President Donald Trump’s second-term attempts at brokering peace in Gaza and Ukraine have gained little traction. But there is one place where the United States’ involvement might yet help bring peace: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where for three and a half deadly years, the Rwandan-supported M23 rebel group has fought against the Congolese government and its allies. These clashes have killed thousands and displaced millions. Since November 2021, with troops, munitions, weapons, and diplomatic support from the Rwandan army, the M23—an armed group led by Congolese Tutsi that aims to overthrow the government—has expanded its control over rural areas and two major cities along the Rwandan border.
The Congolese government’s reaction to the incursion has only exacerbated the violence: Kinshasa outsourced its counterinsurgency efforts to private international military contractors and threw its weight behind ramshackle, poorly disciplined armed groups known as the Wazalendo. After African Union–mandated peace talks with Rwanda led by Angolan President João Lourenço collapsed last December, the Rwandan government escalated, providing the main firepower that helped the M23 take the large border cities of Goma and Bukavu and roughly doubling the territory it held. But then, in late March, the rebellion’s northwestern expansion was stopped in its tracks, due in part to overstretched supply lines—but also to U.S. and EU pressure.
After a slow start, the Trump administration brought Congo and Rwanda together and renewed efforts to hammer out a peace agreement. Alongside Qatar (which is mediating between Congo and the M23), the United States has led several rounds of negotiations between Congo and Rwanda. It has sought to leverage U.S. investments to get Rwanda to withdraw its troops and to allow Congo to regain control over its territory.
The Trump administration has a real chance to broker a historic deal, but not with economic incentives alone. It will need to use a hefty dose of diplomatic and material pressure, especially on Rwanda. It will have to muster more consistency and focus in its Africa policy. And the United States must become more inclusive in its process: the African Union, the EU, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations will all need invitations to the table in order to craft a durable end to Congo’s 30 years of violence.
PEACE MOVEMENT
Since late 2021, this East African conflict has seen its fair share of peace initiatives. First, the East African Community attempted to organize peace talks between Kinshasa and the country’s myriad armed groups. But those negotiations broke down in 2022, in part because Kinshasa refused to talk with the M23. Diplomatic momentum then shifted toward a regional approach that sought to bring Congo and Rwanda into direct negotiations. The U.S. government supported this Angolan-led effort; ahead of elections in Congo in December 2023, Washington also stepped in and negotiated a shaky cease-fire between Kigali and Kinshasa, after which it invested significant diplomatic and intelligence-gathering resources in the region to help monitor the deal.
The Angolan-led talks, however, collapsed in December 2024 when Rwandan President Paul Kagame refused to attend the signing ceremony for a peace deal. Instead of committing to a peace process, Kagame backed a new offensive. Although Rwanda continues to publicly deny its support to the M23, in private, Rwandan leaders argue that they must help the group protect the persecuted Congolese Tutsi population and suppress a Rwandan rebel militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). But Rwanda’s motivations are certainly more complex. Its initial backing of the M23 was driven by competition with neighboring Burundi and Uganda, and because it derives huge material benefit from its neighbor’s instability, which facilitates the smuggling of gold, coltan, and other minerals.
Before this year, Kagame had suffered few major consequences for backing the M23. He is admired by international donors as well as by some Africans for his role in stabilizing and developing Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, and he has made allies by deploying Rwandan troops in other conflict zones on the continent. The EU, for instance, increased its support for Rwanda during the M23 rebellion’s first three years, boosting its aid, offering grants to the Rwandan army for operations against jihadists in Mozambique, and signing a major public-private investment agreement. The United Kingdom was also a steadfast ally: its previous Conservative government gave Kigali over $300 million to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Kagame obviously hoped that the election of a more isolationist American president with little known interest in Africa would give him an even freer hand in Congo. Indeed, Trump has not yet nominated a new assistant secretary of state to lead Africa policy, and a rotating cast of Africa leaders at the National Security Council complicated Washington’s diplomatic efforts. Many U.S. diplomats believe that the leadership transition in Washington prompted Kagame to launch his January offensive, to change the facts on the ground before Rwanda had to return to the negotiating table.
But career U.S. diplomats and civil servants kept up the pressure, succeeding in imposing sanctions in February on a top Kagame ally. In March, the United States received an unexpected assist from the Qatari government. When the Angolan mediation failed, Doha stepped in, brokering a face-to-face meeting between Kagame and Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi for the first time since February 2024. Qatar has significant leverage over Rwanda, as it is investing billions of dollars in the Rwandan national airline and a new Kigali airport.
Over the past three months, in coordination with Washington, Doha has hosted numerous meetings between the M23 and Kinshasa. Washington also began to change its approach. In early April, the Trump administration finally tapped a senior adviser for Africa: Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany and a businessman with experience in Nigeria. Boulos has focused much of his time on the conflict in eastern Congo, making the case to Trump that U.S. interests are at stake there.
On April 25, these efforts bore fruit when Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers signed a Declaration of Principles in Washington, creating a broad framework for a solution to the crisis. Each side pledged to refrain from supporting armed groups, to respect each other’s sovereignty, and to work toward greater economic integration. The declaration also proposed an ambitious timetable. Both sides were supposed to submit draft peace proposals within a week, and administration officials said they aimed for a Rose Garden signing ceremony by early July.
CARROTS AND STICKS
Those draft proposals, however, were miles apart. Very quickly, it became clear that the United States needed to present, or even impose, its own plan. Under Boulos’s direction, State Department diplomats have been working up a deal, and its contours have emerged: Rwanda would have to withdraw its troops from Congo completely while the M23 would withdraw to a small area north of Goma. Kinshasa, meanwhile, would have to facilitate the M23’s transition to a legitimate political party and help its combatants integrate into the Congolese army or demobilize. Kinshasa would also be required to work with Kigali to defeat the FDLR for good.
What distinguishes the U.S. intervention from previous peace efforts is that it puts economic interests at its heart. Trump appears to have noticed that the region could contribute materially to American security and the U.S. economy, which may be why he has mentioned the conflict publicly several times since April. Congo is rich in critical minerals—it is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and tantalum and Africa’s largest producer of copper—but most of these resources are currently exploited and then processed by Chinese companies. The potential deal is meant to be in all sides’ material interest. According to sources close to the process, it will include U.S. investments in a tantalum mine and a niobium mine in villages currently under the M23’s control. The minerals would be shipped to Rwanda, and Rwanda has been told that it could benefit from refining and processing them.
Ending the conflict may well need such incentives. Since 2021, Rwanda has invested great blood and treasure into its Congo intervention. According to diplomats and UN reports, over the past year, it has deployed up to 20 percent of its 33,000 troops in Congo. Rwanda’s gold exports climbed from $344 million in 2021 to $1.5 billion last year; Kigali denies that this increase relates to its efforts in Congo, but six successive reports by a United Nations sanctions monitoring group have shown that minerals are being smuggled from eastern Congo into Rwanda.
Previous U.S. administrations have often highlighted the humanitarian imperative to end the conflict in Congo. Trump’s ethos is obviously different. His transactional foreign policy—which seeks to obtain economic benefits for the United States at little cost to U.S. taxpayers—may be foundering elsewhere, but it has an opportunity to succeed in Congo, where he also has an interest in countering Chinese influence. In this regard, the potential return on investing in peace—privileged access to Congolese minerals or mineral supply chains for U.S. companies—is immense and the costs to the United States would be minimal.
But crafting a durable peace will also require that Washington impose penalties. March offered a glimpse of what putting more pressure on the combatants could accomplish. That month, a large tin mine based in North Kivu (and majority owned, at the time, by the U.S.- and British-based energy investment firm Denham Capital) shuttered its operations as the M23 closed in on the area. Boulos’s pressure on Rwanda led the M23 to withdraw. On April 9, the mine announced that it would resume operations. The American stick worked.
POWER TOOLS
It is clear that Rwanda is the main instigator in the most recent chapter of the East African conflict, so pressure on its leaders will have to be at the core of any solution. The United States, along with other donors, still has far more leverage over Rwanda than it has used. In 2023, Rwanda received around $160 million from its troop contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, roughly the same amount as its entire defense budget. The UN has dawdled in holding Rwanda to account, even as the M23—and likely Rwandan troops themselves—killed UN peacekeepers in Goma this January. In February, the United States, speaking in the Security Council, once again asked the UN to review Rwanda’s contributions to UN peacekeeping missions; other Security Council members could also make it clear that Rwanda can no longer contribute to peacekeeping operations unless it withdraws from Congo.
Rwanda also receives over a billion dollars in development aid each year. Its largest donor, the World Bank, spends over $4 billion on active, multiyear projects in the country, roughly equivalent to Rwanda’s annual budget. Most of these projects are related to infrastructure, and it does not make sense to invest so much in development in a country that has helped displace millions in Congo and disrupted development projects there. In 2012, the World Bank suspended its programs in Rwanda for over a year because of its involvement in Congo, contributing to Kigali’s decision to pull support from the M23. The United States could exercise its de facto veto power over the bank and demand it do so again.
There are other implements in the U.S. toolbox. The State Department could strengthen its travel advisories and publish a business advisory, which would pressure Rwanda by crimping tourism and foreign investment. Since the fall of Goma in January and Bukavu in February, both the EU and the United Kingdom have become much more critical of Rwanda: the EU imposed its most aggressive sanctions yet on Rwandan officials and Gasabo Gold, a refinery owned by the Rwandan Defense Ministry, while the United Kingdom has suspended some aid. If the U.S. Treasury Department followed the EU’s lead and sanctioned Gasabo Gold, it would effectively kneecap Rwanda’s main earner of foreign currency. And if both Republicans and Democrats spoke more often and more publicly about Rwanda’s damaging role in the region, that might discourage celebrities such as Idris Elba and Ellen DeGeneres—who have visited Rwanda and participated in promotional activities for the Rwandan government—and sports ventures such as the NBA and Arsenal Football Club from associating with the country’s brand.
KEEP THE PEACE
The M23’s three-year rebellion is just a part of a multilayered Congolese conflict that has lasted for more than three decades. There are around 100 other armed groups in eastern Congo, all fighting for complex reasons. International donors, the Congolese government, multinational corporations, and local elites share blame for the conflict’s stubborn persistence. A deal between Congo and Rwanda will be only the first step in what must be a longer peace process.
Massive investments have been made in peace in Congo before. In 2002, concerted pressure from donors, as well as leadership from South Africa and the United Nations, led to a comprehensive peace deal that reunified the country, demobilized 130,000 soldiers, and ushered in a new, democratic constitution and elections. But the ambition of that process quickly shriveled. There were no serious transitional justice programs, no adequate land reform projects to address rural poverty and inequality, and the stigmatization of the Congolese Tutsi community—one driver of the current conflict––was never addressed. Perhaps most important, the chronic corruption and fragmentation bedeviling the Congolese security apparatus was never tackled, prompting its leaders to ally with abusive groups when confronted with threats.
But the M23 crisis is currently the region’s largest by far. Rwandan troops must withdraw from eastern Congo to open up space for the larger necessary peace process. Ideally, such a process would be facilitated by the United Nations—given its experience in peacemaking—and the African Union, the regional body to which the UN wants to delegate peacekeeping operations. These institutions could monitor a cease-fire and facilitate disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration.
A deal between Congo and Rwanda must lead to a larger peace process.
Truly bringing peace to his country will require courage from Tshisekedi: he will have to launch military operations against the FDLR, address Congolese Tutsi grievances, and bring hundreds of thousands of refugees home. Tens of thousands of combatants need to be demobilized. If the M23 withdraws north of Goma, the UN and regional bodies will probably have to deploy an interposition force to assuage Rwanda’s security concerns and prevent another escalation.
Regional economic integration poses yet another challenge. To prevent yet another Rwandan invasion, a peace process will need to get each country in the region invested in their neighbors’ stability. That aim can be pursued by encouraging joint economic projects, such as a hydroelectric dam on the Ruzizi river that the U.S. government has envisioned as part of its peace plan. This dam would become the third co-managed by Burundi, Congo, and Rwanda and a demonstration that cooperation is possible. Rejuvenating the Great Lakes States Development Bank—which was established in 1977 by Burundi, Congo, and Rwanda and which declined in the 1990s because of mismanagement and lack of funds—could provide tax incentives for cross-border trade and money for joint projects. There are many other areas where the two countries could collaborate. Congo is rich in timber, coffee, and cacao as well as minerals, while Rwanda can provide a safe and stable—if authoritarian—base for companies to operate.
As it stands, the structure of the peace process is a problem, too. Qatar’s talks between Kinshasa and the M23 are ongoing, and the United States has stepped into the role of mediator between Congo and Rwanda. But neither country can go this alone. The United States will have to involve the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the African Union, to orchestrate pressure on both sides.
This conflict can be solved, and Washington is on the right track. But to consolidate any of its gains, it must now engage in the kind of multilateralism it has, to date, avoided. “America first” and international cooperation—self-interest and humanitarianism—need not be mutually exclusive.
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