Months of US efforts to end a long-running humanitarian crisis in eastern DR Congo will come to a head on Thursday when the presidents of DR Congo and Rwanda meet in Washington to sign a long-expected peace agreement.
Those efforts are being presented as a feather in US President Donald Trump’s cap and his ostensible push to end wars around the world. But the most oft-repeated cliché we’ve heard this week has been: “The devil is in the details.”
Despite multiple stages of agreements being signed by representatives of the two African governments in recent months, both sides remain quietly concerned about whether real peace will be achieved. The Congolese continue to see Rwanda as the aggressor because of Kigali’s alleged support for the M23 rebels who have controlled swaths of the troubled eastern region for most of the last decade with thousands of lives lost and millions displaced. Thursday’s anticipated agreement to end the fighting includes a US-brokered economic pact, so both sides can benefit from the valuable minerals funding the conflict. It would also create an opportunity for interested US businesses to invest.
Any deal still leaves lots of room for uncertainty, however, once Trump’s photo ops with DR Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame are done. “The difficult work of resolving the underlying economic, mining, and human rights issues will need to be firmly addressed by the Congolese, Rwandans, and the M23 if peace is the ultimate goal,” cautioned Benjamin Mossberg of Field Focus, a Washington advisory firm. “It’s easier to bring people to Washington and sign a document in front of the cameras — peace will be much harder.”