A deadly insurgency is sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country three times the size of Texas that is estimated to hold trillions of dollars’ worth of minerals essential to smartphones, computers and electric vehicle batteries.
The rebel group M23 is vying to expand its control by pushing south from Goma in the most dramatic escalation in the decades-old conflict for 13 years. The United Nations has warned that the conflict is at risk of spiraling into a war in a region that’s no stranger to bitter fighting.
After seizing control of Goma, a key city in the east of the country, earlier this week, M23’s leader Corneille Nangaa vowed to take the battle all the way to the country’s capital, Kinshasa. Meanwhile, the Congolese government called for a massive mobilization and President Félix Tshisekedi vowed to “reconquer every inch of our territory.”
War has raged for years in the Democratic Republic of Congo (also known as the DRC), which is 4,000 miles away from the U.S. While it may seem remote to the United States, the impact of the latest developments will reverberate around the world. NBC News takes a look at what is going on in the vast African country and what the conflict’s impact will be around the world.
What’s happening?
Conflict marred the DRC before and after it became independent from Belgium in 1960. The latest bout of fighting has been worsening for around three years, with clashes between national troops and Rwanda-backed M23 insurgents escalating in January. More than 400,000 people were displaced last month alone, the United Nations says. Firefights in Goma have also killed several United Nations peacekeepers.
With M23 taking further territory on its way south, more gains in the neighboring South Kivu province would see it take back land it has not controlled since the end of two major wars that ran from 1996 to 2003, in which 3 million to 5½ million civilians are thought to have died, mostly from malnutrition and disease.
Tshisekedi’s government has described the current offensive as “a declaration of war” by Rwanda, and his office said in post on X on Thursday that “the situation in the city of Goma is dramatic. Corpses litter the streets, water and electricity have been cut off for several days, and residents cannot get food supplies.”
Has the world reacted?
The fighting in the east has been so brutal that the 300 Romanian mercenaries recruited by the country to fight on its side were forced to surrender, ultimately taking refuge at a U.N. peacekeeping base, Romania’s state broadcaster TVR reported.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot met with Tshisekedi in Kinshasa, after the French Embassy, among others, was set on fire by demonstrators protesting inaction by the international community.
President Donald Trump this week described the crisis as a “very serious problem,” while the State Department has advised U.S. citizens to evacuate, but the muted response from Western nations may create opportunities for the West’s competitors, such as China and Russia, for influence in the region.
“For the West, credibility is at stake,” said Nick Westcott, former director of the Royal African Society in Britain and currently a professor at the SOAS University of London.
What is M23?
The M23 is a rebel group that has been involved in the ongoing ethnic conflict in the region since its inception in 2012. The group is mostly made up of ethnic Tutsi who claim to be fighting for their minority group’s rights in the majority-ethnic Hutu country.
The group was formed primarily as a result of tension between the Tutsi-majority Rwanda and the DRC. In 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda committed what was later ruled by the U.N. to be an ethnic genocide, with nearly 1 million mostly ethnic Tutsi slaughtered.
During and after the conflict, a group of ethnic Tutsi fled to eastern DRC, near the borders with Rwanda and Burundi, which is at risk of being drawn into the war. Peace agreements, including a landmark one signed March 23, 2009, have had mixed results. So while some Tutsi rebels were integrated into the Congolese army, others splintered off to form M23.
The U.N. has said in the past that M23 received military supplies and ammunition from the Rwandan military. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi former rebel general, has been accused of supporting M23. The group says the Congolese government has not done enough to protect the ethnic Tutsi in the country, and Rwanda denies providing weapons to the militants.
What is China’s role?
While the vast region is economically poor, in recent years it has become overrun with dozens of armed militia groups — including one affiliated with the Islamic State terrorist group. Those different groups have competed to benefit from the trade of minerals essential to the global electronics supply chain that include coltan, tantalum, gold, copper and — perhaps most significantly — cobalt.
The DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a key mineral used to make the lithium-ion batteries that go into electric vehicles and smartphones. According to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, “80% of the DRC’s cobalt output is owned by Chinese companies, refined in China, and then sold to battery makers around the world.”
The protracted conflict has meant the mines effectively operate without the protection of the Congolese army. China has condemned the M23’s insurgency, with Beijing’s ambassador to the U.N., Fu Cong, telling the Security Council this week recent developments were “deeply worrying” and raise “the risk of a larger conflict.”
“It is an extremely fragmented conflict situation where the Congolese army has not had any possibility of controlling the territory,” said Benjamin Petrini, a Washington, D.C.-based research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.
Still, experts say for now an imminent threat to the mineral supply is low.
What’s Rwanda’s role?
Though M23 swiftly seized Goma in 2012, that insurgency only lasted a few days. Rwanda, then heavily dependent on Western aid, quickly saw millions of dollars of its aid cut, with the rebels ultimately withdrawing from the city and surrendering.
“That mattered for a country that was then and still is now dependent on foreign aid and particularly dependent on its brand,” said Jason Stearns, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada and the author of a book about conflicts in Congo.
But this time around, “the international community largely has either looked away or actually doubled down on Rwanda,” he added.
That includes the European Union and U.S. sports organizations such as the NBA, whose business in Africa was valued at nearly $1 billion by 2021. The NBA has since increased its investment in Rwanda, where basketball is popular.
“Rwanda has made itself extremely useful,” Stearns said. For many Western businesses and governments, the central African nation has made itself a best-practice example of reliable business in Africa — it guards French gas installations in Mozambique, it is the second-largest contributor to the U.N. peacekeeping force, and it is considered a counterweight to Russia’s influence in central Africa.
As far as the West’s response to the latest escalation goes, the German Development Ministry has canceled meetings with Rwandan officials over the conflict, and a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said the United Kingdom is “actively considering next steps, alongside international partners, including the possibility of a review of all U.K. support to Rwanda.”
Still, Rwanda’s flow of aid continues uninterrupted, and M23 is showing no signs of halting its offensive.
