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Participants hold a candle light night vigil during a commemoration event, known as "Kwibuka" (Remembering), as Rwanda marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide, at the BK arena in Kigali, Rwanda April 7, 2024.
30 years since Rwanda’s genocide, ethnic violence continues to plague Central Africa
Rwandan President Paul Kagame led a memorial ceremony on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide that killed more than a million people. Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups are no longer in open conflict in the country, but the legacy of the 100 days of slaughter that began on April 7, 1994, carries on in a conflict in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The background: Conflict between Rwanda’s major ethnic groups dates back to the colonial period, when German and Belgian authorities privileged ethnic Tutsis over Hutus for choice jobs and social status. Hutus dominated government after achieving independence in 1962, leading to a long-running war meant to end with a power-sharing agreement in 1993.
However, the day after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, Hutu extremists launched a long-planned assault against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Over the next 100 days, over a million people were butchered in the violence before an ethnic Tutsi militia, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, invaded and overthrew the genocidaires. The Tutsi victory pushed over two million Hutu civilians into exile in neighboring countries.
The present: One of those neighboring countries was the Democratic Republic of Congo (also home to an indigenous Hutu population). Rwandan Tutsi-led forces invaded their gargantuan neighbor twice to chase down alleged genocidaires between 1994 and 2003.
Now, Rwanda backs the Tutsi-led M23 militia in the DRC, which Kigali allegedly uses to extract valuable mineral resources. Rwanda, in turn, accuses Kinshasa of backing the Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which seeks to overthrow Kagame. Civilians in the DRC are forced to bear the brunt of it: 250,000 civilians have been displaced in the last month as M23 presses toward the key city of Goma.Peter Navarro, who served as U.S. then-President Donald Trump's trade adviser, talks to the media before turning himself in at a federal correctional institution to begin his prison sentence for defying a subpoena from a panel that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in Miami, Florida, U.S.
Hard Numbers: Former Trump adviser goes to jail, Cambodia bans musical car horns, DRC suffers M23 siege, Afghanistan endures dire drought
38: In a move straight out of "Footloose," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has banned musical horns after videos surfaced on social media showing people, especially youths, engaging in impromptu dances on roads to tunes emitted by truck horns. Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, has directed the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation and police to enforce the ban nationwide, aiming to curb what he views as a public order and traffic safety issue.
230,000: Goma, a resource-rich city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is under siege from M23 rebels reportedly backed by Rwanda. With nearly all supply routes controlled by M23, the conflict is asphyxiating the city, causing a surge in basic commodity prices. Over 230,000 people fled Goma in February, with aid agencies warning of humanitarian disaster and the increasing risk of a wider regional conflict.
21 million: Afghanistan, one of the nations most susceptible to climate change, faces a dire situation as a fourth straight year of drought displaces entire villages, leaving fields barren and stomachs empty. The drought has deprived 21 million Afghans, almost half of the country's population, of access to potable water.
FILE PHOTO: Members of Burundi's National Defence Force (FDN), part of the troops of the East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), arrive to their deployment as part of a regional military operation targeting rebels, at the airport in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo March 5, 2023.
Burundi detains troops who refused to fight in Congo
The Burundian government has been detaining troops for refusing orders to deploy to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Burundi is trying to stop the advances of a rebel group backed by Rwanda. The focus now is on the key border city of Goma.
The background: The area around Goma is rich in minerals, which armed groups and their backers have vied to control for years. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group began taking territory two years ago and funneling the spoils back to their patrons. UN peacekeepers have been largely unable to stop violence that has pushed hundreds of thousands of people into dangerous refugee camps.
A Kenyan-led intervention force managed to hold Goma last year, but withdrew in November, opening the way for M23. In December, Burundi intervened, but troops say they are fighting blind, hence the desertions. That leaves a South African-led coalition as Goma’s best bet.
What’s next? The fighting will be brutal, with 2 million residents of Goma in the crossfire. M23 is angling to cut the city off from the rest of the DRC. If they succeed, the rebels – and their Rwandan supporters – will be in a commanding position to extract concessions from Kinshasa.A Congolese girl carries vegetables for sale on the last day of the electoral campaign in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo December 18, 2023.
The DRC wants stability. Will this week’s election deliver?
On Wednesday, voters in the vast heart of central Africa go to the polls in just the fourth election since the Democratic Republic of Congo began transitioning to democracy 20 years ago. Incumbent President Félix Tshisekedi looks likely to beat the crowded opposition, but he faces a severe crisis of insecurity in the mineral-rich northeast, while folks in the more secure west and south struggle to get ahead against ubiquitous corruption and lack of resources.
But for all its problems, Congo is brimming with potential. It is the world’s No. 3 copper producer and plays a crucial role in the green energy economy as a source of cobalt, tantalum, and tungsten. It is home to some of the last pristine rainforests on the planet and cooperates with Brazil and Indonesia in efforts to bolster this crucial resource in the fight against climate change. Plus, Congo is an incredibly young country, with a median age of just 16. Its population is projected to reach 200 million people by 2050, the majority of whom will be fluent in a global language, French.
So who are the main contenders to take on the difficult task of running the DRC?
- Félix Tshisekedi took power in the country's first-ever peaceful democratic transition in 2019 – and even then previous President Joseph Kabila remained a thorn in Tshisekedi’s side via his control of the legislature (he’s still a senator-for-life). Félix is the son of venerated pro-democracy leader Étienne Tshisekedi, who opposed both the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko and the regimes of Kabila and his father. Polling is scarce in the DRC, but US-based firm Geopoll, which specializes in African elections, put Tshisekedi’s support at 55%, which ought to be plenty to overcome the divided opposition.
- Martin Fayulu, Tshisekedi’s main rival in the 2018 election — which he claims, with some evidence, was fraudulently stolen from him — is back on the campaign trail, doubling down on anti-corruption pledges. He’s promising not to take a cent in salary (as a former ExxonMobil exec, he can afford it) and reinvest that money in social programs.
- Moïse Katumbi is the governor of Katanga province and one of the richest men in the DRC. His efforts to expand and formalize copper production, develop agriculture, and build infrastructure in the province have led to long-term economic growth, which he says he can bring to the Congo as a whole.
- Denis Mukwege is a gynecologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work helping women in the conflict-ridden Northeast who had suffered sexual violence. He is the only leading candidate from the center of the conflict zone and enjoys national admiration for his work, but he has no political experience.
In addition to these four, over a dozen more candidates are running for president, but none are expected to net strong results.
Who’s likely to take office in January?
Tshisekedi looks strong, but it’s hard to know who will come out on top – and it’s not just because of a lack of polling. Joseph Mulala Nguramo, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the lack of transparency around vote counting could lead to a situation where multiple candidates declare victory on Wednesday.
“That would put the country into one of the worst crises we have seen in our history,” he says. “Is it possible the candidates will reach out to their voting bases and call for violence? I like to think we won’t go there because the country won’t survive.”
Independent observers have already raised the alarm that the government’s preparations are inadequate to deliver a free and fair election, and Tshisekedi’s rivals have complained he is using government powers to impede their campaigns.
But Ben Shepherd, who specializes in DRC politics at Chatham House, said that voters’ sophisticated understanding of how the system works – corrupt as it is – could prevent the worst scenarios.
“Congolese voters don’t have a great deal of faith that anyone with political aspirations is doing it for the right reasons,” he says. If rival candidates call for demonstrations in Kinshasa, voters “know they could tear the city apart, but that it probably wouldn’t change a great deal.”
And it is important to note that Tshisekedi has delivered some progress on key issues. The economy has grown strongly under him — though corruption prevents most of the benefits from reaching ordinary folks — and the conflict in the Northeast has thus far been contained, rather than spiraling into a regional war as in 1996 and 1998.
Challenges for the winner
The immediate problem for whoever wins will be in control of the legislature. No candidate is likely to earn a parliamentary majority, says Nguramo. They also face six more rounds of local elections through 2024, meaning a clear picture of the political landscape might not emerge for months.
The armed conflict in the Northeast remains a major risk, and Tshisekedi’s efforts to suppress the rebels with help from the United Nations and the East African Community regional bloc appear to be on the rocks. Many locals in the Kivu provinces and Ituri resent the foreign troops for failing to keep them safe, and Tshisekedi has asked both the UN and EAC to leave.
“Taking a hard line with the UN particularly plays very well and touches a nerve of the Congolese population, a sense of being abandoned by the world, which isn’t entirely untrue,” says Shepherd, adding that Tshisekedi’s frustration that EAC troops did not take the offensive against the rebels led to the breakdown.
Long term, both Nguramo and Shepherd believe Kinshasa needs to improve its engagement with the wider world and accentuate the progress it has made. The perception of the DRC as a hopeless “heart of darkness” unfairly colors the world’s vision and impedes necessary investment and support.
In a country where powerful individuals have helped themselves to tens of billions of dollars of public money, Nguramo says the DRC will not truly thrive until it has expunged its culture of bribery and embezzlement. If you’re an ordinary person, he adds, “you wake up in the morning and don’t know where your next meal will come from. You don’t know how to bring your kids to school. How many schools could you build [with the money lost to corruption]? How many hospitals, how many roads?”
Damage at the site of the blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon. Photo taken August 5, 2020
What We’re Watching: Lebanon’s lackluster port probe resumes, Kanye’s troubles Down Under, Rwanda-DRC tensions
Will Lebanese port blast victims ever get justice?
The long-stalled investigation into the July 2020 Beirut port blast that killed at least 218 people got very messy this week. After a 13-month hiatus, the investigation resumed with Judge Tarek Bitar charging three high-ranking officials – including former PM Hassan Diab – with homicide with probable intent. (The charges related to the unsafe storage at a port warehouse of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate that ultimately exploded, decimating large parts of the city.) But then, the chief prosecutor (yes, the prosecutor!) announced on Wednesday that he was charging the judge for reopening the case. It’s unclear what the exact charges against him are, but Bitar, the second judge to oversee this investigation, has been subject to intimidation for pursuing the case. Meanwhile, the prosecutor also ordered 17 suspects in pre-trial custody to be released. Indeed, this is the latest sign that a culture of impunity plagues Lebanon. Meanwhile, as the elite continue to line their pockets, Lebanon’s economic situation remains catastrophic. Just this week, the US said it was rerouting aid funds to help cash-strapped Lebanon pay security personnel’s wages over fears that the security situation could spiral.
Will Ye get to “Meet the Parents”?
Kanye “Ye” West isn’t getting much love Down Under these days with a host of politicians and academics calling for the rapper to be denied entry into Australia after his recent antisemitic tirades. (Unless you live in a cave, you’ll remember that several leading brands ditched their partnerships with Ye after he said that he “like[s] Hitler” and repeated classic antisemitic tropes about rich Jews owning the media.) Ye, formerly married to Kimmy K, is hoping to visit Melbourne to meet the parents of his new wife, Bianca Censori, an Aussie designer at Yeezy, his LA-based fashion house. Australian politicians across the political aisle have called on Ye to be banned from the country, and at least one senior minister confirmed that denying the famous American a visa wasn’t out of the question. To ban or not to ban? That’s the question. Let us know what you think the Aussies should do.
DRC-Rwanda on the brink?
Tensions are once again rising between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. On Wednesday, Rwanda's military opened fire on a Congolese fighter jet that the Rwandans claim had violated their airspace. The DRC, of course, denied it and called the shooting "an act of war." The jet landed safely at Goma International Airport in the DRC, but the Rwandans say this was the third time this has happened in recent months. What's more, this latest incident comes just a week before Pope Francis is scheduled to make the first papal visit to the Congolese capital of Kinshasa since 1985. The main goal of his trip is to shine a spotlight on the bloodshed of the conflict in eastern DRC, one of the world's most resource-rich yet conflict-ridden regions. (It's also quite complicated, so if you're interested, read our explainer here.) Why should you care? This is the closest the DRC and Rwanda have come to all-out war in years — the last time Rwandan troops invaded, they sparked the Second Congo War, a regional mega-conflict involving nine countries that killed and displaced millions.A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic republic's "morality police" is seen in Tehran.
Hard Numbers: Iranians protest Amini death, Ukrainian troops leave… DRC, tumult in Haiti, French spiderman
67: Iranian internet connectivity was curbed to 67% of ordinary levels to limit coordination via social media as protests broke out at the funeral of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman reportedly beaten to death in Tehran by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for failing to comply with the regime’s strict head covering requirements. Protesters shouted “death to the dictator” and some tore off their headscarves at the funeral held in the western province of Kurdistan.
250: Around 250 Ukrainian troops with the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are returning home to fight the war against Russia. This is one of the UN’s largest and most expensive peacekeeping missions and has been criticized for failing to root out insurgencies by armed groups vying for power – and access to minerals – in the crisis-ridden country.
100,000: Rioters calling for the resignation of Haiti's interim PM Ariel Henry looted businesses, and the UN Food Programme said that some stormed a warehouse stealing food aid that could feed 100,000 school kids through the end of the year. Thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets to protest the government’s decision to slash fuel price subsidies amid sky-high inflation and economic collapse.
48: A French solo climber – dubbed the French Spiderman – has scaled a 48 story building clad in tight red apparel to mark his 60th birthday. Alain Robert, an avid climber who climbed the building without ropes in one hour, said “I want to send people the message that being 60 is nothing. You can still do sport, be active, and do fabulous things.” Cheers to you, Alain.
A “combustible situation” in the eastern DRC
At least 17 people — including three UN personnel — have died after three days of violent protests against the UN peacekeeping mission in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Demonstrations in the region have now spread to other cities.
On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of people surrounded and looted the UN base in Goma, demanding its forces withdraw from the eastern DRC. After the Congolese cops were unable to quell the protests, the UN decided to bring its peacekeepers home.
How we got here. The latest iteration of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC was established in 2010 to protect civilians in the eastern part of the country. But locals believe the UN peacekeepers have failed to do their job.
Bordering both Rwanda and Uganda, the eastern DRC is one of the most resource-rich yet conflict-ridden regions in sub-Saharan Africa. It suffered the chaotic exodus from the 1994 Rwandan genocide (committed by the majority ethnic Hutus against the minority Tutsis who now run the country), followed by two wars in 1996 and 1998. An estimated 120+ armed groups are now fighting there.
Things have gotten even worse since November 2021, when the M23 — a DRC-based rebel group claiming to defend DRC Tutsis against the Congolese military — began its latest offensive. Many in the DRC blame the M23's recent gains on Rwanda, which has long been accused of supporting the rebels (which the Rwandans deny).
A month ago, the DRC and Rwanda agreed to de-escalate tensions. But the violence persists, and people are getting tired — which in part explains the rage against the (UN) machine.
Why it matters. “Volatility in that region is kind of the executive status quo,” says Eurasia Group analyst Connor Vasey. But “any sort of intensification of that does create issues.”
And perhaps this time what’s happening is more troubling than the violence the region has seen for so many years.
This popular unrest is precisely what we should be watching out for, says Phil Clark, a professor at the SOAS University of London. The M23’s territorial gains have diverted attention away from what’s happening at the local level.
Never before, he explains, has the eastern DRC seen such popular active opposition, directed against several actors — Rwanda, the DRC government, the UN, and Tutsis — all at once.
“The thing that I think is worrying is how organized [it] is,” says Clark. “You’ve got these local leaders at the provincial and the village level very happily on camera, saying — go out and kill the Tutsis.”
If the protests managed to throw the UN out, it might spur more local unrest that could further worsen an already “combustible situation”.
Hard Numbers: Global chips glut, DRC border jam, Amazon deforestation
35: Remember last year's big semiconductor shortage? It's over. High inflation, China's zero-COVID policy, and Russia's war in Ukraine have slashed global demand for chips, with the benchmark Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropping 35% in 2022.
60: The Democratic Republic of Congo will expand its main border post with Zambia to ease congestion. Trucks loaded with precious minerals like copper are often stuck in lines up to 60 km (37.3 miles) long.