Rwanda’s threat to stop protecting a U.S. gas project from the Islamic State in Mozambique is putting in jeopardy billions of dollars in contracts as Rwanda balances responding to U.S. sanctions and bringing about regional peace.

Rwanda, known as the “Prussia of Africa” for its small but highly capable military, plays a large role in regional peace operations, with its 6,200-man deployment to Mozambique crucial to containing the Islamic State-Mozambique insurgency. Its alleged involvement with a paramilitary rebel group, M23, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused the Western world to sour on its relationship with the country, bringing its peacekeeping deployments elsewhere under threat. Rwanda denies involvement in M23’s actions in eastern Congo.