ZAIRE: U.N. Warns Kivu Crisis is Spinning Out of Control

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 28 1996 (IPS) - Ongoing fighting in Zaire’s eastern North Kivu and South Kivu provinces is sparking concern among U.N. officials that Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi may all be affected by the widening violence.

The seizure by Zaire’s ethnic Banyamulenge rebels of several key South Kivu cities, including Uvira and Bukavu, in recent days has sent thousands of refugees streaming to Rwanda for help, while underscoring Zaire’s fragile stability, the officials say.

“The failure to address the root causes of the conflicts in the region…has once again unleashed a spiral of violence and human suffering that may spin out of control unless urgent measures are taken immediately to control the situation,” U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned in a statement to the Security Council.

“The rebel Banyamulenge are openly calling for the toppling of the Zairean government,” one U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Whether they can do it is an open question. But they could spark turmoil…and create a separate area under their control.”

The official noted the Banyamulenge, descendants of Tutsis who have lived in Zaire for more than a century, “seem to have the upper hand at the moment” in their battle to fight the South Kivu state government’s campaign to expel them from the country.

“The Zairean troops are not well-armed, and are not well- disciplined, either,” the official argued. “There isn’t much the Zaireans can do at this point, unless they fight back and win” parts of eastern Zaire they have lost in recent days, he added.

The crisis has underscored for many here the fragility of Zaire at a time when longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko is in Europe undergoing cancer treatment while the central government is unable to exercise much control over the provinces.

It was the South Kivu state government which, on Sep. 8, gave the 250,000 to 400,000 Banyamulenge in the province a one-week deadline to leave the country, in accordance with a 1981 federal ruling branding the ethnic group “illegal immigrants”.

But the rebels beat back state and federal troops, while a similarly-descended ethnic group in North Kivu, the Banyarwanda, have also begun to fight the Zairean troops in their state.

U.N. officials have noted that, in recent days, the Banyamulenge rebellion has encouraged opposition groups, separatists and pro-democracy activists throughout Zaire.

In response, the Zairean government has accused Rwanda and Burundi — neighbouring countries both ruled predominantly by Tutsis — of supporting the rebels in North and South Kivu. The Rwandan government has denied the charges.

“There is a sense that the Banyamulenge wouldn’t be able to fight Zairean troops without some outside assistance,” one U.N. spokesman argued. “They have every reason to be supported by the Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi,” he added, noting that both nations have had to deal with rebellions from ethnic Hutu rebels based in eastern Zaire.

Bukavu and Uvira contained some 500,000 mainly Hutu refugees from Rwanda and Burundi, while the North Kivu city of Goma has sheltered more than 700,000 Rwandans who fled the country in 1994, including many former government forces accused of fomenting genocide against the Tutsi minority that year.

Yet the U.N. spokesman added there remains no evidence that either the Rwandan or Burundian government is helping to arm or train the rebels across the border in Zaire. U.N. agency workers evacuated from both Bukavu and Uvira because of the current fighting, leaving the world body unable to confirm any allegations of outside intervention.

The rebels’ success so far, however, has aided one goal the United Nations and Rwandan government have both shared: the repatriation of some of the Rwandan refugees in Zaire. About 4,500 Rwandans crossed the border from Zaire on Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported, while more than 10,000 refugees are estimated to have massed on the border itself, waiting to cross.

WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini said Monday that the agency is preparing to equip the Rwandan prefectures of Cyangugu and Gisenyi with enough food to handle any influx in the coming days.

“We are now pre-positioning food in Rwanda,” Bertini said. But she added that fighting has complicated efforts to help the refugees: “We have 75 trucks at the border, unable to move.” Those trucks, she said, have now been relocated to nearby Uganda.

But WFP spokesman Trevor Rowe said preparations for a possivble influx will go on. “We don’t know if this suden spurt of refugees will turn into a growing trend,” he said. “But we don’t want to be caught napping if it turns into a flood.”