The upcoming Geneva peace talks have pushed Kinshasa to dust off a tired and unconvincing narrative that the crisis in Congo is somehow an imported disease. By casting its adversaries as foreign proxies, the Congolese ruler Félix Tshisekedi is trying to externalize what is, in truth, a deeply domestic failure. It won’t work.
Start with the basics, the principal actors in this conflict are indisputably Congolese nationals. They do not need anyone’s permission, foreign or otherwise, to assert their political or security claims. To suggest they do is an attempt to distract public’s attention away from an uncomfortable reality being that of a regime that has hollowed itself out through tribal patronage and systemic looting, and faces internal resistance as a result.
Joseph Kabila, whatever one thinks of his record, is a former Head of State who resides in Goma, a city he considers home. Corneille Nangaa is the former Head of the National Electoral Commission. Claude Ibalanky, now presented as a delegation expert, was appointed roving ambassador by Tshisekedi himself as recently as 2023. As for the M23, they are not foreign imports but former FARDC soldiers whose grievances stem from the state’s chronic failure to protect its citizens or honor its own commitments.
To insist that such actors must seek “foreign approval” to fight or negotiate is simply absurd.
The regime’s fixation on neighbors as the source of its failures is equally revealing. The foreign hand is a convenient scapegoat, deployed to divert attention from a record of catastrophic governance. The evidence is not subtle. Corruption allegations filed with Belgian prosecutors outline a system in which the Tshisekedi family is accused of siphoning tens of millions of euros each month from mining revenues, funneling them through offshore channels in places like Saudi Arabia and Mauritius. War, in this context, begins to look less like a national tragedy and more like a business model, one that thrives on instability and opacity.
At the same time, the regime has traded national cohesion for tribal divisions and militarization. Rather than addressing the root causes of insecurity, it has leaned on foreign mercenaries and armed terror groups with histories of massacres and systemic rapes, effectively expanding and weaponizing violence to suppress dissent. The result is a dangerous fragmentation of authority in the east, where the state is no longer a stabilizing force but one actor among many.
Meanwhile, the machinery of justice has been bent to political ends, with decisions that look less like due process and more like expedient power plays.
These Geneva talks should not be about foreign interference. They should be about Congolese actors grappling, however imperfectly, with a Congolese crisis. Because until Kinshasa abandons the habit of blaming outsiders for failures born at home, the prospect of peace will remain remote.
