What does Paul Kagame want in the eastern DRC?

As Rwanda president Paul Kagame’s M23 militia and army, the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF), advance towards Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s third strategic city, following their occupation of Goma and Bukavu, one of the questions I have been asked a lot has been along the lines of: what does Kagame really want? 

Does he see himself as a conqueror? Is he simply striving to be the “apex predator,” as Félix Tshisekedi, Congo’s president, put it? Or does he truly believe in his self-assigned role as the protector of the Tutsi people in Rwanda and abroad? 

It is a powerful and relevant question—one that has eaten away at me for the past decade. It is also not a new question. Legions of commentators have posed it in an attempt to interpret Kagame’s actions. How has Kagame continued to aid and abet so much violence and suffering in the DRC? 

On one side is the imagined inner voice of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Mo Ibrahim who, respectively, worship him as a “visionary leader,” “one of the greatest leaders of our time” and “a model leader”. The New York Times has crowned him “The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman”. With this kind of backing and laundering of his reputation, Kagame presents his politics, including his violence in the DRC, as a necessity to protect the Tutsi people, the ethnic group of which Kagame is a member, against the remnant of the Hutu militia responsible for the 1994 genocide, allegedly, presenting a deadly threat to his regime in Kigali from the DRC’s forest. 

Accordingly, since 1994, Western policies, co-led by the UK and the US, have been to ensure the survival of Kagame’s regime in Kigali. Indeed, even after a UN investigation on the violence engulfing the DRC, published in July 2024, said that Kagame has deployed around 3,000 to 4,000 RDF troops to aid and abet violence in the DRC, including the most egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity documented by the UN, the UK, US, Canada, Germany and the rest of the EU continued to provide Kagame the financial, military and diplomatic support enabling his violence which, we also know, will never lead to peace, development or prosperity. 

The problem is this analysis fails to explain why, for instance, Kagame’s troops and Museveni’s fought in Kisangani, in the DRC, over diamond mines, killing up to 250 civilians, and wounding over 1,000. It also doesn’t account for why after nearly 30-years of the Kagame’s rule, Rwanda still ranks as “not free” in the Freedom Index or, for that matter, why Kagame has sent assassins to kill his opponents in London, Belgium, South Africa and Kenya, leaving him no serious opponents in sight. 

Above all, it doesn’t explain why Kagame’s M23 militia and his RDF troops have been attacking, killing, raping, looting and displacing innocent civilians, including women and children — openly and in most cases, it seems, carelessly and with impunity. “We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property, including of a humanitarian warehouse and humanitarian and health facilities being hit,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told journalists in Geneva a day after M23 seized Goma, leading to a UN warning for a looming health crisis, including massive spread of mpox, cholera and measles due lack of medical care coupled with further displacement.

At least 3,000 Congolese people were killed last week when the M23 and RDF overran Goma, the deputy head of the UN mission in DRC Vivian van de Perre told reporters in a video call from Goma last month. “We expect this number to go up,” she added. In Goma’s Munzenze prison, hundreds of women were raped and burned alive, and the M23 and RDF are still preventing UN investigators from visiting the prison to collect evidence, according to a senior UN official.

It similarly doesn’t explain why his M23 militia and RDF troops are now occupying Bukavu and Goma like they did between 1998 and 2003 — or assassinating activists, including Delphin Katembo Vinywasiki, better known as Delcat Idengo, or, for that matter, threatening to attack Panzi Hospital — instead going after the remnant of the Hutu genocidaires he says present a mortal danger. 

Here is what I think is Kagame’s actual modus operandi.  

Kagame’s prime objective isn’t the Hutu militia. Kagame is pushing for the breakup of the DRC’s eastern province to establish a Tutsicracy. In the past, he publicly questioned the borders between Rwanda and the DRC. In Kigali, the idea of a “Greater Rwanda,” extending Rwanda beyond its colonial borders, is openly discussed. During an official visit to Benin in 2023, Kagame complained that “a big part of Rwanda was left outside, in eastern Congo, in south-western Uganda . . . this is a fact.” Positioning himself, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a protector of minorities linked to his country beyond its borders, Kagame added: “It is a fact of history . . . And these people have been denied their rights.” 

Théogène Rudasingwa, Kagame’s former chief of staff and a former Rwandan ambassador, similarly told Foreign Affairs about the significance of these beliefs for Kagame from his time in government with him. “In the past, within the inner kitchen cabinet I belonged to, Kagame constantly alluded to the Greater Rwanda idea,” Rudasingwa said.  

His strategy is twofold. First, to arm, train, support, and use the Tutsi people to fuel violence in the DRC, including mass killings, mass rape, mass looting, and mass displacement of innocent civilians—including women and children—to sow animosity and mistrust between the rest of the Congolese population and the Tutsi people in and outside the DRC. He can then weaponise this hostility to justify an occupation of part of the DRC under the guise of protection in order to establish his Tutsicracy. 

The second part of Kagame's strategy is to consistently push for his M23 militia—many of whom are, in fact, rank and file members of the RDF—to be integrated into the Congolese army, regardless of their crimes, as part of any EAC, SADC, or UN peace deal. “Casualties do not deter Kagame,” a former Rwandan commander told Foreign Affairs. This serves not only to sustain the near-total culture of impunity keeping the DRC on its knees but also to deepen the animosity and mistrust between the rest of the Congolese population and the Tutsi people in and outside the DRC. 

And here, I must reluctantly concede that I fear Kagame could succeed—not least because the DRC has the worst leader in its history—perhaps in all of Congolese history, which includes Mobutu Sese Seko. 

In spite of having never been part of any militia, rebel group, or previous government—therefore unstained by blood—the DRC president, Félix Tshisekedi, continues to refuse to prioritise the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal for the DRC. Such a tribunal would put an end to the near-total culture of impunity fuelling Kagame and his henchmen, both inside and outside Congolese politics and the army. Ultimately, this culture of impunity sustains the violence, corruption, famine, and climate crises destroying the DRC. 

Why? Because Tshisekedi needs generals and politicians whom the UN, HRW, and Amnesty International say are co-responsible for vast violence, corruption, and destruction to secure his own political future. Even if this denies peace to 120 million Congolese people.  

For Kagame, his henchmen, and their backers in the UK, US, and elsewhere, this alone is mission accomplished—with or without sanctions from the UK, US, Canada, and/or EU countries—because the near-total culture of impunity will continue to fuel insecurity, as well as famine, corruption, animosity, mistrust, and violence, and, ultimately, a Tutsicracy.