M23 rebels guard outside the South Kivu province administrative office, at the centre of east Congo's second-largest city, Bukavu, on Feb. 16.Janvier Barhahiga/The Associated Press
As Donald Trump ramps up his global strategy of swapping peace agreements for U.S. business privileges, the bumpy path of an accord in Congo is exposing the pitfalls of his campaign.
The U.S. President doubled down on his peace-for-business strategy on Friday at the White House when he unveiled his latest deal: an agreement between two long-time enemies, Armenia and Azerbaijan, that provides for exclusive U.S. development rights in a transit corridor for energy pipelines and railways.
The accord could be a bonanza for U.S. investors. Similar financial incentives were featured in Mr. Trump’s peace initiatives in Ukraine, where he secured U.S. preferential access to Ukrainian minerals, and in Gaza, where he floated the idea of a massive tourism project of hotels and resorts.
The most advanced example of this campaign is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Mr. Trump for months has promoted a peace process that explicitly allows U.S. investors to become “partners” in the development of minerals and other resources in the country’s war-torn eastern region.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly touted the Congo-Rwanda deal to burnish his credentials as a peacemaker, claiming he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for it. Signing ceremonies for Congo peace declarations were held in Washington in April and again in June with much fanfare.
The offensive led in Congo by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel militia since 2022 has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, with millions of Congolese forced to flee their homes.
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The U.S. business incentives, however, have failed to settle the conflict. Fighting between pro-government forces and M23 has continued almost non-stop, and M23 leaders have repeatedly vowed that they will never end their military occupation of a huge swath of eastern Congo, including the cities of Goma and Bukavu.
In a disturbing sign of trouble in the peace process, the United Nations last week revealed M23’s role in massacres of hundreds of civilians in eastern Congo – weeks after the latest peace agreement was signed in Washington.
At least 319 civilians in four Congolese villages were killed by M23 forces with the backing of Rwandan soldiers from July 9 to July 21, the UN Human Rights Office reported.
It was “one of the largest documented death tolls in such attacks since the M23’s resurgence in 2022,” the human-rights office said. “Most of the victims, including at least 48 women and 19 children, were local farmers camping in their fields during the planting season.”
The Trump administration has supported two separate peace negotiations: a Rwanda-Congo process in Washington and a Congo-M23 process in Doha, Qatar. Preliminary agreements have been signed in both places. But both have now been weakened by postponed meetings, missed deadlines and disputes over how to interpret the texts.
Ceasefire violations, meanwhile, are persisting. In recent days, clashes have been reported in two key provinces, North Kivu and South Kivu, while M23 has captured more villages in the region.
“The hopes placed in the so-called ceasefires from the Washington and Doha agreements have proven to be nothing more than a facade that only lulls international vigilance and leaves the field open to the aggressors,” Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in a social-media post on Sunday.
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Filip Reyntjens, a Rwanda and Congo specialist at the University of Antwerp, said the Congo peace agreement in Washington was “Trump-style transactional politics” that left many issues unaddressed, while the agreement in Qatar lacked any “enforceable commitments” and is already being interpreted differently by the rebels and the Congo government.
Despite the deals, it is still difficult to see why M23 would have any interest in giving up its territorial gains and its access to mineral resources, Prof. Reyntjens wrote in a published commentary last week.
Rwanda, as M23’s main backer, is the key player in any peace process – but its government says it won’t withdraw its forces from the border region until Congo has neutralized a Hutu-based militia, known as FDLR, that Rwanda sees as a threat. Congo retorts that it cannot do this because many of the FDLR units are in M23-controlled territory. So the two sides seem at an impasse.
Jason Stearns, a Congo expert at Simon Fraser University, said the Qatar agreement lacks any clear timeline or incentives for the Rwanda-backed forces. “If the deal is followed to its logical conclusion, M23 would have to dissolve – why would they ever implement this deal?” Prof. Stearns asked during a Brookings Institution online panel discussion last week.
He also questioned the economic incentives in the Washington deal. “It’s going to take years to build up industrial mines. If that is going to work – the economic incentive of industrial mining, with America first – it’s just going to take way too long.”