Willy Ngoma, military spokesperson for AFC/M23, posed next to the carcass of an armored vehicle after AFC/M23 and Rwandan Defense Forces seized control of Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, on January 27, 2025.
The UN Group of Experts on DRC reports the obvious, that Rwandan President Paul Kagame intends to annex DRC’s Kivu Provinces.
It’s long been obvious to anyone following Rwanda’s 30-year war of aggression in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that Rwandan President Kagame’s ultimate goal is to annex the mineral-rich Kivu Provinces bordering Rwanda. His project has come closer to fruition every year since his M23 militia re-emerged in a new push to claim territory and mines in November 2021. The June 2025 UN Group of Experts Report on DRC makes abundantly clear that he is now in de facto control of both provinces. His troops seized Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, in January. They seized Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu Province in February.
No one could be honestly surprised, including the UN investigators, so the real question is why “the international community” let this happen. The UN Security Council has passed resolutions demanding that M23 withdraw from the territory it controls and that Rwandan troops withdraw from DRC, but no sanctions serious enough to force them to are ever imposed, neither by the UN nor by the big Western powers. The US and its NATO allies exclude Russia, North Korea, and Eritrea from the SWIFT system for conducting international financial transactions, but no one has ever proposed imposing this harshest of Western sanctions on Rwanda, not at any point in its 30 years of invasion, occupation, and plunder.
China goes along with the UN Security Council’s toothless resolutions but continues to sell arms to both Rwanda and DRC.
The US long ago anointed Kagame and his Tutsi elite as resource managers in this part of the world, and now it’s working out just fine for all concerned. All the governments, corporations, traffickers, and traders are happy to sit by as Kagame proceeds with his annexation project.
Everyone likes to do business in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, which hasn’t suffered the ravages of Kagame’s war of aggression, all of which has taken place within DRC’s borders. Kigali’s a beautiful modern city with clean streets, 5-star hotels, and a globally renowned sports arena and convention center. Financial services are easy to access, and the Internet works.
The savage truth of the 30-year war of aggression should nevertheless be told, and more of it is in the UN investigators’ latest report.
M23 is Rwanda
The M23 operates as a division of the Rwandan army under Rwandan command; UN investigators said so in last year’s June and December reports and in this latest again. The press should stop quoting Kagame’s preposterous statement that his troops are not in DRC. No one believes this, least of all Trump’s Middle East and Africa advisor Massad Boulos.
AFC, the Alliance Fleuve Congo, is the political arm of the M23 militia, so the two are often identified as AFC/M23. Here are just a few quotes from the report which make it clear that M23, or AFC/M23, is Rwandan:
“One week prior to the Goma attack, Rwandan officials confidentially informed the Group that President Paul Kagame had decided to imminently take control of Goma and Bukavu.”
"Following RDF [Rwandan Defense Force] additional reinforcements, on 27 January 2025, AFC/M23 and RDF took full control of Goma town."
"AFC/M23 did not show genuine commitment to a negotiated settlement of the crisis. AFC/M23 leaders and Rwandan government officials expressed that ‘AFC/M23 would not leave the occupied areas, whatever the outcome of the negotiations’ and that ‘the time for agreements has passed.’"
“Sources close to the Rwandan Government and AFC/M23 reported that Rwanda’s intention was to soon reinstall sanctioned individual Laurent Nkunda as one of the leaders of AFC/M23. Laurent Nkunda’s planned travel to AFC/M23 controlled territories aimed at boosting the rebellion’s legitimacy and popular support. Laurent Nkunda reportedly accepted Rwanda’s project, and agreed to recognize Sultani Makenga–with whom he had long-standing rivalries–as the military commander of the rebellion."
Rwandan colonization
Much of the report is devoted to Rwanda’s “systematic effort to dismantle existing State authority and civil
structures in territories under its control, replacing them with its own parallel governance while targeting perceived dissenters, erasing institutional records, and laying the groundwork for demographic and land control changes.”
New governors are appointed; more Rwandans are empowered to oversee mining, taxation, banking, border controls, and all else official. Property is confiscated and new deeds are drawn up.
In a particularly callous move, AFC/M23 demanded an $8000 tax on every UN food ration truck entering Goma, DRC from Gisenyi, Rwanda, refusing to recognize the UN’s tax exempt status.
In the DRC, traditional chiefs play an important role in local governance. They are central figures of authority and local legitimacy, exerting considerable influence in social affairs, land issues, and conflict resolution. The report includes lists of 18 customary chiefs that M23/Rwanda removed from Nyiragongo and Rutshuru Territories.
Chiefs, civil servants, and civil society leaders flee intimidation and torture. Men, boys, and children are forcibly recruited into the ranks of M23 and the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF), as are surrendering Congolese troops. Some even wind up serving in the RDF mission to defend France/TOTAL Energies’ interests in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique.
Rwandans who neither speak the local language, understand local customs, nor know how to count in the local currency arrive to take the place of Congolese who have fled from the M23/Rwandan army to take refuge in IDP camps.
Annexation at last
It’s very close and is no surprise to those who have followed the struggles of the Congolese people since Rwanda’s 1996 invasion. Here’s from the report’s section on what Rwanda’s been up to all along:
“The Group interviewed many sources–RDF soldiers, AFC/M23 combatants, sources closely linked to the Rwandan Government and intelligence sources–who provided details on Rwanda’s overt and covert objectives when providing military, logistical and intelligence support to AFC/M23. The following quotes provide some information on the objectives and strategy of the Government of Rwanda:
- “At 5 p.m. on 31 December 2023, President Kagame called on all demobilized soldiers in the Ministry of Defense (Pentagon) office. Kagame, James Kabarebe and Mubarak Muganga were there. There were around 40 first lieutenants and captains there….They explained at the meeting: "If we're going to lose the war, where are we going?
- “But no one can resist Kagame or say otherwise. They also said that there wouldn't be a second Berlin conference, so they had to take the country indirectly. He also said, “we are threatened by neighbouring countries…” (Source: RDF officer deployed in Eastern DRC)
- “The economic objective of the minerals is part of the plan; the other objective is to help the M23 win the war, and then they're going to do what they did in South Sudan and declare the Kivus an independent state.The President said that. Remember history, this whole area used to belong to Rwanda.” (Source: RDF officer deployed in Eastern DRC)
- The idea was to help the M23 and, after recovering the territory, Rwanda was going to lobby the United Nations and argue that this part of the country should at least be given independence. It's a line that goes back a long way, even to when James Kabarebe was still on the general staff. Kagame says this every time he speaks to the military, to indoctrinate them and say that this part of Rwanda has been taken over.”
Again, why has “the international community” allowed Rwanda’s 30-year war of aggression in DRC to come to this? Thirty years that left millions dead, many millions more displaced, countless women raped, and the fabric of indigenous Congolese life ripped apart.
No one in power is suffering, many in power are doing very well, and the minerals required to manufacture modern life keep flowing from DRC, the bleeding heart of Africa.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. You can help support her work on Patreon.
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