U.S. Military Scaling Back Modest Rwanda Aid Force : Africa: Troops reopened airport, set up water system. Some relief groups call program too little, too late.

Amid signs of returning normalcy here in the capital, the U.S. military’s humanitarian task force has begun a gradual, quiet pullout--just a month after President Clinton promised a “massive” American relief effort for this small country and its troubled people.

Whether the American commitment has lived up to the President’s promise is likely to remain a question of debate and perspective.

The soldiers and Air Force personnel on the ground here and in Goma, Zaire, although modest in number, said they believed that after a rocky beginning, their deployment ended up saving lives and putting Rwanda on the road to reconstruction.

But some private humanitarian groups, themselves overwhelmed by Rwanda’s flood tide of refugees, remained critical of how little was devoted to the crisis and how slowly the response came from American and other Western military forces.

“Not a single nation of the world has decided that Rwanda matters,” said John O’Shea, director of the Irish relief agency GOAL. “It’s been like trying to keep the tide back with our bare hands.”

“I reject that,” said U.S. Army Col. James R. McDonough, commander of the 210 American troops still on duty Thursday in Kigali. The deployment was down from a high of 280 and will steadily decline as more of the Americans’ work is turned over to the United Nations and Rwandans.

“The first thing we had to do here was stop the dying in Goma,” McDonough said. “The key to that was water. When we got there, 5,000 people a day were dying. When we left, that was down to fewer than 500. Stopping the dying was a mission given, and met.”

U.S. troops were ordered into Central Africa to assist in humanitarian efforts on July 22, two days after a cease-fire was reached in Rwanda’s civil war. The first American soldiers arrived the next day to begin establishing water purification and transportation systems in Goma, where almost 1 million refugees fled. Troops began pumping water on July 26.

This week, the operation was turned over to private contractors and Goma-based troops pulled out.

In Kigali, the mission of U.S. forces was to bring the capital’s war-damaged airport back into service. As of Thursday, up to 40 flights a day were arriving with food, medicine and other relief supplies. By American count, 20 million tons of goods and equipment had passed through the airport since it reopened for relief flights.

As in Goma, the military now is incrementally turning over its airport duties as private and U.N. workers can be trained.

And by all accounts, the airport was operating as smoothly this week as any in this part of Africa, if not better--with a working baggage system, clean floors and running water. Commercial flights here are to begin in days.

The remainder of Kigali still suffers from lack of power and water--both of which may be a month away, because of damage from the bitter 3 1/2-month civil war. But other signs of a rebounding capital were evident this week: Shops and restaurants were opening, gasoline was available at service stations and hotels were in business, even if some rooms remained ripped apart by shrapnel.

“There is a crust of normalcy over the place, but if you walk around, suddenly your foot falls through into the suppurating mess below. You’ve got to remember that nearly everyone here has lost half of their family,” said David Shearer, a relief worker with Save the Children.

From the beginning, the American contribution to Rwanda and its refugees has been the subject of some confusion. Although his advisers emphasized that the American mission would be limited, Clinton initially promised an aid effort that would rival the Kurdish relief operations after the Persian Gulf War. On July 30, the President said, “The United States must not cease its efforts until the dying stops and the refugees have returned.”

But in the midst of a cholera epidemic that was killing hundreds by the hour, the American effort had put only 75 people on the ground in Goma, far fewer than private relief agencies that had little of the U.S. military’s logistic capability. And a U.S. emergency airlift of supplies turned out smaller than promised and included needless items, such as mittens.

At the end of July, Defense Secretary William J. Perry traveled to the region and said the American deployment could last a year or longer. But a week later, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived and began to talk of turning the military duties over to contractors and pulling out. “Shorter rather than longer,” was how he described the U.S. commitment.

Now, Americans are in a measured retreat but with no final departure date announced.

“When we leave, we don’t want anyone to notice,” said Army spokesman Capt. Ryan Yantis. “That doesn’t mean we are sneaking out, only that we want a systematic, logical and sequential transition.”

In one regard, the Americans can congratulate themselves for avoiding, so far, the violence that overtook U.S. relief efforts in Somalia. “No one has been hurt. No one has been seriously ill, no serious disease. There have been no incidents with weapons, no one stepped on a mine, no traffic accidents and no fights with locals,” said McDonough.