As tensions persist between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, Kigali has consistently articulated one core position: Rwanda’s security cannot be understood as beginning at its borders … not as a matter of ambition, but as a matter of survival. This claim is often treated by external observers as excessive or suspect. In reality, it reflects a security doctrine forged through direct experience with a genocidal threat that has never been fully dismantled.
The escalation of violence in eastern DRC in December 2025, shortly after the signing of the Washington Accords, illustrates this reality with clarity. While diplomatic frameworks were being finalized, a parallel military buildup was unfolding on the ground. “Unaccountable actors”, including mercenaries, government-backed militias, and at least one state, operated outside both the Rwanda – DRC agreement and the DRC – AFC/M23 negotiations. Acting deliberately as spoilers, they coordinated violence in November and December, believing responsibility could be shifted onto Rwanda.
For Kigali, this was not an anomaly. It was a reminder.
A Threat That Never Ended
Rwanda’s security posture is rooted in lived history. In the immediate aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the country faced a genocidal insurgency launched from neighboring territory, one that nearly destroyed the post-genocide Rwandan state.
Following their defeat in July 1994, approximately 40,000 members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (Ex-FAR) and Interahamwe militias regrouped in refugee camps in eastern DRC. From August 1994 onward, they launched a coordinated insurgency known as the Abacengezi, aimed explicitly at completing the genocide and returning to power.
Between 1994 and 1999, thousands of civilians were killed inside Rwanda. Genocide survivors were targeted, Hutu supporters of national unity were executed, schools were attacked, children were separated by ethnicity and murdered, and prisons were raided to free génocidaires and replenish ranks. Operating from Congolese territory, these forces reorganized into the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALIR), the direct precursor of today’s FDLR, benefitting from regional protection and external support.
By October 1997, more than a thousand insurgents attacked Gisenyi itself. Only through drastic changes in tactics and sustained defensive measures did Rwanda prevent catastrophe. The threat was not eliminated; it was contained.
From Fugitive Militia to State-Embedded Actor
What many still fail to grasp is that the FDLR has not merely survived; it has evolved.
While its numbers have declined, the group has undergone a qualitative transformation. Under the current Congolese administration, the FDLR has shifted from a fugitive militia hiding in forests to a legitimized actor embedded within Congolese security structures. Through the Wazalendo / Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (VDP) framework of the Congolese government, it has gained unprecedented access to arms, logistics, intelligence, and political protection.
The Wazalendo phenomenon has acted as a force multiplier. By positioning itself as the ideological and operational core of this coalition, the FDLR has assumed de facto leadership over tens of thousands of armed and radicalized youth across eastern DRC. Unlike militias driven by local grievances or opportunism, the FDLR brings with it a coherent genocidal ideology — one that rejects reconciliation and thrives on instability.
This distinction is critical. Rwanda has long confronted the FDLR as an armed group, including through periods of successful joint operations with Congolese forces. But the FDLR as a system-level threat — embedded, legitimized, and amplified through state-sanctioned mobilization — represents a fundamentally different order of danger.
Security Explanation Is Not Political Endorsement
It is within this context that Rwanda’s Ambassador to the United States articulated Rwanda’s security perspective before the U.S. Congress. Yet rather than engage with the substance of that explanation, some rushed to mischaracterize it as “proof” of Rwandan support for AFC/M23.
This conflation is false. It mistakes threat prevention for political alignment, and security coordination for political sponsorship.
Explaining a security reality is not the same as endorsing a political project. Rwanda’s articulation of its threat environment does not amount to choosing Congolese actors, shaping Congolese governance, or predetermining political outcomes in the DRC. Rwanda does not endorse armed movements as substitutes for inclusive governance, nor does it claim to represent Congolese constituencies. Its concern is singular and defensive: preventing the re-emergence of a genocidal cross-border insurgency rooted in the FDLR and its allied extremist networks.
Reducing this position to accusations of “backing rebels” may be rhetorically convenient, but it obscures the real issue. The central problem is not Rwanda’s security doctrine; it is the continued tolerance, protection, and integration of genocidal forces within Congolese state structures.
The Cost of Arming Extremism
History offers sobering parallels. Sudan’s Janjaweed militias evolved into the Rapid Support Forces and plunged the country into catastrophic civil war. In Ethiopia, reliance on irregular forces during the Tigray conflict has given way to prolonged insurgency and state fragmentation. Libya remains trapped in permanent instability after empowering revolutionary armed groups.
The DRC is now following this same trajectory — with one crucial difference. In eastern Congo, the ideological core of this mobilization is genocidal.
By empowering the Wazalendo–FDLR nexus, Kinshasa is not merely creating future rivals. It is nurturing a force structurally opposed to stability, reconciliation, and sovereign authority itself. Recent internecine clashes in South Kivu are already early warning signs.
Why Rwanda Will Not Delegate Its Survival
One final truth underpins Rwanda’s posture.
The Genocide against the Tutsi unfolded under the watch of the United Nations Security Council, composed of the most powerful states on earth. They were warned. They did nothing. As more than a million people were murdered in 100 days, the international system stood aside.
After the genocide, it failed again. It did not dismantle the genocidal networks that fled into Congo. It did not neutralize the perpetrators who reorganized and continued their campaign for three decades from across Rwanda’s borders.
Rwanda carries those wounds in its own flesh. While rebuilding its social fabric and pursuing reconciliation, it has had to confront an existential threat largely alone.
No one came in 1994. No one eliminated the genocidal forces afterward. No one has the moral authority to dictate to Rwanda how it should define its own security today.
Rwanda does not seek to determine political outcomes in the DRC, nor does it endorse armed movements as substitutes for inclusive governance. Its actions are narrowly focused on one objective: ensuring that genocidal forces never again acquire the capacity to threaten its people from across its borders.
Until that threat recedes, Rwanda will continue to act on the lesson history imposed upon it, that “Never again” cannot be outsourced, misread, or negotiated away.
The witer Albert Rudatsimburwa is a socio-political commentator and regional observer based in Kigali, Rwanda
