The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been engaged in an armed conflict with the M23 rebel group for three years, which has resulted in the displacement of nearly two million people and the deaths of hundreds of people.
M23 was first formed after a mutiny within the Congolese national army (FARDC) in 2012. The group resurrected “Wazalendo” self-defence groups in North Kivu province in 2022 despite the initial uprising, which was overturned.
M23 says it is defending the interests of minority Congolese Tutsis, many of whom say they suffer discrimination and exclusion in DRC for their ethnic links to Rwanda’s Tutsi community.
With regional tensions rising as bodies like the UN accuse Rwanda of supporting M23 with troops and weapons, which Rwanda denies, Kinshasa perceives M23 as the greatest security threat it currently faces.
Despite attempts at ceasefires and negotiations – including the 2022 Nairobi peace process and recent mediation efforts by Angola – fighting has continued. In Lubero, M23 accelerated by several thousand kilometers in a short period of time.
Bertrand Bisimwa, the head of the political wing of M23, maintains that the group is fighting a “defensive” war. He discussed the war in eastern DRC with Bojana Coulibaly, a researcher with a focus on peace and security in Africa’s Great Lakes region, and expressed hope that a dialogue will start to form.
Bojana Coulibaly: Could you please clarify what M23’s demands are?
Bertrand Bisimwa: Our demands boil down to a struggle for survival. Because the Congolese government sentences some of its citizens to death, we are engaged in an existential conflict. And this didn’t start today. People are forced to seek refuge from fear of death and avoid being killed in this situation, which has been occurring for decades. There is hate speech and there is also a kind of radicalisation that is taking shape. The Tutsi serve as the Congolese government’s scapegoats for the people’s failures in governance.
So, we told ourselves that we must not sit idly by and watch our citizens being killed in this way. To defend these citizens, we are currently engaged in a defensive war. So that they do not continue to be put to death. They are not citizens of inferiority. The state must take care of them and not consider them as stateless, or who are not Congolese. Like all other Congolese, they are full-fledged citizens.
Coulibaly: Recently, there’s been intense fighting between government forces and M23 in Great North Kivu, in the Lubero territory. Could you describe what transpired?
Bisimwa: In March, the mediator in the crisis between Rwanda and the DRC, Angola’s President]Joao] Lourenco, had invited us to Luanda to convey the message from the African Union which was to sign a ceasefire. Kinshasa resisted signing the ceasefire, which we signed. Later, Kinshasa simply continued the war against us, and we started again – we continued to defend ourselves.
Although neither the Rwandan government nor the Rwandan military are on Congolese soil and aren’t fighting, a meeting was scheduled between the two governments on December 15.
The Congolese government wanted to have a victory on the ground before the 15th. They put pressure on us in order to secure a victory that would put them in a good position, forcing Rwanda to either sign what Kinshasa desired or almost derail the Luanda meeting. That was the government’s objective.
More than 22, 000 men are gathering around 15 regiments, supported by the FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed rebel group] – the former genocidaires of the 1994 Tutsi genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, who are using them against us. We understood the manoeuvres, so we prepared sufficiently to defend ourselves.
Because for us, it was crucial to thwart this military offensive on their part, and we were successful in doing so, this is what caused this violence to escalate.
We learned that they continue to prepare to reignite the war, and if they do reignite it, we will continue to defend ourselves to prevent them from continuing down that path, because we believe that for peace, it is necessary to thwart the path of war.
Coulibaly: The United Nations says M23’s advance towards the Great North Kivu as well as the increase in control of areas are a desire for expansion and conquest of territory. What is your response?   ,
Bisimwa: Since starting our war, we have been responding to the government’s daily assaults. And each time, we say it: if they continue to attack us, we will silence the weapons everywhere they shoot at us.
When you have supremacy over one, you must take the space they were shooting at you, according to the logic of war. And we fight for that. We are required to silence the weapons from the area where they aim when we fight against the government, those who attack us. And that is what allows us to stop the war. So we can’t just defend ourselves from the enemy without getting shot at. That would be illogical, it would mean continuing to submit ourselves to death and to submit to death the people that are in our area.
You’ll notice that we stop and wait every time we take control of the opponent’s hand and clear the area they were shooting at us. If they launch the same offensive again, at that moment we advance. Therefore, it is impossible to fault ourselves for defending our country and defeating the offensive we are given.
When there is war, people are afraid and can flee, because they must seek shelter. And this attitude is entirely acceptable. So, we cannot place this responsibility on just one party. We succeeded in restoring or emptying more than nine camps of displaced people that were established in the area we control today, so I believe there is a certain refusal to face reality at the UN level as well. OCHA recently published a report where it stated that more than 480, 000 families have returned to their homes, in our area. Therefore, I believe that everyone needs to examine themselves and have the guts to expose what is actually happening on the ground rather than start to condemn.
Coulibaly: After M23 was excluded from the peace process in Nairobi in April 2022, the Luanda process has been stumbling over the issue of dialogue – because Kinshasa considers you to be just a proxy of Rwanda. What do you think about this dialogue being thwarted?
Bisimwa: The refusal of dialogue by the Congolese government is a refusal of a civilised resolution of conflicts. Because today’s civilized world no longer fights, it resolves issues through dialogue and progresses. But Kinshasa is in the logic of war.
To understand the circumstances surrounding our visit to Nairobi in 2022 is necessary first. On April 10, the heads of state of the East African Community had gathered, at the request of President]Felix] Tshisekedi, to ask us to withdraw to a certain distance, because we had just liberated locations. And we were asked to engage in dialogue by the Congolese government.
We found that civilised because we told ourselves, after all, we have the dialogue we wanted in order to address the root causes of the conflict. On April 20, 2022, we arrived in Nairobi and assumed we were going to talk. But while we were in Nairobi, the armed forces of the DRC began to reclaim the locations from which we had withdrawn, and it was moving towards our positions.
We made it clear to the facilitators that a situation is emerging on the ground that requires immediate attention because it runs the risk of getting worse. The facilitator discussed with the Congolese government, but nothing was stopping on the ground.
Unfortunately, the war broke out and we were not heard. The next day, FARDC soldiers woke up, they shot at our soldiers, we defended ourselves and the war resumed. The Congolese government reacted by saying it couldn’t tolerate us in the room and that we should leave.
That is when we understood that the Congolese government was not ready to be in dialogue with us. And the same logic is still in place today.
War cannot solve our problems. Only dialogue alone can reveal the conflict’s underlying causes. Because it has lasted a long time. These unsolved conflicts are affecting the east of the nation. And the east of the country is our home. Our families reside there. Our families cannot continue to be put to death every day simply because the capital is located 2, 000km from where we live. If Kinshasa can’t solve our problems, it should let us do it ourselves.
According to Congolese Foreign Affairs Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, who vehemently opposes any dialogue with M23, she would like to invite all armed groups to a dialogue or resume the Nairobi process. What is your response?   ,
Bisimwa: Everyone knows – the whole world knows – that there are no more armed groups in Congo. These various armed organizations have all been made reserve members of the FARDC. There is a law that came out, all these Wazalendo, all those we call the VDP, are auxiliaries of the FARDC who have been officially integrated. Official integration of the FDLR into the FARDC So, there are no more armed groups.
These armed organizations don’t bother us. We have existential problems that will not be solved by armed groups. The government is in charge of the nation, not these armed groups. It is to the government that we must address and not the armed groups.
Second, we are not fighting for jobs within the government, and Minister Wagner should be very aware of this. We are not fighting for ranks. The Congolese army has its officers and soldiers. They had ranks there. Some of us served as ministers in Kinshasa and as government members. They left because the problem had not been resolved. This implies that even if these positions were offered to us, they would not alleviate our suffering and suffering today.
We must address the root causes of the conflict to stop the violence in the east of the country. If the country turns peaceful, each of us has access to fertile land so that they can live wherever they like. We can cultivate the land, we can keep our cows, we can produce milk, we can go teach. Instead of engaging in politics, each of us has a chance to improve our family and ensure our survival.
What we want is to talk with them to resolve issues related to the governance of the country. A government that causes us to be killed, a government that causes exile, and a government that won’t allow us to provide for our children tomorrow and the day after. Our children must be able to live. We must create a setting that will prevent the future from inheriting the issues we haven’t been able to resolve.
Coulibaly: The latest battles against the government coalition took place near territories affected by the presence of the ADF armed group. Is there a connection between your movement and the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) claimed to be affiliated with this organization?
Bisimwa: We were the first in this country to denounce the ADF threat. And I think we’ve been discussing it for more than ten years. And the Congolese government has always taken us for people who are joking. They claimed there is no ADF. Today, this issue has become a reality visible to everyone, because they have excelled in massacres against the population and to say that it is us who have links with them – that is also immoral, to think in that way. We have always fought to bring those people to justice. And the sooner they are neutralised, the better the country would be today.
The FARDC or the Congolese government mobilize more forces than they do against us. Against the ADF, they just send a few soldiers to accompany the Ugandan army that does all the work, against us, they mobilise more than 15 regiments of 22, 000 men. They use impressive weapons and cutting-edge technology. So, between us and those who behave in this way, who can we say is closer to the ADF?
Coulibaly, you are accused of squandering Rwanda’s mines for profit. What do you say to this?
Bisimwa: We initially opposed Rubaya because we never intended to take mineral-rich areas. We have always avoided this so that we would not confuse our existential cause with the exploitation of minerals.
However, the reality is that there was a training facility in Rubaya run by the Burundian army and the Imbonerakure militia, where young people from the Congolese were trained in how to use bladed weapons in order to enslave them and cause desolation in our country. We communicated this to the world so that everyone would understand that there is a threat in Rubaya that needs to be addressed quickly. Everyone ignored this, and there was no response. This is how we made the decision to stop this thing because it was going to create for us more problems than solutions.
There was never any fighting inside Rubaya when we entered this space, in this region of the country. The strategy we took was to evacuate from Rubaya all those who had weapons in these mining sites. Children who were used in the mines, which had the greatest chance of having an accident, were the second group of people to leave those locations. The third group of people we extracted from Rubaya were pregnant women who very often were mistreated.
Rubaya is performing well today. We have kept in Rubaya the same people, the same organisations that were exploiting the mines because they are private entities that were exploiting the mines there. Additionally, we forbid our officials from working in Rubaya’s mines. There is not a single member of the M23 in the mines of Rubaya. Therefore, we have allowed the perpetrators to continue their abuse. And we are happy with a small tax to allow that this police mechanism that we have established around Rubaya can continue to hold. We have done this, exactly.
Coulibaly: M23 currently controls the world-renowned biodiversity reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site in danger, Virunga National Park, which was established in 1994. What is the current status of Virunga Park since you arrived there in 2023?
Bisimwa: We have always taken care of this world biodiversity reserve in, around, or close to it regardless of our population levels or the actions we take. Before our arrival, we found that the park was overrun by the FDLR who were engaged in woodcutting activities to make charcoal. A report from the United Nations that claimed the FDLR made money off of this charcoal trade has been released. They were talking about more than $100m a year.
The FARDC’s invasion of the park, among other things, was the second thing we noticed. These FARDC who were not paid, they were killing the park animals to feed themselves. And we said no because the parks still have no trees left. So, we created a protection force for the park that works in agreement with the rangers to protect the park.
Our third course of action was an educational one for the population. To make them understand that they have no interest in invading the park. because we discovered that the parks’ boundaries were in danger. There are even citizens who have taken plots of land in the park concession, which was unacceptable. We started by informing the population that there is another way to benefit from what we get from the park. That is to say, when tourists come, what they will pay as tourists will allow us to carry out development projects.
There was no wildlife when we arrived at the park. But now, all the animals that had left the park are starting to return because there is security. In the swamps, hippos can be seen parading. We can see families of antelopes running here and there. The gorillas are visible to us. And it’s beautiful. Everyone who travels by that road is aware of how much of the beauty of the natural world is available to us, and I think that privilege must be preserved.
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