Notes on the War in Eastern Congo
Featured image: protesters clash with police in front of the French embassy in Kinshasha, Democratic Republic of Congo. Source: REUTERS/Benoit Nyem.
On Monday, 27th of January, the group M23 Movement, or “Movement of March 23” claimed that captured eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) largest city, Goma. Already in 2012 the M23 group took the power in Goma “with nearly any resistance”. Nowadays there is a large constellation of more than 100 armed groups in the region, the M23 being the most active and predominant. In 2022 the group made significant gains against the DRC forces and the “peacekeepers”. Among other territories, the M23 controls Rubaya, a coltan mining town.
More than 100,000 fled the Northern Kivu area in only one week and there is one million displaced already in Goma. The so-called UN “peacekeepers” have clashed with the M23 troops, but have been defeated and suffered casualties, with at least 13 of them killed over the past week. Amid allegations of support by Rwanda to the M23 Movement, the DRC has cut relations with the country. Allegedly there are thousands of Rwandan soldiers on the ground, as well as there is continuous equipment and support of many kinds to the M23 by Rwanda. According to the United Nations (UN), 773 people were killed and 2,880 injured in Goma during this week of combat.
Source: Institute of Studies of War (ISW)
The M23 Movement has made significant territorial gains along Congo’s border with Rwanda in recent weeks, since the start of a series of offensives and counteroffensives against Congolese forces that began in December 2024 and after months of negotiations and several offensives in the last years. The offensive of M23 Movement continues towards the south, Southern Kivu, relatively close to Bukavu, which is also a wealthy mining area. The “rebels” have stated that they will move also to the capital, Kinshasha. The entire area which is now being disputed between the DRC and the M23 is a mining area, as the entire Congo in general is, in particular the region of Kivu, very rich in many different resources. Regarding DRC’s mineral wealthiness, US sources state that “Its mineral resources are huge, worth an estimated $24 trillion.”
Source: Al Jazeera
Source: ISW
The wealth of Congo is not bringing any kind of welfare to its people, but actually the opposite: war, oppression and imperialist subjugation since the imperialists are profiting from those resources. The history of the region is marked by colonial and imperialist subjugation and exploitation of resources. Since the nineteenth century Congo was pillaged for rubber and ivory, and faced a brutal genocide, committed by Belgian colonialism. Afterwards exploitation continued, and following Congo’s formal independence in June 1960, it became a battleground and an area of plunder. Imperialists orchestrated coups d’état, used mercenaries and supported separatist movements in order to ensure the looting of Congolese wealth. We reported on the last attempt of this policy of destabilization, which occurred last year when a clear lackey of US imperialism, Christian Malanga, attempted to carry out a coup but clearly failed. From the 1990’s several wars erupted in Congo, becoming some of the most massive and deadly in the continent. The death-toll from the two Wars of Congo is around 6 million people. These wars and the instability in the region is tightly connected with the genocide on the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994, which not just caused hundreds of thousands of murders but also a massive exodus into Eastern Congo and shortly after, the two Congo wars erupted, from 1996 until 2003.
Ethnic and tribal differences, as the processes of nations in formation, were used to create divisions among the people, which marked the history of the area not only but especially since the formal independence of the DRC and Rwanda, and have been used as a tool to split regions and provinces from the countries and to balcanize the region, so that the monopolies are able to further loot the resources. ‘Ethnic’ armed groups, claiming to defend the interests of Hutu or Tutsi or other groups in the area, took action and clashed with other groups opposed to them. But the sense of these groups and its struggle for territory is that they are usually controlled by monopolies or at least they are nourished by the imperialist countries in order to smuggle resources outside the territories they seize. The bureaucratic-big landlord States did the very same and also claimed to intervene in conflicts to defend its “national security” or defend its tribes or ethnics which can be a majority in their countries, but a minority in the neighboring countries. This created the chaos and fragmentation favored by imperialists to continue stealing the resources from the peoples of the region. The Rwanda Genocide of 1994 marks one of the highest peaks of this sinister policy of division and genocide lead by the imperialists. French imperialism had an infamous role in this regard and directly intervened, armed and protected the Rwanda government which was carrying out the genocide against its own people.
Despite the tremendous wealth of the country, the Congolese people sink in a deep misery. The consequences of the war and plunder are disastrous: over 7 million people internally displaced, with almost 5 million of them living with host families; widespread atrocities including massacres and sexual violence. The UN has been alerted on the increase in human trafficking for sexual exploitation and slavery; also about the acute hunger which is targeting the DRC, affecting 25.6 million people. The Congolese masses face such living conditions by fiercely protesting against the occupation and subjugation of their territory. And as we reported, the masses paid the price with its blood being spilled, not only by local armed groups or by neighboring States, but also by the UN troops, the so-called “peacekeepers” who pretend to be in the territory to keep peace, to impose restraint and to avoid new genocides and massacres. But they revealed their criminal role: these UN troops murdered more than 100 people by shooting at a manifestation which protested against subjugation and abuse. These massacres have not stopped the Congolese people, which continue protesting, taking to the streets and fighting against the oppression. It is usual that the masses carry out protests with a clear anti-imperialist character, denouncing the looting done by mainly French, Belgian and US imperialism, among others, in front of their embassies. More recently thousands of Congolese stormed several embassies, such as the ones of Rwanda, France, Belgium, Kenya and US. The French embassy was fiercely attacked and set ablaze.
Source: SAMY NTUMBA SHAMBUYI/AP
Nowadays few countries mine in a official manner in the DRC, partnering with State mining companies. The Congolese ruling classes have moved increasingly towards Chinese social-imperialism, which has acquired a vast majority of the official mining concessions, initiated infrastructure projects and also is arming the Congolese troops to fight the “rebel” groups. Chinese social-imperialism dominates among the countries mining in the DRC, with its companies controlling 15 of 17 cobalt mines, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The Swiss monopoly Glencore also owns two copper and cobalt mines. United Arab Emirates (linked to Yankee capital) signed a $ 1.9 billion deal with a State mining company in July 2023 to develop four mines for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold in the eastern Kivu and Maniema provinces.
Rwanda, led by the lackey of imperialists, Paul Kagame, plays the role of a spearhead of the imperialists in the region by launching and supporting armed initiatives which are destabilizing the area and facilitating the looting of the mineral wealth of the DRC. The role of Rwanda can be clearly seen since they don’t have vast mineral resources but this country is one of the biggest exporters of coltan. It has been broadly reported and proved that there is illegal exploitation of the mineral wealth of the Congolese people. Some imperialist forces are competing in the area, and many of them are not satisfied with just having what is smuggled, but want more, and this war serves exactly that purpose.
The role of Rwanda is of utmost importance for the imperialists who are financing the actions of the country and buying the smuggled minerals, at the same time Rwanda is arming and supporting the M23 group. This last question has not been officially admitted neither by the M23 nor by Rwanda, but it has become obvious since the M23 has sophisticated materials and received support of many kinds as well as refuge. There are also Rwandan soldiers on Congolese soil. Rwanda as well as the M23 are directly armed by the imperialists who seek to seize all the wealth from the region, for example from 2001 to 2022, the US alone provided over US$ 3.9 billion in economic aid to Rwanda and waited until October 2023 to place Rwanda on a blacklist for military aid for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits “child soldiers”. According to the UK Foreign Minister, Rwanda receives over $ 1 billion “global aid” annually.
Rwanda and the M23 are not moving autonomously or only because their very own desires. Who is fueling a further division and war in the region are the imperialist powers and mainly the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower, Yankee imperialism, is key. The interest of Yankee imperialism in this area and the resources within are well-known and openly expressed: “The next industrial revolution will be anchored in critical and rare-earth minerals, and because most modern technologies are defense-related, many of these minerals are strategic materials. Current technologies such as semiconductors, flash memory, fiber optics, satellites, CAT scan equipment, electric vehicle batteries, and smartphones would not exist without these minerals. And these technologies would not exist in the numbers they do today without countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Namibia.”
One of Yankee imperialism’s ambitions in Africa has been to create the “Lobito corridor”, as a way to break with the increasing dominance of Chinese social-imperialism in the central and southern regions of Africa. During the last abroad visits by Joe Biden, he went to Angola in December to pledge additional $ 600 million to the Lobito Corridor project. The name of the corridor is due to a key port in Angola, Lobito. This project would cost more than $ 1 billion and the imperialists inside the European Union (EU), within their inter-alliance struggle and collusion, also supported that project in collusion with US imperialism. This project would link the Copper Belt with the Atlantic Ocean, transporting the mineral resources looted from the DRC, from the mining key city of Kolwezi, to Lobito in Angola. Even tough Chinese social-imperialism also might profit from that project using this new line of transport, this mega-project would open the possibility for further exploitation of the Congolese mineral resources by US and monopolies from European countries and would make the transport and export of those resources in a large scale much easier. As well as it would facilitate further projects of Yankee imperialism in the region and a stronger counter-action against Chinese social-imperialism by offering an “alternative” to the Belt and Road Initiative and strengthening the grip of US imperialism on the region, mainly on the DRC, Angola and Zambia. That is something that even Yankee imperialist ‘think tanks’ as the Atlantic Council point out.
The imperialists demons from the old Europe act in collusion with Yankee imperialism as we have seen. Last year the EU signed a “strategic minerals deal” with Rwanda, creating an almost perfect framework to smuggle minerals from Eastern Congo, since, according to the European Commission, Rwanda is a “major player in the world’s tantalum extraction” as well as it pointed out its “output of tin, tungsten, gold and niobium”. However, the experts answer to this statement: “only a fraction, an undefined proportion, of the export of Rwanda comes from Rwanda itself”, and that “deal justifies… and formalizes illicit trade”. Meanwhile the imperialists from Europe want to cover their crimes, and therefore the European Commission of the EU approved on Monday, January 27, a 60 million euro package of “humanitarian aid” to be sent to the DRC. This makes a total of 272 million euro sent as “humanitarian aid” to the country.
Imperialist powers such as France and Belgium have shown their hypocrisy for several times regarding the situation in the DRC and the region of Kivu: the French Minister of Foreign Affairs has stated that the Rwandan forces must “instantly abandon” Eastern Congo, and that the “territorial sovereignty and integrity of the DRC are not negotiable”. Brutal cynicism! Reality shows that French imperialism is one of the perpetrators of the wars in the region and one of the profiteers from them. The DRC has just sued France and Belgium because it argues that Apple in both countries uses minerals pillaged from Congo.
Political representatives of Belgian imperialism, as for example the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stated that the “Territorial integrity of the DRC must be respected” and that the “Rwandan troops must leave”. But meanwhile Belgian think tanks as Egmont, The Royal Institute for International Relations, have put a lot of efforts on denounce how the DRC’s President Félix Tshisekedi is corrupt and how he held fraudulent elections in 2023. But the biggest prove of the imperialist cynicism and hypocrisy is the agreement signed by Belgium with Rwanda, to import copper, cobalt and coltan from Africa. Rwanda has none of these resources, so they are obviously stolen from the areas seized by the “rebels” in Eastern Congo.
Obviously there are regulations in the EU as well as in US against the smuggling, stealing and use of minerals coming from areas of war, but of course such regulations if they do not meet the imperialist interests, are completely ignored. On the other hand, even though the DRC has filed complaints and sued imperialist powers for this smuggling and supporting “rebel” groups, also the local ruling classes in power are selling out the country to other imperialist forces, for example the vast majority of mineral resources to Chinese social-imperialism.
Under imperialism the vast mineral resources of Congo remains a heavy burden for its people, which along with other peoples of the region is used as cannon fodder and slaves by the imperialists in its war of plunder in the country in general, and in the Eastern part of it in particular. Despite the immense wealth of the countries of the region, and specially the DRC, these are some of the poorest countries in the world since bureaucratic capitalism is evolving, and imperialist subjugation does not bring development, but misery, war and plunder. Even though the lackeys of imperialists and their masters fill their mouths with speeches and wishes about “peace”, “restraint” and “territorial sovereignty”, what they actually bloodthirsty wishing is “war”, “escalation” and “further division”. This is what meet their needs and purposes, since they are not able to maintain “order”, as long the region is unstable, many armed groups operate there and the States are unable to control their territories, the wealth will be more easily been stolen and the development of the countries and the achievement of their full national formation, which can only be completed through a victorious democratic revolution, will be prevented.
The Congolese and the other peoples of the region cannot stand this burden anymore and they are very aware of that, the protests are continuous and increasingly pointing out the source of the evil: imperialism. More and more protesters target imperialist institutions, its representatives and buildings, and blame them for the looting and war. And what is also increasingly clear is the necessity of taking advantage of the huge experiences and power of the peoples channeling them into the direction of the true interests of the people, the Revolution of New Democracy, to drive out the foreigners, peacekeepers, NGO’s, monopolies and its lackeys, to liberate and finalize the formation of the nations and lead the masses to a new bright future which will be completely different than under the awful grip of imperialism.
