POLITICS-RWANDA: Genocidal Forces Return, Says UN

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 1998 (IPS) - Rwandan armed forces, linked to the 1994 genocide in the central African country, had regrouped and now were active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a U.N. report.

In the shifting world of central African politics, the United Nations said that the genocidal forces – who had been dispersed since their defeat by the Rwandan Popular Front four years ago – were now linked to the DRC government and armed rebel movements in Burundi, Uganda and Angola.

A four-member U.N. commission, chaired by Mahmoud Kassem of Egypt, said in a report Friday that the former Rwandan armed forces (or FAR) linked to the genocide, as well as ethnic Hutu ‘interahamwe’ militias, had become a “significant component of the international alliance against the Congolese rebels and their presumed sponsors, Rwanda and Uganda.”

The ex-Rwandan forces had, in effect, becomed the allies of the Congolese government in Kinshasha led by President Laurent Kabila, who only last year was allied to the Hutu soldiers’ enemy, the current Rwandan government.

With Congolese radio broadcasts advocating violence against Rwanda’s dominant Tutsi minority, the Kassem commission’s report sparked fears here of a possible repetition of the 1994 genocide. Four years ago, FAR and interahamwe followers were blamed for the bulk of a series of massacres in which as many as one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

The FAR and interahamwe forces fled, mostly to the Congo – then Zaire – when the Rwandan Popular Front, a Tutsi-led rebel army, seized power in Kigali after four months of massacres. According to the Kassem commission, tens of thousands of militia members dispersed into eastern, central and southern Africa.

As fighting in the Congo heats up – pitting Kabila and his former Rwandan government allies against each other – many of the genocide-linked armed elements are returning to the eastern Congolese areas from where they initially fled.

The report estimates that, in addition to some 15,000 Hutu forces who remained in the DRC over the past four years, between 18,500 and 25,500 Hutus have moved to the war-torn republic since last August.

“The commission believes…that since the outbreak of the insurgency in the DRC, the ex-FAR and interahamwe have been receiving significantly enhanced support from some of the governments of the region,” the U.N. report contended. It listed Kabila’s regime – which ousted Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko with Rwanda’s help last year – as one of the possible allies along with Angola, Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The political difficulties between Kabila and his former allies have forced several parties to become strange bedfellows, with the list of groups linked to the genocide-linked Hutu forces a particularly complex one. FAR and interahamwe fighters, for example, were present in zones or received assistance from both Angola’s government and UNITA rebels in recent months.

Not only has their position been strengthened by the military turmoil in central Africa, but the Hutu armed elements had profited from two other trends: the proliferation of small armed groups in the region and sales of the drug mandrax, the report said.

The Kassem commission estimated that there weree more than 20 armed rebel movements operating in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, including the anti-Rwandan Hutu groups. They ranged from forces like the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and Palipehutu in Burundi to Angola’s Unita. “These armed groups exchange arms freely among themselves and receive them from a variety of outside elements,” the report noted.

The rebel movements could maintain their strength because of the ineffectiveness of regional arms embargoes and the involvement of outside companies – including European and South African arms dealers – in weapons trafficking, the report said.

The Kassem commission detailed the involvement of a South African arms dealer, Willem Ehlers, in supplying the Hutus with weapons and has asked the French government to examine Ehler’s connection to the Banque National de Paris. The French government had yet to respond.

Bulgaria’s government similarly had not replied to requests for information on reports that two Bulgarian-chartered airline companies sent arms to the former Rwandan forces.

Britain’s state minister for foreign affairs, Tony Lloyd, conceded, however, that some British companies – notably the Mil- Tec Corporation, registered in the Isle of Man – may have circumvented a 1994 U.N. embargo banning arms to the FAR and Interahamwe.

“Because the legislation imposed the embargo in the United Kingdom did not fully cover the supply of arms to neighbouring countries (to Rwanda), the customs and excise investigation was unable to take forward criminal proceedings against Mil-Tec for a breach of UK law,” Lloyd added.

The Kassem commission urged nations to comply with U.N. sanctions rulings, and argued that there was a need for further research into “the activities of air-cargo companies, many of which are reported to be based in some countries in eastern and south-eastern Europe.”