Thirty years later, the FDLR survives: What do the DRC and the West really want?

For over thirty years, the FDLR has remained an armed presence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC says it should be neutralised. Western governments say it should be neutralised. The United Nations Security Council has sanctioned its leaders, demanded its disarmament and repeatedly called for its neutralisation. At one point, the Council went so far as to describe the swift neutralisation of the FDLR as a “top priority.” Yet the FDLR survives. Perhaps, after three decades, we are asking the wrong question. The question is no longer whether the DRC and Western governments know what the FDLR is. They know. Nor is it whether they formally condemn it. They do. The more difficult question is why a sovereign state on whose territory the organisation operates, supported for decades by an international system possessing enormous diplomatic, financial, intelligence and military resources, has failed to ensure that an armed organisation rooted partly in forces associated with the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi ceases to exist as an organised military and ideological threat. This question must be asked carefully. There is no established evidence that “the West” collectively created, finances, arms or commands the FDLR today. We should not replace serious analysis with conspiracy theories. However, rejecting an unproven conspiracy does not absolve either the DRC or the international community of responsibility for persistent failure. Between sponsorship and innocence lies a large territory occupied by political convenience, strategic utility, selective enforcement, geopolitical calculation, competing economic interests and unwillingness to impose sufficient costs on those who obstruct an agreed objective. That is the territory we collectively need to examine. For Rwanda, the story does not begin with the creation of the FDLR. It does not even begin in 1994. It reaches back into the colonial transformation of Rwandan society. Hutu, Tutsi and Twa existed before European colonisation. Belgium did not invent these terms. But Belgian colonial administration, influenced by European racial theories and supported by important sections of the missionary establishment, helped transform complex social identities into increasingly rigid racial and political classifications. The notorious Hamitic hypothesis assigned supposedly different racial origins and characteristics to Rwandans. Colonial censuses and identity documentation subsequently gave administrative force to those classifications. By the 1930s, the colonial state had helped turn identity into bureaucracy. This distinction matters. Belgium did not simply observe Rwandan society. Colonial rule helped reorganise its political meaning. Identities that had been more complex and permeable became increasingly hereditary administrative categories carrying consequences for education, authority, employment and political opportunity. Colonialism did not mechanically cause the Genocide against the Tutsi. Such an argument would wrongly diminish the responsibility of the Rwandan political leaders, ideologues, military officers, militia organisers and individual perpetrators who consciously prepared and carried out genocide. But neither can serious history pretend that the racialisation and bureaucratisation of Rwandan identities had nothing to do with the political environment inherited by independent Rwanda. The colonial state helped construct a machinery of political classification. Postcolonial extremists ultimately transformed identity into a criterion for exclusion, persecution and extermination. The Belgian inspired ID card was refined by Rwandan authorities and used to determine whom to kill and whom to spare in 1994. Here again, speculation is unnecessary. The United Nations’ own independent inquiry headed by former Swedish Prime Minister Carlson Ingevar concluded that the international community failed Rwanda. It is still failing Rwanda today. The problem was not simply insufficient information. It was a catastrophic absence of political will. The world knew that civilians were being slaughtered and nevertheless failed to mobilise the action required to stop the Genocide against the Tutsi. France’s historical role presents an additional and particularly difficult chapter. France’s own Duclert Commission later concluded that French policy carried heavy and overwhelming responsibilities, while stopping short of finding evidence that France deliberately participated in the genocidal enterprise. That distinction must be preserved. But so must the finding of grave political and institutional failure. For me and Rwanda, therefore, one lesson of 1994 is impossible to erase: international recognition of danger does not necessarily produce international protection. That lesson is fundamental to understanding Rwanda’s contemporary security thinking. When the genocidal regime was defeated in July 1994, its military and political structures did not simply disappear. Former FAR soldiers, Interahamwe members and political networks crossed ushered in the broad light into what was then Mobutu’s Zaire alongside hundreds of thousands of civilians. Armed structures subsequently reorganised under different names and formations, eventually producing the FDLR. The FDLR is consequently not simply another Congolese armed group competing over a hill, a mine or a local chieftaincy. Its genealogy connects directly with one of the darkest chapters in Rwanda’s history. Its military capacity may have diminished considerably over the decades, but military capability is not the only measure of a security threat. Ideology, intention, networks, alliances and the consequences of miscalculation also matter. Western policymakers may understandably ask how many fighters FDLR possesses today, what territory it controls and whether it could realistically defeat the Rwanda Defence Force. Rwanda must ask additional questions. What ideology survives? Which networks remain? With whom are they cooperating? Why does an armed organisation carrying this historical genealogy remain organised across Rwanda’s border? And why should Rwanda once again be asked to assume that an extremist movement is harmless because outsiders consider its present military capacity insufficient? History makes those questions legitimate. The Security Council itself has repeatedly recognised the problem. More recently in 2014 and 2015 it described the swift neutralisation of FDLR as a top priority. It recognised that leaders and members of the organisation included perpetrators of the Genocide against the Tutsi. It called for military action when voluntary disarmament failed. It subsequently expressed concern about collaboration between elements of the Congolese armed forces and FDLR. A decade later, Western governments and UN experts were still reporting cooperation between FARDC elements and FDLR. This is where the credibility problem becomes unavoidable. What does “top priority” mean if, more than ten years after something was declared a top priority, the international community is still negotiating another plan to achieve it? Unquestionably,the first responsibility must lie with the state on whose territory FDLR operates. The DRC cannot indefinitely describe FDLR as somebody else’s problem. It cannot simultaneously affirm that the organisation must be neutralised while elements of its security apparatus cooperate with it when doing so appears militarily useful. Congolese state governance weaknesses undoubtedly explain part of the problem. Eastern DRC is vast. State institutions are weak. Borders are porous. Armed groups survive through local alliances, illicit taxation, mineral networks and political protection. Neutralising an organisation such as FDLR requires much more than a battlefield operation. It requires intelligence, territorial administration, disarmament, prosecution, repatriation, financial disruption and sustained political commitment. Nevertheless, incapacity cannot explain collaboration. Once elements of FARDC cooperate with FDLR, supply it or employ its fighters alongside other armed auxiliaries against another enemy, the issue changes fundamentally. FDLR is no longer simply an armed group the Congolese state has failed to eliminate. At particular moments, it becomes an armed group that elements of that state consider strategically useful. And authorities incorporate them in the state apparatus at all levels. That is the logic of proxy warfare. It also raises a question that Kinshasa should answer clearly: does the DRC genuinely want FDLR eliminated, or does it sometimes prefer an FDLR sufficiently weak not to threaten Kinshasa but sufficiently alive to remain useful against Rwanda and its perceived allies? That question is uncomfortable, I know. However, decades of survival combined with documented episodes of cooperation make it legitimate. The Western response creates another question. When Western governments conclude that Rwanda allegedly supports M23, they speak the language of state responsibility. M23 commanders are sanctioned. Rwandan military officers have been sanctioned. Senior officials have been sanctioned. Economic entities have been targeted. Aid, defence cooperation and diplomatic relations have been affected. When the same international actors acknowledge cooperation between elements of FARDC and FDLR, the language frequently becomes softer. Kinshasa is urged to stop cooperating. It is encouraged to implement neutralisation plans. Another roadmap is negotiated. Another mechanism is established. There have been exceptions. Congolese Colonel Salomon Tokolonga was sanctioned by both the United States and European Union in 2023 for conduct that included supplying ammunition to FDLR fighters. It would therefore be inaccurate to argue that no Congolese official has faced consequences. Unfortunately, the broader asymmetry remains worthy of examination. Why has accountability for alleged Rwandan support to M23 escalated through military, governmental, economic and diplomatic levels while documented cooperation between elements of the Congolese state and FDLR has generally produced much less escalation against the Congolese state? This is not an argument for ignoring M23. M23’s territorial expansion and conventional military capability have created serious dangers for civilians, Congolese sovereignty and regional stability. The issue is consistency. If state support to one armed group creates state responsibility, then state collaboration with another armed group should also create state responsibility. International law cannot become more demanding or less demanding according to which government is involved. Geopolitics may provide part of the explanation. The DRC is not an ordinary geopolitical space. It is one of Africa’s largest countries, located at the intersection of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa and endowed with extraordinary mineral resources. Cobalt, copper, uranium, lithium and other critical minerals have become increasingly important to the technologies, defence industries and energy systems around which twenty-first-century economic competition is being organised. China already occupies a formidable position in Congolese mining and global mineral-processing supply chains. The United States and Europe increasingly seek diversified and secure supplies of strategic minerals and greater economic influence in the DRC. This does not prove that Washington, London, Brussels, Geneva or Paris want FDLR to survive so that they can obtain Congolese minerals. There is no evidence supporting such a simplistic conclusion. But it would be equally naïve to pretend that strategic and economic interests have no effect on the amount of pressure Western governments are prepared to place on Kinshasa. From my experiences, foreign policy is rarely about one objective. The West wants FDLR neutralised. But it also wants good relations with Kinshasa. It wants Congolese territorial integrity preserved. What about Rwanda’s territorial integrity? The West wants access to critical minerals. It wants alternatives to excessive dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains. It wants Western investment. It wants humanitarian access. It wants Goma and Bukavu airports reopened. It wants regional stability. It wants to avoid another Congo war. And it wants alleged Rwanda’s military activity inside the DRC constrained. Kinshasa has interests too. It wants international support for its sovereignty. It wants military and diplomatic backing against M23. It wants investment. It wants international recognition of Rwanda as the principal external threat and cause of all evils and failures inside DRCongo. And elements of its security establishment may regard armed groups hostile to Rwanda as tactically useful. When all these objectives interact, what happens to FDLR neutralisation? The thirty-year record provides an uncomfortable answer. This is the difference between declared priority and revealed priority. Governments declare priorities through speeches, resolutions and communiqués. They reveal priorities through the political and economic costs they are prepared to bear. The DRC declares that FDLR should be neutralised. Yet elements of its armed forces have been documented cooperating with it. Western governments declare that FDLR should be neutralised. Yet they have generally been reluctant to make the wider relationship with Kinshasa contingent upon achieving that objective. Both contradictions matter. There is another uncomfortable factor. I would not be wrong saying that Rwanda may have become a victim of its own success in rebuilding state capacity. Western policymakers know that today’s Rwanda is not the devastated country of July 1994. It possesses capable institutions and well trained and equipped armed forces. FDLR is therefore frequently assessed against Rwanda’s ability to defend itself. The implicit calculation can become: FDLR cannot defeat Rwanda; therefore FDLR is manageable. This is equally malicious to say the least. The DRC presents the opposite picture. Its difficulty controlling and defending large areas of its territory means that M23’s advances are immediately treated as threats to sovereignty requiring urgent international attention. This creates a capability paradox of collective security: the weaker state attracts greater international security protection because it is weak, while the stronger state is expected to absorb threats because it has developed the means to protect itself. That cannot be a sustainable principle. To my knowledge, a state’s entitlement to security does not diminish because it has built an effective army. Time has created another danger: normalisation. What should have remained extraordinary has become routine. FDLR became an item on sanctions lists. Then a DDRRR problem. Then a MONUSCO mandate. Then another paragraph in another Group of Experts report. Another regional summit. Another deadline. Another neutralisation plan. Reports are written. Resolutions are adopted. Meetings are convened. Commanders are sanctioned. Yet FDLR survives. At what point does managing the FDLR become a substitute for eliminating the FDLR as an organised armed threat? For Rwanda, this question cannot be separated from history. European colonialism helped racialise and institutionalise political identities in Rwanda. Belgian colonial administration placed those classifications into official bureaucracy and identity documentation. The international community later failed catastrophically to stop the Genocide against the Tutsi. Armed elements associated with the defeated genocidal order escaped into neighbouring Zaire. Their successor structures survived and evolved. The Security Council eventually declared FDLR neutralisation a top priority. Elements of the Congolese military were subsequently documented cooperating with it. And more than three decades after the genocide, Rwanda is still being told that neutralisation is coming. Does this prove that the DRC and the West are secretly “behind” FDLR? No. To me, however, it raises a more serious question precisely because it does not depend upon conspiracy: have both Kinshasa and powerful Western governments repeatedly found the management of the FDLR more convenient than paying the political price required for its definitive neutralisation? For elements of the Congolese security establishment, the calculation may at times have been military utility. For Western governments, the calculation may involve sovereignty, regional stability, diplomatic access, critical minerals, competition with China, humanitarian considerations and the desire to preserve relations with Kinshasa. Different motives can nevertheless produce the same outcome. FDLR survives. And that is ultimately the collective-security contradiction Rwanda confronts. The international community asks Rwanda to accept three propositions simultaneously: FDLR constitutes a legitimate security concern; Rwanda should not address that concern unilaterally on Congolese territory; and the DRC, supported by the international community, will neutralise the threat. The first acknowledges Rwanda’s security concern. The second invokes international law and Congolese sovereignty, but the credibility of both ultimately depends upon the third. If the state responsible for the territory does not neutralise the threat, and if the international system repeatedly fails to ensure that it does, then another communiqué cannot repair the resulting security dilemma. Thirty-two years after the Genocide against the Tutsi, therefore, the question should be addressed not only to Washington, Brussels, Paris, London or the United Nations in Geneva and New York. It must also be addressed directly to Kinshasa. If the DRC and the West genuinely agree that the FDLR must be neutralised, what are they actually prepared to do—and what political price are they prepared to pay—to ensure that it finally ceases to exist as an organised armed and ideological threat? After more than thirty years, resolutions are no longer enough. Declarations are no longer enough. Another roadmap is not enough. The measure of policy is the outcome. And the outcome remains impossible to ignore: the DRC says the FDLR must be neutralised. The West says the FDLR must be neutralised. The United Nations says the FDLR must be neutralised. Yet the FDLR survives. That contradiction deserves an answer. The writer is a political and diplomatic analyst specialising on Africa and countries of the Great Lakes Region.

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Thirty years later, the FDLR survives: What do the DRC and the West really want?