‘We’re here today to celebrate a glorious triumph,” Donald Trump announced last Friday as he oversaw the Oval Office signing of an imperfect peace agreement, supposedly bringing an end to the years of Rwandan incursion and bloody fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). US and Qatari mediation brokered the deal .
“They were going at it for many years, and with machetes – it is one of the worst, one of the worst wars that anyone has ever seen,” Trump said, without his usual exaggeration, before the signing, adding controversially that the US was now also going to get access to strategically important rare mineral deposits.
The agreement leaves a lot of critical questions unanswered. Notably, its terms have yet to be signed up to by the brutal M23 militia which occupies large parts of mineral-rich eastern Congo. M23’s resurgence over the last six months has seen thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. With dozens of other non-state armed groups active in the area, it’s not clear whether all will adhere to the ceasefire. Uganda and Burundi also have troops in eastern Congo.
DRC foreign minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, called the signing a “remarkable milestone”, but emphasised its fragility, and pleaded with Trump to “stay committed, stay on board . . . We need the US to make sure that this agreement holds and that you hold us accountable.” Her words were echoed by her Rwandan counterpart.
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The US president was non-committal, alluding simply to “very severe penalties, financial and otherwise” against those who violate the agreement. Unstated was the expectation the US would not stand by if its new interests came under attack.
The deadly conflict has unfolded over three decades, since a genocide and civil war began in Rwanda in 1994. It has been fuelled by the same Tutsi-Hutu ethnic tensions, the struggle for mineral and other resources, and the disintegration of the DRC state. All these realities remain in play.
