A new investigation into Islamic State’s Central African branch puts Europe’s stalled minerals deal with Rwanda back under scrutiny.
An Islamic State affiliate in eastern Congo is using the war waged by Rwanda-backed rebels to expand, according to a new investigation by The Sentry, the Washington-based investigative group co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast.
The findings, picked up by British media in recent days, come almost two years after EU foreign ministers agreed to review a critical raw materials partnership with Rwanda. That review has still not concluded.
The Sentry report
The report, Gold-Backed Brutality, examines the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which operates as Islamic State’s Central Africa Province. The group killed more than 1,370 people in 2025, the second-highest civilian toll of any non-state armed group in the world. Its fighters have massacred worshippers at a church vigil and mourners at a funeral. Former hostages described beheadings and the systematic rape of abducted women.
The group now largely pays its own way. After US sanctions disrupted Islamic State money transfers in late 2024, conflict gold became its main source of income, with much of the metal smuggled out through Uganda. The Sentry estimates the ADF could earn $1 million to $1.6 million a year from one mining area alone.
Rwanda’s connection
The report finds that the ADF exploits the strain placed on Congo’s army by the war against the M23, a rebel group the UN says is backed by Rwanda. When the army’s attention shifts to the M23 front, ADF attacks intensify.
Investigators also documented supplies for the group moving through Goma, then under M23 control. In September 2025 an ADF collaborator was arrested while collecting explosives in the city, and military uniforms were traced from Goma into Beni.
“While these incidents do not establish direct collaboration, they indicate permissive transit corridors, tolerated movement, or gaps in M23 territorial control that may indirectly facilitate ADF logistics.”
(The Sentry, Gold-Backed Brutality)
According to UN experts cited in the report, the M23 sought a non-aggression arrangement and safe passage with the ADF in 2024. The ADF leadership reportedly turned it down. The two groups share a long front line, yet no attacks between them have been reported.
The Sentry stresses that it found no conclusive evidence of direct collaboration, and its sharpest criticism is reserved for Uganda’s military operation against the group. Rwanda has consistently denied backing the M23. After the latest US sanctions, government spokesperson Yolande Makolo argued that the Washington accords include commitments on neutralising the FDLR militia that have not been fulfilled.
Europe’s exposure
In February 2024 the Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with Rwanda on raw materials value chains. A year later, MEPs voted 443 to four, with 48 abstentions, and called for it to be suspended. Foreign ministers agreed instead to review it. The Commission defended keeping the deal and told MEPs that “If we cancel the MoU, we’ll never get another one”. By February 2026, a coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty International noted that the review commitment was still pending.
Global Witness has found that traders moving coltan from M23-held mines pay levies of $4 a kilo to the rebels and $3 a kilo to the Rwandan government before the ore is sold on as Rwandan.
Through the European Peace Facility, the EU also provided around €40 million to support Rwandan troops against an Islamic State-linked insurgency in Mozambique. That support ended in May 2026, and no talks are under way to renew it.
The EU sanctioned three senior Rwandan army officers and the Kigali-based Gasabo Gold Refinery in March 2025. Washington has since gone further. The US has sanctioned the Rwanda Defence Force, the same refinery and, on the 28th October, Rwanda’s Ministry of Defence and Zigama Credit and Savings Society, a lender it accuses of moving gold out of M23-held territory. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said,
“Rwanda must halt its support for M23 and withdraw its troops from eastern DRC.”
What’s next?
On the 13th October Formula 1 announced a 10-year deal for an African Grand Prix presented by Visit Rwanda, the tourism brand that also sponsors European football clubs including Paris Saint-Germain and Aston Villa. Human Rights Watch’s Clementine de Montjoye has urged the country’s backers to look harder at Kigali’s record.
“Rwanda’s partners should open their eyes and see Kigali’s wide-reaching human rights abuse for what it is: the consequence of three decades of impunity for the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front.”
The Sentry calls on the EU, alongside the UN Security Council, the United States and the United Kingdom, to investigate the gold supply chains linking eastern Congo to Ugandan traders, refiners and exporters.
EU member states have yet to say whether they will follow Washington’s sanctions on Rwanda’s defence ministry. The Commission has given no date for concluding its review of the raw materials partnership.
