Cape Town, South Africa – President Donald Trump, who won a single social media post five months ago, put half a million people in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
A few days ago, in Washington, D.C., the same administration claimed credit for removing the Congolese people from decades of conflict, which is said to be the most deadly ever since World War II. This year alone, thousands of people have died and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated.
The White House may be celebrating a diplomatic victory by mediating a peace deal between the strained neighbors DRC and Rwanda, but the mood will be much more muted for skeptical observers and those caught up in conflict and deprivation of the Eastern DRC.
“I don’t think many ordinary citizens are very impressed with this deal. Many will wait to see if there is anything positive coming out of it,” said Michael Odiambo, a peace expert at Irene International in Uvira, Eastern DRC, where 250,000 displaced people have no access to the water due to Trump’s aid cuts.
Odhiambo suggests that for Congolese people living in towns dominated by armed groups, like the Rubaya mineral-rich region held by the M23 rebels, US involvement in warfare can cause more anxiety than bailouts.
“As we saw in Iran, there is fear that American peace could be enforced vigorously. Many citizens simply want peace, but [this is] Decorated as a peace agreement, it could lead to future violence, which could justify America protecting its business interests. ”
The agreement signed on Friday by Washington’s Congo and Rwanda foreign ministers is an attempt to stop bleeding in a conflict that has somehow been raging since the 1990s.
At the time of signing, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Ndungayle called it a “turning point,” and his Congolese Kaykwamba Wagner said the moment was “longer to come.”
“It won’t erase the pain, but it can begin to recover the conflict that has taken away many women, men and children, including safety, dignity, and a sense of the future,” Wagner said.
Meanwhile, Trump said he even suggested that he even suggested that he was worthy of the Nobel Prize for his efforts.
The deal is intended to quell decades of brutal conflict, but observers point to fine print concerns. That was also mediated after Congolese President Felix Tsushisekedi said in March that he was a partner with the US for the minerals.
Experts say that US companies want access to minerals like tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium, and they need to meet the demand for technology and beat China in the competition for Africa’s natural resources.
However, this has raised fear among critics that the main concern in the US agreement is the more foreign extraction of rare earth minerals in the eastern DRC, which has raised fear among critics that the replays of violence seen in the past decades could lead to replays of violence rather than de-escalation.
M23 and FDLR: Are the armed groups lined up?
The main terms of the peace agreement, also supported by Qatar, require Kinshasa and Kigali to establish regional economic integration frameworks within 90 days and form a joint security coordination mechanism within 30 days. Furthermore, the DRC should promote the withdrawal of armed groups, the democratic military for Rwanda’s liberation (FDLR). Rwanda will then lift the “defensive measures” within the DRC.
According to the United Nations and other international rights groups, Kigali has around 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan troops on the ground in the eastern DRC as they actively support the M23 rebels who seized major cities in the region this year. Rwanda has repeatedly denied these claims.
The M23 is the centre of the current conflict in the Eastern DRC. The rebel group, which first acquired weapons in 2012, was temporarily defeated in 2013 before reappearing in 2022. This year, he made significant profits, seizing control of the capitals of both North and South Kivu states in January and February.
Qatar-led separate mediation efforts are ongoing regarding the dispute with M23, but the rebel group is not part of the contract signed last week.
“This transaction is not about M23. The M23 is a Congo issue discussed in Doha, Qatar. This is a deal between Rwanda and the DRC,” Rwandan political commentator Gatete Nyiringabo Ruhumuliza told the inner story of Al Jazeera, which showed that Kigali had established fdlr. Tuttis in the Rwanda Genocide in 1994.
“Rwanda has its own defense mechanism [in DRC] That has nothing to do with M23,” Ruhumuliza said, adding that Kigali will remove these mechanisms only after FDLR is addressed.
However, the omission of the M23 from the US brokerage process shows one of the potential cracks in the transaction, experts say.
“The impact of the contract can be more severe for FDLRs as it explicitly requires that FDLRs no longer exist,” said Odhiambo of Eirene International. “However, the M23 is in a stronger position given the leverage from controlling Goma and Bukavu and the income generated in the process.”
In the US brokerage process, countries require that Qatar support continued efforts to mediate peace between the DRC and M23. However, by including this, the deal also appears to “slow expectations about the M23,” Odhiambo argues.
Furthermore, “The M23 has the ability to continue to cause mayhem even if Rwanda decides to oppose it,” he said. “Therefore, I don’t think the contract itself will have a major impact on the M23.”
He added that the current dealings are at risk of being exposed due to their role in the conflict, both countries.
“If Rwanda can beat the M23, as expected in the deal, I think it could prove a long-term delegation relationship between them.”
For the DRC, he said that it would not work for Kinshasa to implement the terms of the contract for FDLR, but suggested that calls to neutralize them could be in a tall order.
“if [Kinshasa] somehow, remove Rwandan justification for its activities in the DRC. But doing so could be a big question given Fard’s capabilities. [DRC military]and otherwise you will feel the story of a dysfunctional impossible state. Therefore, I think DRC is at a more critical risk than Rwanda. ”
Meanwhile, the government of Tshisekedi was able to score political points according to Jakob Kerstan, DRC country director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Foundation (KAS), which promotes democracy and the rule of law.
“Congolese sentiment…it’s very similar to how conflict is left behind. No one really cares about it in the world. The Congo is just being exploited.
He also feels that Kinshasa’s government is also less pressure than at the beginning of the year, when the M23 first made rapid progress. “There’s no more protests. Of course, people are angry at the situation. [in the east]but they are kind of acceptance [it]. And they know that they can’t win it military-wise. The Kinshasa government, they know that too. ”
“Peace for exploitation”?
Kinshasa appears to have easily provided US access to important US minerals in exchange for security, but many observers on the continent consider such transactions.
Congolese analyst Kambale Musavuli told African radio that the report on the possibility of allocation of billions of dollars worth of minerals to the United States was the “Berlin Conference 2.0” which stated that it referred to a 19th century conference in which European powers divided Africa.
Meanwhile, Congole, Nobel Prize winner Dennis Mukwege called the agreement a “scandal surrender of sovereignty,” examining foreign occupation, exploitation and decades of immunity.
Political commentator Lindani Zungu, who writes in Manipulation for Al Jazeera, said the unstable undertone of the contract was “a yokai of resource exploitation.” “This new ‘peace for exploitation’ means that African countries, particularly the DRC, should not be forced to accept it in a post-colonial world order. ”
On the other hand, for others, the US could become a raw deal.
Kas’ Kerstan believes Trump people may underestimate the complexity of doing business at DRC.
Even those who welcome this path towards peace await the situation as it remains vulnerable.
Alexandria Maloney, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s US-based Africa Center, praised Trump’s deal for combining diplomacy, development and strategic resource management. However, she warned against extraction without investing in infrastructure, skills and environmental protection measures. “The fragile governance structure of the Eastern DRC, particularly weak institutional capacity and fragmented local governments, can deprive enforcement and public trust,” Maloney told the think tank’s website.
She added that China’s “established footprint in the mining sector of DRC could complicate implementation and increase geopolitical tensions.”
For analysts, the most optimistic assessment of the US role in this process appears to be: I am grateful for the Americans intervened. I’m not the most optimistic, but are they on their heads?
Overall, it appears that the Congo peace agreement has few supporters other than multilateral diplomatic fora such as the United Nations and the African Union.
For many, the biggest attention is the exclusion of Congolese people and civil society organizations. This is where previous peace efforts have also failed.
“I have no hope at all. [in this deal]said Vava Tampa, founder of grassroots Congo’s anti-war charity Save the Congo.
“This deal really does two things: it denys Congo’s victims and survivors – justice. It promotes immunity at the same time,” he said.
“Peace begins with justice,” Tampa said. “We cannot have peace or stability without justice.”
