Rwanda-Backed Rebels Capture Second Major City in Eastern Congo

(Bloomberg) — Rwanda-backed rebels captured a second major strategic city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, expanding their dominance over the country’s mineral-rich east amid the widening conflict.

After taking control of the nearby airport, the M23 walked into Bukavu on Friday and faced little resistance as Congo’s army retreated, according to the United Nations. The fall of Bukavu marks a major escalation in the conflict between Congo, M23 and its Rwandan backers, coming two weeks after the rebels seized the city of Goma on the north shore of Lake Kivu, leaving more than 3,000 people dead and a similar number wounded.

“M23 is currently in Bukavu, but no active fighting is reported,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York Friday, citing humanitarian partners on the ground. 

The M23 now controls the two main airports and trading hubs in the region as well as the entirety of Lake Kivu along Congo’s and Rwanda’s shared border. The Congolese army has been unable to stop the rebels and Rwandan forces, despite support from the army of neighboring Burundi, dozens of local militias and peacekeepers from South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi and the UN. 

The international nature of the conflict — Ugandan troops are also present in eastern Congo — has raised concern that a regional war may erupt similar to the one that embroiled most of Central Africa a quarter of a century ago.

Leaders around the world condemned the invasion of Goma and have called for peace talks and a ceasefire, and for Rwandan soldiers to leave Congo.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said he doesn’t know if his troops are in the country and denies backing the M23.

At a security conference in Munich on Friday, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi called for sanctions on Rwanda. 

The M23 previously seized Goma in 2012, but retreated soon after amid immense diplomatic pressure. This time, the international community has been slow to cut funding or implement sanctions, underlining Rwanda’s growing importance as a provider of peacekeeping troops and a stable business environment.

Congo has tried to chip away at that image, calling on the National Basketball Association, Formula One racing and the Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal FC and Bayern Munich football clubs to drop ongoing or planned partnerships with the country. 

But Rwanda and its president have cited the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when more than 800,000 primarily ethnic Tutsis died in 100 days while the international community stood by. 

Kagame stopped the killing as head of a Tutsi-led rebel group. He says anti-Tutsi ideology still exists in eastern Congo in the form a militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, which was founded by ethnic Hutu extremist perpetrators of the genocide. 

M23, also a Tutsi-led group, says they’re fighting against the FDLR and for the rights of Tutsis and other speakers of the Rwandan language in Congo.

Bukavu was last invaded in 2004, when a break-away group of soldiers with links to Rwanda took the city, leading to massive casualties and sexual violence. 

The city of about a million people is an important transit point for South Kivu province’s gold, much of which is smuggled to neighboring countries, according to UN experts. The region is also rich in tin ore, tungsten and tantalum, which are used in most portable electronics.

Tshisekedi on Friday called on EU nations to stop buying minerals from Rwanda, which he said are stolen from Congo.

–With assistance from Ilya Arkhipov.

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