Trump’s ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the DRC is a corporate resource grab disguised as diplomacy, rewarding Rwandan war crimes while U.S. investors stake claims to Congo’s coltan mines.
The Trump Administration brokered a vaunted peace agreement between the Republic of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on June 27, 2025. The Agreement was witnessed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and signed by Rwandan Foreign Minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe and DRC Foreign Minister, Therese Kayikamba-Wagner. The Agreement is a codification of the Declaration of Principles that the two foreign ministers signed on April 25th under the aegis of Marco Rubio at the State Department. The Signing of the Agreement on June 27th was followed up on the same day with a White House ceremony and briefing that included the two foreign ministers, Secretary Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance, and Trump's Senior Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos. The Ceremony was cringe worthy but appropriate for the representatives of two of the three leading neo-colonial regimes in the Great Lakes region of Africa - Uganda is the third of the three. Donald Trump was not far off the mark when he stated that the foreign ministers must be really happy to be in the White House. A White House visit with the President of the United States is a feather in the cap for neo-colonial leaders in Africa; in essence a key marker of legitimacy.
During the White House ceremony, Donald Trump declared "We are here today to celebrate a glorious triumph." The Agreement is anything but a glorious triumph by the way. He went on, "today the violence and destruction come to an end and the entire region begins a new chapter of hope, opportunity, harmony, prosperity, and peace." The twisted White Savior vision is of a Donald Trump coming to save the day between two savage African nations killing their citizens with machetes. But that vision flies in the face of the reality of the United States’ 65-years of destructive foreign policy in the Congo. From the mounting of the CIA's largest covert action in the world at the time in the 1960s to overthrow Congo's democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, to the installation and maintenance of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for over three decades and the wholesale backing of successive invasions by Rwanda and Uganda that triggered the greatest loss of life in any conflict in the world since World War II,, the United States is in large part responsible for the current devastation that we see in the heart of the African continent.
Should one accept Donald Trump's narrative, US citizens would never know that the United States was the major foreign force responsible for trapping the Congolese masses in perpetual wars, instability, and abject poverty. Trump’s narrative is co-signed by Congo's neo-colonial leader Felix Tshisekedi who like all Congolese heads of state since the US overthrow of Lumumba ascended to power due to the sign-off of the United States even though he was not the rightful winner of the elections. Felix Tshisekedi said "If President Trump can mediate and put an end to this war, he deserves the Nobel Prize. I would be the first to vote for him."
The Peace Agreement or what is to be called the "Washington Accord" is very unlikely to bring an end to the conflict in the Congo. The agreement is framed as if Rwanda and the DRC were two nations at war on each other’s territory, when in fact the conflict is a three-decade long war of aggression, plunder and occupation spearheaded by Rwanda and Uganda and backed by the United States and other Western powers. It is a war that has played out on Congolese soil and on the backs and bellies of Congolese women. There was even a six-day war in 2000 when Rwandan and Ugandan militaries fought each other inside the Congo in the city of Kisangani. The victims have been Congolese. An estimated six-million Congolese have perished due to the on-going war and hundreds of thousands of Congolese women have been systematically raped and sexually terrorized. It is the deadliest conflict in the world since World War IITwo. It is a war of aggression, plunder and occupation that has been able to persist because of Western nations arming, financing, training, equipping and providing diplomatic and political cover to Paul Kagame and the Rwandan government for three decades.
This year alone, seven thousand Congolese have perished due to Rwandan military capture and occupation of Goma, a city of two million inhabitants bordering Rwanda in the east of the Congo. An estimated seven million Congolese are internally displaced due to Rwanda's war in the Congo and its command and control of the militia group named M23. They currently occupy and control the North and South Kivu provinces in the east of the DRC. The United Nations Security Council in a unanimous 15 to 0 vote on February 21st passed resolution 2773 which called on "the Rwanda Defence Forces to cease support to the M23 and immediately withdraw from DRC territory without preconditions." The peace Agreement, which has nine provisions, seven of which are substantive and two which are perfunctory does not make the explicit call for Rwandan soldiers to withdraw from the Congo and cease its support of the M23. The agreement cosigns Rwanda's Orwellian propaganda about Rwanda relaxing "defensive measures." The notion of "defensive measures" is not fundamentally different from Israel claiming to defend itself while carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The illogic is that Rwanda must occupy the Congo, particularly its critical minerals mines in order to defend itself from a spent group called the Democratic Forces For The Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR in French). Some of its members were involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda has used them as a casus belli for massive atrocities and resource theft in the Congo.
In addition to the peace agreement not calling for the immediate unconditional withdrawal of Rwanda soldiers as was voted at the UN Security Council, there are many other major shortcomings that do not bode well for peace in the Congo:
1. It prioritizes going after the FDLR who represent more of a threat to Congolese civilians than they do to Rwanda
2. It does not address at all the M23 which is the militia group controlled and commanded by Rwanda and currently occupies two provinces in the east of Congo. Apparently, Qatar is supposed to advance a separate peace Agreement between M23 and the Congolese government.
3. There is no punishment or accountability on the part of Rwanda for its crimes in the Congo, which means no justice for the Congolese victims of Rwanda's war crimes and crimes against humanity
4. It offers Rwanda legal access to Congo's minerals, which it has been plundering illicitly for three decades
5. It proposes a tried and failed process of integrating militia groups into the Congolese military to offer incentives for putting down the guns.
The agreement benefits the local and global elites at the expense of the Congolese masses. Paul Kagame and the Rwandan leadership are not held to account for the crimes they have committed in the DRC. In fact, they are rewarded with promises of US investments and access to Congo's riches through the regional economic integration framework of the agreement. Donald Trump explains best how he and the United States benefit. He stated that, "We are getting a lot of the mineral rights for the United States from the Congo." One of Trump’s wealthy friends, a Texan tycoon named Gentry Beach, Chairman of America First Global, has claims on the Rubaya Coltan mine that was captured by Rwanda and the M23. It is the largest coltan mine in the world and accounts for about 15% of coltan produced globally. The final beneficiary is Felix Tshisekedi himself and the comprador class in Kinshasa who get to stay in power. The US intervention to halt the military offensive of the M23 benefited the corrupt Kinshasa class even though the Trump administration's aim was to enable the majority owned U.S. company Alphamin to restart its tin mining operations that had been captured by the Rwandans and their M23 militia.
It is the Congolese masses in particular and Africa in general who lose out among the local and global elites. Congolese do not stand to get either justice or peace. In addition, they will almost certainly not benefit from the wealth beneath their feet as US investors and the billionaire class descend on the Congo like vultures picking apart a carcass. This does not bode well for the advancement of the African continent writ large. If the Congo is captured by U.S. capitalists, it will be a big hole in the heart of the African continent and serve as a major obstacle for the revolutionary Pan African sovereignty movements unfolding on the Continent. Frantz Fanon's words ring even louder today than it did decades ago when he declared, "The fate of all of us is at stake in the Congo."
Maurice Carney is one of the co-founders of Friends of the Congo and currently serves as the organization's Executive Director. He has pursued a Pan African solidarity mission for the past twenty-five years to build a global constituency in support of the Congolese people as they strive to fulfill Lumumba's vision of a free and liberated Congo.
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