Thread by @ethuin

In light of ongoing events, it is interesting to look at data. M23 doesn’t seem to be a major source of civilian deaths in eastern #Congo since its return 2017. This doesn’t mean it isn’t illegal and committing violations galore, but it may nuance the current polemic a bit.

Obviously, @KivuSecurity covers violence no longer than since its establishment in 2017. It does neither include M23’s first life, nor its predecessors CNDP and RCD. Many of the latter can be found in the @UNHumanRights Mapping Report, alongside a wealth of crimes by others.

What does that mean? Is M23 your sympathetic liberation army next door? Certainly not. Although some of their claims are valid, insurrection should not be carte blanche to harvest impunity (as other armed groups in the past). Some current M23 likely took part in Kiwanja 2008.

Nonetheless, it is astounding how public invective, driven notably by diaspora and foreign activists (and maybe not reflecting the diverse agency of Congolese in Congo) is singling out M23 as killing squad if actually other armed groups are far more harmful in the past 5 years.

What lessons to draw? 30 years of impunity, including for international actors that contributed to conflict in Central Africa in furtherance of political and business interests, created a situation where injustice seems so all-encompassing that facts are relegated to a backseat.

This is dangerous. It decreases future chances for justice and peaceful cohabitation by entrenching Otherness that will likely only benefit political elites, not the people that have been rallied online and offline to echo extremist invective cooked by spin-doctors.

It also clouds a more nuanced analysis of what is actually happening on the ground. Voices of civilian victims – recent fighting amplified displacement – are rare in a situation where activists on their couches (on all sides of the spectrum) dominate discourse.

Moreover, the exaggerated fantasies on what M23, RDF and others do or don’t are overshadowing their actual involvement on Congolese soil, which is happening, but in a very subtle way, and also lead to reduced attention to other, more deadly theatres (ADF, Codeco etc.)

There is much more to be said on all that, of course, such as the diachronicity and synchronicity of different “wars” (M23 etc. vs. FARDC etc., RDF vs. FDLR, diplomatic escalation, social media escalation etc.), but let’s leave it at that for now.

PS: Since the above focuses on recent history, it is important, as @GMathys just reminded me, that “these reactions also need to be seen in longer historical frames, not only of impunity, but also about lived experiences with conflicts and relationships between both neighbours.”