There is a saying among my people: no argument is as bitter as an argument between brothers.

First, the scene: The area around the central watershed of Africa has been populated for more than ten thousand years. The first peoples, the Twa, still survive in forest enclaves, but several migrations of nomadic cattle herders and agriculturalist settlers have created a unique pattern of conflict, exacerbated by colonialism. Ethnic alliances across borders, and historical opposition undermines attempts to smooth administration. This is exacerbated by vast riches underground. 

The actors are the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a vast state sprawling over forests and savanna, over a multitude of ethnicities and languages. Political power is centered in Kinshasa in the far west, and the peoples in the east feel alienated and forgotten. Uganda, an erstwhile British protectorate, itself fragmented between conflicting ethnic interests. Rwanda was a scene of tragic genocides culminating in the civil war of 1994 when a million people were killed. Some of the perpetrators of the Rwandan Liberation Forces (FDLR) fled into the forest fastnesses of eastern DRC, where they enslaved locals to mine tin and coltan for them in order to finance a guerilla war against Rwanda.

The Rwandan conflict between Tutsi, a cattle-owning aristocracy, and Hutu, an agricultural laborer class, spread over the hills and valleys of the Kivu and Ituri provinces of eastern DRC, leading to Tutsi-related self-defense groups forming and coalescing in armed groups. Rwanda supported or encouraged these, and one, the so-called M23 group eventually prompted a regional intervention in 2013. At the same time brutality of the DRC armed forces prompted a resurgence of the ancient Allied Democratic Forces, a group rebelling against the Ugandan forces. At some stage this group had secured support from Libya, now they claim allegiance with ISIS. 

Félix Tshisekedi assumed the Presidency of the DRC in 2019 in a questionable election leaving many in the east unrepresented. Rebel activity resumed, and Uganda and Rwanda looked anew at the mineral riches of the region and the interests of ethnically related peoples. 

Despite attempts to create regional structures to ensure peace Uganda reacted to AFD bombings of its capital, Kampala, and crossed into eastern DRC in hot pursuit, with the permission of President Tshisekedi. Then popular demonstrators in Kinshasa claimed that the Rwandan government was again aiding and arming the M23 rebels, and Rwanda accused DRC of not acting against the FDLR, who had taken two Rwandan soldiers captive. 

The eastern DRC sits on vast mineral wealth, while nearby Rwanda has a population density close to that of Hong Kong. 

While Belgian anthropologists, writing at the time of Nazi ethnic studies, held that the Hutu were the original inhabitants of these valleys and the cattle-herding Tutsi arrived later to subject them, a linguistic study suggests that these are merely class distinctions and that these are really the same people. 

As tensions rise the Virunga volcanos smolder.