Rebels backed by Rwanda are seizing huge tracts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their progress has been swift and stunning. In a month, they have routed Congo’s underequipped army several times and caused more than half a million people to flee. On Monday, they captured Goma, a major Congolese city along the Rwandan border. (They grabbed it once before, in 2012.)
I’ve been talking to Goma residents. They’ve been hiding in their houses for the past week without electricity or running water. Gunfire, and occasionally bombs, explode around them. Some of them took in families who had fled from camps and villages outside the city. But plenty of those displaced people arrived in Goma knowing nobody.
Why are the rebels, known as M23, grabbing parts of eastern Congo? In their telling, they’re protecting ethnic Tutsis, the minority group massacred in a 1994 genocide, some of whom also live in Congo. But experts say the real reason is Congo’s rare minerals, which power our phones and devices. Congo’s mines are making the rebels — and their patrons in Rwanda — rich.
The United States and China are competing for such minerals, and the rebels could make access uncertain. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what’s at stake in the rebels’ advance — and why they may be hard to stop.
The minerals in your phone
You might be familiar with Rwanda from the film “Hotel Rwanda,” starring Don Cheadle. In 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis. After a revolt overthrew the Hutu extremists who oversaw the genocide, many of the culprits fled to Congo. Rwanda says they continued attacking the country from across the border, but those salvos ended decades ago.
You might not know much about Congo. But you could be holding a piece of it right now, inside the phone on which you’re reading this. The country is full of the minerals used to make our electronics. And everyone wants a piece: Washington and Beijing have been vying for access to minerals like copper and cobalt. Elon Musk gets most of the cobalt in Tesla’s batteries from a Congolese mine.
Rwanda’s rebels are seizing land with rare minerals like these. For years, they’ve profited from Congo’s mineral wealth, studies show. Lately, U.N. experts say, they’re taking in $800,000 per month from mines they seized containing coltan, an ore used in smartphones.
Africa’s world war
What’s at stake, experts warn, is a larger regional war. The United Nations says up to 4,000 Rwandan troops support M23 in Congo. (Rwanda denies this.) Burundi has sent 2,000 troops to defend Goma against the rebels. South Africa sent troops to fight with a U.N. force alongside the Congolese Army.
Around the turn of the century, the Great Lakes region of Africa was at the center of a regional war that raged for five years. Several countries sent soldiers, and millions of people died. The current battle, too, seems likely to extend beyond eastern Congo. It may not go as far as Kinshasa, the capital nearly 1,000 miles away, but that is what the rebels have vowed.
A few African leaders have lately tried to sort this mess out. Kenya’s president invited the Congolese and Rwandan presidents for talks on Wednesday, but Congo’s president didn’t show up. In December, Angola’s president was set to hold peace talks, but Rwanda’s president pulled out at the last minute.
All mouth, no money?
The world’s powerful countries have condemned Rwanda for supporting the M23. Yesterday, France called on Rwanda to withdraw its troops from Congo. The new U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, held a genial call with Congo’s president and a tense one with Rwanda’s, in which he said he was “deeply troubled” by the escalation.
Back in 2013, after M23 took Goma the first time, Western countries threatened Rwanda with sanctions, and it cut the rebels off. Eventually, Congolese and U.N. forces defeated the rebels.
This time, it’s unclear how far big countries will go — or whether the flurry of diplomatic statements will change anything. Rwanda, a country very dependent on aid, has worked to make itself useful internationally. It supplies U.N. peacekeepers to dangerous missions elsewhere in Africa. It has offered to take in asylum seekers whom European countries turn away. It sent troops to fight a jihadist insurgency in Mozambique. It channels foreign aid into impressive economic growth, making it a darling of donors.
Another wrinkle is that President Trump has suspended almost all foreign aid, including to Rwanda, so he has less leverage to use on its president.
That all may earn Rwanda a pass as its patron countries do little to stop it.
Related: Trump’s order to halt most foreign aid has intensified humanitarian crises and raised questions about Washington’s reliability as a global leader.
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