in UN archives, but which need not concern them. As long as lies and hidden agendas determine the fate of our world, they are safe. Not so when the wind changes. •

¹ M23 is the abbreviation for the “23 March Movement”, the new name for the particularly sadistic terrorist group CNDP, which was disbanded on 22 March 2009. AFC, Alliance Fleuve Congo (Alliance of the Congo River), is the collective name for other phan- tom rebel formations in the service of discreet international donors.
² https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/373/37/pdf/n2437337.pdf. Denis Mukwege refers to the UN document “Letter dated 27 December 2024 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the President of the Security Council”, UN document S/2024/969. It records the failure of Uganda’s and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s efforts to gain military control over the various so-called ‘rebel’ groups.
³ “Stratégie du chaos et du mensonge”, with co-author Honoré Ngbanda-Nzambo, 2014; and currently “Malheur au vaincus”, 2024