The security crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo represents one of the most protracted and complex governance challenges on the African continent. For over three decades — stretching from the spillover of the 1994 Rwandan genocide through two continental wars, the emergence and reemergence of the M23 movement, and the proliferation of more than one hundred armed groups — the eastern provinces have experienced a cycle of violence, displacement, and institutional failure that has defied successive peace agreements, military operations, and international interventions. Understanding the current dynamics requires examining the security landscape not merely as a military problem but as a governance failure with security manifestations.
The M23 Resurgence and Its Implications
The resurgence of the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) beginning in late 2021 marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that many had assumed was contained after the group’s military defeat in November 2013. The group’s reemergence — characterized by sophisticated military operations, rapid territorial expansion in North Kivu, and the capture of significant population centers — demonstrated that the underlying political and security dynamics that produced M23 had not been resolved during the intervening years.
The M23’s military capability exceeded that of previous iterations, reflecting external support that multiple United Nations investigations have attributed to Rwanda. The sophistication of the group’s operations — including the use of advanced weapons systems, effective command and control structures, and coordinated multi-axis operations — was inconsistent with an indigenous insurgency and pointed to state-level military backing.
The implications of the M23 resurgence extend beyond the immediate security situation. The group’s territorial control in parts of North Kivu created parallel governance structures — including taxation, dispute resolution, and service provision — that displaced the authority of the Congolese state. These parallel structures, while primarily designed to sustain the armed movement, have created governance realities on the ground that any peace process must address.
The humanitarian consequences have been severe. The M23 offensive produced waves of displacement, adding hundreds of thousands of newly displaced persons to an existing internally displaced population in eastern DRC that already numbered in the millions. Displacement disrupts livelihoods, overwhelms host communities, and creates protection crises — including sexual violence, recruitment of children, and exploitation by armed actors — that compound the human cost of the conflict.
The Ceasefire Architecture
The diplomatic response to the M23 crisis has produced a complex, multi-layered ceasefire architecture involving bilateral, regional, and international mechanisms.
The Luanda Process, mediated by Angola under the leadership of President João Lourenço, has been the primary diplomatic framework for managing the DRC-Rwanda dimension of the crisis. Angola’s role reflects its growing diplomatic weight in the region and its interest in stability along the Lobito Corridor — the infrastructure initiative that connects DRC mining regions to the Angolan port of Lobito. The Luanda Process has produced multiple ceasefire agreements, most of which have been violated within days or weeks of their announcement.
The Nairobi Process, operating under the framework of the East African Community (EAC), addressed the broader regional dimension including the deployment of a regional military force and engagement with non-state armed groups. The East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), deployed in 2022-2023, operated under restrictive rules of engagement and was widely perceived as ineffective in addressing the security situation on the ground. Kenya’s role as process convener and troop contributor reflected Nairobi’s interest in regional influence but also exposed the limitations of regional security mechanisms when the underlying political dynamics remain unresolved.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) subsequently deployed its own force — the SADC Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC) — comprising troops from South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi. The SAMIDRC deployment represented a strategic shift toward a more robust military posture but also raised coordination challenges with existing security actors including MONUSCO and the FARDC.
The multiplicity of diplomatic tracks and military deployments has created a fragmented security architecture with overlapping mandates, competing timelines, and inconsistent messaging. The M23, for its part, has exploited the gaps between these various mechanisms, engaging with different processes selectively while maintaining military pressure on the ground.
MONUSCO and the Transition Question
The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), successor to the earlier MONUC mission, has maintained a presence in the DRC since 1999, making it one of the longest-running peacekeeping operations in UN history. At its peak, MONUSCO deployed over 20,000 uniformed personnel and operated one of the largest peacekeeping budgets in the world.
The political dynamics surrounding MONUSCO have shifted dramatically. Popular sentiment in the DRC — particularly in eastern provinces — has turned increasingly hostile toward the mission, driven by perceptions that MONUSCO has failed to protect civilians despite decades of deployment. Anti-MONUSCO protests, some resulting in fatalities, have become a recurring feature of the political landscape in North Kivu and Ituri.
The DRC government formally requested MONUSCO’s departure, and the Security Council has been managing a phased withdrawal that began with the mission’s departure from South Kivu. The transition from MONUSCO to national security forces raises profound governance questions. The mission provides not only military assets but also civilian functions including human rights monitoring, political affairs analysis, rule of law programming, and support to the judicial system. The departure of these civilian capacities creates gaps that the Congolese state is not currently positioned to fill.
The Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), MONUSCO’s offensive military component authorized under Security Council Resolution 2098, represented an innovation in UN peacekeeping by authorizing proactive military operations against armed groups. The FIB played a significant role in the initial defeat of the M23 in 2013, but its effectiveness during the group’s resurgence has been constrained by force posture limitations, rules of engagement debates, and the broader political dynamics of the MONUSCO transition.
The FARDC and Security Sector Reform
The Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) — the national military — is simultaneously the primary instrument of state security and a significant source of governance challenges. The FARDC was created through successive rounds of military integration (brassage and mixage) that absorbed former rebel combatants into the national army without adequately addressing command and control structures, force discipline, or institutional loyalty.
The results of this integration-without-reform approach are evident in the FARDC’s performance. The army has struggled to maintain territorial control in eastern provinces, has been implicated in human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings and sexual violence, and has been documented engaging in illegal economic activities including artisanal mining and informal taxation of civilian populations.
Security sector reform (SSR) has been on the governance agenda since the Sun City peace agreements that ended the Second Congo War, but implementation has been slow, uneven, and frequently reversed by political developments. The key SSR challenges include:
Force rationalization — The FARDC’s total strength is difficult to determine precisely due to ghost soldiers (fictional personnel whose salaries are collected by officers), dual enrollment, and incomplete personnel records. Establishing an accurate personnel database and eliminating ghost soldiers would free significant budgetary resources for genuine capability improvement.
Command and control reform — The chain of command within the FARDC is compromised by parallel authority structures, ethnic and political loyalties that override institutional hierarchy, and the persistence of former armed group networks within the integrated force. Establishing effective, merit-based command and control is essential to military effectiveness and civilian protection.
Military justice — The military justice system has made notable progress in prosecuting senior officers for human rights violations, but enforcement remains inconsistent and politically influenced. The conviction of several senior FARDC officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity represents important precedents, but the overall impunity rate for military human rights abuses remains unacceptably high.
Professionalization — Investment in military education, training, and professional development has been insufficient relative to the scale of the force and the complexity of the security challenges it faces. International partners — including the United States, Belgium, France, and China — have provided bilateral military training, but these programs have been fragmented and inconsistently sustained.
Armed Group Dynamics Beyond the M23
The focus on the M23 risks obscuring the broader armed group landscape in eastern DRC, which involves more than one hundred distinct groups operating with varying motivations, capabilities, and territorial footprints.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which has conducted devastating attacks on civilian populations in North Kivu and Ituri, represents a distinct security challenge. The group’s claimed affiliation with the Islamic State — reflected in IS communiqués claiming ADF attacks — has attracted international counterterrorism attention and raised questions about the nature of the group’s ideological orientation and transnational connections.
The Coopérative pour le Développement du Congo (CODECO), an armed group associated with the Lendu ethnic community in Ituri, has been responsible for large-scale attacks on civilian populations, including incidents that international organizations have characterized as potential crimes against humanity.
Numerous Mai-Mai groups — a catch-all term for locally organized armed movements that emerged during the Congo Wars and have perpetuated through economic incentives, ethnic mobilization, and governance vacuums — continue to operate across eastern provinces. Mai-Mai groups are diverse in their motivations and organizational structures, making them resistant to comprehensive approaches.
The Disarmament, Demobilization, Community Recovery, and Stabilization (DDRC-S) framework — the latest iteration of the DRC’s approach to armed group demobilization — aims to address the root causes that sustain armed mobilization. The programme’s community-based approach represents a conceptual advance over previous DDR iterations that focused narrowly on individual combatant reintegration, but its implementation faces the same structural challenges — limited state presence, inadequate funding, and the persistent political economy of armed mobilization — that undermined previous efforts.
Regional Diplomatic Architecture
The security dynamics in eastern DRC are inseparable from the regional geopolitical context. The DRC’s relationships with its nine neighbors — and particularly with Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi — shape the security landscape in ways that domestic governance reforms alone cannot address.
The DRC-Rwanda relationship remains the most consequential regional dynamic. Rwanda’s alleged support for the M23 — documented in multiple UN Group of Experts reports — reflects longstanding Rwandan security concerns regarding armed groups operating from eastern DRC, as well as broader strategic interests in the mineral-rich border region. The relationship between Kigali and Kinshasa oscillates between diplomatic engagement and near-confrontation, with each cycle producing temporary agreements that are undermined by unresolved underlying tensions.
Uganda’s role is multifaceted. The UPDF has conducted operations against the ADF in eastern DRC under bilateral agreements with the Congolese government, but Uganda’s historical involvement in DRC conflicts and its economic interests in cross-border trade create a complex relationship dynamic.
The African Union’s engagement has been primarily through diplomatic mediation, including the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the DRC and the Region signed in Addis Ababa in February 2013. This framework established commitments by DRC, regional states, and international partners, but its implementation has been inconsistent.
Institutional Requirements for Sustainable Stabilization
Sustainable stabilization in eastern DRC requires governance solutions that address the root causes of armed mobilization and state fragility. Military operations — whether conducted by the FARDC, MONUSCO, SAMIDRC, or regional forces — can create space for governance interventions but cannot substitute for them.
The critical institutional requirements include restoration of state authority in territories currently under armed group control, including the deployment of functional judicial, administrative, and service delivery institutions. They include land governance reform that addresses the tenure disputes and ethnic dimensions of land conflict that fuel armed mobilization. They include economic governance that provides livelihood alternatives to armed group participation, particularly for young men in areas with limited formal employment opportunities. And they include accountability mechanisms — both judicial and transitional — that address the legacy of mass atrocities committed by all parties to the conflict.
The International Security and Stabilization Support Strategy (I4S) and its associated Stabilization Coherence Fund represent the most comprehensive international approach to integrated stabilization in eastern DRC. The I4S framework correctly identifies governance, security, and development as interconnected dimensions that must be addressed simultaneously. Its implementation, however, has been constrained by the same security dynamics it seeks to address — creating a circular challenge where stabilization interventions cannot be implemented because of insecurity, and insecurity persists because stabilization has not occurred.
The path forward requires honest acknowledgment that the eastern DRC security challenge does not have a purely military solution, a purely diplomatic solution, or a purely governance solution. It requires all three, pursued simultaneously, with sufficient resources, sustained commitment, and genuine regional cooperation. Whether these conditions can be achieved in the current political environment remains the central question of Congolese governance.