A supply-line crisis is developing in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where militants belonging to the M23 rebel group are reported to control all access into Goma on the country’s Lake Kivu border with Rwanda.
BBC Africa regional editor Julian Barnes said: “The M23 controls all the roads in and out of Goma, to the north, south, east and west.
“They are the masters of logistics. Goma is best resupplied from its immediate neighbours or by air.”
He said the severing of supply lines for food, goods and medicines is the real threat to the two million-plus people living in the frontier city.
With threats of a humanitarian crisis developing in the city, pressure has been piled on Rwanda for its apparent support of M23, an accusation denied by the government of Paul Kagame.
The M23, or March 23 Movement, is a Congolese rebel military group that operates mainly in the province of North Kivu in the eastern areas of DRC.
It is mostly formed of ethnic Tutsi and was formed on April 4, 2012, by nearly 300 soldiers, the majority of them former members of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), citing poor conditions in the army and the government's unwillingness to implement a peace deal aimed at ending conflict in the eastern DRC.
Taking its name from the date on which the peace deal was signed, the M23 rebellion of 2012 to 2013 against the DRC government led to the displacement of many people.
According to Bedford, apart from accusations that Rwanda is funding a proxy conflict in the DRC, turmoil in the area is exploited by unscrupulous operators in the mining industry.
“Everyone knows that they can get very rich if they can control areas with mining in it,” he said.
Last week two South African soldiers were killed during an attack on a gold mine near the Djugu district in Ituri province, north of Goma.
The DRC is rich in natural resources, including cobalt, copper, gold, diamonds, tin, tungsten, tantalum, and lithium, which are primarily mined in relatively small-scale artisanal mines in the eastern DRC.
The Bibatama Mining Concession is a series of coltan mining sites near the town of Rubaya, northwest of Goma, which is a major source of tantalum and niobium – minerals used in the fast-growing smart tech and metal alloy industries.
