Mongwalu Cheers the Blue Helmets Because the State Has Deserted It

In the mining town of Mongwalu, in Ituri, residents are now saying something every Congolese should hear with shame. Without the blue helmets, the Ebola medicines would still be stuck on the tarmac. It was not the institutions of the Republic that brought the helicopters down. It was the soldiers of MONUSCO. When a people comes to celebrate a foreign force for getting what its own government owes it, that is a verdict. And it is a harsh one.

Since June, the blue helmets have been guarding the local airstrip, through which medicines and response equipment now flow. The residents testify: where fear and isolation once reigned, there is now a protected runway and a supply chain that works. We must not downplay this progress. A mother who can have her sick child treated gains something real. But let us ask the question that no one in power seems willing to ask: why does a UN army have to protect the runway of an airstrip on our own territory?

Look at what is happening a few kilometres away. In the territory of Djugu, the ADF, an armed group of Ugandan origin that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, continues to slaughter. According to the Congolese army, at least 37 civilians were killed in Cantine-Aloya in an attack attributed to the ADF. Thirty-seven people. Fathers, traders, children who had never heard of the Islamic State. And among those who fled this massacre, many face a high risk of Ebola infection, because flight scatters the disease to places where it can no longer be tracked. That is the reality: an epidemic, a massacre, and a population on the run, with a state that has no credible response to offer.

Further south, the picture is more damning still. The reports of the UN Group of Experts on the DRC, notably documents S/2025/446 and S/2026/466, describe in detail the engagement of the Rwanda Defence Force, the RDF, alongside the M23 in eastern Congo. The experts assess the presence of 14,000 to 18,000 Rwandan soldiers, or 40 to 50 per cent of the Rwandan army, operating in direct support of a movement presented as a local rebellion. Let us call things by their name: this is a war of aggression, waged the way Russia waged it in Ukraine with its separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. The M23 supplies the human mass and the political cover; the RDF brings the combat units, the artillery, the drones and the command. When Kigali speaks of "regional security", we must translate it: occupation.

The numbers of this occupation are enough to chill the blood. M23's fighting strength is reported to have grown from around 3,000 combatants to more than 30,000, largely through the forced recruitment of tens of thousands of Congolese civilians and prisoners of war. Men torn from their villages and turned into cannon fodder under threat. This is not a liberation army. It is slavery in uniform. And while the graves pile up, the Kanombe military cemetery in Kigali keeps growing: more than 1,171 new burials have been documented by satellite imagery since 2021. A state that hides its dead knows exactly what it is doing.

Meanwhile, Kigali hosts international sporting events, sells its image as a luxury tourism destination and promotes gorilla tourism. The contrast is obscene. You cannot send soldiers to die and kill in Congo while presenting yourself to the world as a model of order and cleanliness. Sportswashing is not a figure of speech. It is a communications strategy designed to keep anyone from looking at the corpses.

And all of this must be placed within the new scramble for Africa. Mongwalu is a gold town. For years, UN reports have documented how Congolese gold, extracted under violence and without traceability, moves toward refineries and trading platforms, with Dubai as one of the main hubs. China, Turkey, the Emirates, Russia with its paramilitary networks: all of them want our minerals. They do not ask whether the mines employ children, whether public accounts are transparent, or whether the militias controlling the sites are paid from gold ransoms. They buy. And what we harvest is violence.

Now look at the Atlantic coast. Off Kébémer, in Senegal, the death toll from a migrant boat capsizing has risen from 35 to 39, according to the governor of the Louga region. Thirty-nine young West Africans drowned trying to leave a country where the future seemed closed to them. This tragedy has a social cause: unemployment, the lack of prospects, the conviction that the sea is less cruel than stagnation. But it also has a political cause. The tightening of controls by Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco has pushed departures southward, toward The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, lengthening the crossings and making them deadlier still. We closed one door. We opened one more grave.

These two stories, Mongwalu and Kébémer, tell the same story of failure. A state that appears only as a barrier, a checkpoint or a security convoy, and never as services, justice or jobs. Congolese applaud the blue helmets because the civil servant never came. Young Senegalese take to the sea because the administration offers them nothing. And external partners, Europe first among them, pay to block borders rather than to build economies capable of keeping their young people at home.

Yet there is a way forward. It is not magic. It is institutional. First, the DRC must bring to justice those responsible for the ADF massacres and the militia atrocities in Ituri, with no negotiation and no amnesty for warlords. Next, Kinshasa must publish the mining contracts, establish full traceability for gold from Ituri and Kivu, and apply OECD due diligence standards to foreign buyers. Artisanal mining cooperatives must be formalised, with clear property rights and taxes that fund local schools and health clinics. A miner who holds a title and a contract does not die for a militia.

We must also look at the models that work. Botswana built its prosperity on diamonds by imposing public management more rigorous than the continental average and by investing the proceeds in health and education. Mauritius built a diversified economy on legal stability and open markets. Senegal proved in 2024 that peaceful democratic alternation is possible on our continent. And Rwanda itself has shown that a health system can be effective, which makes it all the more scandalous that it deploys its capacities for aggression. A state's strength is measured by what it protects, not by what it invades.

So here is what we demand. To the African Union: name Rwanda's aggression for what it is, and end all diplomatic complacency. To the UN Security Council: sanction the commanders of the RDF and the M23, freeze assets linked to the gold trade, and give MONUSCO a real, funded civilian protection mandate. To Kinshasa: publish the mining contracts, prosecute the ADF criminals, and pay the soldiers and police who are meant to protect the villages. To European partners: stop financing border barriers without demanding accountability on human rights, and invest in jobs where departures begin. And to each of us, citizens of the DRC, Senegal and all of Africa: stop letting governments content themselves with existing in press releases. Demand justice, transparency and results.

Mongwalu does not need to be thanked for being protected by foreigners. It needs a state that protects it itself. On that day, the blue helmets can go home, and the word "security" will regain its meaning: that of a nation that keeps its promises to its people.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL