Welcome to the President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boyes

Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the conflict in Eastern Congo.

With me to discuss the renewed fighting in the eastern Congo that pits the M23 rebel group,

backed by Rwanda, against the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is Mwemba Faso Disolele.

Mvemba is a senior fellow and director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a lecturer in African Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has served as an election monitor in multiple countries and reported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo alongside

UN peacekeepers. His writings have appeared in foreign affairs, foreign policy, and the New York Times.

He also hosts CSIS's Into Africa Podcast, which I highly recommend to you.

Mbemba, thank you for joining me on the president's inbox. Thank you, Jim, for having me. Pleasure. And Vemba, thank you for joining me on the president's inbox.

Thank you, Jim, for having me. Pleasure.

And Vemba, I'd like you to help me understand the recent surge of fighting in the

Eastern Congo that is killed by some estimates as many as 7,000 people.

Who is doing the fighting, and what are they fighting over?

Jim, that's the $1 million question.

As you know, this has been going on for 30 years.

So somewhere along the line, we lost track exactly of why people are fighting.

If you talk to the M23, which is the big group that is fighting with the support of Rwanda,

as the United States and other powers have established,

they will say they're fighting because there's the FDLR,

which is a remnant of people who had committed the genocide in 1994 who fled to Congo.

They will also say that the minority Rwandophones, as they call them, have been discriminated,

that the rights have not been protected, particularly the rights as citizens,

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