After Rwanda-backed rebels seized the Congolese city of Goma in 2012, powerful nations across the world registered their disapproval, announcing sanctions against Rwanda and other measures that led to the rebels’ defeat a year later.
When those same rebels battled to capture Goma on Sunday, several nations once again voiced their criticism, but they have yet to apply the level of pressure on Rwanda that eventually led the rebels to stand down more than a decade ago.
As hundreds of thousands of civilians fled escalating violence in recent days, seeking sanctuary in Goma, the rebel group M23 was right behind them. M23, which the United Nations and others say is funded and armed by Rwanda, declared that it had captured Goma early on Monday.
Now, with the fate of the city in the balance, analysts say a conflict that could be tamed with strong international pressure against Rwanda is, instead, spiraling out of control. Rwanda has as many as 4,000 troops in eastern Congo supporting the M23 advance, United Nations experts say. The government of Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, appears intent on rewriting Congo’s map by seizing land, and so far, beyond issuing reproofs, Western countries have barely mustered a response.
Mr. Kagame has denied that Rwanda is arming M23, or that his troops are in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He says M23 is simply defending the rights of Congo’s minority Tutsis — Mr. Kagame’s own ethnic group, which was the principal target of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Most analysts say that this is a pretext to occupy Congolese territory and plunder its vast mineral wealth.
In a call with President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “condemned the assault on Goma by the Rwanda-backed M23 and affirmed the United States’ respect for the sovereignty of the DRC,” according to the State Department.
The United Kingdom and France had earlier condemned Rwanda’s presence in eastern Congo. Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, on Monday called for the first time for Rwandan troops to withdraw from eastern Congo.
But Mr. Kagame’s small central African nation has spent the last decade bolstering its reputation among western powers, making it too useful to sanction quickly, some analysts say. The European Union signed a strategic minerals deal with Rwanda last year, prompting accusations from rights groups that it is fueling the conflict.
Rwanda, with a population of just 14 million people, currently contributes the second-highest number of peacekeepers to the United Nations. Starting in 2021, its troops beat back a jihadist insurgency in an area of Mozambique where a French oil giant has a $20 billion gas project. Rwanda has also shown a willingness to take asylum seekers from Europe, offering to help tackle an issue that has fueled that continent’s far right movements.
And for years, Rwanda has been seen by Western donors as the textbook example of how to get aid right, using the aid to leverage economic growth and development while styling itself the Singapore of Africa.
“Powerful Western countries have for long been reticent about punishing Rwanda, which cultivated a reputation as a donor darling,” said Dino Mahtani, a former adviser to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo. “While some are now finally demanding Kagame pull back support to M23, they are unlikely to take action against what they see as the military solution against jihadis in Mozambique.”
Congo, on the other hand, has regularly been written off as a hopeless case, a helpless giant in Africa wracked by a series of wars, rife with corruption and suffering.
And the suffering is overwhelming.
Holding a tiny baby and trying to keep her other children close, Sifa Kigugo arrived in Goma on Sunday, just before the rebel takeover, with nowhere to go. She had given birth just five days before, but when fighting broke out around her village, she had to run.
Millions of Congolese like Ms. Kigugo have been forced to abandon their homes, with several hundred thousand displaced last week alone. Bombs have fallen on the camps meant to house them. Sexual violence, long used as a weapon of war in Congo, has lately increased sharply, reaching record levels last year, after M23 began its most recent push.
“When will the international community stop turning a blind eye to the Congolese tragedy, and accepting or tolerating systematic violations of international law and human rights?” asked Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who has treated thousands of rape victims in Congo and won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
More than 21 million people in Congo — about one-fifth of the population — need aid. But humanitarian workers warn that the actions of the new Trump administration could plunge the country deeper into crisis. After taking office, President Trump issued an executive order directing a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid, pending a review. Last year 68.8 percent of all humanitarian aid in Congo came from the United States.
It is also Rwanda’s biggest bilateral donor, giving over $188 million to the country in 2023. Now that aid has been paused, the U.S. may be in a weaker position to influence Rwanda, according to some analysts.
In 2012, in the wake of M23’s first occupation of Goma, President Barack Obama called Mr. Kagame and urged him to stop supporting the rebels.
More recently, Western nations have taken some action against M23: In 2023, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on a few Rwandan and Congolese military commanders involved in the conflict, and the United States suspended military aid to Rwanda last year.
On Tuesday, Germany’s development ministry suspended aid talks with Rwandan officials. But many Congolese, including protesters in multiple cities this week, say the E.U. and the United States need to do more to stop Mr. Kagame.
Rwanda’s exploitation of Congo’s rare minerals has been detailed in multiple reports from the United Nations. Last year, M23 seized an area around the Congolese town of Rubaya that is rich in coltan, an ore used in cellphones and computers.
U.N. experts said in December that at least 150 tons of coltan were illegally exported to Rwanda and mixed with Rwandan production. Last month Congo filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium against subsidiaries of Apple, accusing it of using conflict minerals sourced in Congo.
Analysts say M23, under Rwanda’s guidance, is looking to occupy Congo for the long term, behaving in ways that suggests it plans to establish an administrative state, collecting taxes and imposing fines on residents. “This seems to be a long game of territorial acquisition,” said Mr. Mahtani, the former adviser to the U.N. peacekeeping mission.
In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday, anti-Rwanda protesters attacked several foreign embassies and a United Nations building in an eruption of anger at Congo’s allies for failing to stop M23’s advance. Protests also broke out in Bukavu, a larger city to Goma’s south to which some Congolese officers are thought to have fled. Many of Bukavu’s residents fear they are the rebels’ next target.
Some observers see peace talks organized by nations in the region, including Angola, as the best hope for ending the violence. Secretary Rubio said on Monday that negotiations should restart as soon as possible. President William Ruto of Kenya said Tuesday that Mr. Kagame and Mr. Tshisekedi had agreed to attend an emergency summit on Wednesday to address the situation.
While those discussions lumber on, hundreds of thousands of terrified people who took cover in Goma have nowhere to go.
Even those who have beds to sleep on have not slept, said Maina King’ori, the regional humanitarian director of the agency CARE International, who described hearing constant gunfire in the city. “They’ve just been awake, waiting with bated breath, wondering what’s next,” he said.
Elian Peltier contributed reporting.
