But Is the World Equal to This Catastrophe? : Rwanda: How Washington can best help out

Rwanda is perhaps only the latest African apocalypse, but if the pattern of horror seems familiar, the scale of the suffering is extreme even by Third World standards. War and ethnic slaughter have killed as many as 700,000 and forced more than double that number to flee. Now, a deadly cholera epidemic sweeps the overflowing refugee camps in neighboring Zaire, threatening to bring the death toll to more than 1 million. Misery, on this unfathomable scale, begs for international intervention immediately.

President Clinton ordered Washington on Thursday to respond “quickly” with “a practical plan of action,” while pledging an additional $35 million in aid beyond $41.4 million approved earlier. That humanitarian plan should provide the planes, portable hospitals, medical supplies, food, trucks and people--but not combat troops or police--needed to save lives on a scale heretofore unknown even in Ethiopia and Somalia.

Fortunately, Rwanda politically looks to be no Somalia. The brutal attacks on Americans in Mogadishu and the lack of a quick-fix solution in Somalia soured much of the West on helping in similar crises.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION: There has been no rush to intervene in Rwanda’s civil war between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority in spite of the genocide. Only France, which has had a checkered history at best in Africa, responded to Rwanda’s screams, with help from troops from Senegal and Ghana. Give Paris some credit, however. The 2,500 French troops have slowed the exodus in their area, though they cannot staunch the human hemorrhaging. They need reinforcements to help stop the crisis that began after a suspicious April 6 plane crash killed Juvenal Habyarimana, the first Hutu president of Rwanda.

In response to that plane crash, Hutus slaughtered as many as 500,000 Tutsis--the tall, educated minority so favored by the Belgian Colonial rulers. Before independence, the Tutsis, though barely 15% of the population, dominated the short Hutus, who tended to be farmers and peasants. That blood rivalry has been exacerbated by the most recent massacres.

In this conflict, the Tutsi rebels have prevailed, and their Rwandan Patriotic Front leaders were sworn in on Tuesday. In victory, the new government includes two Hutu leaders, a figurehead president and a prime minister. But the symbolic inclusion of a few Hutus and the Tutsi promise of no reprisals has not reassured those many Hutus who fear revenge. Their fears have been stirred up by some ousted Hutu officials, who are forcing their ethnic brethren to flee. But some of these naysayers are the same evil Hutus who ordered the slaughter of Tutsis. Given the deadly conditions of the refugee camps, their latest campaign of rejectionism--nearsighted and self-serving--could have the effect of sending more innocent Hutus to their slaughter.

THE U.S. CONNECTION: Cholera stalks the refugee camps in Goma, Zaire. The disease is relatively easy to treat if clean water, fluids and basic supplies are available. Sadly, that is not the case in the refugee camps: Relief workers cannot handle the overwhelming demand for emergency provisions unless the small airport is expanded. Additional air-traffic controllers and cargo handlers are also desperately needed to allow more cargo planes to land.

If there is any hope for Rwanda, and Africa, Good Samaritans from around the world must send help to stop the exodus and dying and allow rebuilding. Americans, understandably snakebitten by Somalia, do not want to get bogged down in a conflict that has nothing to do with this country, but our prosperity and heritage require the United States to respond humanely, and immediately. That doesn’t mean combat troops, or even military police; but it does mean just about everything else.