Once more violence convulses central Africa, a region where unspeakable catastrophes now appear chronic. First there was genocide in Rwanda, where as many as 1 million people, mostly Tutsi, were bludgeoned and hacked to death in 1994. Then came a lethal tidal wave of refugees, mostly Hutus fearing reprisals for those massacres, over the border from Rwanda into Zaire. Now some refugee camps are shutting down as their miserable inhabitants flee the latest disaster: battles between the bedraggled army of Zaire and Tutsi rebels. Humanitarian agencies warned that a million people, cut off from food aid, could go hungry. Meanwhile, the Zairean Army was disintegrating as the rebels, backed by Tutsi soldiers from Rwanda, took over several towns along the border. With strongman Mobutu Sese Seko recuperating from cancer surgery in Switzerland and his prime minister accusing Rwanda of fomenting the insurrection, Zaire appeared to be sliding into war and national collapse at the same time. And it could take its neighbors Rwanda and Burundi along with it.
Mobutu is partly to blame for the crisis. He makes no secret of his hostility toward Zaire’s Tutsi minority, and some of his henchmen reportedly urged Hutu refugees to attack Tutsi outside the camps. Local radio broadcasts urging people to hunt down ““the foreign infiltrators’’–code words for Tutsi–helped stir up the Tutsi rebels, who attacked the Hutu camps and Zairean towns. Mobutu has deliberately kept the Zairean Army disorganized and undisciplined–to protect his own neck. Small wonder, then, that his soldiers have been stealing from refugees and looting towns.
What should the West do? The big powers barely tried to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The killing isn’t easy to stop, of course: in Burundi, Hutu and Tutsi have slaughtered each other all year at the rate of about one Oklahoma City bombing a day, observed a former U.S. ambassador. In the latest crisis, the Clinton administration defends its record. ““We absolutely reject the charge that Western governments have not done enough,’’ said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. But a U.S. proposal for an African peacekeeping force seems to be a nonstarter. Last week the United Nations sent a special envoy, Canadian Raymond ChrEtien, to the region. ““It is a war. It has started,’’ he said. That raised the ante. But it doesn’t mean outsiders will have any better answers this time.
