Farmers returning home in eastern Congo are finding their fields seized — a flashpoint that could shatter Trump’s fragile Rwanda-Congo deal.
What happens when war refugees return to their land — only to find strangers plowing it? In eastern Congo, that’s exactly the nightmare unfolding. Survivors of M23’s brutal advance are walking back into fields of cabbage and cauliflower now farmed by new arrivals, many of them speaking Kinyarwanda and accused of being Rwandans. The result: a powder keg threatening to blow apart the peace Trump brokered between Kigali and Kinshasa.
Hundreds of such cases have been documented by the U.N., Reuters reports, forcing M23 to set up an “arbitration centre” — an extraordinary attempt by a rebel movement to police property disputes in occupied territory. But these makeshift courts only underscore the fragility of a deal already delayed in Doha, where peace talks stalled last month.
For men like Abdu Djuma Burunga, who fled Kibumba three years ago, the reality is brutal. His house reduced to rubble, his land seized by strangers drinking beer with M23 fighters, he was told to wait four months until they finished harvesting “their” crops. He got his farm back in August — but only after outsiders had stripped it clean.
This is not an isolated case. U.N. survey data seen by Reuters shows at least 200 families around Goma unable to reclaim farmland. In many instances, returnees accuse Rwandan newcomers of squatting on their property. Kigali denies orchestrating any land grab — yet U.N. experts say Rwanda exercises “command and control” over M23 and has a vested interest in seizing strategic territory in the mineral-rich east.
For Congo, it’s not just about land. It’s about sovereignty — and survival. With coltan, cobalt, copper and lithium under their soil, these villages sit atop the minerals that power the world’s tech economy. And with each field occupied or contested, the promise of Trump’s peace deal grows weaker.
M23 insists most newcomers are Congolese Tutsis returning out of fear of Hutu militias. But even the rebels admit abuses happen. Land is identity in Congo. Lose it, and the war never really ends.
Trump sold his deal as a breakthrough. But without resolving land rights in rebel-held zones, it risks becoming just another failed accord in a region already littered with broken promises and unmarked graves.
