The long-simmering conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is starting to boil over again. This would be its first known battlefield deployment – comprising South African, Tanzanian and Malawian troops – since it began arriving in the DRC in December. That incident precipitated the international furore that led to the creation and deployment of the UN Force Intervention Brigade (FIB). It’s somewhat ironic then that in the DRC, SADC may now, directly or indirectly, be taking on Rwanda, its former ally in Mozambique. He was unhappy that the East African Community Regional Force, which began deploying in east DRC in 2022, would not take on M23.