https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/causes-of-war?pc=1665
Jason Stearns
20 March 2025 Politics

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.
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Each time Rwanda has invaded the DRC it has backed a domestic armed group. There were two major incursions: one in 1996-1997, in which the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo toppled the government of Mobutu Sese Seko, and another in 1998-2003, in which the Congolese Rally for Democracy seized control of a third of the country. These were followed by two smaller rebellions, led by the National Congress for the Defence of the People in 2006-2009 and the M23 in 2012-2013, each of which only succeeded in capturing a sliver of land in the East. Rwanda’s interference in Congolese affairs is all the more remarkable given that the former is 88 times smaller than the latter, its population an eighth of the size. As a former Congolese president quipped, ‘Have you ever seen a toad swallow an elephant?’

Rwanda’s motives are not straightforward, and its official justifications are often out of step with realities on the ground. It is clear that it considers the projection of power in the eastern DRC a matter of vital, even existential importance. But the security threat that the DRC poses to Rwanda is exaggerated. The last major invasion of Rwanda was in 2001, when the rebels known as the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), some of whom participated in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, launched an incursion that resulted in a thousand deaths within the rebels’ ranks. Since then, the FDLR has only been able to carry out small cross-border raids; the last serious attack took place in October 2019, when a splinter group allegedly killed fourteen civilians. Even so, Rwanda cites Dick Cheney’s ‘one percent doctrine’, claiming that if there is even a miniscule chance of a threat must be treated as an absolute certainty. It is willing to displace hundreds of thousands to safeguard even a few of its own people. Disproportionality is baked into its defence policy.

The other frequently cited reason for Rwandan intervention is the protection of the Congolese Kinyarwanda-speaking population, in particular the Tutsi community, which is thought to make up around 15% to 20% of the population in Rwanda and around 1% in the DRC. It is certainly true that the Congolese Tutsi community has long been the victim of abuse and discrimination. Yet there is little evidence of an upsurge in anti-Tutsi violence in the East prior to the resurgence of M23. Nor can the Rwandan state boast a perfect record of defending this community, to say the least. In 2001, when combatants from the South Kivu-based Tutsi population known as the Banyamulenge rose up against a Rwandan-backed rebellion, Kigali launched a violent crackdown on them. The Rwandan government has also engaged in repression against Banyamulenge refugees on its own soil, stamping out protests against the poor living conditions in their camps. Since 2016, the main violence against Tutsi populations in eastern DRC has targeted Banyamulenge, but Rwanda has said little about this situation until recently.

Rwanda’s motives can only be explained by taking a closer look at its political culture. The 1994 genocide remains the bedrock of public discourse in the country: the legitimacy of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front is largely based on its role in ending the slaughter and providing stability in its aftermath – eradicating civil liberties and any vestiges of democratic opposition in the process. Parts of the Rwandan elite probably feel that their interventions in the DRC remain justified in the name of security and ethnic solidarity. But whether the key decision-makers, including Kagame himself, are truly convinced of this, or merely using it as a means to bolster their domestic power, is another, imponderable question.

There is also the issue of the economy. Before the crisis broke out in 2021, the financial ties between the regimes in Rwanda and the DRC seemed to be relatively strong. Tshisekedi had given valuable gold concessions to a company close to Rwanda’s ruling party; the Rwandan national airline had started flying to Congo’s capital Kinshasa; and Rwandan businesspeople were becoming active in various parts of the Congolese economy. Why would Kigali give this up by launching another assault via the M23?

We do not have all the answers. But a critical element was the 2021 military interventions in DRC launched by Uganda and Burundi. At the time, Rwanda had tense relations with both countries and felt threatened. It may have therefore been eager to reassert its regional influence. Kigali may also have been worried by DRC’s increasing attempts to take control of its own gold sector. Because Congo cannot effectively govern its territory, its neighbours have profited from such precious minerals – with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi all benefiting from the massive smuggling of Congolese gold across the border. Indeed, since the M23 rebellion, the value of minerals in Rwanda’s economy has climbed dramatically: from 50% of exports in 2021 to 80% in 2023. Gold exports, by far the largest foreign exchange earner, have meanwhile soared from $368 to $885 million. This is especially important for Rwandan military elites, since the country’s tin and gold smelters are both part-owned by the army.
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The Congolese government is also complicit in the continuation of the war, albeit in a very different way. Since the creation of the Congo Free State in 1885, as the private fiefdom of Belgium’s King Leopold II, the country’s administrative apparatus has been little more than a vehicle for accumulation. It was dominated by Western companies until 1908 and subsequently by the Belgian government, which ran the colony until 1960. For a brief period over the next decade, President Mobutu Sese Seko used high copper prices to drive statist development. There was a relatively good public health service and the national army was one of the strongest in the region. But thanks to the legacies of the colonial period, Congo continued to depend almost entirely on unprocessed commodities for its revenues, which left it extremely vulnerable to external shocks. The 1974 OPEC oil crisis, coupled with the fall of copper prices and Mobutu’s profligacy, sent the economy into freefall. Hobbled by debt, he abandoned the project of building a strong state and army, turning instead to ethnic favouritism and patronage politics as modes of rule. He slashed public spending at the encouragement of the Paris Club, World Bank and IMF. Around the same time, several coup attempts – both real and imagined – persuaded Mobutu to fragment his security agencies, pitting them against each other and privileging loyalty over competence.

By this means, the DRC evolved into the hollow rentier-capitalist structure we see today, with political and military elites continuing to favour a weak state over a strong one. The Congolese state spends most of its revenues simply to sustain itself. The wage bill is between 30% and 40% of the budget; combined with operating expenses and debt servicing, that makes up around 75% of public spending, even though much of the health care and infrastructure is paid for by foreign loans or grants. Around half of state revenues come from the mining sector, which is dominated by large multinationals: Glencore (Switzerland), Ivanhoe (Canada), CMOC Group (China), Zijin Mining (China) and China Nonferrous Metal Mining (China). Much of the rest of the economy, especially the manufacturing, real estate and construction sectors, is also dominated by foreign businesses – or by families of Lebanese, Indian or Belgian origin who have been in the DRC for generations. Above this business class sits the political class, extracting resources and doling out patronage. In 2022, almost $1 billion was allocated for the presidency alone: a tenth of the entire state budget, more than health care, the justice sector and infrastructure combined.

Since Mobutu’s rule, this model has given rise to a military bourgeoisie in the security sector. It too receives around a tenth of the national budget. Officers can enrich themselves through hazard pay and bonuses, skimming from the salaries and allowances for their troops, setting up local protection rackets and extorting money from local populations and traders. Much of this economy is linked to the conflict, which means that military elites stand to gain from its continuation. While this stratum is relatively small, it is politically important given its influence in the restive East. Moreover, it seems strikingly uninterested in consolidating control of the state. There are very few military officers or armed group commanders who have obtained senior positions in government or in state-run companies, nor has the army sought to hegemonize the private sector. Yet the military bourgeoisie has nonetheless succeeded in reshaping local societies in line with its financial interests, militarizing the economy and linking customary chiefs and businesspeople to armed groups. Its investment in racketeering and extortion, along with its overlapping chains of command and privileging of personal loyalty, has undermined its basic military functions – hence its swift retreat before the M23. Its weakness is a feature, not a bug.
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We are often told that, in the DRC, conflict is being fuelled by multinationals who are backing – or otherwise complicit with – militias so as to secure access to the country’s minerals. The reality, however, is more complicated. Minerals are an important part of the conflict economy, and they are indeed bound up with international supply chains, with tantalum and tin entering the global market through manufacturing companies in Southeast and East Asia. But it would be reductive to suggest that this is what caused the war. The corporations remain several transactions removed from the violence, generally purchasing minerals which are extracted from eastern DRC with picks and shovels, and which at some point along the line are taxed by armed groups.

Together, Rwanda and the DRC supply around 63% of tantalum – refined from colombo-tantalite, or coltan for short – that is used in electronics. In the early 2000s, a spike in global demand led to huge profits in the coltan market at a time of escalation in the DRC. Today, the world’s largest tantalum mine in Rubaya is in the hands of the M23. UN investigators estimate that the rebels earn about $800,000 a month from coltan taxation in Rubaya. Yet while this is an important source of funding for the M23, its significance for global industry is diminishing. It price is much lower than in the early 2000s. Mines have shut down elsewhere in the world due to lack of demand, and much of the tantalum used in manufacturing can now be obtained through recycling.

The regional mining economy has also shifted over the past decade. While tantalum and tin once constituted the largest share of mineral exports from eastern DRC and Rwanda, gold has now taken their place. In 2023, over $4 billion worth of gold was exported from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, compared to only $50 million of tin and $102 million of tantalum and other minerals. It goes mostly to Dubai, where companies have been accused of using it to launder large amounts of money from criminal organizations. Again, though, the causal links to the conflict are complex. While it is undeniable that the United Arab Emirates economy benefits from the plundering of Congolese gold, and that their leaders are uninterested in promoting accountability in the supply chain, it is less clear whether they have taken active steps to fuel the conflict. Indeed, this gold boom in the Great Lakes region of Africa began around 2014, long before the resurgence of the M23.

To understand the links between the global economy and the conflict we need to look further into the past. Mobutu legalized artisanal mining in 1983, encouraging tens of thousands of young men to take up picks and shovels and tap directly into the global trade of minerals. As industrial mining dwindled under the weight of corruption and mismanagement, enterprising businesspeople in eastern DRC began to forge trade links with southeastern China, along with port cities in India and Dubai, exporting minerals and importing motorcycles, electronics, textiles and construction materials. A large part of this trade was informal and carried out under the radar of the predatory government officials, giving rise to commercial circuits that rebel groups and foreign armies later began to exploit.

The massive flows of gold, tin, tantalum, timber and cacao which play into the current conflict are therefore linked to this wider process: the decline of the statist project, the rise of predation, and the boom in informal mining and trade. The liberalization of the economy reached its zenith after the two Great Congo Wars of 1996-2003. The first saw a regional coalition overthrow Mobutu and install Laurent-Désiré Kabila; the second began when Kabila fell out with his Rwandan backers, triggering a longer and deadlier war. This conflict ended with a so-called ‘liberal peace’, built on promises of democratic governance and free markets. The World Bank helped design a mining law that gave sweeping tax exemptions to foreign capital, encouraging it to invest in this risky but highly lucrative sector. Until then, mines had been almost exclusively owned and operated – very inefficiently, if at all – by the state. Over the next decade, most of the lucrative concessions were sold to Swiss, Canadian, Chinese and Kazakh companies. As a result, billions of dollars were stolen by Congolese elites, often with the complicity with foreign companies, and squirreled away to tax havens.

None of this needed to be planned by a shadowy cabal of elites or corporate executives. For that is the beauty of the neoliberal power structure: in the name of efficiency, it allocates resources and disciplines governments such that enormous prosperity is produced for a select few. Since the advent of ‘liberal peace’, the Congolese economy has grown almost tenfold – buoyed by foreign investments in mining, banking and telecommunications – but there has been no parallel decline in poverty. In 2004, 91% of the country lived in extreme poverty; now it is around 79%. When we account for population growth, that means the absolute number of extremely poor people – those who can barely sustain themselves – has increased. Today, the country’s revenues are 20 times smaller than those of Glencore, the largest mining company active there.

The weakness of the DRC, its consignment to the peripheries of the global economy, has thus benefited elites from Kinshasa to Kigali, Shanghai to New York. A strong Congo would try to control its resources, add value to them and use the revenues to invest in public goods, from infrastructure to healthcare to security. The effect would be to reduce profit margins and redistribute power. While many diplomats and donors may not mind that on an individual level, the system in which they are caught up – defined by free markets, tax havens, commodity traders and cowboy mining companies – offers a range of incentives to keep things as they are.

This structural approach, then, helps to clarify the major features of Congo’s crisis. Its origins lie in a Rwandan elite that is intent on projecting power into its neighbouring country; a Congolese elite that is invested in fragmenting and weakening the state; and an international system that props up this status quo while profiting from Congo’s resources. Meaningful change is only likely to come about through a remaking of the Congolese state which puts an end to the corrupt rentier model. In the short term, external pressure may yet force Rwanda to withdraw its troops, especially as it remains heavily dependent on foreign aid. But a pause in hostilities will only last so long, and DRC’s neighbours will have every reason to intervene again. In the long-run, it is only by investing in public goods – security in particular – that the DRC can hope to push back against armed groups and foreign profiteers alike.