The war in eastern Congo is escalating far from view

Gunmen are everywhere on the main road through Fizi territory in South Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. So are signs of devastation. People fleeing their villages trudge past carrying their meagre belongings. Every so often, the remains of a burnt-out hamlet appear at the side of the road.

More than a year ago M23, a militia backed by Rwanda, captured Goma and Bukavu, eastern Congo’s largest cities. A peace deal backed by America and signed in December by Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame, the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, was supposed to end the conflict. But more than three months on, the fighting is spreading to ever more remote areas, inflaming ethnic tensions and raising concerns that it may affect Katanga, Congo’s industrial centre (see map).

Early in the year it briefly looked as though the region might get some respite. In January M23 left the city of Uvira, which it had taken just days after the peace deal was signed. That was a “gesture of good faith”, says the group. The real reason was probably pressure from America, perhaps backed by mercenaries linked to Erik Prince, a notorious military contractor.

Yet the withdrawal from Uvira has done little to dampen the conflict in South Kivu’s mountainous back country, where fighting has escalated. After Willy Ngoma, M23’s military spokesman, was killed in a drone strike near the mining town of Rubaya in North Kivu in February, the group’s allies in the south intensified their offensive against the Congolese army and militias allied with it. Whoever ends up in control of the area will have leverage over the towns on Lake Tanganyika and the road south towards Congo’s mining heartland.

The escalation is a catastrophe for the territory’s civilians, half a million of whom have been displaced since December. There is no electricity and hardly any medicine. Clean water is scarce. Supplies must be transported via roads that turn into knee-deep slush in the rain. Villages that struggle to secure basics, such as paracetamol, are taking in thousands of refugees. Even before Ngoma’s assassination, the International Committee of the Red Cross said war-wounded patients were overwhelming Fizi’s colonial-era hospital.

The conflict is reviving ethnic tensions in the region. Many locals perceive South Kivu’s Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge, as a Rwandan transplant. Animosity has its roots in atrocities committed by Banyamulenge militias during the first and second Congo wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, Rwanda backed the groups to help it fight Hutu génocidaires who had fled to Congo after the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsis.

That dynamic is now playing out again. The largest Banyamulenge militia, which has its stronghold in the South Kivu highlands, officially joined forces with M23 just over a year ago. Most pro-government fighters say their war is against the Banyamulenge. “Our wives are widows and our children are orphans,” says one. “We won’t be able to live together again.”

Things may yet get worse. There are fears M23 could march towards Kalemie, some 260km south. That would give the group control of the city’s airport, which can be used by the army to supply troops and fly drone sorties. It would also bring the conflict uncomfortably close to the Katanga region, where the Trump administration wants American firms to invest in lucrative copper and cobalt mines. Nor is the danger of escalation limited to South Kivu. Last week a drone attack in Goma killed a French aid worker. That suggests the army is stepping up its campaign against M23 in the north, which may invite retaliation.

Efforts to get both sides to stick to the ceasefire have gone nowhere. An Angolan-brokered initiative to resume talks fizzled out in February. In early March America imposed new sanctions on Rwandan officials and on the country’s armed forces. Rwanda complained it was being unfairly targeted. Fighting continued unabated. “We’ve left everything behind, and we’re tired,” says Petro Mujambo, a displaced farmer on the road through Fizi. Plenty of Congolese are likely to share his view. ■