Congo's Fractured Ceasefire: Washington's Minerals Bet Strains the M23 Peace Process

When the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda sat alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at a White House signing ceremony in December 2025, the spectacle was striking. For the first time in a conflict that has dragged on in various forms since the late 1990s, Kinshasa and Kigali were formalizing commitments on American soil. The resulting Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity — as reported by Deutsche Welle — promised a ceasefire by February 18, 2026, and opened the door to a US minerals partnership that would, at least in theory, give Washington a direct economic stake in Congo's stability.

Three weeks after that ceasefire deadline, the picture is more complicated. M23 rebels — who control large parts of eastern Congo including the strategic city of Goma, which fell in January 2025 — have begun selective withdrawals from contested towns. But both sides continue to trade accusations of violations, the humanitarian crisis affecting tens of millions of Congolese civilians remains largely unaddressed, and the mineral deposits at the centre of American diplomacy sit in territory the rebels still hold.

The Fall of Goma and the Road to Washington

The M23's capture of Goma in January 2025 marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict rooted in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the two Congo Wars that followed. M23 — the Mouvement du 23 mars — is the latest iteration of Rwanda-backed armed groups that have repeatedly exploited eastern Congo's governance vacuum and mineral wealth. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates that roughly six million people have died in eastern Congo-related violence since 1996.

The Goma offensive was swift and devastating. According to United Nations reporting, at least 3,000 people were killed; the Congolese government put the toll at higher. Hundreds of thousands of already-displaced civilians fled again. Rwanda, whose government has provided M23 with ground troops numbering in the thousands, continued to maintain that it was not a warring party — a position Kigali's Interior Minister Vincent Biruta repeated publicly at the February 2026 Munich Security Conference, insisting the conflict was "a matter between the Congolese government and the M23 de facto authority."

"We must do everything to keep the weapons silent."

— Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, DRC Foreign Minister, Munich Security Conference, February 2026

Earlier mediation efforts by Angola, Kenya, Togo, and Qatar had produced limited lasting results. Angola's President João Lourenço, leading the Luanda Process, laid important groundwork; Qatar hosted separate DRC-M23 direct negotiations. It was ultimately US engagement — with Trump adviser Massad Boulos coordinating on Washington's behalf — that brought both Kinshasa and Kigali to a framework with enforceable commitments and an economic incentive architecture.

Minerals as Diplomatic Leverage

Central to the Washington Accords is a dimension that previous peace frameworks lacked: direct American commercial interest. In February 2026, Reuters reported that the DRC had offered the US access to a tantalum deposit in Rubaya — a site in North Kivu currently under M23 control. Tantalum, refined from coltan ore, is a heat-resistant metal critical to semiconductors, aerospace components, mobile devices, and gas turbines. The DRC holds some of the world's largest deposits of coltan, alongside vast reserves of cobalt and lithium.

Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the broader minerals agreement in positive terms, stating it would "promote our strategic minerals, particularly copper, cobalt, and lithium, in a sovereign manner" while "ensuring a more equitable distribution" of resource revenues. The implicit logic of the deal is transactional: US investment and diplomatic pressure in exchange for stabilized access to minerals that Washington has identified as critical to its technology and defense supply chains. For observers of US markets navigating geopolitical supply disruptions in early 2026, the DRC minerals question represents a longer-term strategic bet on sourcing diversification away from China-dominated supply chains.

The structural challenge, however, is that the Rubaya deposit Kinshasa placed on the table sits in rebel-held territory. Extracting the diplomatic and commercial value of the deal requires either M23's full military withdrawal or a power-sharing arrangement that grants Kinshasa nominal sovereignty over the area. Neither outcome is imminent. As commodity market analysts tracking global resource disruptions have noted, conflict zones rarely deliver on minerals-for-peace quid pro quos without sustained external enforcement.

A Ceasefire Under Strain

The weeks since February 18 have offered a mixed picture. Under direct US pressure, M23 leader Corneille Nangaa announced in January 2026 that the group would withdraw all fighters from Uvira, a town it had recently seized — a move Washington framed as evidence its leverage was working. More recently, M23 agreed to pull back from Walikale, citing a desire to "promote conditions for peace initiatives and political dialogue." These withdrawals, however incremental, represent the most significant territorial concessions M23 has made since its 2022 resurgence.

Yet the ceasefire remains fragile. Rwanda has accused Congolese and Burundian army units of launching attacks in violation of the accord. Kinshasa's foreign ministry has lodged reciprocal complaints. The US has warned both parties that ceasefire violations could trigger sanctions — a credible threat, given that Massad Boulos publicly stated the administration "will not accept the agreement being ignored by any party." The African Union, now chaired by Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye following Angola's handover in February, has framed its role around "African solutions to African problems," though the practical enforcement mechanism remains thin.

The broader humanitarian picture offers its own grim baseline against which diplomacy must deliver. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented 21 million Congolese in need of urgent medical, food, and shelter assistance — making the DRC one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises. One million Congolese have sought refuge in neighboring countries. The Washington Accords' minerals provisions have attracted considerable attention; less so the civilian protection framework that any durable peace would require. For those tracking the Trump administration's expanding diplomatic footprint across the developing world, the DRC engagement represents a defining test of whether transactional resource diplomacy can translate into lasting security arrangements.

What Peace Requires

The Washington Accords are more substantive than their predecessors precisely because they attach American commercial interests to the outcome. Previous efforts — the Luanda Process, the Nairobi talks, the Qatar channel — lacked that binding incentive. The minerals deal gives Washington a structural reason to maintain pressure on Kigali and Kinshasa long after ceasefire headlines fade.

But the path from partial withdrawal to durable peace is long. Rwanda has never formally acknowledged its role backing M23; without that acknowledgment, any security architecture rests on contested foundations. M23's leadership has political ambitions beyond territorial control — questions of amnesty, reintegration, and accountability for Goma-offensive atrocities remain unresolved. Kinshasa's capacity to govern eastern Congo after any rebel withdrawal is also uncertain, given the governance vacuum that armed groups have historically exploited.

What the February 2026 ceasefire has provided, at minimum, is a temporary reduction in active combat, public commitments that can be cited when violated, and a diplomatic framework backed by a great power with skin in the game. Whether that converts a fractured ceasefire into settled peace depends on whether Washington's minerals-deal incentives hold through the setbacks ahead.