Didier Aksanti and Laura Ziegler
It has been three months since the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a peace agreement with Rwanda, brokered by Washington. Following the recent UN report highlighting large-scale massacres in areas occupied by M23 rebels supported by the Rwandan army, particularly near Virunga National Park in Rutshuru territory, Oicha, Beni, and Ituri in the far north and east of the country, the US remains determined to take control of the DRC’s mining areas, including those located in areas controlled by M23 rebels.
It should be noted that the war in the DRC is not an ethnic war, as the Rwandan leader insists. Rwandan leadership is using this pretext as a cover while it takes control of the mining sectors in the eastern part of the DRC. Rwanda is acting on behalf of powerful Western countries led by a transinternational capitalist class, as it does not have a factory producing the latest generation of weapons or aircraft factories to manufacture fighter planes and other technological advances.
Rwanda justifies its direct involvement in the war in eastern DRC as a hunt for rebels from the Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which, according to several sources, including the Congolese government, does not exist. The evidence for this is that the FDLR is part of the Rwandan army and government, as well as the fact that the DRC had given Rwanda the green light to enter the DRC to hunt down the so-called FDLR, although without any evidence proving the existence of the FDLR.
Several civil society organizations have spoken out against the Washington agreement, denouncing the systematic plundering of Congolese minerals and the full support of the United States and its allies, who have been the real supporters of genocide in the DRC by Rwanda for more than three decades. It should be further noted that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is going through a period of security turmoil, exacerbated by persistent armed conflicts in the east of the country. Despite efforts to establish peace, particularly through recent agreements, the situation remains fragile.
These armed conflicts are managed by western powers, particularly the United States, creating the conditions for widespread destabilization and the breakdown of state protections and sovereignty.
Armed groups continue to sow terror, severely affecting the lives of civilians and hampering economic development, causing significant loss of civilian life. In this context, prominent transnational (rooted in the U.S.) capitalists such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are showing growing interest in the DRC’s mineral resources. These investments, while at surface value seem promising for the local economy, are paradoxical given the current security situation, which continues to worsen with dozens of civilians killed every week, and raises ethical and environmental questions. The mining permits granted to these investors are being closely scrutinized, as they could have repercussions on the rights of local communities and the ecosystem.
The investors are of course also imposing hyper-exploitative arrangements that ensures rights to land, resources, and development are forfeited, subordinating the rights and livelihood of workers to the whims of the transinternationalist class that works to ensure destabilization within the region.
Furthermore, it strengthens imperialist projects not just within the region, but in regions under ongoing encroachment and destabilization.
Projects like the 1,443 km EACOP crude oil pipeline, under construction since 2017, persistently try to mask ongoing settler initiatives by presenting them as eco-friendly agendas for shared progress. Closer scrutiny reveals that these projects are driven by entities like the Allianz Group, which invests in arms manufacturers such as Israel’s Elbit Systems. The network of imperialist endeavors and destabilization efforts is deeply intertwined.
What is disguised as charity and economic development towards a majority of non-Western countries remains a precisely liberal whitewash of a resource extraction and management plan to this day. Decades of reports have not altered the perception of a deceiving bourgeoisie. Indeed, no liberation will succeed without African liberation at its core.
Which leads us to consider one more element within the struggle against exploitation in the DRC. Entangled in partnership with eugenic projects, including the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization is unfortunately the United Nations. The projects the UN partners are linked to imperialist-capitalist lobbies, such as the Bill Gates Foundation.
The scramble for resources led by a global imperialist-capitalist order has not spared the African continent for several centuries, evolving in form and strategy over the last few decades. Though on paper some African countries have an appearance of sovereignty, in practice they are often ruled by neocolonial puppets that act as resource managers for an imperialist-capitalist class. The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the African countries undergoing neo-colonialization due to its natural resources, especially the strategic minerals, which capitalists covet.
The imperialist powers manipulate Africans to fight among themselves, exploiting the DRC’s weak leadership—stemming from neocolonial interference—by using Rwanda as the main aggressor, enabling the United States and its allies to plunder the DRC’s resources. As such, the United States is in no rush to implement any real ceasefire deal. Its intentional delays allow massacres to escalate across the region. The toll is heavy every day of the crimes committed by the M23 rebels backed by Rwanda and its partners.
While the deaths continue, American billionaires and companies continue to claim the mining squares and quarries, which also assists their “Israeli” allies in replenishing raw material to strengthen its military capacity. These very raw resources allow them to continue their criminal abuses against the Palestinians and other Arab/Islamic countries in the West Asia region. Indeed, these struggles are interconnected.
If the resolve and courage to oppose lobbying efforts succeed, and if the issue of the Congo is properly understood in the context of global imperialism every person must take it upon themselves to boycott complicit institutions, workplaces, and consumer products, as well as prioritize supporting armed resistance to imperialism, and of course, build pan-African solidarity networks, as no other path leads to true liberation.
Didier Aksanti is a youth climate organizer, activist, and reporter based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Laura Ziegler is an artist and writer based in Germany.
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