THE ECONOMIST: A Congolese militia wants to sell critical minerals to Donald Trump. He’s not buying them, yet

Before you interview the leaders of M23, the Congolese rebel group that has taken over swathes of Africa’s second-largest country, prepare for some unusual preliminaries.

Men with machine guns politely — but thoroughly — frisk you for weapons. A secretary flicks through your notebook, page by page, “in case there is poison”.

Devices and watches must be left outside the meeting room, lest they prove to be trackable or explosive.

Inside the sanctum, however, M23 wants to project a business-like approach. A social-media team takes photos.

There is corporate merch: flags, banners and desk calendars. The Economist is given, exclusively, a slide deck about why America should cut a deal with the group over the rare earths and 3T metals (tin, tungsten and tantalum) under its control.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of M23’s political arm, says: “Those minerals are in our region… Come, let’s discuss.”

Mr Nangaa’s chutzpah reflects M23’s hold on most of South and North Kivu, provinces in eastern Congo that collectively hold 15 million people and span an area the size of Greece.

Diplomatic talks have failed to stop the front line of its war with the Democratic Republic of Congo from lengthening. From Goma, North Kivu’s capital, M23 is building a parallel administration.

Yet the pleas are also a sign of concern that the Trump administration is increasingly siding with M23’s enemy. In December, America signed a “strategic partnership” with Congo.

In March it imposed sanctions on the army of Rwanda, the neighbouring country that supports M23; on April 30 the target was Joseph Kabila, Congo’s president from 2001 to 2019, whom America accuses of aiding the rebel group.

There have been talks between America and Congo over military training and intelligence-sharing. Erik Prince, an American military contractor hired by Congo, helped its army retake a city in South Kivu earlier this year, according to Reuters.

Exactly how the war will end is unclear. A military victory for one side is unlikely; a comprehensive political agreement will take huge effort.

The longer the conflict goes on, the more likely it is that the Kivus will become, like rebel-held parts of Yemen, Sudan or Libya, a state within a state.

Think of the conflict as both a civil war and a proxy war.

It is a civil war because M23, led by Congolese Tutsis, is fighting a Congolese state that it says discriminates against minorities.

It is a proxy war in that Rwanda, itself led by a Tutsi elite, sees M23 as a way to project power. It says it is threatened by the Congolese army and the FDLR, a group of ethnic Hutus whose presence in the Kivus dates back to the Congo wars fought in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Abundant mineral resources provide extra reasons to fight.

Two main initiatives are intended to curb the violence. The first, led by America, is between Congo and Rwanda. (Mr Trump often cites ending war in Congo as a reason why he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but the fighting continues.)

The second, mediated by Qatar, is between Congo and M23. There are concerns that the conflict will spread to Katanga, the copper-rich region to the south.

M23 has ramped up recruitment and cut deals with allied militias; it may have 38,000 fighters, notes a report by the Congo Research Group, an institute at New York University. Congo is hiring more mercenaries and using more drones.

In March a drone strike killed a UNICEF worker in Goma; the blast was next to a Kabila family house.

M23 is also creating its own de facto government.

“We are activating a new administration,” says Mr Nangaa. Since late 2021, when the group began its latest assault on the Kivus, it has replaced hundreds of civil servants. Chiefs who wield influence in rural areas, especially over land, have been swapped.

Officials receive training in M23 “ideology” at dedicated camps.

Goma is undergoing what might be called, after the Rwandan capital, Kigalification.

Every Saturday residents participate in salongo, a forced city-beautification exercise.

Motorbike-taxi riders have been made to wear helmets and join a new official association. A new police force, the Police Révolutionnaire Congolaise, has a near-identical uniform to its Rwandan counterpart.

People on the streets of Goma say petty crime is down.

Ladies selling vegetables at kerbside markets say they stay open later. At a mosque Muslims say they feel safer attending the last prayer of the day. But there is still fear. Several women say their sons or nephews have been forcibly recruited by M23.

“They are taking our boys,” whispers one as she piles her tomatoes. NGOs are understood to be under pressure to minimise their reporting of sexual violence. (Amnesty International has documented the use of gang rape by all sides of the conflict.)

The economic situation is dire. Banks remain closed, leaving locals without access to credit or savings. The airport— a source of cash and imports — is shut, which makes it hard for aid workers to reach remote areas.

Fewer expats and tourists means fewer shoppers. Fighting in the Kivu hinterland has left people unable to farm or reach markets.

“We are selling in a cleaner city but we don’t sell as much,” says a market trader.

“There is no money in Goma any more because we are isolated,” adds the manager of an electrical shop, who says that her average daily revenues have fallen from $US800 to $150.

“More tax, less money,” is a money-exchanger’s pithy summary. “Regarding security, life is good,” a motorbike-taxi driver says, “economically life is not good.”

Freddy Kaniki, deputy co-ordinator of M23’s political wing, agrees that local people face a “medieval” situation.

But he says that Félix Tshisekedi, Congo’s president, is engaging in “collective punishment” by refusing to reopen banks. He claims that M23 has eliminated dozens of taxes imposed by the Congolese government while improving enforcement of the remaining ones.

The group is also trying to build an alternative financial system. A small building next to a launderette on a side street is, in effect, the central bank of the Kivus. Inside Cédric Fiéma Punduyange, a dapper man with high-waisted black trousers and books by Joseph Schumpeter on his desk, goes through two formula-filled papers with plans to manage exchange rates and boost the money supply. “Sometimes financial regulation here can be more complex than military strategy,” he says.

He says new lenders—one called IMF Kivu (no relation to the one in Washington, DC)—show that some entrepreneurs are willing to upset Kinshasa by setting up financial institutions.

Mr Fiéma Punduyange declines to say who these entrepreneurs are. But the business elite in Goma has changed. Trade with Rwanda—always robust, given the proximity—seems to have strengthened.

Supermarkets stock more Rwandan cheese and less of the Gouda-like Congolese stuff. One Rwandan tycoon says he has “a huge interest” in seeing M23 succeed “from a DNA perspective but also from a business perspective”.

The militia has seized around 45 mining assets, according to the CRG report. The most important is Rubaya, a town some 60km northwest of Goma, with deposits amounting to 15 per cent of current global tantalum supply.

Congo has put the mine on a list of assets for potential American investment, even though it is under M23 control.

“Ever since they (Congo and the Trump administration) signed the mineral deal, we don’t feel the same reception,” says Mr Kaniki, who has spent much of the past 18 years working as a pharmacist in Alaska.

“We realise the game has changed; it’s now transactional.”

So he hands out the pitch deck listing the five main mining assets under M23 control that he wants to discuss with America. In a line that is more MBA than M23, the deck says the group’s plan “represents a more deliverable pathway to the same US supply-chain objectives” than Congo’s. Mr Kaniki adds that some assets Congo is offering away from the Kivus are privately owned or under litigation. “America is making the same mistake they are making in Iran: going in without an end-game strategy.”

There are—to put it mildly—problems. M23’s leaders (though not Mr Kaniki) are under American sanctions. It does not run a sovereign state. Congo believes it can retake Rubaya and other assets with the help of mercenaries.

What happens in the war will depend in part on whether American pressure exacerbates tensions within M23’s coalition.

The group’s military leadership is not always aligned; generals compete over business opportunities as well as strategy. The military and political wings diverge, too. The latter is more interested in power in Kinshasa. The former emphasises control of the Kivus.

America hopes that its sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force will prompt Rwanda to distance itself from M23. Westerners have already cancelled or paused investments in firms owned by the Ministry of Defence. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, may struggle to pitch his country as Africa’s Singapore when his army has joined the likes of North Korea’s on America’s naughty list.

After M23 previously took Goma, in 2012, Rwanda eventually withdrew support under Western pressure. Mr Kagame has also in the past cut deals with Congo over the heads of M23.

Yet there is still genuine concern in Kigali that, with Mr Tshisekedi emboldened, Congo and FDLR represent an enduring threat. Eventually, there will have to be a political deal. For all their flaws, the two diplomatic tracks are keeping the sides talking.

While that goes on, M23 will become more embedded in the Kivus. Its leaders say they are patient, noting that other pariah regimes—like Syria’s — were eventually brought in from the cold.

“This is home,” says Mr Kaniki. “If it takes 20 years, we will wait.”