Goma, one of the biggest cities in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, fell to the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) and M23 earlier this week.
Who are the AFC and M23? What incited the conflict in the DRC? And how is neighboring Rwanda involved?
The story of the current circumstance in the DRC goes all the way back to 1994 during the Rwandan genocide.
Rwanda is made up of two major ethnic groups: the Hutus and the Tutsis, with the Hutus having a strong majority over the Tutsis.
During the Scramble for Africa in the mid-1800s – in which Africa was haphazardly divided by European powers seeking to exert their powers, Germany took control of Rwanda and instituted a colonial government, followed by Belgium after World War I. However with colonialism comes colonial ideals and practices, including social Darwinism, phrenology, and scientific racism.
As a result, both German and later Belgian colonial governments implemented a system in which physical traits delineated ethnicity and leveraged these newly minted ethnic divides to formulate a hierarchical class structure with the minority Tutsis on top, upsetting the previously peaceful relationship between the Hutus and Tutsis.
With tensions building and the Hutu majority growing increasingly upset with the unequal status quo, the Hutu Revolution sparked into existence on November 1, 1959 with a violent uprising of Hutus at the rumored killing of a Hutu leader. One violent incident snowballed into a bloody revolution and coup, leading tens of thousands of Tutsis dying and hundreds of thousands fleeing to neighboring nations.
The revolution, however, wasn’t the end of the story; ethnic violence against Tutsis repeatedly sparked in Rwanda, leading to periodic genocides of the ethnic group. Yet again, tensions mounted and in 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group led by Tutsis and based in Uganda, invaded Rwanda leading to yet another round of warfare before a ceasefire was signed in early 1991.
Yet, once again, this hard won peace failed to be long lasting. On April 6, 1994, the president of Rwanda was shot down in his plane, which served as the catalyst for a mass genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, particularly (of the latter) those in the government. After practically 100 days of violence, the genocide came to an end with over 800,000 people dead, countless women raped and purposefully infected with HIV/AIDS, and 2 million left displaced.
As one would imagine, the scars of this atrocity, over 100 years in the making, were slow to heal – and haven’t healed completely to this day.
After the end of the genocide, Rwanda saw the rise of a Tutsi-led rebel force spearheaded by Paul Kagame, the incumbent president of the African nation. As a result of this Tutsi rise to power, nearly one million Hutus fled the nation and sought refuge in Rwanda’s next door neighbor: the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Over the years, the Rwandan army has invaded the DRC twice, reportedly searching for the culprits of the 1994 genocide. And their claims, at least in part, hold truth: the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), or a Hutu group thought to house several individuals responsible for the genocide, continues to call eastern DRC home… or at least, temporarily.
On one side, Rwanda continues to accuse the DRC government of playing host to the FDLR, allegations that the DRC vehemently denies. On the other hand, many believe that the repeated allegations are merely an excuse for Rwanda to grow wealthy off of mineral-rich eastern DRC.
This brings us back to today’s conflict in the DRC.
The M23, or March 23 Movement, is a subgroup of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), the rebel coalition spearheading the violence in the DRC, and is composed predominantly of Tutsis, with the cited goal of fighting for the rights of the Tutsi minority in the DRC.
However, the DRC and UN allege that the M23 is not indeed a group fighting for the rights of Congolese Tutsis, but instead a pawn of Kagame, who they allege is supplying the group with weapons and soldiers, all in an effort to control the mineral wealth buried under the dirt of the eastern DRC, something that has been the cause for violence in the DRC before.
Whatever may be the real motive for the conflict – mineral wealth, Tutsi rights, long harbored grudges and conflict – one thing is for sure: we may have left colonialism in the past, but it hasn’t left us.
The invasion of Goma serves as a powerful reminder of the far-reaching impacts of colonialism, across nations, across continents, and now, across time. So many of the problems and conflicts we face today on the geopolitical stage are no more a product of greed and lust for power today, as they are of the same vices from centuries prior.
Without acknowledging the ramifications of colonialism, we cannot understand the true breadth of the violence plaguing the DRC – and countless nations across the world. And without dismantling the lingering effects of colonialism, we cannot put a lasting end to the violence in our world today.
