“Get out! Get out!” the rebels yelled, rounding up Christians, tying them together, and transporting them to a nearby church. Hours later, the grisly scene in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) defied imagination. There, in the nearby village of Kasanga, lay the bodies of dozens of men, women, and children — all decapitated by the militants’ trademark machetes and long knives.
The beheadings were just the latest in a long line of bloody horrors the world had barely acknowledged. “We don’t know what to do or how to pray,” an elder of another church said in February. “We’ve had enough of massacres. May God’s will alone be done.”
While Americans’ attention has been on Israel, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, China, and our own borders, a vicious war has raged between Rwanda and the DRC, a systematic campaign of rape, terror, and butchery against the predominately Christian nation of the DRC. For months, that quiet invasion has only intensified, as a rebel force linked to Rwanda — the M23 — along with the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) tried to seize key territories of the second largest country in Africa and control the mineral-rich land, said to be sitting on $24 trillion worth of natural resources.
Nightmarish testimonies of looting, burning, sexual violence, and displacement started bubbling to the attention of the U.N. and Human Rights Watch, where stories of brutality began confirming what had become a legitimate humanitarian crisis. One after another, women and girls came forward after the situation grew dangerously worse. Some are pregnant with their attackers’ children, but with no idea which of the many rapists is the father.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
A 22-year-old described the armed soldiers, on a mission secretly sanctioned by Rwanda, overtaking her town. “The M23 harassed people and looted houses. They took what they wanted and took men away. I don’t know where they took them. … After two weeks, they started raping women. They didn’t care if we were married or not. They came to my house in the evening on February 20. They told my husband to leave. There were seven of them, and five raped me. My husband couldn’t stand what happened to me and left me. I had to flee on my own, through the forest.”
Another mother and daughter were trying to flee, only to be robbed by a band of rebels. “They wanted to rape us,” she told Human Rights Watch investigators. “My mother said no, so they shot a bullet into her chest, and she died on the spot. Then four of them raped me. As they were raping me, one said: ‘We’ve come from Rwanda to destroy you.’”
Others described being gang raped until they lost consciousness or trying to bribe the men not to violate them. Some husbands were forced to watch, along with their crying children. “They tore my clothes,” one woman remembers emotionally. “I was crying and begging them to kill me rather than rape me.” They didn’t listen. Her screams still haunt her husband.
Thousands have been killed — shot in cold blood, blown to pieces with shoulder-fired rockets, or caught up in the massive explosions since the conflict peaked earlier this year. Moïse Ombeni was at church in Goma when he heard militants were moving in on the town. “We were in a general panic, and we were wondering if we should stay or go,” he said in French.
In a harrowing account to Christianity Today, Ombeni says he managed to get home, lock the doors, and wait. “He felt the house vibrate when stray bullets hit the roof and ricocheted into his courtyard. Outside, hundreds of civilians and soldiers died from gunfire and explosions. Unlike in previous conflicts, government forces fought directly with M23 in every part of the city, a decision that directly increased the number of civilian casualties and damaged buildings.”
Ombeni told reporter Morgan Lee that he began “praying with his family and reciting all 16 verses of Psalm 91 to them. He reached out to his friends from church, and they prayed together on online platforms until their internet connection was cut off.” At least 900 bodies were found strewn across the streets, the U.N. reported.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame denied his country’s involvement, but the international community knew better. Armed with surveillance video and drone footage, NBC News’s investigation uncovered “definitive proof” that the Congolese were victims of a “carefully concealed and high-tech operation” by Rwandan forces to take over an area of land that was home to five million people.
In just two months, more than 10,000 cases of rape and sexual violence — almost half against children as young as 10 — have been documented (countless others were not). Until recently, the locals “describe[d] a state of near lawlessness in city centers, where gangs of armed men, some escaped from local prisons, prey on civilians using weapons left behind by the Congolese army.”
This is the hellish situation that the Trump administration has been intensely negotiating behind the scenes to stop. “They were going at it for many years, and with machetes,” the president emphasized Friday. “It is one of the worst wars that anyone has ever seen. And I just happened to have somebody that was able to get it settled,” he explained, referring to his African envoy, Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany.
In an incredible development, the president celebrated a peace deal between the two nations, which could end the decades-long bloodshed that has ravaged the two bordering countries. “We just ended a war that was going on for 30 years with six million people dead,” Trump said, as the foreign ministers flanked him. “No other president could do it.”
The ceasefire, which has been tragically overshadowed by the headlines swirling over the U.S. strike against Iran, Supreme Court rulings, and the Big Beautiful Bill, is one of the most consequential achievements of Trump’s term. “It was vicious,” Trump reiterated at Friday’s White House press conference. “People’s heads being chopped off. And I have a man who’s very good in that part of the world, very smart, and put them together, and we’re signing a peace treaty today. First time in many years they’re going to have peace, and it’s a big deal.” Then, acknowledging the other big news of the day, the president said, “It’s sort of sad, because we’re doing the signing at 3:00, and [these rulings] may very well dominate the signing of a big war that was going on and really affecting … the entire continent of Africa.”
And while the announcement played second-fiddle to a lot of the domestic news last week, the achievement did not go unnoticed by longtime human rights advocates like Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who’s been holding a string of congressional hearings about the atrocities there. “Six million deaths is staggering and intolerable,” the New Jersey Republican insisted. “The United States — under President Trump — is leading the way in promoting regional peace, real accountability, and transparent supply chains through principled diplomacy and smart solutions.” This is, he underscored, “a critical and long-overdue step toward ending the violence and suffering that has engulfed the region for far too long.”
Under the terms of the agreement, The Washington Post reports, the two sides agreed to “halt aggression against each other and to cease support for armed groups on each other’s territory.” They also pledged to try to cooperate economically, including on “mining and processing materials and other resources ‘that link both countries, in partnership, as appropriate, with the U.S. government and U.S. investors.’”
Joel Kappa, a Fulbright alumnus, author, and now director of Ethical Servant Leadership Center, was educated in the U.S. and lives in the DRC, where he’s watched the suffering of the Congolese people up close. He, like so many others, insists that he is “deeply grateful to President Trump’s administration and its commitment to end the war.” As he emphasized to The Washington Stand, “Conflict and violence can never create a peaceful society — only love, justice, integrity, and compassion can.”
“I’m praying,” Kappa continued, “that God will continue to use President Trump’s administration to end this long and meaningless conflict between DRC and Rwanda. I’m convinced that the time for peace has come, and we must learn now to love and live together like brothers and sisters. That’s what God wants from us as His children, and I’m happy to see that President Trump and his administration understand it clearly.”
The pact is so significant to the African continent that Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe believes Trump should receive the world’s highest honors for helping to end the bloody war. “This conflict in eastern DRC is one of the longest conflicts on the continent — 30 years,” Nduhungirehe told Breitbart News on Saturday afternoon. “We have had a genocidal movement that has been destabilizing our country during this whole period. Anyone, including President Trump, who would help sizably to bring this conflict to an end deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Absolutely.”
While most Americans had no idea of the severity of the situation, they’re starting to get an inkling of just how significant last Friday’s news is — and will be — to the millions of persecuted Congolese.
“May this peace agreement be the first step toward a secure, stable, and more prosperous future for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and all others in the region who desire peace,” Family Research Council’s Travis Weber told TWS. “The Trump administration has laid the governmental groundwork for a pathway toward a more prosperous future. Now is the time to follow through and implement it, so that violence and bloodshed cease,” he urged, “so that the people of this region — many of whom are Christian — can live in peace and harmony.”
Hopefully, Weber underscored, “this agreement can be a model for others in the region and can serve as the basis for true flourishing of the countries involved and their people — and not merely enrich others from the outside at the expense of the people of the DRC and Rwanda.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer for The Washington Stand. In her role, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, consumer activism, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, religious freedom, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Over the past 20 years at FRC, her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to The Christian Post. Suzanne is a graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., with majors in both English Writing and Political Science.
