Gaza

• Hamas spoiled Pres. Biden's optimism that a ceasefire deal with Israel could be signed within the next week. Some reports claimed Hamas officials said they hadn't seen any formal proposals from Israel since last week, and other reports said they received a new proposal but rejected it. Either way, it doesn't sound like a deal is imminent.
• Nonetheless, Biden seemed confident that Israel was still committed to pausing military activities in Gaza during Ramadan - but that could change if hopes for an imminent ceasefire deal fade.

Iran

• Both Iranian and American officials say Tehran has called on the militias it backs (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc.) to scale back their attacks on U.S. military installations in the Middle East following U.S. retaliatory strikes on militia bases in Iraq after three U.S. servicemen were killed in a militia strike in Jordan.
• The militias have indeed curtailed their attacks. In the four months prior to the U.S. retaliatory strikes on Feb. 2, the Pentagon counted 170 attempted attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. But since Feb. 2, there have only been two minor strikes against the U.S. from Syria and none from Iraq.

Ukraine and Russia

• Pres. Putin reacted predictably to Pres. Macron's refusal to confirm he wouldn't send French troops into Ukraine (which the media read as a suggestion that NATO may - one day - send troops into Ukraine, despite NATO reiterating that it ruled out the idea). A Kremlin spokesman responded: "This is of course not in the interest of these [NATO] countries."
• Separately, a Russian court sentenced Oleg Orlov - the co-chair of a Nobel peace prize winning activist group that the Kremlin dismantled - to 30 months in prison for criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine as "mass murder."

DRC

• UN peacekeepers officially began withdrawing from DRC, where they'll be replaced by a coalition of troops from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).
• The UN mission in DRC, MONUSCO, was the longest peacekeeping mission in UN history, lasting from 1999 until now. It certainly wasn't the most successful one: not only did it cost over $20 billion and fail to keep the peace in restive eastern DRC; its troops were widely unpopular on the ground and accused of numerous abuses.
• The SADC coalition has a daunting task ahead of it: eastern DRC is probably closer to regional war than it's been in the last 12 years, and the international voices that stepped in to prevent war in 2012 are now distracted by Ukraine and Gaza.
• An Economist op-ed pasted below outlines suggestions for preventing another war in DRC by encouraging Rwanda - which backs the M23 rebels instigating fighting in the east - to stand down.
• Pres. Tshisekedi said he would be willing to meet his Rwandan counterpart, Pres. Kagame, to discuss the situation.

Other News

• Two of Nigeria's biggest trade unions are threatening a national strike if the government doesn't accede to their demands for higher wages in light of inflation and rising fuel costs. That could lead to destabilizing protests.
• The privately-built Odysseus lunar lander cut its mission a few days short yesterday after losing power and comms following a sideways landing. But before it lost comms it beamed back some cool photos its builder - Intuitive Machines - posted to X here: https://twitter.com/Int_Machines

How to prevent another catastrophic regional war in Congo (The Economist) Few parts of the world have suffered such prolonged misery as eastern Congo, a place that has been meddled in and fought over by its neighbours for decades. Since the 1990s it has been the battleground in two major wars that sucked in troops from across the region. The deadliest of these, the second Congo war, led to the loss of 1m-5m lives, mostly from conflict-related disease and starvation. Now, with much of the world focused on crises elsewhere, there is the risk of a catastrophic third regional war being sparked in Congo—one that could possibly be averted but for the inattention of the West.

Rwanda-backed rebels have surrounded Goma, the biggest city in the east and home to perhaps 2m people. In recent weeks Rwandan troops or their proxies have fired an anti-aircraft missile at a un drone and bombed Goma airport. They are almost certainly responsible for firing on a un helicopter, killing a peacekeeper, and for the death of two South African soldiers in a mortar attack.


The conflict in eastern Congo has deep and tangled roots. The region’s rich mineral wealth has made it a prize worth fighting over. A weak central government in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, has allowed the emergence of around 120 armed groups that fight one another and the army for control of mines, people and land. A national army too ineffectual to provide security for the region’s people or to control the country’s borders has been an open invitation to meddling by neighbours. In the centre of this thicket is Rwanda, a tiny country of 14m people that has played an outsize role in destabilising Congo, a country almost ten-times its size.

The first Congo war broke out in 1996, just two years after the genocide in Rwanda. The genocide was halted only when the army and allied Hutu militias responsible for the killing were defeated by rebels led by Paul Kagame, now Rwanda’s president. The militias and army leaders found sanctuary in Congo, then named Zaire, and used its territory to strike back at Rwanda. In response, local Rwandan-backed rebels marched on Kinshasa and toppled Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s dictator.

The second Congo war started when Rwanda invaded again, in 1998, after Laurent Kabila, the figurehead leader of Congo, turned on his erstwhile patrons and began supporting the Hutu militias. The resulting conflict involved troops from eight countries and lasted until 2003. It ended only after all sides were exhausted and donors pressed participants to withdraw.

A third Congo war was narrowly averted in 2012, thanks to the stance taken by Western donors and the un when Rwanda-backed m23 rebels marched into Goma. America, Britain and other European donors withheld more than $240m of aid to Rwanda and blocked disbursements by multilateral institutions. The un formed the Intervention Brigade, its first-ever unit authorised to use offensive force, to attack the m23 and other armed groups. The pressure worked. Rwanda scaled back support for the m23, which was largely defeated by un and Congolese forces.

Yet now few in the outside world are paying much attention to the unfolding crisis. Only America has been using its diplomatic heft, to try to get Rwanda to withdraw its troops and Congo’s government to tone down its inflammatory rhetoric and stop co-operating with a militia linked to leaders of the genocide who had fled Rwanda. Others are being craven out of self-interest. Britain, which wants to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, gave it more than £120m ($150m) in aid in 2022. France, which is grateful for Rwanda’s help in fighting jihadists who threaten a large gas project French companies are developing in Mozambique, has provided €504m ($545m) in development aid since 2021. The un, which wants to pull its peacekeepers out of Congo, has failed even to name Rwanda as being behind attacks on its blue helmets.

There are many problems in a country as large and as poorly governed as Congo. Most of them cannot be solved easily or soon. But, as recent history has shown, the threat posed by Rwandan forces and their proxies can be lowered by outside pressure. It is not the means that are lacking, but the will. ■