Wrong friends and enemies: Why rebels are on a winning streak in eastern DRC

The government of President Felix Tshisekedi in Kinshasa could be on the back foot, having made several mistakes that played into the rebels’ hands. For starters, they have allowed the momentum to swing to M23’s side and will have an uphill struggle reversing it.

As of January 2025, conservative estimates suggest the M23 rebels control approximately 43 per cent of North Kivu and 39 per cent of South Kivu provinces.

Liberal estimates have M23 controlling 65 per cent of North Kivu and 45 per cent of South Kivu, respectively. It is in the nature of war that they will not gradually progress to 68 per cent, then 72 per cent, then 75 per cent, and on to 80 per cent. They could reach 70 per cent in North Kivu, and the whole prize might fall into their lap, driving Kinshasa out.

M23 now has one hand on the Goma trophy. According to several reports, they have been seen in Buhumba, approximately three kilometres from the city centre of Goma.

Additionally, they have been active near Sake, roughly 25 kilometres west of Goma, but their presence extends much closer to the city in other directions.

Read: M23 rebels seize Minova town in eastern Congo

It is not clear whether the rebels will move to seize Goma. They captured the city in 2012, and it turned into an international diplomatic nightmare.

This time they might wait, using it as a bargaining chip, for if Goma fell, it would damage Tshisekedi’s political credibility considerably. But with a new Donald Trump regime in Washington, which is less likely to care and give them pain, they could well move in quickly and take it.

The Kinshasa government and its African and global allies also committed a tactical error in making the M23 campaign all about Rwanda.

Beyond diplomatic support for M23, Rwanda has denied directly backing the rebels and having troops deep inside DRC fighting alongside them.

However, it no longer matters whether Rwanda is in cahoots with M23; the ingrained view that they are could now be more damaging than whatever military actions they are involved in.

With all the big eyes on Rwanda – and Uganda – it allowed M23 to work in the shadows. Those who point a finger at Rwanda say all the gains attributed to M23 can only be possible by an army with the capabilities of the Rwanda Defence Forces.

No one will have forgotten that it was mostly the Rwanda army which, in 1997, mostlywalked from its border with DRC on October 24, 1996, and at the head of Congolese rebels, helped overthrow the corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko over 2,000 kilometres away six months and 23 days later on May 17, 1997.

There are probably few Congolese soldiers eager to go toe to toe with the Rwandan army, now it has been presented as an overwhelming force.

It is not good motivation to paint a picture of a Goliath, then tell your soldiers to go up against it. Ironically, the only force in DRC thought to have some stomach to face the Rwandans is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), comprising elements who fled the country after committing the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Now co-opted as the cornerstone of the DRC’s military infrastructure in the eastern part of the country, they are the biggest problem Rwanda has with Kinshasa.

Their genocide enterprise, and continuing ethnic cleansing of Congolese Tutsi and “Rwandaphones” in eastern DRC, have added fuel to the fire.

Eastern DRC has been swept by anti-Tutsi hate speech, pogroms, expulsions from their lands and seizure of their property. This has driven thousands of young people into the arms of M23, swelling its ranks. To use the cliché, the Kinshasa-FDLR consortium is the chief recruiting officer for M23.

Read: Kivus on high alert as M23 rebels march on cities

President Tshisekedi has not only chosen the wrong enemies, but he has also picked the wrong allies. After Rwanda, Uganda and the broad anti-Mobutu coalition ousted the autocrat in 1997, and installed Laurent Kabila, they fell out one-and-a-half years later.

They withdrew in late 1998 to eastern DRC to support Kabila’s rivals, but they were checkmated by Angola and Zimbabwe, as part of a pro-Kinshasa South African Development Community (SADC) compact.

However, today, Angola, which once had one of Africa’s largest and most formidable armies, is a pale shadow of its former self. Zimbabwe, an on-off-on basket case, has withered even more. Both militarily and economically, Rwanda and Uganda, by contrast, have grown a lot of muscle. Kinshasa also tapped some mercenaries, but they are a hotchpotch.

More recently, Burundi jumped into the fray to support Kinshasa. At one point, in a remarkable example of how tribalism can muddle strategy, it sent Burundi Tutsi soldiers as cannon fodder to face M23. Some defected.

Last week, Burundian soldiers were overwhelmed and killed in confrontations with M23 rebels, with one source stating that 215 of them had died in recent fighting.

The Burundi foray seems to be collapsing, and M23 will likely get a morale boost from beating a state army which has a solid reputation for battling the hardy Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans.” X (Twitter) @cobbo3