NEWS ANALYSIS : Rwanda Reflects Changes in Africa

For two months, the world has looked on with horror at the genocidal killing in Rwanda. But, in testimony to the limits of outsiders’ power, no international effort has been able to stop it.

“Enough of this blood,” pleaded Pope John Paul II, and from Washington and London to the capitals of Africa, similar calls have echoed across the bloodied Rwandan countryside. But they have stopped not a bullet nor saved a life.

Now, with the Rwandan Patriotic Front closing in Friday on Gitarama--seat of the interim government--and battling a defiant but crumbling army in the capital, Kigali, a rebel victory seems increasingly likely.

Most human rights groups--even those with no particular affinity for the rebels--would welcome such a victory as the fastest way to stop the appalling massacre of civilians.

When Kigali falls, it will join Kampala, Uganda, in 1978, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1991, as the only African capitals in recent times to succumb to a rebel army.

Kigali’s collapse will be a reminder of how much has changed in Africa since the not-so-distant days when European powers were willing to rush in troops to prop up their former colonies.

Britain always stood ready to guarantee the stability of Kenya and still conducts military exercises here. France used troops at least a dozen times to stave off coups in its former African colonies; a decade ago, Paris might well have sent combatants into French-speaking Rwanda, whose military France armed and advised.

As often as not, the mere landing of European troops in Africa was sufficient to restore order.

But in Rwanda the world has done little more than shed a tear and shrug helplessly.

Rwanda’s two former colonial masters, Germany and Belgium, have declined a U.N. request for help.

Only three African nations--Ethiopia, Senegal and Ghana--have agreed to participate in an African peacekeeping force for Rwanda. But their offer of 2,100 troops fell far short of the 5,500 soldiers that the United Nations requested, and it was never clear who would pay for the mission.

What is apparent from the world’s reluctance to enter Rwanda, Western diplomats say, is that governments realize that there is little they can do militarily to pacify dedicated, warring factions unless they are willing to bring to bear the full power of their guns. In Somalia, they weren’t; the lesson was a painful one.

Somalia started as a humanitarian mission, just as any effort in Rwanda would. But when, inch by inch, the peacekeepers’ military resolve was tested--as it surely would be in Rwanda--the U.N. response was at first confused and timid.

The more undefined the response became, the bolder the belligerents grew, until, in the end, they came to understand that none of the governments in the peacekeeping force had national interests they were willing to stand and fight for in Somalia.

The same scenario could be repeated in Rwanda, the most destitute of African countries.

Although the world will remain morally haunted by its passivity, the fact is that politically, economically and militarily, Rwanda is a country that holds importance for not a single nation, except perhaps for neighboring Burundi.

With peace talks between the rebels and the army having broken off in Kigali on Thursday and no future sessions planned, that leaves the international community to hope that one side or the other will achieve military dominance, thus ending the slaughter.

But even if the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front defeats the Hutu-controlled army, African observers are less than confident that Rwanda’s troubles will be over.

These observers debate whether 63 years of peaceful colonialism created Rwanda’s problems or merely contained longstanding animosities. But they agree that, since independence in 1962, neither group has shown itself willing to accept anything less than domination over the other.