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The capital of one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s most mineral-rich regions is being “asphyxiated” as armed rebels close in on the city in a conflict that threatens to explode into a wider regional war, aid agencies and analysts have warned.
As fighting between M23 rebels and DRC government forces intensified around Goma, capital of the eastern province of North Kivu, the situation had become “really catastrophic”, said Angèle Dikongué-Atangana, DRC country representative for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
M23, which observers say is being backed by neighbouring Rwanda, has fought its way to within 25km of Goma. The rebel group controls almost all supply routes into the city, where the 1.5mn-strong population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of displaced people, sending the price of basic commodities rocketing, according to aid agencies and analysts.
More than 230,000 people fled to Goma in February alone, according to UNHCR. The encirclement by M23 was “asphyxiating” the city, Dikongué-Atangana told the Financial Times.
The intensity of the fighting was “completely unprecedented”, said Joachim Giaminardi, advocacy adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“If the fighting gets closer to Goma, the impact is going to be exponential,” as civilians would run out of food and anywhere to flee, he warned.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups operating in eastern DRC, a strategically important and mineral-rich region that has been beset by conflict for decades.
The group initially emerged in 2012 and took control of Goma during a 19-month insurgency, before being driven back by government forces. But it resurfaced in 2021 after alleging that demands set out in the peace agreement a decade earlier had not been met by the Congolese government, including allowing some of its members to return to the DRC.
However, the government blames neighbouring Rwanda, which has been accused of supporting M23 as well as having troops in DRC, for the group’s re-emergence.
In December, a UN report provided evidence that M23 fighters had been trained in Rwanda and that the Rwandan army had provided it with troop reinforcements and directly intervened on Congolese territory.
The US issued a statement in February condemning Rwanda’s support for the group and calling on Kigali to withdraw its forces. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has long denied supporting M23.
The conflict in eastern DRC dates back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists and members of the Hutu majority. In the wake of the violence, Rwandan forces pursued suspected genocidaires into Congo.
M23, made up mostly of Congolese Tutsis, claims to be protecting the DRC’s Tutsi population against a Hutu militia, the FDLR.
Rwanda sees militias such as the FDLR as a threat to its security and blames Kinshasa for supporting them.
François Muamba, a special adviser to the Congolese president, said Congolese Tutsi were part of the DRC and entitled to protection from the Congolese state. “It is not up to a foreign president to claim to defend a people who have their roots in the territory of another country,” he added.
However, control over natural resources — particularly gold — was also a factor for Kigali, said Fred Bauma, executive director of Kinshasa-based think-tank Ebuteli.
“There is reason to believe there is some economic component to Rwanda’s support,” he said. “Gold export . . . is a large part of Rwanda’s economy.”
Aid agencies are deeply concerned about an escalation in the fighting. A hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Goma received 350 wounded in February compared with a monthly average of about 50, said Anne-Sylvie Linder, head of the sub-delegation for North Kivu at the ICRC.
More heavy weaponry such as artillery was being used and fighting was now taking place in densely populated civilian areas, she added.
As well as those who have fled to Goma, more than 700,000 people have been displaced behind the front lines where humanitarian organisations cannot reach them, according to UNHCR.
The risk of M23 again overrunning Goma was high, analysts said. “The surge in violence towards Goma . . . increasingly signals the rebels’ intention to take over the city,” Acled, an organisation that aggregates conflict data, said in a recent report.
Muamba said DRC forces were fighting a “war of liberation” and that “everything is being done” by the government to ensure Goma did not fall to the rebels.
But residents of the city were losing confidence that the army would be able to defeat M23, said Espoir Ngalukiye, a former activist and now opposition politician living in Goma. The rebel group “will never have the support of Congolese citizens”, he added.
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