San Francisco Frontiers - Long-running conflicts muddy DR Congo Ebola response

The Rwanda-backed M23 militia has set up a parallel administration in the swathes of territory it has seized from the Congolese government in the east, already the scene between 2018 and 2020 of the central African country's deadliest Ebola epidemic to date.

- Inter-ethnic conflict -

The outbreak's epicentre is in Ituri province on the border with Uganda and South Sudan in the Congolese northeast, where the violence wrought by various armed groups has led to intense episodes of internal displacement.

Since 2017, the areas north of Bunia, the provincial capital, have been torn apart by a violent conflict between the Lendu, a group mainly made up of settled farmers, and the Hema people, typically nomadic herders. Massacres leaving up to dozens of people dead are regularly reported.

The town of Mongbwalu, the latest Ebola outbreak's ground zero, is on the turf of the self-proclaimed Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco), a militia claiming to defend Lendu interests.

"So far, we have not encountered any resistance from the armed groups," a health official in Mongbwalu said on Monday. "We are looking for strategies to reach the sick in insecure areas."

The Convention for Popular Revolution (CRP), an armed group often associated with the itinerant Hema, for its part declared a unilateral ceasefire on Thursday, before the Ebola outbreak was reported.

The pitched battles pitting the CRP against the Congolese military and the Codeco militia are marked by numerous abuses and killings of civilians.

- IS-linked fighters -

To the southwest of Bunia stretches the vast Ituri forest, which serves as a safe haven for fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Formed by former Ugandan rebels who fled across the border, the ADF is notorious for extreme violence towards civilians. It has committed massacres in both Ituri and neighbouring North Kivu province, killing at least 36 people in several attacks in early May.

The road leading from Bunia to Beni, a major city in the north of North Kivu, cuts through an area that falls prey to regular ADF raids.

Healthcare and humanitarian workers are not spared by the armed group, who kill indiscriminately.

ADF fighters often target roads along which the military is slow to intervene, despite the help of the Ugandan army fighting alongside Congolese soldiers in the province since 2021.

- Front line -

To the south, the DRC's eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu have been cut in two by the front lines pitting the Congolese army against the M23 and its Rwandan allies.

According to local sources, clashes have continued on the ground since the beginning of the epidemic, notably in South Kivu -- despite the DRC and Rwanda signing a peace deal brokered by the United States in December.

The airport in North Kivu's provincial capital Goma, which once helped funnel urgently needed aid into the eastern DRC by air, has been shut since the M23 took the city in January 2025.

In April, the warring parties signed a declaration in Switzerland committing them to help the deployment of humanitarian aid.

Francois Moreillon, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in the DRC, on Monday appealed to the belligerents' "sense of responsibility" and urged them to open "the way to effective humanitarian access, cooperation and coordination".

- Parallel government -

A first Ebola infection has been confirmed in Goma, which lies near the Rwandan border and remains in M23 hands.

While the M23 has set up to govern for the long haul for the regions under its control, it has never had to manage the response to a serious epidemic.

The M23-appointed governors of the North and South Kivu provinces on Sunday announced the deployment of health, monitoring and awareness-raising teams among the population, as well as the tightening of health measures in medical facilities and in high-density areas.

Since Sunday, "no new cases have been reported", the M23's spokesman said in a statement on Monday.

F.Garcia--SFF