The conflict, having taken millions of lives just three decades ago, has suddenly resumed right in Africa’s heart. The situation in the region is rapidly developing starting to impact the interests of global corporates sourcing from there a critical mineral for the electronic industry. What is this about and what are the reasons of what is going on?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo cut diplomatic ties with neighbouring Rwanda and the head of Rwanda’s foreign office Thérèse Wagner called the developments in the border-zone of the two counties ‘a declaration of war’ by Rwanda. At the same time, the March 23 Movement (M23) comprised of ethnic Tutsi entered Goma, a million-plus Congolese city, the capital of North Kivu province, supported by the regular army of Rwanda. The Congolese governor died in a combat the day before, the DRC army, deployed between the lakes Kivu and Edward, is scattering itself leaving hardware behind.
Local people, who are not Tutsi by origin, are massively moving deep into the DRC. And there are around two million of them. The UN peace-building corps deployed in the Congolese-Rwandan border-zone suffered losses (with soldiers from South Africa, Malawi and an Uruguayan killed) and locked themselves at their bases. The Russian MFA condemned the military escalation in the Great Lakes region and the attack against the UN mission soldiers.
Everything taking place on the equator right now (which goes right through the centre of the current battle ground) is not accidental and is not a minor episode in remote Africa, which news from U.S. and Europe will easily overshadow. The thing is that in the same casual manner, without the attention from Europe and U.S., in 1998 the Great War of Africa broke out in the same place and for the same reasons involving the same participants.
This war lasted for five years and involved two-thirds of Black Africa countries in one way or another. According to various estimates, the war claimed from five to six million lives and the global economy felt the pressure due to repeated taking over of territories locating strategic raw materials like coltan, a mineral without which computers and mobile phones cannot be made.
The DRC has 80 per cent of the global coltan deposits. All electronic appliances bear a piece of the Congo inside, so the issues and the ambitions of the Tutsi of three million people quickly turn into a global scourge. One might wonder: there is tiny Rwanda cramping in the hills with a population smaller than in Moscow and there is DRC, the second largest country in Africa (after Algeria) of 100 million people. Yet, Rwanda and the Tutsi people governing it have taken out Congo a few times and even managed to take over Kinshasa for some time.
And the new stage of this massacre has not been caused merely by coltan (with gold, diamonds, cobalt and rare metals). This whole nightmare in various forms has been repeating itself from the 15th century, or since the historically confirmed appearance of Tutsi cattle farmers in the region of the African Great Lakes.
They came there, presumably, from Egypt or Ethiopia and quickly assumed control over much more numerous local black people. The Tutsi are considered the tallest people in Africa, they have very long legs and European face features, especially the nose. And their skin is light brown which, as a whole, makes them very much different from indigenous peoples of Central Africa.
They also are very energetic, self-motivated and hostile. The medieval Tutsi empire stood until the advent of Europeans. And the Great Lakes region was the last spot in the African map, which colonizers could reach. The area controlled by the Tutsi continuously expanded and they moved to new lands taking over Bantu-speaking people in a snap.
As a result, by the time the Great Lakes states (Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and, partially, the DRC which was called Zaire before) declared their independence, the Tutsi, being a minority in each of these countries, managed to take over the power completely (in Rwanda and Burundi) or key positions and industries. The share of the Tutsi in governments, armies, the police and trade in these countries is disproportionately high compared to their number.
Throughout the history and especially in the 20th century, this caused local riots, ethnic bloodshed and wars. There were different reasons and pretexts for mutual destruction including the accusation that the Tutsi ‘cooperated with colonizers’.
The Tutsi genocide in Rwanda reached its utmost peak when the local population (the name of the key tribe in the country is Hutu) literally slaughtered 700 thousand Tutsi without using firearms. Around a million of the Tutsi fled to the DRC right in the area of the border city Goma.
The Tutsi appeared in the territory of the Belgian Congo long ago but formed a large community called the Banyamulenge in the middle of the 20th century when first ethnic violence in Rwanda took place. The 1994 genocide is just the most recent episode in a row of slaughterings of the Tutsi in the independent Rwanda, the colonial administration somehow contained them before. In the second half of the 20th century, the Tutsi in the DRC quickly started to take positions in administration, especially in border provinces, in the army, the police, and key positions in business. All this caused negative reaction among the local population, to say the least, which again manifested in violence against the Banyamulenge. Africa does not know other social protection tools.
The immediate trigger of the Great War in 1998 was the new citizenship act they wanted to adopt in the DRC. According to this act, a citizen had to prove being part of an ethnic group living in the Congolese territory before 1885. Others faced losing their citizenship. This would have stripped the Tutsi of their Congolese citizenship and the right to work in civil administration and to do military service.
By that moment, the Tutsi had regained power in Rwanda after the genocide and responded by doing the same. Millions of Hutus, many of whom were involved in the 1994 genocide, rushed off to the DRC to the same city of Goma, making it ‘the global refugee capital’. A sweeping massacre broke out, in which a small but a very ambitious Rwandan army, the Tutsi, overthrew the power in the huge Congo twice in a row making local leaders accept the Tutsi governance and even appoint the Banyamulenge to governor positions. At that time the world witnessed grim pictures from Goma, which became a huge refugee camp embraced by chaos, cholera and the Ebola fever.
Eventually the war of all against all in Africa paused, but the problem remained where it was. The DRC and Rwanda created their own proxies. Until most recent days, Rwanda denied connections with the M23 army comprised of the Tutsi and the Banyamulenge and terrorizing Congo. And the Congo is supporting the so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) comprised of Hutu refugees. The war of the proxies was waged for decades in the region. Other countries, especially Angola and South Africa, tried to make peace for everyone fearing the repetition of the 1990s bloodshed.
A meeting between the DRC president Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame was scheduled to take place at the end of last December. Kagame cancelled his visit to Angola at the very last moment and the negotiation was disrupted. Rwanda blamed the disruption of the peace process on the Congolese officials who refused to sit at the same table with M23 representatives whom the DRC considers separatists and terrorists. The Congolese believe this was a provocative act of Rwanda.
There is a strong personal factor about everything taking place. The presidents of the DRC and Rwanda cannot stand each other. In December 2023, Tshisekedi compared Paul Kagame with Adolf Hitler and promised he would ‘end up like Hitler’. Kagame’s rhetoric is more restrained but the overall background for the negotiations is hostile.
Today, after the Rwandan forces have occupied Goma, the situation is getting worse every day. The M23 group controls a significant part of North Kivu province between the lakes and is not going to leave. The efficiency of UN’s piece-building corps is close to zero. Only South Africans still continued patrolling a part of Goma, but there are simply many of them: earlier South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa ordered to send more than six thousand soldiers to Goma.
It is possible that the Tutsi can move from the Great Lakes deeper into the DRC seizing coltan deposits, gold mines and diamond fields on their way. This will cause a new major conflict, which Angola will most probably join being interested in the stability and status-quo in mineral production like no one else.
All electronics manufacturers in the world are looking at the war in the Great Lakes area holding their breath. Besides everything else, China might demonstrate extreme interest having its own positions at coltan deposits.
The Congolese army backbone is made up of PMC Agemira comprised mainly of the French and the Belgian (it guards industrial sites, mines with foreign interest) and the so-called Wazalendo (‘a patriot’ in Swahili), local militias trained by Romanians during the recent two years. Using Wazalendo is a questionable experience. Syria’s case showed that haphazardly created militias made up of local tribes give higher numbers ‘on paper’, but sometimes they even refuse to leave their whereabouts. They cannot stand the Tutsi tempered in battles.
The Marxist economic priority over other parts of life has always been the main Europeans’ mistake in Africa. This caused not only the exploitation of colonies but also the false belief that Africans can be paid off easily. However, there are plenty of existential issues on the continent which cannot be solved by means of financing or redistribution of resources among ethnic and social groups.
Of course, economy and coltan do play a significant role in this eternal conflict. But for all the conflicting parties, minerals and money they bring are just tools to fight against each other to extinction. We are just witnessing an outbreak of the tragedy this African region has been experiencing for hundreds of years. Moreover, we see no grounds to reconcile and there is every reason to believe this is just the beginning of even bigger developments.