Rwanda’s dictator gambles future on Congo invasion

For months, the city of Goma held its breath.

Since late 2024, its residents had watched the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels draw ever closer, capturing towns and villages in the hills of eastern Congo and inching towards their city, the lakeside capital of North Kivu province.

As the new year dawned, the rebels, who had mysteriously re-emerged in the misty mountains to the north two years earlier, seemed poised to strike and the mood in Goma was febrile.

A million people fleeing the rebel advance in the countryside had taken shelter within the city, doubling its population. The newcomers brought with them stories of executions, pillaging and razed villages.

M23 has so far seized territory with little resistance, but the city’s residents hoped it would be spared. Goma – garrisoned by the Congolese army, 300 Romanian mercenaries and 3,000 UN peacekeepers – was no village after all.

The rebels had captured the city once before, in 2012. But in the face of international pressure, Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, had ordered them out after just 11 days. Presumably he would not risk his image as the West’s most indispensable African partner by attempting a repeat.

But on Jan 23, three days after Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president, Mr Kagame crossed the Rubicon.

In a dawn assault, the rebels stormed the city with tanks stolen from the Congolese army, advancing under the cover of heavy shelling. Government forces collapsed, the mercenaries fled and peacekeepers remained in their barracks.

It was the largest rebel victory in eastern Congo in more than a decade, and the most brazen Rwandan intervention since the official end of Congo’s civil war in 2003.

Mr Kagame’s actions drew swift international condemnation and comparisons with Vladimir Putin, leaving diplomats at a loss to explain why one of Africa’s most astute leaders had undertaken such a colossal gamble and what he might do next.

Mr Kagame has long denied sponsoring M23, despite claims to the contrary by the UN and the US.

The president, who seized power in 1994 after his rebels toppled the Hutu regime behind the genocide directed at his Tutsi minority, has long been accused of undermining Congo militarily and economically.

Western leaders mostly chose to look away, ashamed over their inaction during the genocide and impressed by Mr Kagame’s leadership style. Efficient and apparently incorruptible, he used development aid wisely, making Rwanda an African development paragon, and dispatched its troops to pacify troubled parts of the continent where the West had economic interests.

Britain became his staunchest supporter. Former aid ministers such as Baroness Chalker, Clare Short and Andrew Mitchell sang his praises. Sir Tony Blair described him as a “visionary” and later served as an unpaid adviser. For many years Britain was Rwanda’s biggest bilateral donor.

Mr Kagame may have been a dictator – winning more than 99 per cent of the vote in last year’s election – but diplomats argued dictatorship was necessary to protect Rwanda’s Tutsis from another genocide.

The West therefore mainly stayed silent as abuses mounted, even when Mr Kagame was accused of sending death squads abroad to murder critics.

When Patrick Karegaya, his former spy chief, was found strangled in a Johannesburg hotel in 2014, Mr Kagame denied involvement but condoned the murder, saying: “You cannot betray Rwanda and get away with it.”

Even when Scotland Yard uncovered a Rwandan plot to assassinate dissidents in London, British benevolence remained unwavering. Mr Kagame paid his dues, distancing Francophone Rwanda from Paris, joining the Commonwealth and, in 2022, signing a deal to receive asylum seekers deported from Britain.

The lure of the east

Western silence often extended to Rwanda’s repeated interference in eastern Congo.

Early interventions had some justification. In 1994, Mr Kagame’s rebels ended the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and pursued the perpetrators into neighbouring Congo, where they swiftly regrouped.

But Rwandan complaints about the Hutu killers lurking across the border increasingly seemed like pretext as the threat faded.

Over the course of 30 years, Rwanda has openly invaded Congo three times, attempted to topple its government twice and succeeded once. It has backed a dozen rebel factions, participated in the weakening of Congo’s anarchic east and stands accused of plundering resources such as gold, tin and coltan. Millions have died as a result.

Rwanda has legitimate security concerns, while M23’s claim to be fighting discrimination and violence against Congo’s Tutsi minority is not without foundation.

But the Rwandan elite’s hunger for Congo’s minerals is a decisive factor, analysts say. Looting has been widespread for decades. Kigali exports far more minerals than it produces, thanks to proxy militias smuggling resources from artisanal Congolese mines, rights groups claim. Last year, Rwanda exported more than £1 billion of gold, despite having few supplies of its own.

Mineral greed alone does not explain Rwanda’s latest military action, however. Critics note it has merrily plundered the east for years without triggering a war.

But in 2021, the status quo in the east changed when Uganda, another beneficiary of smuggled minerals, reached a deal with Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, to build new roads connecting the east’s mineral-rich heartlands to Ugandan territory, sidelining Rwanda.

Ken Matthysen, a regional expert at the International Peace Information Service, a Belgian research institute, said: “The balance of power in the Great Lakes shifted. Rwanda felt its interests were endangered.”

Weeks later, M23 resurfaced.

The fall of Goma

Few expected M23 to seize Goma. A low-level war protected Rwanda’s mining interests, kept Congolese and Ugandan forces at bay and avoided too much unwelcome international attention.

Mr Kagame’s decision to gamble may have been influenced by the US election, diplomats say. Mr Trump’s isolationist instincts and equivocal views on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggested that Washington would respond to Rwandan escalation with indifference.

So for seven days, chaos ensued in Goma.

“There was constant shooting day and night,” said Michel Safari, a 21-year-old mechanic who sheltered with his family at home in the north of the city. During a lull, he ventured outside only to be confronted by gunmen who stole his phone and shot him in the leg.

Thousands were killed, including 20 peacekeepers. Aid workers struggled to treat the wounded in overcrowded hospitals. Morgues overflowed; corpses rotted in the streets. Amid the chaos, 4,000 male prisoners escaped the city’s largest jail, raped more than 100 female inmates, locked them in the women’s wing and set it ablaze.

The Congolese army collapsed. Officers, loyalist militia leaders and government officials scrambled onto ferries or seized dugout canoes to cross Lake Kivu, according to Shaman Hamuli, the president of Goma’s main fishery, who witnessed the scenes.

Others hid at the UN peacekeeping base, including the 300 Romanian mercenaries, who later surrendered to the rebels.

By the end of January, Goma belonged to M23.

Analysts disagree on Mr Kagame’s endgame. Some believe he wants a permanent foothold in Congo; others suspect he aims to force regime change in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. Perhaps Mr Kagame himself is uncertain.

Jason Stearns, an expert on the Congo, said: “One of the things you learn over the years is that Rwandan strategy is often more tactical than strategic.

“They push a little, see what’s possible, and keep on pushing. They adjust. They do a lot of course corrections. There is clearly the desire to project power into the eastern Congo, but is there a grand strategy? Maybe, maybe not.”

Whatever Mr Kagame’s intentions, it appears he failed to anticipate the strength of the international response. Britain suspended aid, the European Union placed a key economic partnership under review and the US imposed targeted sanctions.

In a startling turn, Mr Tshisekedi outmanoeuvred his Rwandan counterpart, offering Washington a Ukraine-style minerals deal in exchange for protection against M23 and its patron. Mr Trump’s interest was piqued and he tasked Massad Boulos, his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, with negotiations.

Mr Kagame found himself in unfamiliar terrain. After M23 seized Walikale and closed in on a large tin mine backed by US investors in late March, he received an unequivocal warning from the Trump administration.

“They gave him a very strong message to say ‘move back now, or else’,” says a source familiar with the discussions. “There was no carrot involved in the conversation; there was nothing but stick.”

Mr Kagame swiftly complied. M23 withdrew and Congo’s front lines have remained largely frozen since.

Mr Kagame now finds himself in the unusual position of being at the receiving end of Western vilification, argues Michela Wrong, the author of a book about Karegaya’s killing.

“With the exception of a brief moment in 2012, the world has never stood up to Kagame and said ‘no’, so he’s reached the correct assumption that he can get away with it.” She said. “The question now is whether he has pushed it a bit too far.”

The conflict’s future now depends largely on Mr Trump, who is understood to be offering drones to the Congo as part of a package to deter Rwanda and reduce its military advantage in the region.

Mr Kagame has been told to sign a peace deal with Mr Tshisekedi at the White House in early July or face far more significant economic consequences, according to two diplomatic sources.

Under the deal, it is likely that M23 would have to withdraw from most of the territory it holds, including Goma. His economy still heavily dependent on Western aid, Mr Kagame may have no choice but to yield – for now.

But Rwandan compliance could be short lived. Unless the complex issues bedevilling Congo’s east, most notably those of ethnicity and land rights, are addressed, the region will remain volatile, lawless and vulnerable to outside interference.

Congo’s army remains hopelessly feeble, while the ragtag loyalist militias Mr Tshisekedi relies on in their stead do more to fuel the chaos than end it.

Without sustained diplomacy, something Mr Trump may not have the patience for, a new chapter of violence could easily begin in the near future. Mr Kagame simply needs to bide his time.