No end in sight to Rwanda’s war in Congo, despite peace deal

Perhaps no country in history has been more ravaged than the Democratic Republic of Congo, from its sadistic plundering under Belgium’s King Leopold II at the turn of the 20th century to the US-led, 1961 assassination of its first democratic leader, Patrice Lumumba, an act that derailed Congo’s emerging sovereignty. The country has also faced steady predation by its own kleptocratic elites—former presidents Mobutu Sese Seko and Joseph Kabila—and by two neighbouring warriors, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.

And yet Congo’s potential for transformation and breadth of humanity are something to behold. Today it is a nation inhabited by more than 100 million people from 250 different ethnic groups who are steeped in traditions of civic action and resistance. Congo is also one of the most biodiverse countries and home to 60 percent of the Congo Basin, the world’s largest carbon sink. Its natural resources, which include strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium and tantalum, are estimated to be worth a staggering $24 trillion USD. Given that a tech revolution is now driving the global economy and shaping how world powers interact, Congo is poised to play a defining role.

Amid this promise, Congo still faces a series of clear and present dangers. It is no wonder that US President Donald Trump has turned his attention toward the vast, embattled nation, in search of a deal. Trump’s strategy is to challenge China’s near monopoly in the global supply chain of critical minerals, in particular in Congo where Chinese companies own or operate a majority of copper and cobalt mines.

Congo now appears ready to pivot away from China’s dominance in its mineral sector. Earlier this year, Congolese officials offered the United States access to critical minerals and investment in infrastructure projects in exchange for the US guaranteeing stability in Congo’s war-torn eastern region. In return—and at a very minimum—Congo expected that Washington would persuade its longtime ally, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, to call off the dogs of war and leave Congo alone, once and for all.

Kagame’s visit to Washington, where he signed an accord with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi on December 4 is part of a public pledge to end violence. Despite the ceremony’s pomp, Congolese blood continues to spill.

In late November, Rwanda’s proxy M23 militia executed scores of civilians in Irhambi Katana, a village in South Kivu. Rwanda’s army and the M23 re-invaded Congo nearly four years ago and have now set up a parallel military administration in Congo’s mineral rich Kivu provinces. In September, UN human rights investigators reported that the M23, with operational support from Rwandan military forces, recently committed summary executions, torture, enforced disappearances, and recruitment of children. The militia also carried out widespread sexual violence, including gang rape and sexual slavery. The UN report documented deliberate killings and sexual violence against civilians by Congolese soldiers and their allied Wazelendo militia, as well. On December 2, civil society reported that 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed during violent clashes between Congolese forces and the M23 in several villages in South Kivu.

For nearly three decades Rwanda has waged war in Congo, committing systematic atrocities against civilians and using its military and proxy rebel groups to traffic large quantities of Congolese gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten. UN investigators and non-governmental organizations have documented evidence of Rwanda’s laundering and its link to violence for decades, even after an international certification scheme claimed that minerals from the region—in particular Rwanda—were conflict-free. Rwanda’s ability to export Congolese minerals onto the international market has been Kagame’s longstanding incentive for stoking war. The majority of suppliers to weapons companies and Big Tech source their minerals, in particular tantalum, from Rwanda.

Over the last several months Trump’s advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, helped broker a blueprint for peace between Congo and Rwanda, but the deal considerably strengthens Rwanda’s position. It allows Rwanda’s Tutsi-led military to remain, for the time being, an occupying force in mineral-rich Congo under the false pretext that Rwandan Hutu militia in Congo are a threat to Rwanda’s security. Yet these Hutu combatants are actually a fractured force, with no military capacity for attacking Rwanda. Over the years, many Hutu fighters have disarmed, demobilized and returned to Rwanda, only to be forcibly integrated into Kagame’s army and then sent back to resource-rich Congo to fight.

The deal will also allow Rwanda, which has no meaningful production of minerals, to legally process and export Congolese tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold for global markets—an apparent reward for all the murder and mayhem the country has been responsible for since 1996. Meanwhile, the US managed to secure “a lot of mineral rights in Congo” for facilitating this agreement, according to President Trump.

One of the most troubling aspects about this arrangement is the brazen disregard for transparency, and the exclusion of Congolese stakeholders. Negotiations have been conducted behind closed doors with no attempt to include civil society, victims of war, or Congolese cooperatives representing miners. It is not entirely clear which international entities will benefit from Congo’s first-class mineral resources, and at what cost to the public treasury. So far, the individuals queuing up to profit are American political, military and financial elites.

US-based KoBold Metals, a mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, has been granted seven permits to explore lithium, used in electrical vehicle batteries, and other Congolese minerals.

Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge fund manager who helped raise funds for Trump’s election was reported to be part of a consortium interested in buying a majority stake in a lucrative mining concession in Rubaya, in eastern Congo. The mines in Rubaya are considered to be ground zero for the global production of tantalum, a metal used in defense, aerospace and artificial intelligence hardware. Rubaya is currently controlled by the M23 militia, which is armed, financed and directed by Rwanda.

Donald Trump:

▪️We will be sending our biggest companies to the Congo and Rwanda.

▪️We will take out some of the rare earth, and take out some of the assets.

▪️Everybody will make a lot of money. pic.twitter.com/wVGEEdFtKY

— Yzb EN (@yzbhakanen) December 4, 2025

Techmet, a Dublin-based investment fund whose advisory chairman is Mike Mullen, former US Joint Chief of Staff, is also part of the consortium seeking to buy mineral rights in Rubaya. Techmet has received more than $100 million in US government funds from the International Development Finance Corporation, and is the largest shareholder in the Rwandan mining company Trinity Metals. Trinity’s chairman is Shawn McCormick, former director of African affairs at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton when Kagame’s forces invaded Congo and overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

These political and military insiders will no doubt expect Kagame to provide stability for their investments. Given Kagame’s history of perfidy (he has reneged on every past peace accord he’s signed), there is every chance that he will resort to strategically escalating the violence in eastern Congo, while simultaneously controlling it.

“He can basically name his price. No Western investor will go ahead unless there is a guarantee of stability from Kagame,” said an analyst who has followed the region closely for years.

“I very much doubt there will be a stop in fighting, though. Because that’s what makes Kagame relevant. That’s how he showcases his power in the region,” he told me.

The opportunity for Kagame to play both warrior and peacemaker in Congo is laid out in the accord, and will ultimately compromise Congo’s sovereignty. But the US has never been interested in ensuring Congo’s sovereignty. If it were, it would have sanctioned Rwanda for its multiple invasions decades ago, and called for Kagame and his senior entourage to be prosecuted for their crimes. Instead, Washington has protected and supported Kagame and Museveni because they are geopolitical lynchpins on the African continent.

President Tshisekedi has so far played his hand poorly, and will need to negotiate more shrewdly in the future if he wants to protect the Congolese people and their resources from further ravage.

Judi Rever is a journalist from Montréal and is the author of In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.