Kabila’s Warlord Diplomacy

When a former head of state chooses a rebel-held city to launch his political comeback, standard diplomatic commentary ceases to apply. Joseph Kabila, who governed the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2001 to 2019, has formally aligned himself with the Rwanda-backed M23 insurgents. Announcing the creation of the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation at his residence in Goma—a regional stronghold M23 has controlled since January 2025—Kabila has stripped away any lingering illusions regarding peaceful political opposition.

The structure of this new entity reveals much about its immediate intentions. Kabila assumes direct leadership of the coalition, flanked by deputies such as Corneille Nangaa, former head of the Congo River Alliance and political chief of M23. Coalition adviser Claude Ibalanky made their operational logic explicit, declaring that the group intends to unite resistance forces to put an end to tyranny, by any means necessary including the use of force. The government in Kinshasa offered no immediate response, but the strategic calculation is clear.

Kabila’s open alignment with an armed rebellion follows a rapid sequence of legal actions and international sanctions. Last year, a military court in Kinshasa sentenced him to death in absentia on charges of treason, war crimes, and collaboration with Rwanda and M23. Kabila dismissed the trial as a politically motivated sham. Washington followed with its own measures earlier this year, imposing sanctions on the former president over allegations of funding rebel groups.

Meanwhile, President Félix Tshisekedi is hardly acting as a disinterested guardian of constitutional norms. As insurgency flares across the eastern provinces, government allies in Kinshasa are actively preparing public opinion for revisions to the constitutional two-term limit before Tshisekedi’s mandate ends in 2028. Escalating conflict in the east provides a convenient backdrop for expanding executive privileges at the center.

Peace talks scheduled for November in Qatar between Kinshasa and M23 now appear largely decorative. University of Ottawa researcher Yvon Muya noted that an announcement of this scale is not made without military preparations already in place, predicting direct escalation between Kabila and Tshisekedi. When political survival is sought through armed rebellion on one side and constitutional alteration on the other, state authority becomes little more than a trophy for competing factions.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com