The two African nations signed a peace deal that will see the withdrawal of Rwandan troops that have supported rebel forces in Congo and killed thousands.
Officials from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a peace deal at the U.S. State Department on June 27 in the hopes of bringing a halt to fighting that has killed thousands in the two African nations this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio presided over the ceremony, where foreign ministers from both nations signed the U.S.-brokered agreement.
The peace agreement is a win for the Trump administration, which has sought to position itself as a peacemaker in the international community.
“They were going at it for many years, and with machetes,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters ahead of the signing on June 27.
“It is one of the worst wars that anyone has ever seen, and I just happened to have somebody that was able to get it settled.”
The agreement involves provisions on territorial integrity, a prohibition of hostilities, and an agreement for the disengagement, disarmament, and conditional integration of nonstate armed groups.
The deal also aims to secure for the United States billions of dollars’ worth of rare earths and other minerals from the region, although the signing of an associated economic framework has been delayed for up to three months.
“I was able to get them together and sell it,” Trump said of the economic framework, which could grant U.S. companies access to a wide array of valuable resources.
“And not only that, we’re getting for the United States a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo.”
Rubio described the June 27 deal as “an important moment after 30 years of war.”
Under the terms of the peace agreement, Rwanda and Congo will implement a 2024 deal that would have Rwanda withdraw its troops from eastern Congo within the next 90 days.
Rwanda has sent at least 7,000 soldiers over the border in support of a rebel group known as M23. That group seized two of Congo’s largest cities and most lucrative mining areas in a series of surprise attacks earlier this year.
The fighting has since resulted in thousands of deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The violence in the region is not new, however, and traces back through decades of intermittent fighting between the two powers since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. At that time, roughly half a million ethnic minorities were killed in a civil war in Rwanda, and the mass exodus of others into neighboring Congo caused a civil war to erupt there as well.
In the decades since, hundreds of armed groups have risen up and fallen again, and endemic violence is believed to have resulted in millions of deaths in the two countries since the 1990s.
It’s unclear how quickly the fighting will end, or whether it really will. Just hours before the deal was signed, an armed militia group killed at least 11 people and injured a dozen others in the Congolese region of Djugu.
The attack was carried out by the rebels from the Cooperative for the Diversion of Congo, one of 120 or so armed groups in the region that have spent the past three decades fighting for control of limited land resources and valuable mining sites.
Further complicating matters is the question whether M23 will consider the agreement to be binding on its own fighters. The group has not been directly involved in the peace deal signed on June 27.
The forthcoming economic framework, which is expected to be signed in the next three months, would expand foreign trade and investment in local critical mineral supply chains and may bring some stabilization as U.S. companies move into the region to secure mining sites.
The mostly untapped minerals are estimated by the U.S. Department of Commerce to be worth as much as $24 trillion.
The June 27 peace deal comes alongside an international framework currently being negotiated in Qatar. That deal aims to establish a joint security mechanism within 30 days and to implement a plan to monitor and verify the withdrawal of Rwandan soldiers from Congo within three months.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
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