Jonathan Luke Austin
Professor
The University of Copenhagen
RESEARCH Note
In January 2025, violent conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo increased, following the capture of the Eastern city of Goma by Rwanda-backed rebel group m23. In this research note, one of HUD’s Principal Investigators, Jonathan Luke Austin, explores these events from the perspective of Kinshasa, capital of the DRC.
Austin also visited Goma and Bukavu a few weeks prior to these events to conduct core HUD research on detention conditions and internally displaced persons. Reflections on his visit and humanitarian conditions then can be found in the photo essay Why are you watching?
How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places
swings corpses through the air
rolls stretchers to the wounded
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins…
The war continues working, day and night.
– Dunya Mikhail1Dunya Mikhail. (2005). The War Works Hard. New Directions Publishing.
1. ESCAPES
Unlike the austere mourning rituals of Europe and North America, funerals in the Congo are also celebrations. Even parties, sometimes running over days. Friends, families, and acquaintances visit the home of the dead so that those most directly in mourning are not left alone. In late January, next to the Rwandan embassy in Kinshasa, one such ritual was taking place in a small house. On Monday the 27th, a group of visitors sang songs to honour the person who had been lost. Later in the night, those softer melodies were replaced with pop music being played at high volume and the sounds of drunken dancing.
The next morning, while those who had been drinking till late in the night were probably still sleeping, protesters were awake in Kinshasa. Eventually, they made their way to the Rwandan embassy next to that house. When they arrived, they burned tires, breached the embassy walls, looted its interior, and set the building alight. Replacing the calm melodies of the day before were explosions, gunfire, and the sounds of jubilant screaming. Many hours later, the Congolese Republican Guard arrived on the scene, volleys of automatic fire pummeled the air, and the rioters dispersed.
Those rioters were responding to another kind of looming funeral: the violent capture of the city of Goma in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by the rebel group M23, with the support of Rwanda.2For analysis of these events see Koen Vlassenroot and Judith Verweijen. (2025). “Congo Crisis Extends Beyond Conflict Minerals,” EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations, 31st January 2025. and Kristof Titeca. (2025). RD Congo-Rwanda. Une guerre aux racines multiples, Afrique XXI, 28 Janvier 2025.
In Goma and its environs:
Western Union was unusually busy.
They were distributing escape money.
The prisoners fled the prisons.
They had no one left to watch them.
The humanitarians fled their compounds.
They were abandoning their ‘missions.’
The national soldiers shed their uniforms.
They had already lost.
And in Kinshasa, protesters burned embassies.
They were angry.
Doctor, you want to say that the world can be as white as your shirt. Okay, doctor. And that man is a comma between the words ‘birth’ and ‘death’. But on the honour of your humanitarian profession, doctor, promise to tell me what this empty blank sentence means, and whether the comma is actually necessary.
-Hassan Blasim3Hassan Blassim (2013). The Iraqi Christ, London: Comma Press.
2. ECHOES
Recent events in the Congo are echoes. As these words are being written, M23 troops in the East are feared to be capturing further ground, moving towards capturing the capital of South Kivu, Bukavu.4Jeune Afrique. (2025). “Est de la RDC : reportage dans Goma occupée par le M23,” Jeune Afrique, 30 janvier 2025. A remarkably similar sequence of events transpired in 1997 when Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s rebel forces took control of the Kivu region, before marching on the capital Kinshasa. Eventually, Kabila would overthrow the military regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. Corneille Nanga, the nominal leader of M23, has expressed his intent to do the same. Not uncoincidentally, Mobutu himself had a passion for inspiring the public to burn embassies, across his rule, when things were not going well. It was – remains – a certain ‘persuasion’ tactic. It is for these echoes that, despite the sudden garrulousness of international diplomats, few in the country are surprised. Take one young researcher in Bukavu. He was in the city when other rebel groups raided the city in 2004, twenty years ago. He was in Goma when the city was previously captured by M23 in 2012. And he was in Bukavu a few days ago, as Goma was again captured, and waits as they approach Bukavu. Recent events are another stage in a war that has never stopped.
Whether 30 years ago, or today, these machinations see civilians suffer the most. With the departure of humanitarian actors from the East, the must vulnerable remain in camps dotted around the country, now more abandoned than ever. But like few are surprised by the war’s resurgence, even fewer are surprised by the departure of those who profess ‘compassion across borders.’ This is not the first time they have come and gone. But the difficulty with humanitarianism in the DRC is not solely related to these sudden voids in emergency aid, which will slowly trickle back. Alongside such forms of emergency triage, humanitarians in the country have long engaged in forms of ’emergency development’ in which they attempt to fill the infrastructural chasm of the state. The ICRC’s Water and Habitat unit, for instance, has been in Goma since the Congo Wars – constructing new water delivery systems and drilling wells to access new water sources, all the while risking, yet denying, the possibility of replacing the state itself. Likewise, its detention teams visit prisons and prisoners, but its most effective interventions come when it provides, say, filing cabinets and paper to improve detainee record keeping or, alternatively, tents. Tents not to house refugees in the many camps around Goma, but – instead – to construct temporary outdoor courtrooms that might allow the justice system to better overcome its vast backlog. These activities have now also stopped, with no other authority likely to engage in them. Such emergency development, put differently, appears to ‘develop’ nothing in the long-term. Indeed, if there is one thing that protects Kinshasa now, it is – paradoxically – the intense infrastructural-developmental decline of the country. It will be difficult to march to Kinshasa. Though not impossible.
Across the border, Paul Kagame leads his ‘model’ African state, which, more than a dictatorship, is a totalitarian dictatorship crushing any dissent, becoming a Kingdom of Silence. That ‘model’ – such that it is – is very effective in its public relations. ‘Visit Rwanda’ is emblazoned across football shirts in Europe. ‘Pan-African’ universities are funded, seeking to employ European or North American academics for a bit of prestige. European governments have engaged the regime for its willingness to ‘process’ asylum seeker applications within its borders. Behind this slow but steady accumulation of international soft power is Kagame’s desire for regional influence, to become the “principal interlocutor” in the Great Lakes region, and to continue his development of the banking, telecommunications, and other sectors in Rwanda. Doing this, it seems he believes, requires control of not only the natural resources of the DRC but also its cities, populations, and borders.5Stéphanie Perazzone in Pagella, C. (2025). “Derrière la chute de Goma, le Rwanda à la manœuvre,” Le Temps, Geneva, 28.01.2025.
Forgetting about Rwanda for a moment, however, events in the Congo reveal – above all – the long shadow of colonialism. The fact that the DRC remains a colonial plaything. In Kinshasa, not only the Rwandan embassy, but also the French, Belgian, US, and other embassies were attacked. Why? On the streets, rumours of a conspiracy between the ‘Westerners’ and the regime in Kigali are explicit – that this outcome is desired by the West. Of course, the explanation is not that clear-cut. France has denounced Rwandan interference, for instance. Yet, does it matter if this is a conspiracy proper, or simply a de facto conspiracy? Mercenaries were captured in Goma a few days ago, as in 1967, and 1997. And, unlike in 2012, there has been no swift European or North American response to these events, threatening to sanction and withdraw aid from Rwanda. Above all, European and North American multinational corporations profit, handsomely, from the instability of the Congo.
Stripped bare, colonialism and neocolonialism, alike, are characterized by a fundamental callousness – a willingness to abandon any ethical principle, any principled political stance, any morality in order to gain material benefit. In this, Europe and North America have been remarkably willing to ‘wait and see’ which outcome most benefits them. Indeed, as Perazzone puts it, “what is certain is that, for the moment, whatever the actors who are interested or who have been involved in the conflict, none are taking their responsibilities.”6Stéphanie Perazzone in Pagella, C. (2025). “Derrière la chute de Goma, le Rwanda à la manœuvre,” Le Temps, Geneva, 28.01.2025. Within this mix are again humanitarian organizations. Their position is a strange one. On the one hand, they have been present in the DRC, and especially the East, constantly. On the other hand, their presence is premised on Euro-American geopolitical power and politics. When it comes to the future, however, humanitarian organizations must begin to design their activities differently. The future of humanitarian design in contexts like the Congo rests not on any particular technology, any particular process, or any particular innovation. It rests in the responsibility to cultivate a politics of solidarity, internationalism, and true anti-colonialism, irrelevant the politics of Brussels, London, Paris, and Washington.
A politics of not leaving the most in mourning alone.
A 1967 newspaper report on Congolese protesters attacking embassies in Kinshasa