KIRUMBA, Democratic Republic of the Congo—In the courtyard of a small Catholic church in Kirumba, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) North Kivu province, Innocent Munyandekwe Mpizi addressed the few hundred people who had gathered to hear him.
Mpizi is the city’s mayor, the third appointed by a militia called M23, or the March 23 Movement, that took control of a wide swath of the eastern DRC beginning in the summer of 2024. Since taking office, he has held community meetings every Thursday.
At one such meeting in mid-December 2025, armed militiamen stood near a Jeep. They held their weapons, ready to fire if anything suspicious happened while residents complained to Mpizi of a surge in banditry. The bandits were stealing cash from homes and even killing people. Mpizi offered reassurance that M23 would apprehend the criminals. When people are caught, they’re whipped.
He also had another message: “We are Congolese,” he said. “We invite you to join our ranks so that we can go and liberate other areas under the control of the Kinshasa government.”
It was an effort to reassure the people, who have a strong allegiance to their Congolese national identity, that his group isn’t Rwandan, despite widespread knowledge that it has strong backing—even ongoing provision of munitions and even troops—from that neighboring country.
It was also a clear signal that the recent peace deal between Rwanda and Congo, brokered by the United States and signed in early December, means nothing in most M23-held areas. The deal resolved that M23 would disarm, and its territory would return to DRC government control. U.S. President Donald Trump hailed the moment as a “great day for Africa—great day for the world and for these two countries.”
But M23 remains in place as the government of much of eastern Congo. Most shockingly, many people here would prefer that it stay that way.
When M23 seized the town of Kirumba in late 2024, one of us—Merveille, who has lived in this city all her life—believed that ongoing, widespread atrocities and mass killings were certain. After all, this was the group responsible for exacting extraordinary bribes; raping men, women, and children; and hacking off limbs and heads with machetes as it swept through the region to claim as much mineral-rich land as possible.
But Merveille and her neighbors didn’t die. Now, though some still want Congolese governance restored, many others, such as Merveille, see that this new administration, however illegal, offers new opportunities. There are fewer taxes. Community service is mandatory, but it is put toward efforts to improve roads and other infrastructure. There’s no more harassment at the hands of the national army, known as the FARDC for its French initials, which often acted no better than any other militia group. M23’s soldiers are more disciplined. There’s even been an easing of corruption.
It’s far from idyllic. Banks have been closed for more than a year, which has led to a cash crisis and exacerbated extreme poverty. Across the eastern DRC, violence against women and girls, including at the hands of M23, is shockingly high. The armed group is a violent and extortive ruling force.
But for all of M23’s viciousness, the previous status quo—extreme instability, never knowing when another armed group would emerge from the forest to slaughter people in the street—seems worse. Against all odds, M23 has brought a form of stability that hasn’t existed in decades.
“We don’t want M23 to leave here anymore because we are already almost at peace,” one businessman said.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s administration has always staunchly denied supporting M23, despite assertions from the United Nations and other international bodies that it does. Gold, coltan, and other minerals from eastern Congo, where the country’s natural wealth is largely concentrated, flow freely from M23-held areas and beyond to Rwanda. Trump has said that the United States also wants a share of the DRC’s mineral wealth as part of the peace deal, and U.S. companies have already increased their activity in the country.
But even as that deal was reached, M23 was advancing on Uvira, a town in South Kivu province that serves as a key border crossing between the DRC and Burundi. Under U.S. pressure—and the day before the town meeting in Kirumba—M23 withdrew from Uvira. But the group also said that it wouldn’t retreat from places where it has entrenched itself as the government, a point that Mpizi, the Kirumba mayor, reiterated in that community meeting.
That Congolese government has had, at best, tenuous control of the eastern DRC for decades. For generations a region that has suffered political and social instability, this modern era of violence began in the years after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where extremist Hutus massacred people of the minority Tutsi group. Kagame, a Tutsi, was then a military leader and is largely credited with ending the war in Rwanda. Millions of Hutus, a small number of them extremists, crossed into the DRC Long lines of these refugees walked through Kirumba.
Merveille, a teenager at the time, remembers eyeing those refugees warily, suspicious that they came with violent intent. Armed Tutsi groups emerged in this era to take revenge on the Hutus. Opposing groups formed, too, or revived in the fray. Even before that, Merveille remembers running desperately and repeatedly through the forest with her siblings when armed groups pushed through her region. Her grandparents’ village, located some 20 miles away, was a refuge—until it too was inevitably attacked.
Since 2010, tens of thousands of U.N. peacekeepers have been based in the provincial capital, Goma, located 60 miles south of Kirumba—a trek that can take six hours or more. Those peacekeepers are often passive.
M23 was established in 2012 and has become the most powerful of the 50-odd militia groups contesting control of the region. In the decades of conflict since the genocide in Rwanda, some 6 million people have been killed in the fighting, and 7 million more displaced from their homes.
People here in Kirumba now face a dilemma. Most don’t trust M23, which they see as a Rwandan proxy that has committed numerous atrocities. And yet, if M23 were to disarm and withdraw as the peace deal requires, they fear a return to the rule of the Congolese government. At minimum, M23 seems able to fend off other armed groups that, under the national government, emerged from the forest without warning to slaughter people.
Shortly after M23 was founded, it took control of Goma, the provincial capital, for about 10 days. This time around, people wondered: Would the occupation last for a day? A week? Surely no longer.
But now, more than a year later, it’s clear that this time is different. At least in Kirumba, people meet at church on Sundays. Schools operate as normal, with teachers being paid through local credit cooperatives, ironically funded by the Congolese government. There’s an uptick in housing construction as M23 eliminates much of the bureaucratic red tape that was overwhelming under the Congolese government.
However, though there were well-paying jobs under the Congolese government, there aren’t any professional opportunities with M23. And as always, violence is just a breath away.
At the community meeting that Merveille attended in December, one man asked Mpizi whether M23 intended to balkanize the country.
No, Mpizi replied. The aim isn’t to carve out sections of the DRC to create a new country, but to seize the entire nation.
Another person asked if, in that case, M23 intended to change Congo’s national anthem. Mpizi shrugged off the question. When M23 is finished, he said, the DRC will be made whole. “We will never leave here again,” he said.