Bearing witness to the Congo crisis the world can't ignore | Winnipeg Sun

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It’s Dec. 2024, and I have spent the last week and a half travelling around eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on behalf of the NGO I founded, Make Music Matter. During the last days of this two-week trip, my local staff and I travelled to a rural part of eastern DRC near the mining district, intermixed with various rebel groups, to launch a new project in the area.

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While driving on roads that had been decimated by the rainy season, my driver observed children and youth in the passing fields watching us closely. These children were spies for some of the rebels, and we were being tracked until darkness fell, signalling the hour when ambushes would occur. The driver stopped and had me lay on the floor of the vehicle so as not to be seen as we continued over the washed-out roads to find somewhere to wait out the night.

We made our way to a small town in Walungu, also in rebel territory. My team and I spent an uneasy, sleepless night locked in our rooms, awaiting daylight so we could attempt a return to Bukavu, still approximately two hours away. Two days later, I had made it to Bukavu and then on to Goma by boat, where I would board the first of many flights that would bring me back to Canada. Tensions were high — and palpably so.

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The city of Goma was only tenuously functional, with the Rwandan-backed rebel group M23 less than ten kilometres away and rumoured to be invading any day. Rumours like these were commonplace and based on tragic history. I sensed even then that this time felt different, although I would not admit it.

The drive from the docks of Goma to the airport, which typically took ten minutes, took over two and a half hours due to traffic caused by fear and internal displacement that was already beginning to occur. Things had begun to shift. Two weeks later, I would watch from Canada as M23 invaded Goma, Walungu, and Bukavu in a violent takeover.

The conflict between Rwanda and the DRC is one of the world’s longest and deadliest. Its roots lie in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, when Hutu extremists responsible for the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis fled into neighbouring DRC (then Zaire), hiding in refugee camps and re-arming themselves with stolen aid money from a guilt-stricken international community in the wake of their complacency. Rwanda then used this sophisticated and well-provisioned army to broker its own security guarantees, which metastasized into other interests — thus, President Paul Kagame helped give rise to M23.

M23 is unlike any other rebel group in eastern DRC. With state-of-the-art weaponry and equipment, they easily outstrip the Congolese army, which does not always have bullets to provision their Cold War-era AK-47s. While Rwanda bears significant responsibility for instability in the DRC, so does the government of President Félix Tshisekedi, with his attempts to amend the DRC’s constitution so that he may remain in power indefinitely — driving some Congolese citizens to support M23.

The narrative proffered by M23 to justify their presence in the DRC vacillates between protecting ethnic Tutsis in DRC and overthrowing the government to protect its citizens. However, the true cause lies in mineral extraction. Eastern DRC holds some of the largest reserves on the planet of minerals essential to the manufacture of everyday products like cell phones, TVs, computers, and electric car batteries. One territory alone in eastern DRC provides M23 with minerals worth approximately $800 million USD every month, which are then illegally smuggled into Rwanda to be exported to less-than-scrupulous refineries further down the global supply chain and mixed with ‘certified’ materials.

The human cost of this conflict is immense — almost beyond comprehension. Under the guise of ‘liberating’ or ‘protecting’ the DRC, rebel groups like M23 have displaced at least seven million people. In Jan. 2025 alone, 3,000 civilians in Goma were slaughtered in the M23 incursion. Countless women and children have experienced the life-altering effects of sexual violence used as a weapon of war, and our staff have been threatened while kill lists have been circulating — lists which include many of the participants we serve.

At the time of writing, one neighbourhood in Bukavu still has approximately 800 corpses, including those of children murdered at point-blank range, lining the streets. Furthermore, the fleeing Congolese army left hundreds of guns on the streets, where local youth have been using them to terrorize communities through home invasions at night.

At the same time, in Bukavu and Goma, a slow coup has been unfolding. M23 has gradually begun attempting to set up its own government structures — naming their own people as governors and threatening to establish an independent banking system — while controlling all cross-border movement and prohibiting any economic activity that may benefit the local Congolese population.

As someone who has spent the last fifteen years travelling to eastern DRC, I see two paths forward to help begin restoring freedom and power to the Congolese people. The first is to sanction M23 and the Rwandan government itself. While the U.S. disgracefully allowed the genocide of 1994 to occur without intervention, President Kagame has used this guilt — and his own people as a human shield — for his own gain for far too long.

The number one funder of the Rwandan government is currently the United States of America. All military and humanitarian aid redirected to military means to Rwanda must be halted.

The second path forward is to put a stop to the semi-covert use of the Rwandan army to protect the corporate interests of the international community in oil fields and refineries in western Africa, as an example.

The Congolese people deserve autonomy and freedom — to live in peace as a sovereign nation. The international community has a responsibility to ensure that the current conflict does not expand into a regional one. If it does, we risk not only bearing witness to one nation being further annexed by another — as Russia is currently doing to Ukraine — but the creation of an enemy whose resources we rely on to live our everyday lives.

— Darcy Ataman, M.S.C., O.M. founder and CEO, Make Music Matter.

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