The Democratic Republic of the Congo is once again in the grip of a violent escalation. In November 2021, an organization known as M23 launched a rebellion in the DRC’s eastern borderlands – the fifth such Rwanda-backed insurgency in the past thirty years. The group now controls an area roughly the size of Connecticut. In January 2025 it took over the towns of Goma and Bukavu, which have a joint population of around three million. The Congolese government responded in a ham-fisted fashion, supplying ill-disciplined local militias with weapons. Its regular army has failed spectacularly, despite support from UN peacekeepers, private security companies and foreign troops. There has been a vicious war of words between Congo’s president Felix Tshisekedi and the Rwandan leader Paul Kagame – Tshisekedi comparing Kagame to Hitler, Kagame branding Tshisekedi an ‘idiot’ – plus an immense amount of human suffering, with thousands killed and millions displaced in recent months alone.
As we head into the fourth decade of the conflict, it is necessary to look beyond the headlines to the deeper, structural factors at play. In what follows I will examine three: the desire of neighbouring countries, especially Rwanda, to project power and influence in the DRC; the crippling weakness of the Congolese state; and the relationship between the current crisis and the world economy.
Read the full article by our Senior Fellow Jason Stearns: Causes of War