The Conflict in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo Explained
Image by Safi Erneste for Pexels, February 3, 2025
BY King Solomon Kabagambe and Gregory Feldman
October 2026
Much of the world remains blissfully unaware of what many experts, observers, and people from East-Central Africa know all too well: That since the mid-nineties, Africa has undergone wars and skirmishes, including what became known as the Great War of Africa from 1998-2003. It drew in eight different countries and countless militias. The DRC alone lost between 1 million and 5 million people. The Economist reckons that taking the mid-point of those two figures, more people died in that Great War than any other since the 1940s[1]. The number of deaths, of course, do not reflect the number of rapes, of people maimed, of children orphaned, and of families broken up. And, they do not count the horrors of the 1996-97 war, which occurred in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
And then, of course, we have refugees and internally displaced people. UNHCR reports that by the end of 2017, 4.5 million Congolese were displaced within their country. Externally, Uganda absorbed 240,000 Congolese refugees. Rwanda had taken in 75,000. Burundi accepted 66,000. The number for Tanzania was 82,000, for Zambia 38,000, for Angola 39,000, and for the Republic of Congo 15,500. 75,000 people found refuge in the rest of Southern Africa in the same year. By early 2018, an average of 8000 people per day had been internally displaced in the province of Kasai alone.
Today, the conflict in eastern DRC can be divided into two theaters: the Ituri theater, which is principally concentrated in Ituri Province, and the Greater Kivu theater, which centers mostly on the North and South Kivu Provinces. The ongoing crisis in Ituri Province started in December 2017 when fighters from the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, known by its French acronym CODECO, a Lendu mystical-religious militia, started attacking civilians, mostly members of the Hema ethnic group. The conflict drew in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, commonly known as FARDC, to stop the CODECO atrocities.
Dozens of other actors have also joined the Ituri theater – notably the central government in Kinshasa, the internationally recognized governing body of the DRC. Its response to the crisis in Ituri includes coordinating military offensives against different armed groups in the province, deploying former warlords to negotiate with CODECO to lay down its weapons, declaring a state of siege in Ituri, and facilitating the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of armed militias. Other actors in the Ituri crisis include the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), MONUSCO, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC, the Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF), ZAIRE, the Convention for Popular Revolution (CRP), and the business elites.
ADF is a Ugandan Islamic Fundamentalist movement whose main initial mandate was to overthrow the government in Kampala and establish an Islamic regime. However, the group's interests have changed over time, as in recent years the group has conducted cross-border raids and bombardments into Uganda. It has been equally involved in the illicit trade of gold and timber and committed numerous atrocities in eastern DRC. ADF has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
MONUSCO is the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC. Its prime interest is to ensure the safety of civilians from violent attacks. It also supports the consolidation of peacebuilding initiatives in the DRC, including Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration campaigns.
Image by Voice of America (VOA), September 22, 2022
UPDF main interests in the eastern DRC to combat ADF militias through military operations. However, some reports stipulate that UPDF actions in Eastern DRC entail protecting Uganda's economic interests in the region, including petroleum reserves in Lake Albert along with the illicit gold and timber trade from Ituri to Uganda. This work includes protecting flows of other commodities from attackes by armed groups, especially ADF. Some reports also stipulate that the point of UPDF deployment in Ituri was to curtail the expansion of AFC/M23 into the Great North, Beni, and Lubero territories in North Kivu Province and Ituri Province.
Zaire’s main interest is to protect the Hema community and G5 communities, a platform representing five of Ituri's ethnic groups, that have been the prime targets of the Cooperative for Development of Congo CODECO, Lendu militias. However, the group has also been accused of committing atrocities against civilians, especially those from the Lendu ethnic group. It also participates in, and thus protects, the illicit trade in gold along with other minerals.
CRP's main goal is to overthrow the Kinshasa government that it accuses of failing to end the wars in Ituri. The group is a politico-military movement founded by ICC-convicted former warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.
The Greater Kivu theater of the conflict began in earnest in September 2017 with the war in South Kivu. The National People's Coalition for the Sovereignty of the Congo (CNPSC), a group of Mai Mai militias mainly from the Banyindu, Babembe and Bafuliru ethnic groups, attacked the Congolese military posts in Fizi and Uvira territories. These attacks formed part of the CNPSC’s grand plan to prevent the former Congolese President Joseph Kabila from seeking a third term in office. This shortly degenerated into more local conflict as the CNPSC also started attacking the Banyamulenge community, Rwandophone people (people speaking Kinyarwanda language) living in the high plateau of Itombwe, in South Kivu Province. The former has long perceived the latter as a historic foreign invader.
The violence intensified when the Burundian rebel movement known as the Red Tabara joined the attacks on the Banyamulenge community. The FARDC was largely unable to stop these atrocities. Red Tabara attacks signified a move to align itself with the local Mia Mia groups claiming to represent the grievances of the Banyindu and Bafuliru, who see themselves as the indigenous peoples of the area in contrast to the allegedly invading Banyamulenge. By attacking the Banyamulenge, the Red Tabara embraced and integrated itself into the so-called "indigenous struggle", though with the purpose of flushing out the common enemy, the "Tutsi invaders."
Despite its magnitude, the bloody conflict in the high plateau of Itombwe largely escaped regional and international attention given its remote location. Until the Movement of 23 March, a predominantly Tutsi rebel movement, fighting the socio-political marginalization of that community, resurfaced in neighboring North Kivu Province. In December 2021, the group captured Sabinyo Mountain and eventually Bunagana, along with large swaths of nearby territories. In December 2023, M23 allied with the Congo River Alliance, a politico-military movement uniting different anti-government armed groups, to form AFC/M23. The group then launched numerous military offensives in early 2025 against the FARDC and its allies, capturing several territories, including the agglomeration of Goma and Bukavu, the provincial capitals of North and South Kivu Provinces.
Besides the central Congolese government, the FARDC, and the AFC/M23, other actors in the Greater Kivu theater of the Congo crisis include the Wazalendo militias, a loose coalition of former Mai Mai fighters, recruited by the Congolese government to fight against AFC/M23 and its Rwanda backers. Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by the French acronym FDLR, is a Hutu armed group fighting to overthrow the predominantly Tutsi regime in Kigali. Its ranks include soldier involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The FDLR is fighting alongside the Congolese army, the Burundian army, and the Black Water mercenaries. MONUSCO is also present, along with other actors in this theater of the Eastern Congo conflict.
Overall, the violence in both Ituri and the Greater Kivu has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of lives, more than eight million displaced, and over a million more refugees in neighboring countries.[2] These displaced people and refugees live in deplorable humanitarian conditions with little or no necessities. Such disasters, political and moral, spin off in many directions that will be addressed in the subsequent posts.
REFERENCES:
[1] Economist Feb. 17, 2018, p. 9, 2.
[2] The number of lives lost is based on numerous estimates offered by organizations monitoring conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
King Solomon Kabagambe is a Congolese-Canadian journalist, researcher and special event coordinator. He's the co-founder of the Voice of Ituri, a non-profit organization championing peacebuilding initiatives in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Greg Feldman is a political anthropologist and Professor of Political Science at the University of Windsor. His latest book is titled The Subject of Sovereignty: Relationality and the Pivot past Liberalism and Editor of Today’s Totalitarianism.
