Joseph Kabila, the former president of Congo, has taken charge of a new rebel coalition that was announced in Goma on Oct. 12, and people in the rebel-held city say they now expect the war in the east to run on.
The group, the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, or FRN, takes the place of the alliance between the Alliance Fleuve Congo, known as the AFC, and the M23 rebels, which has held Goma, the main city of North Kivu province, since January 2025. It accuses President Félix Tshisekedi of tyranny and calls for resistance by any means, force included, Al Jazeera reported from Goma. The move puts a former head of state at the top of the rebellion.
“As a resident of Goma, I believed the war might end in the very near future, hoping that the Congolese government would liberate us,” Basa Juhudi told Al Jazeera. “And we are greatly surprised that even our former president has joined the fray.”
Mr. Juhudi said it was Mr. Kabila’s experience that worried him. The former president “knows this country inside out,” he said, which “means the war is far from over.”
The front was presented at a news conference at Mr. Kabila’s residence in Goma, and Radio Okapi reported that it succeeds the AFC-M23. Corneille Nangaa, who coordinated the AFC, Bertrand Bisimwa, the M23’s leader, and Sultani Makenga, its military chief, are vice presidents, Le Monde reported.
In a communiqué on Wednesday, Freddy Kaniki, one of the front’s leaders, said the signing of its memorandum of association and its launch meant the AFC was dissolved, with the FRN succeeding it by right. The new group would take on the AFC’s “rights, obligations and commitments, in particular those entered into as part of the Doha negotiations,” the communiqué said.
Those talks, hosted by Qatar, have brought the Congolese government and AFC-M23 together to discuss a cease-fire, the return of refugees, the release of detainees and ways to curb rhetoric that stigmatizes ethnic minorities. Washington has pursued its own deal between Congo and Rwanda, built on neutralizing the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a militia known as the FDLR, and pulling Rwandan troops out of Congolese territory.
Josué Akuzwe Walayi, a Congolese human rights activist, said deals without a way to hold violators to account would amount to empty promises. “What would the Doha and Washington agreements be worth if, despite the negotiations, Congolese people continue to die, families remain forced into exile and communities live in fear?” he told Al Jazeera.
Vital Kamerhe, a former speaker of the National Assembly who leads the Union for the Congolese Nation, went after Mr. Kabila directly in a speech on Wednesday. “You cannot erase your own record by accusing your successor,” he said, and he urged the front’s leaders to drop their plans. “Whatever our frustrations, our differences or our ambitions, nothing, absolutely nothing, can justify us taking up weapons against our own country,” he said.
The government had not reacted officially to the announcement, Al Jazeera reported. The week before, after Mr. Kabila said the country was in peril and needed saving, the government spokesman, Patrick Muyaya, said he had “nothing to offer but chaos” and called him, in a post on X, a “man of the past, nostalgic for anti-democratic methods.”
Mr. Kabila has been a convicted man for more than a year. On Sept. 30, 2025, the high military court in Kinshasa sentenced him to death in absentia on charges including treason and war crimes tied to the M23, and ordered him to pay about $50 billion in damages, The Associated Press reported. His relatives called the verdict “unjust” and “politically motivated.” His slide from exile into open rebellion has been building for months.
He took power in 2001 after his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was assassinated, then won elections in 2006 and 2011. His second term was supposed to end in 2016, but the vote was delayed, and protests against the delay were met with deadly force. Mr. Tshisekedi was declared the winner of the December 2018 election and took office in January 2019, the country’s first peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box.
Congo’s government and United Nations experts have accused Rwanda of backing the M23. Kigali denies it and points to armed groups in eastern Congo that it says threaten its security.
“If Kinshasa thought it was dealing with puppets, that is no longer the case,” Willo Riziki, another Goma resident, told Al Jazeera. “There are people all over the country who remain loyal to Kabila.”
How far that loyalty runs, and whether it turns into fighters or votes, isn’t clear. Mr. Juhudi wasn’t hopeful. “We don’t know if the war will end here,” he said.