While the world's gaze remains locked on North Kivu and the M23's advance toward Goma, a parallel catastrophe has been unfolding 200 kilometers south — one marked by drone strikes on churches, strangled aid corridors, and civilians trapped between warring forces with nowhere to run.

In the highlands of South Kivu province, Congolese armed forces and various militia groups are systematically obstructing humanitarian access and blocking civilian movement, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation released Monday. The pattern of interference has created what the United Nations classifies as "severe" humanitarian restrictions across an area spanning parts of Fizi, Mwenga, and Uvira territories.

The timing is pointed: the UN Security Council meets Tuesday to discuss Congo, yet this conflict remains what HRW researcher Clémentine de Montjoye calls "vastly underreported" despite mounting evidence of civilian harm.

The Drone War Comes to the Highlands

Between January and March this year, Human Rights Watch documented eight credible incidents involving drone strikes in South Kivu — a significant escalation from previous patterns. Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project shows reported air and drone strikes in the highlands have surged since November 2025.

The targets suggest indiscriminate warfare. On March 23, an 86-year-old man was killed by a drone while tending cattle near Minembwe, the highlands' main city. A week later, a 14-year-old boy died in a field near his village. Whether either strike intended to hit military objectives remains unclear.

More telling are the civilian infrastructure hits. On March 9, a community radio station in Madegu — one of the few remaining information sources in an area where phone networks have been down for over a year — was struck by what witnesses described as a drone attack. "When we see reconnaissance drones, we know we have to flee," a witness told researchers, describing how journalists fled the building before munitions hit, damaging solar panels and chasing survivors into neighboring fields.

An apparent nighttime drone strike on a church in Ilundu village left two large holes in the roof. Scores of livestock have been killed; houses destroyed.

While HRW could not definitively establish responsibility for the strikes, the pattern of targets points toward Congolese forces or their allies, the organization noted. Requests to the Congolese army's regional commander for information on the strikes went unanswered.

A City Under Siege From All Sides

The conflict's geometry is brutally simple: Minembwe has been controlled since March 2025 by the Twirwaneho militia — drawn from the Banyamulenge community — now allied with Rwandan forces and the M23. Surrounding them: Congolese armed forces backed by some 4,000 Burundian troops, alongside Wazalendo militias representing Babembe, Bafuliru, and Banyiundu communities.

Caught between these forces, Minembwe's civilians face pressure from both directions. The Twirwaneho have reportedly forced families to provide fighters or pay compensation, retaliating against those who refuse. More perversely, they've blocked civilians from leaving despite ongoing attacks — partly to shield themselves from assault, partly to maintain their image as "local defenders."

The result: a city under effective siege. Humanitarian organizations have had virtually no access for over a year. Medical facilities lack basic medicines. Staples like sugar and salt now cost five times their price elsewhere in South Kivu.

"We are being bombed all the time, and many people are being injured," a Minembwe medical worker told HRW — a grim assessment from someone presumably accustomed to conflict medicine.

The Predatory Economics of Militia Control

Areas under Congolese government control offer little relief. Wazalendo fighters have established a taxation system that would be darkly comic if it weren't so extractive: between Baraka and Fizi, travelers encounter over ten checkpoints, each demanding 1,000 to 2,000 Congolese Francs (roughly 40 to 85 cents). One resident counted eight Wazalendo barriers across just 130 kilometers.

The harassment extends beyond economics. Wazalendo groups, including forces led by William Yakutumba, have arbitrarily detained people accused of M23 sympathies. "They beat me badly," one recently released detainee said, describing how he paid hundreds of thousands of Francs for freedom. "They harass the population and accuse us of supporting the M23 to make us pay."

Reports indicate Wazalendo fighters have targeted Banyamulenge civilians specifically — the ethnic dimension that has characterized eastern Congo's conflicts for three decades reasserting itself with familiar cruelty.

The UN's Vanishing Act

The information vacuum surrounding South Kivu's highlands isn't accidental. It's partly the result of a 2024 agreement between the UN and Congo's government that saw MONUSCO — the UN peacekeeping mission — completely disengage from South Kivu by June of that year.

The withdrawal was part of MONUSCO's gradual exit from Congo, a process driven partly by Congolese government pressure, partly by the mission's perceived ineffectiveness. What followed was predictable: security incidents involving armed forces and militias increased sharply.

A December 2025 Security Council resolution theoretically allows MONUSCO to resume operations for ceasefire monitoring and verification. Human Rights Watch now recommends the mission consider re-engagement in South Kivu — though whether the Congolese government would permit such a reversal remains doubtful.

The Familiar Pattern

There's a grim historical echo here. Eastern Congo's conflicts have always featured this dynamic: international attention focuses on the spectacular (M23's march on Goma, Rwanda's role, the specter of regional war), while parallel catastrophes unfold in areas too remote, too complex, or too ethnically fraught for sustained coverage.

The highlands conflict involves many of the same actors and grievances that have fueled violence since the 1990s: disputes over land and citizenship rights for Banyamulenge Tutsi populations, competition for local power, and the Congolese state's inability or unwillingness to provide security that doesn't come with predatory extraction.

What's newer is the technology. Drones — whether operated by Congolese forces, their Burundian allies, or others — represent a troubling escalation in conflicts where distinguishing combatants from civilians has always been deliberately blurred.

In February and March, the Congolese army's regional commander, General Fabien Dunia, met with Wazalendo groups seeking to ban armed fighters from urban centers. He told HRW his forces had arrested several abusive Wazalendo fighters. Whether such efforts represent genuine reform or theater remains to be seen.

"Congolese authorities should rein in the Wazalendo coalition and impartially investigate and prosecute all those responsible for serious abuses, including those interfering with aid delivery," de Montjoye said — a recommendation that assumes a level of state capacity and will that decades of Congolese history suggest may not exist.

As the Security Council meets Tuesday, the question is whether South Kivu's highlands will merit more than a footnote in discussions dominated by the crisis further north — or whether this "vastly underreported conflict" will continue its descent into a humanitarian catastrophe the world has chosen not to see.