The Democratic Republic of the Congo is home to some of the world’s largest reserves of metals and rare earth minerals used to produce advanced electronics. As the world has become more reliant on cobalt, copper, uranium, zinc, and other minerals, local and external groups have become more incentivized to get involved in the Congolese conflict. In a more recent note, former President Joseph Kabila, alongside many foreign and domestic entities, is now contriving an unprecedented turning point in the conflict with the replacement of the M23/AFC alliance with the nascent coalition he calls the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, or FRN.
Before the creation of the FRN, the M23/AFC alliance stood as the most prominent and notoriously known rebel group plaguing and exacerbating the conflict in eastern DRC. The M23, made up primarily of ethnic Tutsis, was born out of the March 23 Movement in 2012, where anti-government Rwandan Congolese forces renounced their integration into the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), the DRC’s official military.
According to substantial evidence provided by multiple NGOs and intergovernmental organizations, M23 is militarily and financially backed by the Rwandan government, turning the entrenched conflict from a civil war into a complex web of interstate proxy conflict between the DRC and Rwanda. Kigali, however, has adamantly repudiated those claims.
Since the renewal of the conflict between the Congolese military and M23 rebels began in 2022, civilian populations of eastern DRC have been victims of massacres, acts of torture, sexual violence, forced displacement, extrajudicial killings, and discrimination, according to a statement released by the Congolese government.
M23 rebels have subsequently captured mineral-rich strategic areas in the North and South Kivu regions, such as Goma, Rubaya, and Bukavu, advancing their imperatives of smuggling minerals such as copper, tin, and gold to Rwanda. This clandestine act of smuggling conflict minerals from the DRC to Rwanda legitimizes the minerals exported from Rwanda as conflict-free, costing the DRC almost $1 billion a year in foregone earnings.
Aside from Rwanda, China presents itself as a salient, pervasive force that controls about 70 percent of the DRC’s mining sector. Under the mining contract deal struck between DRC President Félix Tshisekedi’s predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and Chinese state-owned firms Sinohydro Corp and China Railway Group Limited, the Chinese firms agreed to build roads and hospitals in exchange for unprecedented access to metals that allow them to mass-produce electronics and clean energy technologies. However, according to groundbreaking evidence that emerged after Kabila left office in 2019, the Chinese capital meant for infrastructure investment as remuneration for preferential mining rights was being funnelled to Joseph Kabila and his associates. Therefore, China’s presence in the DRC is that of an exploitative and extractivist one, where barely any of its supposed infrastructure investments have been realized by Congolese citizens who depend on it.
In trying to rival the mining chokehold held by China in the DRC, the U.S. sought to mediate regional talks between the Rwandan and Congolese governments in Washington, while the Qatari government stepped in to mediate talks between the M23/AFC alliance and the DRC government. In December 2025, spearheaded by the U.S., a peace deal was signed between the DRC and Rwanda along the lines of similar past regional agreements: the DRC would launch operations against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and Rwanda would withdraw its troops. However, the most important issues—the future of the M23 combatants, refugee resettlement, and justice for past crimes—remained outstanding. Consequently, renewed fighting ensued in the same month following the peace deal signing, when M23, in alliance with the Rwandan Defense Forces, captured the city of Uvira, dismantling the short-lived ceasefire and throwing it into disarray.
Although not promulgated as such by the US government or media, the so-called 2025 Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity served as a proxy for the U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement, where the DRC pledged to provide preferential access to its strategic mining reserves to the U.S. in exchange for promoting peace, security, and regional stability through the Washington Accords.
Analyzing the behaviors of the foreign powers listed above illustrates how the impetus behind the ostensible humanitarian and developmental assistance rendered to the conflict-ridden Congolese citizens is driven by economic and political gains to be had from the unregulated, mineral-rich Central African nation.
Former President Joseph Kabila, who had been sentenced to death in absentia by a high military court in Kinshasa, now stands among political actors such as the Rwandan, Chinese, and U.S. governments, who are all vying for economic dominance to assert their goals of gaining preferential access to the eastern DRC’s critical minerals.
On Oct. 12, 2026, Kabila announced the creation of a new political-military organization: the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation. The group, which is to be fully led by Kabila, is a political coalition bringing together key figures from the M23/AFC alliance and directly positions itself as an opposition to the Congolese incumbent. In a press conference in eastern DRC, the group said its primary mission is “ending tyranny” in the region and is ready to exhaust all available means, including the use of force. That statement is full of contradictions, as an entity cannot possibly end tyranny when it has been the juggernaut wreaking havoc and devastating the Congolese peoples and their lands for over a decade.
One thing all these political actors have in common is the utter disregard and apathy for the ordinary eastern Congolese citizen who is at the forefront of all the devastating, wanton violence and cruelty incessantly inflicted in the region since the creation of the March 23 Movement in 2012. Nearly 8 million people have been internally displaced and suffer from extreme poverty due to land degradation caused by mining expansion and the constant threat of violence and atrocities. Additionally, a staggering 26.5 million Congolese suffer from acute food insecurity, making it one of the largest hunger crises in the world. The displaced population urgently needs a tangible solution to the ongoing conflict in order to secure peace and stability, medical aid, food supplies, and other humanitarian aid.
Every foreign entity involved in purportedly securing peace in the region and building rapprochement between the DRC and Rwanda obstinately adheres to a realist ideology of securing its own self-interest before meaningfully addressing the dire humanitarian crisis. Any durable substantive peace deal in the DRC must first address the fate of over 84,000 Congolese refugees who have lived in Rwanda for over three decades, uphold accountability for crimes committed on all sides, establish reconciliation measures among divided communities through transitional justice, and strategically plan out the future of M23 leaders and combatants.
Until initiatives to adequately address these complex, nuanced political issues come first, all that is regrettably left in the nation will be economically opportunistic agendas that seek to decenter the pain and suffering of millions of Congolese people.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
