Former DR Congo leader Joseph Kabila to lead new rebel alliance

Submission Statement: The former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila, will head a new alliance with Rwanda-backed rebels, further complicating US efforts to broker peace in the mineral-rich country.

The new rebel movement, to be called the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, incorporates M23 rebels, who, with military support from Rwanda, control large swaths of mineral-rich eastern DR Congo including the cities of Goma and Bukavu. It also folds in the M23’s political umbrella group L’Alliance Fleuve Congo.

Kabila was convicted of treason in absentia in Kinshasa and sentenced to death in September 2025 for supporting the rebels.

He made the announcement formalising his role exactly 30 years after his father Laurent Kabila emerged at the head of a Rwanda-backed rebellion that ended the decades-long dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko and sparked regional turmoil that continues to this day.

Former frontmen for the M23 and umbrella political movement AFC will be his deputies, including Sultani Makenga, military commander, and Corneille Nangaa, a former electoral commissioner who heads the AFC.

Kabila was president of the DR Congo from 2001, when his father was assassinated, to 2019, when his chosen successor Félix Tshisekedi took over after flawed elections.

He presided over a succession of peace talks and a boom in mining that favoured the Chinese, but it was also a period in which corruption remained entrenched.

Fighting continues, with M23 rebels suffering setbacks in South Kivu province, after the withdrawal under US pressure of Rwandan troops. But the rebels remain firmly in control of North Kivu, which has some of the world’s largest deposits of coltan, a mineral used in mobile phones and other electronics.

The DR Congo is in the midst of one of the worst-ever outbreaks of the Ebola virus, with a rare strain claiming more than 4,200 lives and spreading across numerous provinces.