Rwanda's approach to its interests in eastern Congo over the last decade has created a gap between its own interests, its rebel proxies in eastern Congo, the marginalized population of the Kivu region and the government in Kinshasa. The agreements it has reached with Kinshasa, and the way it has forced those agreements onto its rebel proxies, has caused those rebel movements to lose support for Rwanda and form separate factions. Along the way, the rebels have also lost local supporters in eastern Congo.

Overthrowing the Congolese Government

The process began during the Second Congo War, which lasted from 1998 to 2003. At the time, Rwanda and Uganda backed the Rally for Congolese Democracy rebel group, which was attempting to overthrow then-Congolese President Laurent Kabila. Rwanda intended after Kabila's ouster to install a friendly government that would help protect Rwanda's interests in eastern Congo. However, the Rally for Congolese Democracy's campaign stalled in Kisangani. Despite Kigali's urgings to continue, the rebels' effort had reached a stalemate, and the result was tension between the Congolese Tutsi rebels and the Rwandan government.

As part of the ensuing peace process, the Rally for Congolese Democracy was integrated into the Congolese military and national elections were held in 2006. Without a militant wing to back them, the remaining Tutsi and Hutu rebels, who are both minority groups in the Congo, were left without political influence. After seven years of rebellion, the elite in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, no longer controlled the area, and Rwandan Tutsi were no longer protected from Hutu militias. Powerless to affect Congolese government policy even in their local Kivu region, the Tutsi rebels in eastern Congo were dissatisfied with Rwanda's deal with Kinshasa.

Nkunda Revives the Rebel Movement

After deciding that overthrowing and attempting to control the regime in Kinshasa was too difficult, Rwanda's strategy changed to ensuring that the Congolese army in the Kivus incorporated the Tutsi rebels and operated against the exiled Hutu militias in the region, at times in cooperation with Rwandan troops. This approach allowed Rwanda to still accomplish its security objectives while expending considerably less resources in eastern Congo.

A new strategy emerged in late 2006, when Laurent Nkunda, a former member of the Rally for Congolese Democracy who had been incorporated into the Congolese military as an officer, left the armed forces, reorganized the former rebels and marched on Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province. Nkunda teamed up with another former rebel and Congolese officer, Bosco Ntaganda, to form the National Congress for the Defense of the People. Rwanda quickly backed the new rebel group, which was initially successful in securing concessions from Kinshasa through negotiations.

But Nkunda's group faltered when it professed to be a Tutsi rebel group fighting the Hutus in general, not simply the exiled Rwandan Hutu militias. The Congolese Hutu population in the Kivu region — many of whom had, on the basis of their being minority groups, sided with the Tutsis in the earlier conflict with the Congolese government — stopped supporting the rebels. The conflict between Nkunda's rebels and the Congolese military restarted. In 2008, Nkunda's objectives started to include attaining power beyond the Kivu region, leading Kinshasa and Kigali to agree on a peace deal that involved Nkunda's arrest in Rwanda and the integration of the rebels into the Congolese army under Ntaganda's leadership.   

Nkunda's arrest created another fracture among the traditional rebels. Supporters of Nkunda, such as Sultani Makenga, who would become an M23 leader, became more critical of Rwanda. However, Makenga and his supporters' heavy leanings toward Rwandan Tutsis alienated the Congolese Tutsis in the Kivu region, cutting further into the rebels' support base.

At the same time, Rwanda began to target the Tutsi elites in Goma who had backed Nkunda. Rwanda hoped to remove any anti-Rwandan elements from the rebel movement. All the while, the former National Congress for the Defense of the People, rebels who were once again part of the Congolese military, were operating against the exiled Hutu militias in joint operations with Rwandan forces. However, the troops abused their freedom of operation in the Kivu regions, further straining the former rebels' relationship with their local support base.

M23 and the Risk of More Divisions

Eventually, tensions mounted between the ex-rebel officers and other officers in the Congolese military over benefits the former rebels received due to their political importance. Congolese President Joseph Kabila, the son of the late president, tried with Rwanda's help to restructure the military by moving some ex-rebel officers to other units away from the Kivu region, but the former rebel officers mutinied and launched the M23 movement.

Having lost a significant amount of local support over the years, the rebels, this time in the form of M23, were forced to reach out to other Congolese rebel groups. These ties enabled the rebels to pressure and preoccupy the Congolese army beyond Goma. Despite their diverse and sometimes conflicting goals, most of the groups cooperate with M23 because of the shared interest in fighting the Congolese military.

There are two major factions within M23: one led by Ntaganda that remains loyal to Rwanda and another led by Makenga (and, indirectly, Nkunda). The Makenga faction, which is the larger of the two, is less supportive of Rwanda because of Kigali's past treatment of Nkunda. Because it has upset the strongest M23 faction, there are doubts about Rwanda's level of control over M23.

If the Makenga faction continues to grow and begins to cast aside Rwanda's limits on how far M23 can go, it would risk drawing too much attention from the Congolese government and military to the Kivu region and potentially upsetting the balance there. However, Makenga is unlikely to suffer the same fate as Nkunda. Many supporters of the pro-Rwanda Ntaganda faction did not defect from the Congolese army to join M23, so it is unclear if Ntaganda would have the might to carry out a coup from within. However, that does not mean Rwanda will not try. An officer in the Ntaganda faction, Baudouin Ngaruye, was promoted to the rank of general (the same rank within M23 as Ntaganda and Makenga) in late November. His promotion could be an attempt by Kigali to push a new, pro-Rwandan leader for M23 since Ntaganda is not currently in direct control of the group's military operations.

The leaders of M23's political wing are supporters of Ntaganda, but they have struggled to make inroads with the Tutsi elite in Goma and Bukavu because of the deals they have had to make with Hutu groups. Their difficulties fuel doubt about what they could accomplish in elections if they tried to become a non-rebel Congolese political party. The political parties of previous rebel movements were unable to gain traction in Congolese elections due to their size, and the rebels have only lost more of their electoral support in the Kivu region since then.

The rifts within the rebel movement will probably worsen if Kinshasa accepts negotiations because the more militaristic elements would insist on holding out for more concessions or continuing the rebellion. The same could happen if M23 stagnates and certain leaders split off to push the movement ahead. Ultimately, the more the rebel movement splits, the further it gets from Rwanda — and the closer it gets to escalating the conflict in the region.