Members’ Question Time: DRC - What does the fall of Goma mean for regional and continental stability?

Christopher Vandome

Well, hello, and good afternoon, everybody. My name is Chris Vandome. I am a Senior Research Fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House, and I am delighted to welcome you all this afternoon to the Members’ Question Time: “What Does the Fall of Goma Mean for Regional and Continental Stability?” Which I think we’re really, kind of, broadening the topic out to, what does the re-emergence of this nature of conflict in the Eastern DRC mean for regional peace and security and for continental initiatives?

Given that since Ben Shepherd, who is our guest today, wrote in his wonderful expert comment, which you can find online, “The fall of Goma to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in late January underlines the return in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a model of hybrid cross-border warfare that many had hoped had been left in the past.” Even since writing that expert comment, there have been regional initiatives and conversations and high-level discussions on what should happen within the Eastern DRC, and subsequently we’ve seen the M23 occupying Bukavu, which, a city at the south of the Lake, was always seen as the next potential threat, and what many were trying to avoid. So, I’m delighted that we’ve got Ben to speak to us today.

We’ve got 45 minutes with him. By brief way of background, for those who have – who don’t know him, Ben Shepherd is a Consulting Fellow with our Africa Programme. He has deep experience in West and Central Africa, and especially DRC and the wider Great Lakes region, where he has worked in the region permanently, as well. And he has significant practical policy experience, notably within the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and also with the London School of Economics. And has an extensive academic background and CV, which you can find online, and I won’t waste your time with now.

So, we’ll listen to Ben, he’s going to make about ten minutes of opening statements, to get the ball rolling. Thank you to everybody who has already submitted their questions to us in advance, and for those who haven’t, please do keep your questions coming in. We want this to be as interactive a session as possible. So, I’ll hand over to Ben for ten minutes, he will speak, and then before the end, we’ll allow him, once he’s answered questions, to do a quick wrap up. And we also have a poll, so we’re going to be asking a poll of all of our watchers today, and that poll is, “Is major regional escalation likely?” You may already have a view on this, or you may want to make up your mind once you’ve listened to Ben, but “Is major regional escalation likely?”

So, Ben, over to you. You know, you have written, “Is it impossible – It is impossible to be certain of the precise tactical logic behind the relaunch of the M23, but on a strategic level, it perhaps reflects tectonic shifts in the underlying bedrock of African geopolitics.” So, please, what are the factors behind the re-emergence of the M23, and what do you mean by “tectonic shifts in underlying bedrock of African realpolitik”? Thank you.

Ben Shepherd

Thanks, Chris, and thanks for the introduction. You’ve asked a tricky question right out of the gate there for me. Before I start, I just wanted to say, I’m a long-term observer of DRC and of the Great Lakes region. I first went to Congo in 2002, to Goma, when it was under the control of the RCDG, one of the long string of antecedents of the M23, and then to Kinshasa the following year. So, my only advantage, really, is that I’ve watched the situation for quite a long time. I probably have less fingertip knowledge of present events than probably quite a lot of people on this call. So, what I thought I’d do today was try and take, kind of, half a step back and start asking some of the tricky questions about what this all might mean. And I present what I’m doing to say with due humility. These are enormous and very complicated topics that are still emerging, so none of this is intended to be remotely definitive, but I hope, to some extent, thought provoking, and that we can have an interesting and interactive session today.

For those on the call who haven’t been following the detail, I thought I’d just give a very brief introductory overview. The M23 relaunched in late 2021, in November. Its epicentre is North Kivu, though as Chris has said, it’s moved in recent weeks further south into South Kivu, with the fall of Bukavu, notably. The Kivus are something like 100 and – sorry, 1,500km from Kinshasa, which to put in context, is something like the distance between London and the western border of Ukraine, so it’s a very long way indeed. There are notoriously multiple armed groups active in Eastern DRC. You know, the numbers vary depending on the source, but probably more than 100, including the ADF, including – who are Ugandan rebels linked to the caliphate, operating a bit further north than the M23, the FDLR and others.

The M23, in 2021, was just one among these many. In fact, it was a real remnant. It was a few guys camping on a volcano, very close to the tripoint of Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. So, it was a surprise when they, kind of, roared back onto the scene, but it also came with a strong sense of déjà vu, that depending on how you want to count it, this is the third or fourth, or even fifth, time that a rebel group along these lines has taken centre stage in the Great Lakes. Going back to the RCD in 1998 and perhaps the FDL in 96. And it’s a relatively well-worn model. Significant Rwandan military support, as you said, which has been documented in this case by repeated groups of experts’ reports to the UN Sanctions Committee and backed by, I think, statements from pretty much all the world’s major powers. Operating behind a political agenda that’s again remained relatively unchanged, fluctuates, the lines they hit are return of Congolese Tutsi refugees. There are of issues around citizenship and extremism in the DRC, and around the FDLR.

As I said in the expert comment, I and many other observers, I think, thought that that model had run its course in 2013. Its re-emergence in 2021, I think, does speak to a new strategic context, as I wrote in the piece, “a shift in the bedrock of African geopolitics.” Perhaps that overclaiming, but I will come to offer some justification for that perspective, I think. I thought before I did that, I’d go into a little bit of what’s happened over the past couple of years, ‘cause it sets all this in context. That from its relaunch, the M23 was able to extend its control, defeat attempts by the Congolese military, the FARDC, and their allies, to push them back. With enormous displacement, hundreds and thousands loss of life and atrocities, a reversal of what had been some green shoots of development in Eastern Congo, long awaited and much needed, including road building. And do quite a lot to undermine what progress there had been on managing the other armed groups, particularly on the FDLR itself.

We’ll come to it later, I’m sure, but the FDLR, the remnants, or borne from the remnants of the forces that carried out the 94 genocide in Rwanda, but had over time, over decades, been chipped away at and eroded, to the point where probably only a few hundred combatants left in the late 2010s. Where their, sort of, fighting stock now sits is, I don’t know, it is impossible to say, because they’ve been drawn back into the fighting on the side of the Congolese military over the last two or three years. But suffice it to say, between 2022 and 2024, the M23 did quite significant local damage, and the situation certainly gradually worsened. But I, and I think other Analysts, didn’t think that we were going to see the kind of escalation that we’ve seen over the last two months, particularly the fall of Goma in January and the subsequent taking of Bukavu, each of which represents an escalatory step.

The reason I didn’t think that was going to happen, and I hold my hands up to being wrong, was that it felt like it was repeating the strategic mistake that was made by the M23 and their backers in 2012/2013, which is the fall of Goma. Raised the profile of the crisis, put it on the front pages, raised the political stakes, and led to quite significant international pressure on Rwanda, including suspensions of aid disbursements and other programmes. And it was that, in combination with a significant military force deployed by South Africa and other South African nations, under the rubric of the UN Force Intervention Brigade that defeated the M23 in 2013, and, as I thought at the time, had pushed them into the annals of history, wrongly.

So, the broad question for today is, why was this, the M23 model, resurrected in 2021, and why were these escalatory steps taken in 2025? Many answers potentially to that. Obviously, the global context is different now than it was more than a decade ago. There’s been a lot of commentary that we are moving into an era of multipolarity, I heard Sir Alex Younger, the former Head of MI6, on – interviewed a couple of times, talking about “moving to a world – a Yalta world rather than a Helsinki world,” referring to the post-war conference, where the world was divided up by the majors into spheres of influence. You know, sort of, brute realpolitik.

There are also obviously lots of concurrent crises in the world, from, you know, from the Middle East to Ukraine, to Sudan, to elsewhere, and relatively limited bandwidth amongst an international community that is preoccupied elsewhere. A distinct lack of unity on the part of “an international community,” and I’d put that inverted commas, ‘cause I’m not sure we can necessarily refer to that unambiguously anymore. All of which allows, potentially, space for a different approach, you know, to a wide range of security agendas on the continent, from borderland security to access to incredibly valuable raw materials and critical minerals. And, you know, there’s an awful lot been said about the DRC’s enormous stock of rare earth minerals, of cobalt, of copper and other things that are absolutely crucial to green transitions, and are going to be increasingly central to the global economy.

So, internationally, I think there’s a very different context. Regionally, there’s a different context, in that the major Southern African players, who have in the past, acted as a, sort of, backstop and security guarantor for the DRC in Angola and South Africa, are not necessarily in the same place economically and militarily as they were in 2012. And I think continentally, we’ve seen a change, in that, you know, the role of the AU in managing this crisis has not been as significant as perhaps people would have expected and hoped. And the frameworks that were put in place, you know, the African Peace and Security Architecture, for instance, has been almost completely peripheral. So, continentally, you have this sense of a weakening set of guardrails maintaining the security of the system.

Now, what does this all mean? I’m aware I’m overrunning my ten minutes, but I think this is the core question. In the short to medium-term, there is a significant risk of a regional escalation. The easy parallels to draw are with the start of the Congo wars in the 1990s, when successive rebellions in 96 and 98 triggered conflict, that in the case of the Second Congo War drew in the armies of nine African nations, was colloquially, you know, termed “Africa’s World War.” They’re attempting parallels in looking at the turmoil of the international system now, compared to the post-Cold War moment of the 1990s, where a whole load of prior rules had been thrown up in the air and no-one quite knew where they are going to land. You know, this was before Fukuyama’s “End of History” had really landed and we moved into, you know, what now with hindsight, looks like an era of a, sort of, longish piece, to some extent. So, they’re attempting parallels with the 90s.

If the M23, or the AFC, the Alliance Fleuve Congo, continue their advance away from the Kivus, down towards the mining areas in the former Katanga provinces or towards the centre of the country, then yes, I think an escalation is entirely possible, ‘cause much bigger equities come into play. Be that the mining industry based in the former Katanga provinces further south, or the stability, overall, of the DRC Government, which has long been thought of as one of Angola’s, kind of, major national security priorities. So, if the threatened advance that certain M23 leaders have been quoted on does come to pass, then I think the stakes go up very quickly, and there are very big risks. There is still hope that all parties pull back from that particular cliff edge, and that the diplomacy is given space and a chance to find a soft landing for all of this. We can discuss perhaps whether that’s likely or not.

So, for the region, I think there are genuine risks. I also think this is perhaps and potentially, a bellwether for a new dispensation on the continent, other hardening of regionalisms or of regional realpolitiks, and a change in the way that borders and borderlands, which has been a preoccupation for a long time, sit within a terrain of African security governance. And that’s a, you know, that’s a very big topic, but that’s what I think this opens out. So, I’ll stop with my introductory ramble at that point.

Christopher Vandome

Yeah, thank you, Ben. There are a lot of questions coming in, and a lot of them, I think, looking for greater detail or picking up on some of the things that you have already said. So, I’m going to start with the regional diplomatic picture, and one of the questions we’ve received is, “What are the diplomatic implications of excluding the African Union Commission Chairperson from the session on a conflict where African Union is a guarantor of peace processes?” This has been covered – I think we’ve got three or four questions on this, also picking up on, you know, again, two – the – two weeks ago, the EAC-SADC discussions that excluded the AU. And, also, there’s a question, kind of, linked into that, which is, “How ready is the AU?” So, please, keen to hear your thoughts on that.

Ben Shepherd

Thank you, yeah. I mean, the AU and the role of the AU is a, you know, an enormous topic in its own right and not one that I claim an enormous amount of knowledge on. But it’s felt to me that the AU has struggled to become the, kind of, lodestone for these questions of peace and security continentally, simply because its members haven’t really wanted it to. You know, as with any supranational organisation, it is – it’s – it can’t be more than the sum of its parts. And if it hasn’t been offered the delegated authority by its members to act with, you know, sanction and authority, then it’s not going to be able to. You know, there are still questions over its funding, it’s majority externally funded, and there was a speech I saw by Moussa Faki Mahamat in February last year, so a year ago, saying that “over the last three years,” 2021, 2022 and 2023, “93% of AU’s decisions have not been implemented.” You know, tha – and that could be decisions by the PSC, it could be the others.

So, are there structural problems with the role of the AU? Yes, I think so, and, you know, again, I was reading recently that President Kagame was leading a reform effort in the AU between 2016 and 2024, and was reported to have been frustrated by a lack of progress on that. So, I think there are some systemic issues with the AU and the role it’s been allowed to play by the continent. I don’t think it’s fair, necessarily, to blame the institution. It’s all a product of politics. I think it also says something about a context of global multipolarity, and a move, potentially, away from a rules-based system, where if state – individual nation states feel like they have to scramble for advantage, they’re unlikely to come together with the amount of unity you’d need to invest a body like the AU with the authority to act in a circumstance like this.

And the fact that we saw the AU excluded from a meeting between EAC and SADC is emblematic of exactly that, that where there may not be continental unity sufficient to have a meaningful African Union, there may be regional, there may be shared regional equities that allow a more unified voice from within SADC or from within the EAC. Which offers a different vision of the future of the continent, and, again, I don’t want to overclaim on that.

A final thought on that is, you know, looking back, the AU should be the guarantor of peace processes. I’m not sure it has been, in practical terms, the guarantor of a great deal. You know, there’s lots of – for instance, there’s been a lot of auth – AU authorised security missions, but with – when you look under the hood of those, they’ve been more about bilateral policy objectives as the contributing countries or the, you know, the people who are pushing them, than necessarily an AU-led and controlled initiative. And maybe on paper, some of these things were, sort of, under the AU rubric, but in practice, not necessarily. So, I think it’s that distance between a hope for reality of the A – a hopeful, sort of, image of the AU and the practical reality that is maybe now coming into focus.

Christopher Vandome

Can I go – just to stay on this issue of regional diplomacy, before we move on, and the – as we expected beforehand, there’s a – there are a lot of questions about cross-border and transnational linkages and regional players. But there is a question here from Rachel, who was with you in Nairobi back in the early 2000s, and she’s got a question about the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. And, you know, do some of the – “Do you think that some of the principles and characteristics that underpin the conference still have a chance of playing a constructive role in supporting a resolution now?”

Ben Shepherd

That’s a very good question, and I think the ICGLR has struggled to find its place. You know, it was instituted as a way of providing a framework to resolve regional Great Lakes security challenges, and what we’re seeing right now is just a recurrence of the most fundamental of those. I think it hasn’t necessarily been able to take up the space and hold the weight that it could have done. It’s not been particularly present in the diplomatic initiatives to end this current M23 crisis. Albeit the Luanda crisis, which I’ll talk about, is at least nominally under ICGLR control, it’s understood, I think, quite widely, as being an Angolan initiative. They happen to be the – hold the chairmanship of the ICGLR at the time it was launched, but, you know, I’m not sure that the ICGLR has been able to consolidate itself into a meaningful region, if you like, and that’s a question of geography as much as anything else.

It’s a very difficult, very big set of questions, but the fact that Africa’s regions and regional economy communities have been largely overlapping, I think has been a, sort of – a truth that people have been content to look away from. The tensions within that, within the rules, across the “spaghetti bowl,” famously called, of African regional economic communities. And adding another one to that, in the ICGLR, with this sprawling membership, you know, the – from the Sudans down, to Angola and beyond, has left it without a, kind of, political kernel that’s able to give it the weight that it would need. That’s a very rambling answer to the question. I think the ICGLR is a very interesting case study and certainly, is important and will remain so, but hasn’t been able to take up that space as the heart of an effective structure to rationalise and solve the Great Lakes’ problems.

Christopher Vandome

I want – so, I think probably the biggest topic that people are asking questions around is clearly the transnational nature of this. Now, “What does the M23’s ability to launch co-ordinated attacks suggest about its source of funding, supply chains, access to advanced weaponry?” You know, as you pointed in – at the beginning of the webinar, you know, a couple of years ago this was a small group of people sitting on a volcano, and now when we see the images on the television and coming through on the media and Twitter, these guys are armed and, you know, they’re tooled up and they have capacity and they’ve – they’re – this is coming from somewhere. And, you know, and so there’s that element of it, but there’s another element as well, just to pick up on some of these questions to keep things moving…

Ben Shepherd

Hmmm.

Christopher Vandome

…which is, you know, the role of “Uganda in Bunia.” There’s – you know, “What does it mean of the withdrawal of Burundian forces?” “What are the risks of spillovers here?” So, you know, there – the transnational element of this, yes, I mean, we’ve got loads of questions coming through on particularly diplomatic pressure points, particularly on Kigali, and aid dependency in Kigali and the role of the West there. So, there’s, you know, there’s a huge amount of unpick here, but I think the crux of this is, you know, what does all of this mean, you know? And again, to, you know, steal your analogy of the spaghetti bowl, you know, if we start, kind of, deciphering all of this, what does this mean?

Ben Shepherd

Hmmm, yeah, two separate questions, slightly, there. I mean, the – to go back to the first one you asked, I mean, yes, the rapid acceleration of capacity and numbers of the M23 was indicative from fairly early on that they were getting significant external support. And that support, fairly clearly, has come from Rwanda, and that has been documented, as I said, by successive groups of experts’ reports, I commend them to those who haven’t read them, that go into quite a significant level of detail. Those, you know, have been accepted and agreed by, as I said, pretty much all major global players.

So, you know, in practical terms, early last year, I believe, they were talking around three to 4,000 RDF forces on the ground in the Congo, bringing with them quite significant sophisticated weaponry, drone jamming technology, anti-aircraft capacity. And that those actors are a force multiplier and the, kind of, tip of the steer – spear for the M23, enabling it to take territory. At that time, a year ago, they were talking about there being roughly 3,000 M23 fighters. In their most recent report of December last year, they said that there was something like 5,500 more M23 fighters, either in training or having been trained. So, whether that proportion of Rwandan forces, vis-à-vis M23 forces, remains the case today, I don’t know. It’s – where – they also go into a little bit of detail about recruitment into M23, coming from within its area of control, and also from refugee populations across the region. Financing re-equipment for them, I’m not sure, I haven’t seen evidence on that.

But it begs a question of why this is all being done now, and that’s a very complicated one to answer. Because as you started with the quote from my little comment piece about hybridity, the reason this is so challenging to understand is because it is a hybrid. The M23 at its core, at its very kernel, is linked to Congolese communities that have fought in successive rebellions, over, as I say, quite a consistent set of issues around refugee returns and around citizenship. Those are, to some extent, reasonable objectives. You know, there are real concerns for the Congolese Tutsi community, and issues of, you know, anti-Tutsi xenophobia in the FDLR are real.

But one can have a degree of not sympathy, but understanding, of motive without any agreement at all about means. And the thought that those things can be solved down the barrel of a gun through an occupation that is as violent and damaging as this one has been, not only doesn’t make sense on the face of it, has failed repeatedly in the past to make a sustainable change. So, are those the core motives of some of the M23’s kernel? Possibly so. Their revendications, the – you know, their objectives seem to shift fairly significantly from complaining about – wanting to change Congolese governance, to threats to march to Kinshasa to kick over the government there, to actually relatively small-scale ones around local issues affecting communities in Masisi and Rutshuru. So, it’s hard to know exactly what they want.

Sitting behind that, and I’m imagining it’s a question that’s being asked, and it’s one I can only really speculate on, is what the Rwandan motive for this is. And in that, I think it’s very hard to separate a perceived security threat, and I underline the word perceived there, emanating from what they consider to be the ungoverned spaces of Eastern DRC, and the litany of armed groups that have been able to make their home there over a very long period of time, to balancing Rwan – Uganda and Burundi. Long rivals to Rwanda, particularly in terms of access to and control over trade into the economic space of the DRC, which extend a very long way westwards.

One of the potential triggers that’s been written about for why the M23 came back this time was the fact that Burundi had sent troops into DRC to go after its non-state armed enemies there, and Uganda has also been given license to send troops into DRC to go after the ADF. And that there’s this, sort of, game of tit-for-tat regional balancing that goes on between these long-term rivals, and that’s – that, in part, is what pulled Rwanda in. As I said, we can speculate, and I actually wrote down a long list of potential reasons why Rwanda may be doing this. I – it’s very hard to say from the outside, in any definitive way.

What I think is interesting is, as I said at the beginning, what this potentially means, I think how it evolves over the next months will do a lot to give us the answer to that question. If, as I wrote in the piece, it becomes a, sort of, de facto thiefdom, in the area of M23 control that is consolidated over time and, you know, the M23 has been widely reported as having put down roots, in terms of appointing local officials, establishing systems and governance, then that is more challenging over the long-term for the status quo. I think, potentially even continentally, that if a deal is done and people pull back from the brink and we revert to something that looks a bit more like the status quo ante.

Christopher Vandome

I want to move on, so, we – I’m going to – got a cluster of questions around domestic politics, a cluster of questions around potential support for FARDC. I’m going to start with a very simple, and perhaps there’s a very quick and easy answer, which is the role of minerals. And you’ve touched on it a little bit, but, you know, in that space, you know, kind of, 60km west of Goma and Go – Rubaya, you know, what role is – are minerals playing in this? Is this as much about these, kind of, economic drivers as some people are saying, or are these, kind of, opportunistic means of making money but not necessarily the overall objective? You know, again, huge question, but perhaps a quick comment on that, and then we’ll start talking about some of the domestic political issues.

Ben Shepherd

Sure. I have long been suspicious of an oversimplified “The DRC is a resource war” narrative, because it takes away all the political context, all the history and tells quite a seductive but oversimplified story. Does it factor into calculations on all sides? Absolutely, but I have heard it said by experts on the trade that, you know, a lot of that, if not most, of the mineral production from these areas of the DRC were going via Rwanda before the M23 returned, you know. The re-export of coltan, of gold, was flowing that way anyway, so it doesn’t necessarily stand up that that was the motive for this. Albeit I’m sure there’s a lot of moving parts that I’m not aware of.

I think it’s more likely to be in a very broad sense of maintaining a sphere of influence, and it – less about an immediate case of assuming control and more about a long-term ability to have a sense of a guarantee of supply, if that makes sense, as a distinction. In the big picture, you know, the really big issues around mining minerals in the DRC are not in the Kivus, they’re in the former Katanga provinces alo – like, 500km to the south, where the Copperbelt, with its global cobalt deposits sit. And the Copperbelt has been the, sort of, crown jewel of Congo’s political economy, going back to the pre-colonial – I mean, the pre-independence period, right? And that I don’t think plays into the immediate questions over what’s going on in the Kivus in quite the same way. It’s – the major profit from there has been in gold, as well as coltan. So, clearly part of the equation, I don’t think maybe as important as has been made out, but that’s just a, sort of, subjective judgment call.

Christopher Vandome

Yeah, thanks very much, and yeah, this is perhaps a call for assistance. I know that we’ve got a lot of people on the call this afternoon who are interested in this area. Do get in touch with us separately. Some of us are currently working on a piece looking at a lot of this and looking at traceability initiatives in the Eastern DRC and, you know, the distinctions between, you know, four million tonnes of mined material, of which two and a half to three million tonnes a year is coming out of Katanga, versus 120 tonnes a month that’s being smuggled over the border, according to those US – UN estimates out of the Eastern DRC. But the – you know, a huge impact on who’s – you know, the importance for livelihoods, who’s being affected, relationships between csarite and gold and the spread – you know, it’s a huge issue and one that we do call for people to, you know, get in contact with us about.

So, I want to move onto the cluster of questions around domestic politics. So, there’s been a number of people speculating and asking, you know, “What’s this” – you know, “What are the implications of Tshisekedi pursuing constitutional reform?” In – you know, “What are the connections” – a question here from Mattias, asking about the AFC, M23 link…

Ben Shepherd

Hmmm.

Christopher Vandome

…again, you know, about domestic political change, and also a few questions around, you know, speculations of a coup in Kinshasa. So, quickly, can you talk us through what you see as being the domestic implications here?

Ben Shepherd

I mean, very briefly, I think President Tshisekedi is under a huge amount of pressure. He was, we should remember, re-elected fairly recently, with elections that were broadly accepted as representative of very – so, I think he, unlike some of his predecessors, he doesn’t have the same burden of a long period of unpopularity, as certainly was the case, I think, with President Kabila towards the end of his tenure, and absolutely was the case with President Mobutu towards the end of his time in office.

So, I don’t think we’re in a similar position to the mid-90s when there was an enormous groundswell of support behind, you know, finally removing the ancien régime, and getting rid of Mobutu. You know, the country had decayed enormously at that point, including its military, and the rallying cry to get in behind an insurgency to kick him out was popular. It – that same call wasn’t popular in 2012/2013, when the M23 tried it the first time. They, you know, they raised the flag of, “We’re going to go to Kinshasa, come and join us,” and almost nobody did. It wasn’t popular when the CNDP tried it before that.

So, do I think that the AFC will be able to muster significant Congolese support for the long march across the country? No, I don’t, I don’t think that’s plausible at this stage. I think there may well have been recruitment to the M23 from within areas they control, much of it probably forced. I don’t think that translates into any kind of domestic political popularity for either M23 or AFC. There is obviously discontent with Tshisekedi, and the rumoured attempt to change the constitution, I think, would fundamentally crystallise that, were it to come to pass, and the manifest and obvious unpopularity of Kabila in the runup to the 2018 elections, when we had [inaudible – 40:24] , you know, the delay of the elections over a long period of time, and an upwelling of popular discontent against him. I don’t think we’re in quite the same place yet.

So, a popular political uprising I think is unlikely, right now. Someone’s asked a question about a “coup.” Yes, of course, I suppose it’s possible. I don’t have any particular insight onto that, beyond the fact that the way that the FARDC, the Congolese military, is, sort of, crosscut by parallel chains of loyalty and parallel chains of command, and attempts to do meaningful security sector reform have failed over many, many years, is in part, a reflection of the Mobutu-era military, which was built that way for a purpose, which was so that it wouldn’t threaten central power. Could there be a coup by elements of the military? Well, certainly, I’m sure that’s possible in any place. Do I think the DRC has the kind of military that would make that likely? No, I don’t. Never say never, and it’s a snap judgment call, but, you know, if – as I said earlier, if the advance continues, or if the economy of the DRC takes a tumble, then potentially. But for now, at least my reading, and I’ve been wrong about many things, is that that’s not necessarily likely.

Christopher Vandome

Well, Ben, I’ve been reading your expert comments for over a decade now, and you don’t get that much wrong. So, I want us to wrap up, because we’re now down to the last two minutes, but I want – before we let you have your, kind of – your final statement, and then I’ll hand over and we’ll do the poll, I just want to throw some unanswered, kind of, issues at you that perhaps you might latch onto in your final statement. And one of them is, “Why has the international response been so muted?” One of them is the potential for – you know, there’s been a discussion here around MONUSCO and SAMIDRC and, you know, the SANDF involvement, and so on, in peacekeeping roles, and there’s been a question about “regional support for FARDC and in – the inclusion of Chad.”

And then another question, which perhaps you, you know – might be where you land on to wrap all this up actually, is the – “What strategy should international community and regional organisations adopt to mitigate the humanitarian response?” And there have been in the questions here people from donor organisations and from development partners, who are asking the same thing, you know, what…?

Ben Shepherd

Hmmm.

Christopher Vandome

You know, given the speed at which this has occurred and given where we are now, what can these organisations now be doing on the ground to help mitigate some of the humanitarian impact of that? So, I’ll let you take your last couple of minutes. We do want to finish as close on time as we can, and then we’ll have the poll. So, Ben, please.

Ben Shepherd

Sure, thank you. Again, these are all enormous questions. The muted response I think is probably broadly, a reflection of the global context at this point. You know, lots of other crises, minimal bandwidth, a sense that people are casting around in quite a hard-edged way for alliances. I think Rwanda has been able to carve a space for itself as being seen as a reliable security partner in places like the CAR and Mozambique. As well as, you know, I thought there was an irony in the European Union calling for the withdrawal of Rwandan troops, but also resisting the suspension of the memorandum of understanding on sustainable critical mineral supply chains. So, you know, that’s emblematic of the tension, I think, within it, that world powers feel like they need to be doing deals, because if they don’t, the Chinese Government’s going to do those deals, at the same time as trying to maintain a line on issues around peace, security and humanitarian suffering. And that’s a policy challenge, right, and I’m not sure we’ve got an answer to it. So, that’s the very short version on that.

What can be done? I mean, I think the ob – you know, obviously, a ceasefire and humanitarian access in the first instance. We’ve got these twin track peace processes of Rwanda and Nairobi, which I haven’t really talked about, which the EAC-SADC meeting decided to try and combine. Which is going to be a challenge, because they’re, kind of, quite incompatible, and they ask very, very difficult questions of sequencing. You know, if you sat down with the M23 tomorrow, while they’re in a position of fairly unchallenged military superiority, would they be motivated to negotiate in good faith? Well, probably not. That’s not – tends – doesn’t tend to be the way that negotiations work. The interstate negotiation between Rwanda and the DRC has not thus far borne fruit, but for me, is the answer, that absent a removal of the Rwandan military weight, the M23 are unlikely to come to the table meaningfully. Which would mirror what happened in 2012/2013, when it was that removal of support that enabled a military solution to this whole thing.

Brings me onto the third point, support to the FARDC, is a military solution like we saw in 2013 likely? I’m not an expert on SANDF or other regional militaries. You probably know a great deal more than me, Chris, but my sense is that some of the capacity that was there in 2012/2013 isn’t there anymore. You know, the Rooivalk attack helicopters have all been decommissioned, right? And so, who is there that could step in to play that role? It’s not obvious to me. I’ve not heard of Chad in that context, but I think Chad has its own internal challenges, and obviously, its interlinkages to Sudan mean that there are other things going on.

So, that’s one of the head scratchers here, is that that is one of the shifts in the terrain and it’s hard to see where that, kind of, military uplift could come from, which brings us back to looking for negotiated settlements to this. And albeit I find the whole – the truism a little bit trite, “There is no military solution.” I think in this case it may be correct, and that for the Congolese civilians suffering so appallingly right now, what we need is progress on this. You know, a humanitarian access will, fingers crossed, come from, you know, a ceasefire, but that will need to be based on a series of political calculations that can be shifted by a change in mood around the world.

I think that may be coming very slowly. We saw that the Rwandan High Commissioner in London had been called into the FCDO, I believe yesterday. It may be that the supertanker of international policy does shift, somewhat, but we haven’t necessarily seen that yet. So, yeah, as I said right at the beginning, I can’t be definitive about any of this. It’s huge, it’s extremely complicated and it’s evolving.

Christopher Vandome

Well, Ben, thank you very much for your time this afternoon, and I’d like to thank everybody who’s joined the webinar, who’s listened. We have had a huge number of questions coming through in the chat box, in the Q&A. I’ve also seen some coming through by email and by WhatsApp, and so we’re really grateful and we – I hope that we’ve been able to answer a lot of what you’ve been putting forward. Please do stay in touch with the Programme and in touch with Chatham House, and you can keep these questions coming through. And for people who can engage with us as the Africa Programme, we will definitely be able to continue the conversation going forward.

And so, yeah, thanks, Ben, thanks, audience. Do stay on for the next 30 seconds, because my colleagues are going to put up a poll, and as I said at the beginning, the question is, “Is a major regional escalation likely?” And so, we’ll keep watching this, but yeah, results will be coming and we’ve got close to halfway participated so far.

Ben Shepherd

And while we wait, Chris, without wanting to, you know, set up any commitments, I think there’s clearly an appetite to have a longer conversation on these things. I’m very aware that we’ve skirted across a lot of very, very deep waters here, and opportunities to really explore these questions properly, I think, you know, should be looked for. So, I think we should take that on board, the level of engagement interest on this, anyway.

Christopher Vandome

Perfect. Well, you know, this is not scientific, and clearly this is not going to influence decisions in African regional capitals as these conversations go forward, but our poll result is in, and so, in answer to, “Is a major regional escalation likely?” 59% have said “Yes,” and 41% have said “No.” So, there we have it, the official poll results, and yeah, as Ben said, I think we do need much more time in talking about this. So, do keep in touch and we’ll – we will certainly be reaching out again to all of you as this situation develops. Thank you all very much, bye, bye.