GREAT LAKES-POLITICS: War Threatens Volatile Region

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Oct 28 1996 (IPS) - Africa’s Great Lakes Region is teetering on the brink of a major conflagration as Zaire’s army battles Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi) rebels who, Kinshasa alleges, are being helped by Rwanda and Burundi.

Zaire’s government has sent reinforcements from Kinshasa to the scene of the conflict, the eastern province of Kivu, deploying them mainly around the towns of Bukavu and Goma, on the border with Rwanda.

As the latest batch of soldiers took up their positions in Bukavu on Monday, rumours swept through the town that the rebels were on the edge of the city, prompting the troops to go on a looting rampage, robbing vehicles and property at gunpoint, according to journalists reporting from the area.

The rebels were also reported Monday to be moving towards Goma, some 120 kilometres north of Bukavu. On Saturday, they attacked Kigumba refugee camp, 25 kms north of Goma, sparking the movement of over 25,000 people towards the town.

The town of Uvira, on the border with Burundi, fell to the rebels last week, followed by the neighbouring town of Rutshuru. Unconfirmed reports Monday said more than 200 people, mostly non- combatants, were killed in Uvira during the two-day fighting there.

The conflict in Kivu could spread to other Zairean regions.

Muller Ruhimbika, exiled Bunyamulenge leader of the newly- formed Democratic Alliance for the People, said that Zairean opposition groups based in nearby Shaba and Kasai provinces now support the Tutsi rebels. His claim raised the possibility of an even broader conflict within Zaire.

Stating that the Banyamelenge were ready for talks, he said in an interview last week that his group was not fighting for the Kivu region, but for the whole of Zaire. “Mobutu must go,” he added. President Mobutu Sese Seko, in power since 1965, is in Switzerland undergoing treatment for a prostate cancer.

However, Mobutu has limited influence in eastern Zaire, including Kasai, which has carved out for itself a large measure of autonomy from Kinshasa, and Shaba, which have been the centre of armed opposition to the Zairean dictator since the 1960s.

Shaba, then known as Katanga, attempted to secede shortly after independence from Belgium in 1960. Then, in the late 1970s, rebels nearly seized the mineral-rich region but were repelled in a joint intervention, reportedly organised by France and carried out by some of France’s African allies, Morocco, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Togo.

The current conflagration threatens to spread further and could eventually affect the more than 30 million people in the Great Lakes Region in one way or another. Kinshasa has alleged that Burundi and Rwanda are involved and Prime Minister Kengo wa Dongo vowed Sunday that Zaire would protect its national unity.

Zaire accuses Rwanda of training and arming the Banyamulenge, who number about 400,000 and the Banyarwanda, another ethnic Tutsi group living in north Kivu. Rwanda — which believes Zaire supports the 40,000-strong ethnic Hutu former army of Rwanda, overthrown by Tutsi rebels in 1994 — has denied the accusation.

Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu said Monday that even though the area used to belong to Rwanda before European powers arbitrarily drew Africa’s borders in the late 19th century, his government was not helping the Zairean Tutsis.

However, Bizimungu, a Hutu, said that the Banyamulenge were given a choice between fighting and extermination and that they had no option but to fight, a reference to the ultimatum given to the Banyamulenge by the then deputy governor of Kivu in early October to leave the province and to pogroms against Banyamulenge in Kivu.

A Banyamulenge source had told IPS last week in Kigali, Rwanda, that the group’s sources of arms were the former army of Rwanda and its Hutu militia ally, the Interahamwe, which were accused of slaughtering up to one million people in Rwanda in 1994.

“We used to swap one goat for an AK-47 assault weapon in the refugee camps in Uvira, Bukavu and Goma,” he said.”But now the price of ak-47 has risen to over 200 dollars due to demand.”

To stop the fighting from engulfing the volatile region, the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said the world body was looking for an accepted personality to mediate in the conflict. He called upon regional leaders to hold a summit to stop the carnage in eastern Zaire.

The panic created by the rebel attacks has caused the displacement of over 300,000 people, mostly Hutu refugees from Rwanda and Burundi.

Zaire hosts 1 million of the 1.7 million Rwandan refugees in the Great Lakes region as well as 143,000 Burundians.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, has urged Rwandan refugees caught in the fighting to consider returning home. Ogata, in a statement broadcast by local radio stations in the region, said she was “deeply saddened” that Burundi and Rwandan refugees were again fleeing for their lives.

“I am afraid this terrible situation may not stop immediately, and I would like you to know that we will do everything possible, in cooperation with the authorities, to help you where we can,” Ogata said in a message to the refugees.

Noting that Rwandan government had renewed its offer to receive refugees in peace, Ogata said the international community was present in Rwanda to support repeated government assurances that refugees could return home safely.

UN agencies have been bracing for a massive exodus from Kivu.

To receive potential returnees, the UNHCR has set up three reception centres in Cyangugu, which faces Bukavu, with a total capacity of 15,000 a day. UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) have 120 trucks and buses available to transport returnees to their home communes.

UNHCR has stockpiled 50,000 blankets, 25,000 plastic sheets, 60,000 jerrycans, and 34,000 agricultural tools in south-western Rwanda. It also has stocks of non-food items for 300,000 people in Kampala, Uganda, and in Ngara, Tanzania, that can easily be moved overland to Rwanda to meet the needs of returnees.

The UNHCR started urging the refugees to return home to Rwanda following the evacuation of 128 international aid workers from Bukavu to Nairobi, Kenya, last last week. Earlier, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) evacuated 48 aid workers who had been trapped by the fighting in Uvira.

“The security conditions are such that it is completely unrealistic for us to remain and it will be impossible for us to carry our task of feeding the refugees,” said WFP spokesperson, Trevor Rowe. “Remaining in Bukavu would mean exposing our staff needlessly to danger,” he said.