Audio By Vocalize
Rwandan leader Paul Kagame, Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and DRC President Felix Tshisekedi during a meeting in Doha on March 18, 2025. [Photo, Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
Diplomacy in the Great Lakes region has once again fixated on the wrong issues. Mediators, from Washington to Addis Ababa, where the African Union is headquartered, continue to frame the crisis as an interstate quarrel between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.
This framing is not only analytically lazy. It’s dangerously counterproductive. If peace is the genuine objective, mediators must abandon this obsession with interstate tensions and pivot decisively toward the inter-Congolese conflict that fuels them.
The dominant narrative is seductively simple: Rwanda is allegedly backing the M23 rebellion to pressure Kinshasa into economic concessions, turning the rebel group into a proxy for Kigali's interests. The only problem? This narrative doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
