The M23 rebels supported by Rwandans who, at the end of January, captured Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, have since progressed to the second largest city in the region, Bukavu.
The latest fights are part of a major escalation of a conflict on power, identity and resources dating back to the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s and the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the country then known as Zaïre .
In his latest conflagration, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed since 2012 and more than a million are now moved.
What’s going on in the field?
After taking Goma, the rebels rushed south towards Bukavu, capital of the province of southern Kivu. Friday, they controlled Kavumu’s strategic airport which serves Bukavu.
The insurgents intend to show that they can restore order and govern in Goma.
There have been more chaotic scenes and looting and rape reports near the front line while M23 confronts the Congolese army and its allies, including Burundian troops.
On Friday, the United Nations Agency for Refugees expressed concern about the “rapidly deteriorating” situation, saying that the war had left around 350,000 people displaced without roof over the head.
The involvement of Burundian and Rwandan troops on the ground added to the fears that fighting can be transformed into a regional conflict similar to two devastating wars in the region between 1996 and 2003 which cost millions of lives.
Reuters reported this week that South Africa had sent additional troops and military equipment to the Congo in recent days after 14 of his soldiers were killed in combat with M23 last month.
The M23, which refers to an agreement of March 23, 2009 which ended a previous revolt led by Tuts in the east of the Congo, is the last group of insurgents led by tutts and ethnic to take up arms against Congolese forces.
He launched the current rebellion in 2022.
The group accused the Government of the Congo not to live up to the peace agreement and to fully integrate the Congolese Tutsis into the army and the administration.
He also promises to defend Tutsi interests, in particular against the militias of Hutu Ethnic such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The FDLR was founded by Hutus which fled Rwanda after participating in the 1994 genocide which killed nearly a million Tutsis and Moderate Hutus.
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For more than a year, M23 has controlled the Coltan region, the Coltan region in Congo, generating around $ 800,000 per month thanks to a production tax, according to the United Nations.
Coltan is used in the production of smartphones and other equipment.
The group’s spread in new territories in recent weeks, it is possible to acquire more mining income, according to analysts.
The vast mineral reserves of the Congo, which are concentrated in the east, also play in conflict.
The Congo is the best world producer of Tantalus and Cobalt, a key component of batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones. It is also the third world producer of copper and houses significant deposits of the coltan, lithium, tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold.
Despite this, the Congo is the country most dependent on the aid in the world.
Last year’s humanitarian operations were funded by 70% by Washington, took a big blow Since American President Donald Trump imposed a break on foreign aid last month.
The Congo government, United Nations officials and Western powers, including the United States, accused the neighbor of Congo, Rwanda, of having fueled the conflict by deploying thousands of its own troops and heavy weapons on the Congolese soil in support of M23.
The accusations are based on a report in 2022 by a group of UN experts who said that he had “solid proof” that the Rwandan troops were fighting alongside the M23 rebels.
The government of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, who denies the rebels, says that he has taken what he calls defensive measures and accuses the Congo of fighting alongside the FDLR, which attacked the Tutsis in the two countries.
Rwanda has a long history of military intervention in the Congo.
IT and Uganda invaded in 1996 and 1998, claiming that they defended themselves against local militia groups and pursued the authors of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
African leaders have tried to put pressure for negotiations to defuse the crisis but have so far not made a lot of progress.
A spouse of the eastern and South African blocks last weekend urged all the parties, including M23, to hold direct talks.
The government has repeatedly refused to speak directly to the M23.
“For us, this is a terrorist organization, and we are not talking about terrorist organizations,” President Felix Tshisekedi said on Friday at the Munich security conference.
The crisis was to be a leading element at the annual African Union’s annual summit in Addis Ababa on February 15 to 6.
Tshisekedi planned to attend, but a presidential spokesman told Reuters on Friday that he would fly from Germany in Kinshasa and that the Prime Minister of Congo would represent the Congo at the top.
What do the peacekeepers do?
The United Nations peacekeepers supported the efforts of the Congolese army to limit the M23 as part of the mission of stabilization of the United Nations in the mandate of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Monusco) to counter The many rebel groups active in eastern Congo.
A agreed withdrawal from the Congo mission was interrupted last year due to the deterioration of the security situation.
In December, there were nearly 11,000 peacekeepers on the ground, mainly to the east.
Since the fall of Goma, the mission has evacuated part of its staff and its families.
Its base has received a large number of people in search of refuge, including civil servants of the government and the army and various elements, in particular pro-governmental combatants of the Wazalendo militia who gave up their weapons.
The Southern African Development Community of 16 members (SADC), which extended its military mission in Congo at the end of last year to help the Congolese army fight the rebels, remains in place, but has undergone losses since the beginning of 2025.
Private military entrepreneurs who have been hired by the Congolese government to help fight against the M23 and to form troops also went.
Burundian troops helped Congo fight against the M23.
The government of Burundi has sent thousands of soldiers, who are now concentrated in southern Kivu.
They were one of the forces defending Kavumu airport before falling.
