[Time] Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a “historic” peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Yet there was no public handshake at the summit in Washington between DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and the violence has continued ever since President Trump began mediating the conflict in April.
The two nations have often been at odds over the past 30 years, but the conflict sharply escalated in January after Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized large parts of mineral-rich eastern DRC in an offensive that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Given the grim reality of the conflict, President Trump’s mediation efforts should be welcomed. But if President Trump wants to truly realize his vision for regional peace and prosperity, he must now build on the summit with sustained high-level engagement and increase pressure on both nations to abide by their commitments.
The task is urgent. M23 has launched several new offensives in the last two weeks, making significant advances for the first time since March. The surge in fighting is unsurprising. The previous months, M23 was waging smaller offensives to set conditions to take key positions in the eastern DRC that it is now capitalizing on, while the Congolese military was conducting an airstrike campaign against M23-held areas. Both sides had heavily reinforced the front lines with thousands of new forces and increasingly advanced materiel.
The Washington Accords—the DRC-Rwanda peace deal—alone will not change this reality. It hardly addresses the role of militias, particularly the M23, who are involved in the vast majority of the fighting. That issue is being discussed in the parallel Qatar-led Doha peace process. While the DRC and M23 signed a framework agreement on Nov. 15 as a prerequisite to the Washington Accords, it is non-binding and both sides have already violated the cease-fire.
Rwanda continues to provide covert support to M23, while publicly denying it backs the rebels. M23 itself likely sees no reason to agree to a political settlement or disarmament, especially while it faces no external military threat to its control and is busy building an extensive parallel state. The Congolese government does not face a direct military threat from M23, enabling the government to repeatedly issue hardline demands in the talks that it does not have the military leverage to enforce as it conducts airstrikes and equips rival militias.
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