DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO Behind the war in Goma: the plundering by multinationals

The city of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), fell on 26 January under the assaults of the armed group M23, supported by Rwandan troops (Goma is located on the border with Rwanda). As has been the case for the past thirty years, thousands of civilians have fled the massacres, while the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) have disbanded.

This latest tragic episode can only be understood in relation to the nature of this war: a war of imperialist plundering of the Congo by multinationals (see below). No supposedly “ideological” motivation, no so-called “ethnic hatred” explains the fighting. The M23 – rightly referred to by Congolese journalists as “armed contractors” – is nothing more than a militia terrorising the civilian population on behalf of the multinationals that are plundering the Congo’s resources.

Behind the M23 is Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, a “friend of the West”, according to Radio France (28 January), which states bluntly: ”Rwanda is an autocracy, no doubt about it. The Kagame regime muzzles the opposition. And he is the one who is running the M23 militia. The UN experts are categorical: the Rwandan defence forces ‘control and de facto direct the operations of the M23’. Paul Kagame has sent 3,000 to 4,000 men alongside an equivalent number of M23 fighters to seize Goma, the resource-rich capital of North Kivu.”

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Barrot, “strongly condemned the offensive”. Pure hypocrisy: the close ties between the Kagame regime and the 5th Republic – and Macron in particular – are well known. This is why the people of Kinshasa (capital of the DRC) demonstrated in front of the French embassy when the fall of Goma was announced. Behind the offensive against Goma, there is also the American administration, which takes a very favourable view of the weakening of the Congolese government, considered too close to China.

“The hard-working people of the DRC, like all peoples, want peace and a dignified life.”

The position of the Committee for the Independent Democratic Party of Workers and Peasants

“We are worker and peasant activists from the DRC who have decided to form acommittee for the Independent Democratic Party of Workers and Peasants (PDITP). Our country has been ravaged by no fewer than eight wars since it gained formal political independence on 30 June 1960.

“Today, wars are tearing entire regions across the planet apart.(The document refers to the genocide of the Palestinian people and the imperialist war that has been devastating Ukraine for three years, before focusing on the war of plunder in the DRC.)

“As part of the relentless fight for this plunder, we note that the United States and the European Union are in the process of rehabilitating the railways linking the Lubumbashi region in Angola to the port of Lobito on the Atlantic. This is the purpose of the only visit to the African continent that outgoing US President Joe Biden made to Angola at the beginning of last month and of the trip of Angolan President João Lourenço in mid-January 2025 to President Macron in Paris on behalf of the interests of French capitalists and those of the European Union. Meanwhile, Chinese groups have undertaken to renovate the Tazara corridor (Tanzania-Zambia) to the Indian Ocean for the drainage and removal of minerals from the DRC.

“The war in our country and those taking place elsewhere areone and the same war: it is thewar of imperialismfor profit through the plundering of the wealth of the people, against their sovereignty. The working people of the DRC, like all peoples, want peace and a dignified life; the struggle against war and against the plundering of wealth is that of the peoples of the whole world. In our country, to emerge from war and poverty requires a government that fights for peace, so that the wealth of the DRC serves to meet the needs of the Congolese, which means driving out foreign troops and militias, expelling multinationals and nationalising all mineral wealth under workers’ control.

“This is why the Committee for the PDITP is involved in the preparation of the International Emergency Meeting Against Global Imperialist War in Paris in March 2025. This is why it is urgent to buildcommittees of unity against war and exploitationthroughout the country, bringing together all workers, peasants and young people, whatever their political opinions, for the unity of the Congolese people taking charge of their destiny, to build their sovereignty over their wealth in fraternal cooperation with other peoples around the world.”

Extracts from Liaison Letter No. 1 (January 2025) of the Committee for the PDITP

Thirty years of war, six million deaths

The uninterrupted war for thirty years in the DRC has led to the massacre of more than six million women, men and children and the forced displacement of seven million Congolese. The DRC is the battleground for more than a hundred armed groups, to which must be added foreign troops from countries in the sub-region and the UN troops, MONUSCO, which has more than 20,000 men! These groups, armed forces, militias and mercenaries, who terrorise the population (particularly in North Kivu), enable the mining wealth of the DRC to be plundered by large foreign multinationals.

The DRC has been described as a ‘geological scandal’ by scientists, since its subsoil is brimming with all the elements on the periodic table. Among them is coltan, of which it is estimated that 60% of the world’s resources are found in the DRC. Tantalum – the metal from which it is extracted – is essential for the manufacture of capacitors capable of storing electrical charges, smartphones, laptops, tablets, video game consoles and GPS devices.

In April 2024, the M23 militia – linked to the Rwandan government – took control of the Rubaya mine, the DRC’s largest coltan extraction centre. Long a customer of this “blood mineral”, the American multinational Apple claimed in December 2024 to have stopped sourcing it there after months of legal proceedings initiated by the Congolese government.

Report compiled by Paul Nkunzimana and our correspondents