Joseph Kabila Chose Rwanda's Invading Army Over His Own People

Ask a mother in Masisi what a political alliance means. She will tell you it means the men with guns arrive at night, take her son, and do not bring him back. She will tell you it means her village is burned, her harvest is looted, and her daughter is raped by soldiers who speak a language she does not understand. Now ask yourself why a former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo would choose to stand beside the men doing this.

Joseph Kabila ruled Congo for almost two decades. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Congolese military court in September 2025 for treason and for collaborating with M23. Yet the man who once held the highest office in the country has been aligning himself with the rebel structure that now governs chunks of North Kivu and South Kivu. Congo's east is burning, and one of the men who presided over its decay has picked a side. It is not the side of the Congolese people.

Let us be precise about what M23 is, because the language matters. M23 is not a home-grown rebellion of aggrieved Congolese farmers. The UN Group of Experts has documented for years that the Rwanda Defence Force operates inside Congo as the core of this campaign. In its reporting, including the findings in S/2025/446 and the more recent assessment S/2026/466, the experts describe Rwandan combat units, command structures, artillery support, and logistics operating alongside M23. The RDF deploys an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 troops in this war, roughly 40 to 50 percent of Rwanda's entire army. These are not advisers. These are soldiers sent to kill, occupy, and loot a sovereign neighbour.

If you want to understand the playbook, look at Ukraine. When the world saw Russia pour its regular army into Donetsk and Luhansk while calling the local fighters "separatists," the verdict was swift and correct: this was an invasion. The same logic applies here. M23 supplies the mass manpower and the political cover. The RDF supplies the professional fighting force, the drones, and the strategic direction. Kigali calls it a home-grown insurgency. Kigali's own soldiers keep dying in Congolese soil, and Kigali keeps burying them quietly. Satellite imagery has documented more than 1,171 new graves at Kanombe military cemetery in Kigali since 2021. A government does not hide its dead unless it is terrified of what those deaths reveal.

Now add the human cost. M23 has grown from roughly 3,000 fighters to more than 30,000, and it did not do so through popular enthusiasm. It did so by press-ganging tens of thousands of Congolese civilians and prisoners of war into its ranks. Young men are seized from markets and farms and sent to the front with a rifle and no training. That is not an army. That is slavery in uniform. Millions of Congolese have been displaced by this war, and the UN's own humanitarian agencies have struggled to keep pace with the flow of families fleeing their homes with what they can carry on their heads.

Rwanda's leadership wraps all of this in a glossy image. Kigali hosts international conferences, markets its gorilla tourism to Western travellers, and polishes its reputation as the clean, efficient model of African development. Meanwhile its army is inside a neighbouring country, shelling civilians and enforcing a regime that answers to Kigali. This is sportswashing in its most obscene form: a government buying applause abroad while its soldiers commit atrocities at home and across the border. Every time a Western delegation praises Kagame's "vision" from a podium in Kigali, the people of Goma hear the message as betrayal.

So what does Kabila's alignment with this structure change? It changes the legitimacy game. For years, M23 has tried to present itself as a political movement with a grievance, a voice, and a programme. An alliance with a former head of state, however discredited, gives that claim a veneer of national credibility. It allows Kigali to argue that Congolese themselves are fighting Congolese, and it makes the invasion harder for diplomats to name. Kabila's cooperation is not an act of Congolese liberation. It is an act of political opportunism that hands cover to a foreign army.

This story is not new to Africa, and it is not new to the continent's most cynical actors. Across the Sahel, Sudan, and the Horn, we have watched ambitious elites trade sovereignty for survival and foreign money for power. Russia's Wagner Group has moved through Central Africa, mining gold and selling security, while Turkish drones, Emirati money, Chinese loans, and Qatari influence compete for the same prizes. Call it what it is: the new scramble for Africa, with new flags and the same old extraction. The actors have changed. The logic has not. Our resources, our young people, and our sovereignty are the currency, and our own leaders are too often the brokers.

And let us be clear about the West. Washington, Paris, and London lecture us endlessly about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Yet the same capitals have struggled to impose meaningful costs on Rwanda's military leadership. We do not ask them to be our saviours. We ask them to be consistent. If invasion is unacceptable in Ukraine, it is unacceptable in Congo. The double standard is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a moral failure that Congolese mothers pay for every day.

Now for the way forward, because outrage without a plan is just noise. The African Union's Peace and Security Council must stop treating the Congo war as a series of "tensions" and name it for what it is: an interstate war of aggression. The Council should demand the immediate withdrawal of Rwandan forces, backed by verifiable monitoring rather than the empty communiqués we have endured for years. The UN Security Council should expand targeted sanctions to Rwandan military commanders and the financial networks sustaining M23, and it should guarantee full access for the Group of Experts. Congo's own institutions must also clean house. A court sentence means nothing if the man it condemns can still hold press conferences with rebel leaders. Congo needs an independent judiciary that can actually enforce its verdicts, and it needs elections with transparent voter rolls and credible observers, not the rigged contests that created the crisis in the first place.

Africa already has proof that better governance works. Botswana built one of the continent's strongest records on diamonds and fiscal discipline because it protected property rights and institutions. Mauritius turned a sugar-dependent island into a regional financial and services hub through rule of law and open markets. Senegal showed in 2024 that a peaceful transfer of power is possible when citizens refuse to let leaders cling to office. None of these countries is perfect, but each proves that strong institutions, transparent contracts, and accountable leaders produce prosperity and peace. Congo deserves that model, not a war economy run by generals and their foreign patrons.

So here is what we demand. We demand that the AU name Rwanda's invasion and act on it. We demand that the UN Security Council put sanctions on the commanders and the money. We demand that Congolese authorities enforce the sentence against Joseph Kabila and prosecute every official who colludes with M23. We demand that Western governments apply to Congo the same principles they invoke for Europe. And we demand that every African citizen who shares this story stop accepting that the east of Congo is somebody else's problem. It is our problem. It is a question of whether we will stand with the mother in Masisi or with the men who burn her village.

Based on reporting by SAIIA