President Trump\u2019s top officials are raising alarm that violence on the ground in eastern Congo is outpacing U.S. efforts to implement a peace deal to end 30 years of conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. <\/p>\n
The warnings from Trump\u2019s top officials counter the president\u2019s repeated claims that he has ended \u201cun-endable wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s special adviser for Africa Massad Boulos, who is also father-in-law to the president\u2019s daughter Tiffany, conceded last week that fighting had not ended and more work was needed to follow through on the U.S.-brokered peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are skeptical \u2026 and they say, \u2018Oh, the fight has not ended.\u2019 First of all, these things don’t end overnight. That’s number one. These things take some time,\u201d Boulos said Sept. 24 during remarks at Semafor’s Next 3 Billion Summit in New York. <\/p>\n
\u201cHas implementation [of the peace agreement] really started? Not fully yet, not fully.\u201d <\/p>\n
Days later, Mike Waltz, Trump\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, raised alarm that M23 Congolese rebels and the Rwandan Defense Force in Congo were blocking United Nations peacekeeping forces, referred to as Monusco, and undermining Washington\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe too strongly condemn the continued obstruction of Monusco\u2019s operations, particularly by M23 and the Rwandan Defense Forces in North Kivu. Such actions we agree are absolutely unacceptable,\u201d Waltz said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sept 30. <\/p>\n
Waltz’s remarks came the same day Trump boasted to hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals convened at a meeting hosted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that he had \u201csaved\u201d Congo. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey’ve been fighting for 31 years, 10 million people dead. I got that one done, and very proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the U.N. Security Council, members heard testimony that a rise in attacks by M23 and other militias in eastern Congo had led to a 122 percent increase in civilian deaths, compared with only a few months earlier.<\/p>\n
Human rights abuses by M23 far outpace those documented by other groups, according to the U.N. report<\/a>. <\/p>\n The atrocities included mass killings, forced military recruitment, and crimes against humanity: summary executions, torture, abductions and sexual violence. <\/p>\n \u201cPeace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still mostly a promise,\u201d Bintou Keita, the U.N. special envoy overseeing Congo, told the council. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are discrepancies between the progress we see on paper and the reality we observe on the ground, which continues to be marred with violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s entry into the peace talks started earlier this year and culminated in the signing of an agreement of peace principles on June 27 between the foreign ministers of Rwanda and Congo.<\/p>\n While Rwanda and Congo are not formally at war with each other, the spillover of the 1994 Rwandan genocide into eastern Congo is the starting point of 30 years of violence in the mountainous jungles of the region. In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, Hutu refugees, including the perpetrators of violence against Rwanda\u2019s Tutsis, fled into eastern Congo. <\/p>\n