The Great Lakes region, and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in particular, is witnessing a qualitative transformation in the nature of the conflict. The March 23 Movement M23 is no longer read as a local rebellion of limited objectives, but rather as an organised military-political actor seeking to reshape the field and sovereign balances in eastern Congo. The movement, which began as a mutiny within the Congolese army, has gradually transformed into a quasi-regular structure that combines military operations, parallel administration, and economic control, and which today treats North and South Kivu as a continuous sphere of influence rather than a shifting battlefield.
The roots of the March 23 Movement trace back to the agreement of 23 March 2009, signed between the government of Kinshasa and the National Congress for the Defence of the People, the rebellion then led by Laurent Nkunda, whose elements were subsequently integrated into the Congolese army. However, as the implementation of the agreement's provisions stalled — particularly those concerning the reintegration of officers, the protection of local influence networks, and the management of security in the east of the country — a number of former officers defected in 2012 and founded the "March 23 Movement", named after the agreement itself. Since then, the movement has positioned itself as a rebellion with a professional military structure, drawing on a narrative of protecting Congolese Tutsi, while operating in practice within a broader conflict over security, borders, and resources in eastern Congo. The United Nations and several Western powers accuse Rwanda of providing direct support to the movement, which Kigali officially denies despite the accumulation of field and intelligence evidence.
The importance of the movement today stems not only from its capacity for military advance, but from its transformation from a fighting rebellion into a de facto authority. Since its return to combat in late 2021, M23 has no longer moved according to the logic of "strike and withdraw", but according to the logic of consolidation and control. This has manifested clearly in its transition from military penetration operations to the construction of parallel administration, the appointment of local cadres, the reactivation of financial and administrative tools, and the imposition of alternative governance structures in areas under its control. Recent field reports indicate that the movement has trained hundreds of administrative cadres to manage the areas under its authority, reflecting its transition from the logic of rebellion to the logic of parallel governance.
In this context, the battle around Goma is no longer merely a battle for a city, but a multi-layered battle of strategic strangulation. Goma is no longer simply a regional capital; it represents the political, economic and logistical centre of gravity of eastern Congo, and any sustained pressure upon it means in practice the undermining of Kinshasa's ability to maintain an effective sovereign presence in the east. For this reason, M23's strategy has come to rest on encircling the city rather than directly storming it, and on converting control over its surroundings into a tool of long-term siege.
The town of Sake acquires central importance in this context, not only for its geographical proximity to Goma, but because it represents the primary overland link between Goma and its southern and interior depth. Control over Sake does not merely mean threatening Goma militarily; it means controlling the logistical artery that connects it to the rest of the country.
The movement's positioning in the surroundings of Sake and on the highlands overlooking it has allowed for the creation of a field situation that grants it the advantage of "fire control" over axes of movement and supply, and limits the ability of government forces to manoeuvre or rotate their units between fronts. This positioning has transformed Sake from a peripheral town into the key to the architecture of the siege on Goma.
The most significant variable in the current battle is that M23 no longer relies solely on rapid ground movement, but has transitioned to a more complex quasi-regular pattern of combat. The movement is now managing simultaneous fronts in Masisi, Rutshuru, and Walikale, and engaging in intermittent clashes with the Congolese army and its local alliances on more than one axis simultaneously, which grants it operational flexibility and prevents government forces from concentrating strength on a single front. Field data from recent days indicate the continuation of clashes in southern Masisi and along the Walikale axis, in parallel with the consolidation of its positions in the northern interior, confirming that the movement is operating according to a flexible strategy of attrition rather than a single offensive thrust.
The battle has also revealed an important shift in the nature of the tools of combat. The movement has become more capable of absorbing airstrikes and more flexible in deploying within complex mountainous terrain, while the intensity of drone use by both sides has increased, whether for reconnaissance or for precision strikes. Recent months have recorded a clear escalation in the drone war in eastern Congo, with limited airstrikes becoming a permanent fixture of the engagement, reflecting the conflict's transition from its traditional pattern to a more technically advanced level.
In contrast, Kinshasa is suffering from a compound crisis that concerns not only combat capability but the very structure of the alliance upon which it relies. The Congolese army is fighting alongside undisciplined local formations of Wazalendo, and regional forces of varying readiness, while the UN mission MONUSCO continues to operate within a narrow political and military margin. This mixture grants the government numerical density but weakens operational cohesion and limits its capacity to execute concentrated and sustained offensives. Furthermore, the multiplicity of field decision-making centres creates coordination gaps that the movement is clearly exploiting.
Most dangerously, the conflict is no longer purely military; it has transformed into a contest over legitimacy and administration. The movement does not seek merely to control territory, but to redefine who actually governs eastern Congo. This is what makes the battle around Goma more dangerous than a mere field engagement; it is a battle over functional sovereignty: who controls the roads, the taxes, the banks, the crossing points, and the local administration. For this reason, the real danger lies not only in the possibility of Goma falling militarily, but in the consolidation of a reality in which the city becomes sovereignly besieged even if it does not fall militarily.
Within this trajectory, the likely scenarios appear confined to three principal paths: the first, the consolidation of a long-term siege on Goma that forces Kinshasa into coercive negotiations granting M23 permanent administrative and security influence in the east; the second, a limited government counter-offensive that succeeds in slowing the expansion without overturning the equation; and the third, the most dangerous, a gradual erosion in the state's capacity to hold the east, transforming the movement's areas of control into a quasi-independent sphere of influence within the Congolese state. In all scenarios, the battle in eastern Congo is no longer a battle of rebellion against the state, but a battle over the very shape of the state itself in the Congolese east.
