Congo Fighting With Rwanda-Backed M23 Continues as Doha Talks Stall; M23-Aligned Accounts Claim Tanzanian and Angolan Troop Deployments

Two Armies That Nobody's Government Will Admit Sending

In early September, accounts aligned with the M23 rebel group started posting that Tanzanian troops had crossed into eastern Congo to help the government fight them, and that Angolan soldiers had moved into Katanga, Congo's copper and cobalt belt far to the south^[1][2]. Neither claim has been confirmed by Tanzania or Angola. No wire service, embassy, or defense ministry has put out a statement backing either one up^[1][2]. The only documented source for both claims is M23 itself.

That matters because M23 has a clear reason to say it. The group has spent over a year building a case that it's not just fighting Congo's army, but a regional coalition ganging up on it^[1]. A claim like this serves that story whether or not it's true. It doesn't mean the claim is false — Tanzania has sent troops into this exact conflict before, and Angola has real business interests in the region^[10][12] — but it does mean the claim needs outside confirmation before anyone treats it as fact.

While that rumor spread, the war ground on much as it has for over a year. M23 has held Congo's two biggest eastern cities, Goma and Bukavu, since early 2025^[3]. Government-aligned forces reportedly pushed back against M23 in southern Masisi in September, and fighting continued near Minembwe, further south^[2]. None of that is in dispute.

A Deal on Paper, a War on the Ground

Both sides agree on the basic shape of the peace effort, even if they disagree on who's living up to it. Congo's government and the M23-led alliance signed the Doha Framework for Peace on November 15, 2025, brokered by Qatar^[4][20]. It has eight separate parts, called protocols, each covering a different piece of the peace — from a ceasefire to prisoner releases to a longer-term political process.

Ten months later, only two of those eight protocols have actually been signed: one setting up ceasefire monitoring, and one on releasing detainees^[3]. The other six, including anything that would settle who governs the territory M23 now controls, remain unresolved. In August, delegations met in Switzerland and agreed to set up a body to review how earlier promises are being carried out — a sign of continued talking, but also a sign that the follow-through itself needed its own new process^[5].

A second, separate track runs alongside it. In December 2025, Congo's president, Félix Tshisekedi, and Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, signed the Washington Accords, a U.S.-brokered security deal between their two countries^[9]. Alongside it, Congo and the U.S. signed a minerals partnership giving American firms access to Congo's mines^[9][8]. The two governments' joint security body met for the seventh time on September 16 and 17, in Geneva, with the U.S., Qatar, Togo, and the African Union all in the room^[6][7].

The Argument Nobody Can Win by Going Second

Underneath both tracks sits one unresolved question: who moves first? The Washington Accords say Congo has to "neutralize" a militia called the FDLR, whose founding leadership includes people tied to the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. In exchange, Rwanda is supposed to lift what it calls its "defensive measures" — its own military posture and, by extension, its backing for M23^[13][23].

Neither side wants to move first, and they don't even agree on what "moving" means. In late July, Congo announced that one faction of the FDLR had agreed to a disarmament protocol, and called it progress toward neutralizing the group^[23]. Rwanda rejected that framing outright. Its government said negotiating a deal with part of the FDLR isn't the same as neutralizing the whole militia, which it says still operates alongside Congo's own army^[13][23].

That standoff is the real engine of the stalled talks. Rwanda's foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, said Rwanda "will continue to defend itself" and called the international mediation biased against it^[13]. Congo's supporters counter that Rwanda and M23 already hold the land and the leverage, so Rwanda has every incentive to keep finding reasons the FDLR step isn't done^[15]. Both positions are coherent on their own terms. Neither side has an incentive to be the one that disarms first and finds out the other side doesn't follow through.

Minerals Run Through Every Argument on Every Side

Congo produces more cobalt than any other country on earth, and ranks second in copper^[8]. That single fact shapes almost every actor's stake in how this war ends. Whoever controls the mines and the roads and rail lines out of the country controls a large slice of the revenue.

That's part of why the Angola claim, even unconfirmed, landed the way it did. Katanga, where M23-aligned accounts say Angolan troops appeared, is nowhere near the actual front lines in North and South Kivu — it's Congo's mineral south, far to the interior^[12]. Angola has genuine business in the area regardless of any troop deployment: on August 26, it signed a deal with Congo to build a rail link, the Dilolo-Sakania line, connecting Katanga's mines to Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito^[12]. That gives Angola a real economic reason to want stability in Congo's south, whether or not it has sent anyone into the country.

Washington's role runs on a similar logic, just stated as U.S. policy instead of a neighboring country's trade route. The Trump administration argues that pairing peace diplomacy with a minerals partnership gives both Rwanda and Congo a financial stake in staying stable, while also giving American firms a source of cobalt and copper outside China's supply chains^[8][18]. Critics, including a group of Congolese lawyers who filed a court challenge in January arguing that parliament should have approved the minerals pact, say it puts the U.S. business deal ahead of an actual resolution^[16][17]. Both descriptions can be true of the same agreement at once.

The Same Facts, Read Backward and Forward

How each outlet told this story tracked pretty closely with where that outlet, or its government, sits in the conflict. Rwandan pro-government outlets like KT Press ran a headline saying the U.S. was commending Rwanda "for delivering" while Congo "dodges" the peace deal — putting the blame on Kinshasa before a reader gets past the headline^[14]. Al Jazeera, funded by Qatar's government, which mediates the Doha talks, covered the same Geneva session in more measured, process-focused terms, though it has its own stake in the talks looking like they're working^[6].

In the U.S., coverage split by ideology more than by the facts on the ground. AEI's Critical Threats project, generally right-of-center, was careful to label the Tanzania and Angola claims as coming from "M23-aligned sources" rather than reporting them as confirmed^[1][2]. Newsweek measured the U.S.-brokered deal's success mainly by its effect on U.S.-China competition, even though M23 still held Goma and Bukavu at the time^[18]. On the left, an opinion piece in Common Dreams called the peace promises hollow and referred to M23 as Rwanda's "proxy" without attribution, framing the U.S. minerals deal as the real story^[17].

None of these framings are factually wrong on their own; they mostly reflect which piece of a many-sided war each outlet chose to put in the foreground. What none of them can currently confirm is the one claim that started this particular news cycle: whether Tanzanian or Angolan soldiers are actually in Congo. That remains an M23 assertion, unverified by the two governments it names, as the next round of talks approaches with six of eight protocols still unsigned^[3].