Congo’s Kabila Leads New Coalition With Rwanda-Backed M23 Rebels

Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila has launched a new political and military coalition,  the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), at a news conference on Monday October 14 at his residence in the eastern city of Goma. This coalition is in partnership with the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group, which has violently captured vast areas of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Kabila said he will head the FRN with rebel leaders, including Corneille Nangaa, the former leader of the Congo River Alliance (AFC) and the political wing of M23, serving as his deputies.

Kabila, the former head of state, with a network of allies and loyalists in the army and the political class, has openly sided with an insurgency against the government in Kinshasa. President Felix Tshisekedi is pushing to secure a third term while Congo contends with a crisis in its vital mining sector and an Ebola outbreak, all while the fighting in the east continues. A government under that much strain now faces a rebel movement.

Kabila is 55 and the son of Laurent Kabila, the former leader who was assassinated in 2001. Joseph took power at just 29, having previously served as army chief and fought in the two Congo wars, when Rwanda backed rebel groups against the long-standing ruler Mobutu Sese Seko. His time in office was marked by corruption and human rights abuse before his term officially ended in 2016, but he delayed elections until 2018, citing problems with voter registration, and finally left office in 2019. He is believed to have struck a power-sharing deal with Tshisekedi, the opposition candidate who now leads the country. Kabila’s allies were initially placed across the cabinet, but from 2020 Tshisekedi began removing them and the arrangement collapsed acrimoniously. Corruption investigations into Kabila followed, and in 2023 he went on a self-imposed exile in South Africa. Last year, he published a scathing article accusing Tshisekedi of mishandling the conflict, and reports emerged of him being seen in rebel-held Goma, where he owns property. In April, the United States sanctioned him, alleging that he had funded the rebels.

M23, or the March 23 Movement, emerged in 2012 from the remnants of Congolese Tutsi fighter groups that had taken part in the Second Congo War. It says it is defending the rights of the country’s Tutsi minority, and it also seeks to unseat the government in Kinshasa. It first captured Goma and other eastern towns in 2012 before being driven back by a special United Nations force fighting alongside the Congolese army. In 2022, as relations between Tshisekedi and Kabila soured, the group resurfaced with renewed strength. Nangaa, who fell out with Tshisekedi in 2023 reportedly over his own wish to stand in elections, went into exile and founded the Congo River Alliance, which became M23’s political wing. Early in 2024 the combined force swept across vast areas of the east, and in January 2025 it retook Goma after heavy fighting that killed nearly 3,000 civilians. The rebels, who stand accused of massacres, now hold North and South Kivu, including both provincial capitals, Goma and Bukavu, as well as border crossings with Rwanda and Uganda. Kabila himself comes from that region.

Rwanda sits at the helm of the insurgency. The roots of the violence lie in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, after which Hutu fighters, including perpetrators of the killings, were said to have found refuge in Congo. Kigali has long accused successive Congolese governments of backing one of those groups, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and has said it must be fought. The United States and the United Nations accuse Rwanda of supporting M23, with allegations of more than 4,000 Rwandan soldiers operating alongside it. Rwanda denies this. Uganda has also faced accusations of backing the rebels.

The United Nations says more than 7.8 million people are displaced and 28 million face food shortages, and the death toll is unknown. Congolese people fear a fresh escalation and the possibility that some soldiers may defect to their former commander in chief.