It matters today because it testifies to the powerlessness of
the Congolese government and the United Nations to stop fighting and
tit-for-tat violence.
The border city also matters because it could be an indicator of the unravelling of the Rwandan president's authority.
In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame is under pressure from
hardliners frustrated by the continued presence of opposition forces who
have found sanctuary on the Congolese side of the border.
President Kagame is also increasingly seen as an embarrassment to touchy foreign partners.
M23 rebels have now entered Goma; the governor of North Kivu
has fled to Bukavu by boat and hundreds of thousands of people are
fleeing the city helter-skelter without having anywhere to go.
War, rape and the illegal extraction of minerals - an old story - matter more and more.
M23, also known as the Congolese Revolution Army, is alleged
to be the newest avatar of Rwandan support for Tutsi rebellions in
eastern DR Congo.
The rebel fighters defected from the Congolese army in April
this year because of pressure on the Congolese government to arrest Gen
Bosco Ntaganda who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court
for alleged war crimes.
The recent fighting for Goma can be directly traced to this decision.
It also results from the symbolic and strategic importance
the city and region have in the intricate Kigali-Kinshasa balance of
power.
Paradox
Some 20,000 UN blue helmets with a
$1.5bn (£943m) annual budget have not been able to stop the fighting.
The peacekeeping force - Monusco - has ordered the evacuation of its
non-essential staff.
UN resolutions taken in New York have little impact on rebels or their backers.
Rwanda is not bowing down to Paris, Brussels, Washington or London.
The small East African nation, the donor darling of the post-genocide years, raises an interesting paradox.
Development aid it has received has been used efficiently but
the creation of Mr Kagame's benign dictatorship is having unforeseen
side effects in eastern DR Congo.
The UN Security Council has condemned Rwandan support of the M23 rebel group leading to another paradox.
On 1 January 2013 Rwanda will occupy a rotating position on that Security Council.
In austerity Europe, where closer scrutiny is given to aid
efficiency, failed international interventions and development
co-operation in Africa are politically damning.
There has been neither peace nor full-scale war in the
densely populated, mineral-rich Kivu provinces of eastern DR Congo since
hostilities officially ended in 2003.
'Volcano Republic'
Until recently, a situation of manageable low-level violence prevailed.
Warlords have had a free hand to carry out business as usual - the illegal extraction of strategic minerals.
Congolese officials, militias and the ordinary people who dig
for and trade minerals reached a fragile modus vivendi where all sides
were able to agree on sharing the profits and risks.
Coltan, mined in the Kivus, is an essential mineral for electric gadgets
The Congolese army offers little competition to the rebels,
which is a further blow to Congolese sovereignty and their sense of
national identity.
Soldiers are underpaid, lack motivation and do not respect the government's orders.
A decade of security sector reform initiatives has produced
few tangible results in terms of morale building, training, chain of
command or the ability to defend the country.
Congolese President Joseph Kabila is partly to blame because
he is afraid that if the military were to become a real force on the
security and political front, it could stage a coup against him.
Goma also matters because amid rumours of the Balkanisation of
DR Congo and the creation of the "Republic of Volcanoes" - yes, the
territory already has its own name.
The taboo of redrawing Africa's boundaries was broken with the creation of South Sudan.
While the issues of governance and access to land and
resources are fundamental for local populations, Goma also matters to
the international marketplace.
DR Congo has 70% of the world's coltan and it comes from the Kivus.
Coltan is what keeps our mobiles ringing. The threat of a new DR Congo war could disrupt supply chains.
The human tragedy in eastern DR Congo has not mobilised creative thinking or effective diplomacy for a lasting peace settlement.
Perhaps if the price of coltan skyrockets, consumers in the
West will need to rethink their engagement in this troubled part of the
world.
Theodore Trefon is senior researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and author of the blog Congo Masquerade: The political culture of aid inefficiency and reform failure - Published by Zed Books
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