M23 restores some services, reopens Rwanda border

31/1/2025 6:24

When M23 rebels swept into the

Congolese city of Goma this week, world powers urged them to

immediately withdraw. Instead, the Rwanda-backed insurgents are

intent on showing they can restore order and govern.



On Thursday, power and mobile data services, which had been

down for days, were back up. The border with Rwanda, a lifeline

for the city, had been re-opened. M23 officials said they had

trained up hundreds of administrators who were ready to deploy.



"We are asking all Goma residents to go back to normal

activities," said Corneille Nangaa, head of Alliance Fleuve

Congo, the political coalition backing the M23, just two days

after heavy fighting subsided, leaving bodies in the streets and

the city cut off from the outside world.



Nangaa also pledged to get children back in school within 48

hours and open a humanitarian corridor so people displaced by

fighting could return home.



How well M23 manage to maintain order and run services in

Goma, a city of 2 million people, will be key to determining if

they can expand elsewhere in eastern Congo or if their reign

will be short-lived as it was in 2012.



At stake is a potential return to the situation that arose

in the 1990s and 2000s, when Rwanda and Uganda and their proxy

forces occupied and ran Congo's eastern borderlands, managing

trade, communications and transport.



One U.N. official said a number of members of the RCD-Goma

movement, a Rwanda-backed group dating back to the 1998-2003

war, were involved in the M23.



In the three years since reigniting their rebellion after a

dormant decade, M23 has set up "parallel administrations" in

areas they conquered, taxing civilians and businesses and

rolling out intelligence networks, U.N. experts said last June.



But Goma, with its population size, international airport

and role as a hub for one of the world's biggest humanitarian

crises, is a far greater challenge.







TRAINING PROGRAMME



An M23 official said the movement had previously struggled

to properly administer territories due to a lack of personnel

and money, but since the collapse of peace talks in Angola last

year, they had been preparing.



M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led

insurgencies that have simmered since a 2003 deal was meant to

end wars in Congo that left some 6 million dead, mostly from

hunger and disease.



The group and the Congolese army have both been accused of

serious human rights abuses in the recent outbreak of fighting.

Like other Congolese, Goma's residents have also frequently

protested against Rwanda, which supports M23.



However, there is also anger against Congo's President Felix

Tshisekedi, who came to power pledging to restore peace but has

lost more territory than any previous administration. His policy

of deploying military governors to the east was both

unsuccessful and unpopular.



"A lot of people are sick and tired of the chaos. If they

can trade, security improves, their daily lives improve, then

M23 could be popular," a senior U.N. official told Reuters.

"Tshisekedi’s management of the east has been catastrophic."



Tshisekedi has also marginalised many soldiers, officials or

businessmen perceived to have had links with Rwanda, a move that

has fuelled frustrations over his rule and may convince some of

them to rally to M23, experts said.



The U.N. experts and three diplomatic sources said

intelligence officers, police and political leaders had been

trained alongside fighters at Tchanzu, the group’s main military

base in North Kivu, to prepare for running areas seized by M23.



After taking control of Rubaya, the largest coltan mine in

the Great Lakes region, in April last year, the group put in

place a system to run the mining, trade, transport and taxation

of the minerals, providing an income of $800,000 per month, the

U.N. experts said in December.



Diplomatic pressure is ramping up on Kigali to cut any

support to M23 or face sanctions such as suspension of aid.

Tshisekedi said the Congolese military was planning a riposte to

recover territories lost.



However, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has rejected any

criticism and Nangaa said that his group was ready to work with

officials that switched side to join their movement.



"We will not chase them out but of course they will have to

undergo an ideological reset," he said. "We are going to show

them that we are an alternative."