Goma falls: impending catastrophe in the Congo

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Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, has fallen to the ‘M23’ rebel group. At the time of writing it is unclear exactly how much of the city is under rebel control, but the sound of gunfire that had filled the city has reportedly died down.

[More material on the violence in the Congo can be found here:
‘Crisis in the Congo: why is M23 advancing?’ (2024)
‘Capitalism, Imperialism and the Wars in Africa. The Meaning of the Conflict in Congo’ (1998)]

Videos are circulating of M23 troops patrolling the streets, while Congolese soldiers are being rounded up or seeking refuge in the city’s UN compound. The supply of water and electricity to this city of 2 million people has been cut. Medical workers report that hospitals are overflowing with the wounded, raped and dying. The streets are piled with bodies.

The bulk of North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital, is now in the hands of M23. The rebel group is now working to establish a permanent administration in Goma, having killed North Kivu’s governor last week.

News of the fall of Goma has provoked mass demonstrations in Congolese cities in support of the Congolese military (the FARDC) and against neighbouring Rwanda, which is widely known to be supporting the rebels. In Kinshasa, demonstrations have been banned after protestors stormed ten foreign embassies, including those of Rwanda, Uganda, the USA and France.

Calls for a ceasefire, emanating from the UN, the African Union and a series of heads of states, have been dismissed by the Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi, who has vowed to reclaim all lost territory. Meanwhile, the fighting continues, with reports that M23 is now turning towards the city of Bukavu in South Kivu province.

Endless war

The current conflict is part of an endless cycle of violence that began with the Congo Wars, which followed the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Since then, more than 120 armed groups have infested eastern Congo, feeding on the enormous mineral wealth beneath the soil.

M23 first emerged in 2012. Largely composed of Congolese Tutsis, it is widely known to have close links with the Tutsi-dominated regime in Rwanda, and its ally Uganda. Today it is by far the best armed and most disciplined fighting force in eastern Congo. It is known to have surface-to-air-missiles, heavy artillery and GPS jammers, and has proven itself capable of using all of these to great effect.

The UN has repeatedly confirmed that 3,000-4,000 Rwandan troops are also directly engaged in the fighting, alongside M23, and that its operations are being directed by the Rwandan military. This claim has neither been confirmed nor denied by Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda.

Whilst refusing to acknowledge Rwanda’s presence in the Congo, Kagame claims to be acting “defensively”, in order to protect Tutsis living in the DRC from Hutu extremists who fled into the Congo after the Rwandan genocide. In reality, he is much more interested in the Congo’s mineral wealth, in particular its gold and coltan, which is essential for the production of mobile phones and electric vehicle batteries.

Last year Rwanda became the world’s biggest exporter of coltan, despite the fact that it has very few coltan mines in its territory. In fact, an estimated 90 percent of Rwanda’s coltan actually comes from mines in the DRC, which is then sold as ‘conflict-free’ to multinationals in the USA, China and Germany.

Imperialist hypocrisy

M23 re-emerged after a period of dormancy in late 2021 and began to advance rapidly in 2022. Since then, there has been no shortage of pious calls for peace from the UN and governments all over the world, including the USA and China. But no real action has been taken. In fact, the imperialists continue to support the Rwandan regime.

The last time that M23 advanced in eastern Congo was in 2012. When the group seized Goma for the first time in November of that year, western states immediately applied sanctions on the Rwandan state and a large UN force carried out a counter-offensive against M23, which was soon forced back into hiding.

This time, however, the only measures taken have been targeted sanctions against a handful of individual commanders in both Rwanda and the Congo, and the suspension of military aid. These modest sanctions were imposed in August and October of 2023, more than a year after M23 began to advance in the spring of 2022.

The hypocritical inaction on the part of the so-called ‘international community’ reflects the fundamental shifts in world relations that have taken place in recent years. In 2012 the US and its allies were the only game in town. Small nations, such as Rwanda, which was heavily dependent on western aid, had little choice but to bow to western pressure.

Today, this is no longer the case. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, states that incur the wrath of the USA and its allies are able to circumvent sanctions by trading with a host of other countries. Since 2012 Rwanda has established trade and investment links with China, the UAE, Qatar and India.

Whilst calling on Kagame to withdraw his troops, western leaders know that if they apply serious pressure, they could lose the last stable ally they have in the region / Image: DFID UK Department for International Development, Flickr

Further, western imperialism continues to rely on the Rwandan military to protect its interests in other, less stable African countries. As recently as last November, the EU agreed to send €20 million to Rwanda to support its deployment as a ‘peacekeeping force’ in northern Mozambique, where the French multinational, TotalEnergies, has an important gas project.

In other words, western imperialism finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. Whilst calling on Kagame to withdraw his troops, western leaders know that if they apply serious pressure, they could lose the last stable ally they have in the region.

This is an existential question for Kagame. While he claims to stand for the protection of Rwandans and Congolese Tutsis, his only priority is the stability of his own regime.

The Rwandan state is dominated by Tutsis, who make up only 14 percent of the population. Up until now, Kagame has maintained this state through a combination of ruthless military rule and economic growth, which has allowed the regime to offer jobs and certain concessions to the Hutu majority.

If the growth that the Rwandan economy has experienced over the last period should go into reverse, old scars will likely begin to open up. The Rwandan ruling class recognises that if it is to maintain the stability of its rule, it must develop its economy, become independent of foreign aid and eventually play a bigger role in the region. The route to this development passes directly through the gold and coltan mines of eastern Congo.

Therefore, Kagame will not back down. His call for an “immediate ceasefire” amounts to the demand that the Congolese government recognise the present balance of forces and negotiate directly with M23, leaving its proxy in control of a large part of North Kivu.

Multipolarity

The relative decline of US imperialism and the rise of rival powers, such as Russia and China, is something that has been welcomed by many African governments. They hope that by balancing between the major powers, weaker nations will be able to play more of an independent role.

The relative decline of US imperialism and the rise of rival powers, such as Russia and China, is something that has been welcomed by many African governments / Image: kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons

In practice, what this means is not peaceful progress and development but greater instability, war and suffering for the people of Africa. In the Great Lakes region, we see the de facto annexation of a part of eastern Congo by Rwanda. But this is just one example.

It must be remembered that the borders of the African nations are completely arbitrary and irrational, having been deliberately drawn up by the colonial powers to leave territorial claims, enclaves and national conflicts between a patchwork of weak African states.

Rather than pledging the abolition of these colonial boundaries, the Organisation of African Unity introduced the principle of the ‘inviolability of national boundaries’ into its founding charter in 1963. This was for the simple reason that if the borders of one country are changed, it could set off a chain reaction of disputes, wars and even genocides across the entire continent.

There will no doubt be a number of African leaders who are following events in eastern Congo, and wondering whether this might also be their chance to assert themselves. The horror unfolding in eastern Congo at this moment only underlines the fact that so long as capitalism survives in Africa, African unity will remain a utopia.

On the brink

The Congo is on the brink of catastrophe. A humanitarian disaster is already unfolding on an unimaginable scale. According to a spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme, “Roads are blocked, ports are closed and those crossing Lake Kivu risk their lives in makeshift boats.”

More than 5 million people in North Kivu and the surrounding provinces of Ituri and South Kivu are currently displaced, living in overcrowded and under-resourced camps. Now, the fighting in and around Goma has prevented the delivery of food and aid, meaning that starvation looms over millions of men, women and children.

The Congo is on the brink of catastrophe / Image: MONUSCO Photos, Wikimedia Commons

Humanitarian workers are also warning of a heightened risk of disease, such as cholera and mpox, spreading throughout Goma and beyond. The World Health Organisation has warned of a public health “nightmare” if the fighting continues.

The crisis is also being deepened by the internal instability within the Congolese state. Tshisekedi has called for the youth to “organise themselves into vigilance groups” and enlist in the armed forces. Young people are reportedly volunteering in large numbers to defeat Rwanda and “defend the republic”.

But these untrained and under-armed recruits will be sent into a nightmare. Against a well-equipped, disciplined force, they will be led by an army which has shown itself many times over to be hopelessly corrupt, and almost indistinguishable from the various local militias that plague eastern Congo. Even before the capture of Goma, demoralisation and desertion were rife within the Congolese army. The influx of thousands of fighters into eastern Congo could destabilise the region even further.

At the same time, a section of the Congolese ruling class has publicly come out in opposition to Tshisekedi. Corneille Nangaa, a former ally of Tshisekedi in the government, joined with M23 in December 2023 to take the lead of its political front, the Congo River Alliance, which is assembling opposition groups from beyond Tutsi areas. He has made it clear that his aim is “regime change” in the DRC. And he is not the only one who would like to see this happen.

Tshisekedi may hope that his war mobilisation will strengthen his position in the state. It could just as easily provoke civil war throughout the country.

But it is not just the people of the DRC that are facing catastrophe. There is a very real risk that the war in the east could descend into a repetition of the Congo Wars, which dragged in a total of nine African states and led to the deaths of more than 5 million people between 1996 and 2003.

Already, thousands of troops from neighbouring Burundi are fighting alongside Congolese troops against M23 and the Rwandan military. Uganda is known to have links with M23, but at the same time it has been sending troops into eastern Congo as part of a joint operation with the DRC.

The entire region is a powder keg. A single spark could be all that is required to light a conflagration that would put the horror and destruction of Gaza into the shade. The longer the fighting continues, the greater the likelihood that this worst-case scenario will be realised.

End capitalism

Capitalism has created a hell on earth in eastern Congo. Meanwhile, all of the major powers, who have exploited the Congo’s people and resources for more than a century, offer nothing but hypocrisy, insults and further exploitation.

The ‘democratic’ West would rather let the Congo burn than sever its links to the Rwandan military dictatorship. But what of China, which officially recognises the DRC as a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partner”? The Chinese government has been even more quiet than the West, while it has continued buying coltan from Kagame.

It is very understandable, then, when Tshisekedi says:

“The Congolese people see the passivity of the world, bordering on complicity. The DRC will not be humiliated or crushed. We will fight, and we will triumph."

But this does not change the fact that neither Tshisekedi, nor any other part of the corrupt and degenerate Congolese ruling class, can lead the people of the Congo to peace, progress or freedom.

Only a revolution can bring an end to the carnage. The workers and youth of the Congo must take the land and wealth of the country into their own hands. On this basis they could reach out to the workers of their neighbouring countries, who have exactly the same interest in ending the horror and sweeping away the reactionary states of the region.

But communists around the world must recognise that the suffering of the Congolese people is tied by a thousand threads to the bankers and capitalists sitting in swanky offices in New York, London, and Beijing. We must strike at the black heart of the world market, which continues to feed on the blood of Africa. The fight for freedom in Africa is inseparable from the fight for communism the world over.

Down with imperialism!

Down with the reactionary capitalist regimes of the African Great Lakes!

Only the workers and peasants of Africa can end the crisis, in alliance with the workers of the world!

For a socialist federation of Africa!

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