In the camps on the flanks of the Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they listen carefully. Not for warning of an eruption but to the dull thuds of distant mortar and artillery fire. Some days there are none, and hopes are raised. On other days, the sounds of war make clear to every one of the thousands of villagers huddled in their makeshift shelters that they will not be going anywhere very soon.
“We want to return home to cultivate our fields and keep our cows, sheep and goats because we are here and we are hungry. We are suffering a lot,” said Nsambimana Ashiwe, 64, at a displacement camp in Kanyaruchinya, a few miles south of the frontlines.
Last week, fighting broke out again between the M23 group, the rebel militia that has seized a swath of the east of the country since launching an offensive just over a year ago, and national armed forces, despite pledges by both sides to abide by a ceasefire.
The violence will undermine slim hopes of mitigating a growing humanitarian crisis in the region and averting a durable regional proxy conflict that analysts and diplomats fear could bring chaos to central Africa.
In an interview, one of the leaders of M23 insisted that the militia would strictly respect the current ceasefire, reaffirmed during talks in Nairobi, but threatened to resume further advances if necessary.
“The M23 aims to definitively resolve the deep causes of conflict through dialogue and to do that the M23 is making an effort to discourage the efforts of [the government] to impose a military solution,” Bertrand Bisimwa, the self-styled president of M23, said via WhatsApp.
“Conquering territory has never been a motive for our struggle … Right from the start of the armed conflict imposed on us by Kinshasa, we have warned the government that we would silence the guns which fire on us wherever they have been set up.”
Analysts point out that M23 has yet to cede any territory despite a pledge to withdraw. Instead, there have been clashes around the town of Masisi, to the west of Goma, the capital of North Kivu. There are also reports of fighting outside Bwiza, about 25 miles north of the city, after Congolese troops advanced.
Bisimwa said the fighting was a result of “acts of provocation and harassment” by armed groups allied to DRC’s government, “which sometimes push us to develop strategies to contain their attacks”.
The fighting has displaced at least 400,000 people since March, according to the UN, with many of them gathering in squalid camps north of Goma. But those fleeing the fighting are just a fraction of the millions of civilians caught in power struggle between regional states that risks drawing in actors from across Africa, and even competing great powers.
Neighbours Rwanda and Uganda have been directly implicated in the war, and Kenya has also become involved. The US has intervened and Russia has made efforts to exploit opportunities to win influence and so access to valuable natural resources.
The result is an intractable conflict with massive humanitarian consequences. “It’s hard to see many people with an interest in having a solution to this and that is worrying,” said Pierre Boisselet, the head of research on violence at Ebuteli, a thinktank in Kinshasa.
One fear has been that M23, a force of several thousand irregular fighters, would repeat the success of its first major offensive 10 years ago and seize Goma, a city of 2 million people. Analysts say the force has “a clear superiority on the battlefield” over the weak Congolese military and other armed groups aligned with Kinshasa.
Rwanda has repeatedly been accused of supporting M23 since its foundation more than a decade ago and of using the militia as a proxy to project power, seize territory, exploit valuable natural resources and fight historic enemies.
The UN said in August it had “solid evidence” that Rwandan troops had been fighting alongside M23, and Bisimwa did not directly deny a close relationship with Rwanda, saying there were people in the neighbouring country who “know our problems”.
“Rwanda is threatened by the same genocidal ideology which caused the genocide of the Tutsi there in 1994 and which permeates DRC from top to bottom,” he said.
M23 is mainly drawn from Tutsi communities within DRC, while most of the displaced people in the camps around Goma are Congolese Hutus.
“They fled because when the M23 comes, they kill people,” said Theo Musekura, the president of a displaced people’s committee in the Kanyaruchinya camp.
The Rwandan government in turn alleges that DRC’s government works with the FDLR, a Hutu faction present in DRC since the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
Adding to the international ramifications of the conflict, the UN has a force of 20,000 headquartered in Goma, and hundreds of Kenyan soldiers recently arrived as part of a newly formed east African peacekeeping force.
“M23 clearly want to be taken seriously, so the Kenyans have to make a difference,” said Richard Moncrieff, a Great Lakes expert with the International Crisis Group. “Their presence makes it politically more difficult to move on Goma. As for the UN, they don’t seem to be anywhere in this fight.”
Uganda has sent troops into DRC to help the fight against Islamist militants further south. Uganda is also accused of helping M23 alongside Rwanda, which is otherwise a regional rival.
In early December, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said: “Any external support to non-state armed groups in the DRC must end, including Rwanda’s assistance to M23.”
Blinken noted “the resurgence of hate speech and public incitement against Rwandaphone communities, recalling the real and horrible consequences of such rhetoric in the past”.
DRC’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, faces new elections next year and has little incentive to make concessions necessary for peace.
Boisselet said: “It’s pretty clear that Rwanda is backing M23 one way or another but Tshisekedi has not been terribly good at delivering jobs, development and all that the Congolese really want, and [the fighting in the east] helps rally support around him and provides an external factor to explain everything that is wrong.”
Officials in Kinshasa accused M23 of killing almost 300 civilians in two villages in November. The UN said 131 were killed in a “reprisal” attack. The rebels deny responsibility.
Civil society groups have struggled to find a way to improve the situation. Lucha, a youth movement founded in Goma in 2012 during the last major surge of violence by M23, is working to help displaced people in and around the city.
Standing in drizzle by the roadside just north of Kanyaruchinya, Adela Mufasano, 54, said she and her children needed to go home. “The kids sleep on the rocks,” she said. “When the rain comes, it’s a catastrophe.”
Andre Bahati Musarumu, 60, watching men play cards in front of a tent in the camp, also said he wanted the situation to end. “We want to go home to look for food. The government needs to decide between negotiation and war.”
