A Conflict in Congo

Rebels backed by Rwanda are seizing huge tracts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.Their progress has been swift and stunning.

In a month, they have routed Congo’s underequipped army several times and caused more than half a million people to flee.On Monday, they captured Goma, a major Congolese city along the Rwandan border.

(They grabbed it once before, in 2012.)I’ve been talking to Goma residents.They’ve been hiding in their houses for the past week without electricity or running water.

Gunfire, and occasionally bombs, explode around them.Some of them took in families who had fled from camps and villages outside the city.

But plenty of those displaced people arrived in Goma knowing nobody.Why are the rebels, known as M23, grabbing parts of eastern Congo? In their telling, they’re protecting ethnic Tutsis, the minority group massacred in a 1994 genocide, some of whom also live in Congo.But experts say the real reason is Congo’s rare minerals, which power our phones and devices.

Congo’s mines are making the rebels — and their patrons in Rwanda — rich.The United States and China are competing for such minerals, and the rebels could make access uncertain.In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what’s at stake in the rebels’ advance — and why they may be hard to stop.The minerals in your phoneYou might be familiar with Rwanda from the film “Hotel Rwanda,” starring Don Cheadle.

In 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis.After a revolt overthrew the Hutu extremists who oversaw the genocide, many of the culprits fled to Congo.

Rwanda says they continued attacking the country from across the border, but those salvos ended decades ago.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Th...