Rwanda’s New Leaders Assert ‘Safe Zone’ Hold

Though another panicky flight of Rwandans may be the outcome, Rwanda’s government began a three-stage operation Monday to quickly assert its authority in the U.N.-policed “safe zone,” where fears of its wrath and rule triggered an exodus last month.

Three military liaison officers from the Rwandan Patriotic Front left for the country’s southwest to take up permanent posts with battalions from Ethiopia, Ghana and French-speaking African countries already stationed in the region, said Canadian Maj. Jean-Guy Plante, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission to Rwanda.

Several members of the Rwandan Cabinet will tour the area under U.N. guard within the next few days, and mayors and other local officials, accompanied by a platoon of armed soldiers from the RPF, will follow.

“This should (happen) quickly, within the next 10 days,” Plante estimated.

If that timetable is adhered to, it will mark the consolidation of the Rwandan government’s authority over the entire violence-racked country for the first time since it came to power in July.

The “safe zone” was created by the French in late June as a stream of more than 2 million refugees, some guilty of having massacred huge numbers of their countrymen, fled toward the border with Zaire, stampeded by fears over what the impending change in government might bring.

Victors in a short, sharp civil war, the RPF ousted a regime led by hard-line members of the Hutu majority, who, in April, masterminded a nationwide blood bath of political opponents, lawyers, journalists and other professionals and members of the Tutsi minority.

The latest estimate from U.N. officials organizing emergency relief to Rwanda is that 1 million people may have been slaughtered. But this Central African country is so disorganized, people’s whereabouts so uncertain and old population estimates so incomplete that such a figure can only be regarded as a rough, disputable guess.

The French firmly kept RPF troops out of the southwest but pulled out of the “safe zone” Aug. 21, handing control over to troops under the flag of the United Nations.

Rwanda’s new leaders asserted that they had the right to send their own soldiers in, saying it was important for their credibility; they later relented.

Until Monday, their only permanent presence in the region was a handful of customs and immigration officials sent to staff border posts on the Zaire-Rwanda frontier.

That will change this week, Plante said.

“We will see an increase of government activity in that zone,” he told a news briefing. “That is, more and more government ministers will be visiting the main cities.”

When the French handed control over to 2,000 U.N. troops and left, aid workers had feared another surge of refugees to Zaire like the wave that carried hundreds of thousands of miserable, sick and dying people to camps at Goma and other cities.

That did not happen on the scale feared, although tens of thousands of people surged across bridges spanning the Rusizi River.

According to latest estimates, 500,000 Rwandans who fled their homes elsewhere in the country are still in the southwest, along with 1.2 million local residents.

The phasing-in of the new government’s authority while U.N. soldiers are still on the ground seems designed to reassure Hutus that if they did not become killers, they have nothing to fear.

But Plante’s remarks made it clear that Canadian Maj. Gen. Guy Tousignant, the U.N. commander in Rwanda, is bracing for a potentially hostile reception or attacks on the RPF officials.

“There’s quite an implication for us (the U.N. force), in terms of security,” Plante said. “One step at a time, we’ll visit one town, and see the reaction.”

Tousignant toured the southwest by helicopter Saturday. Asked whether that meant the U.N. commander had concerns about what the extension of the RPF’s authority might provoke, Plante said, “He doesn’t drive around the countryside just to look at the birds.”

U.N. sources also said Monday that customs officials stationed by the RPF on the Zaire frontier had recently become the target of threats; it was not immediately clear who was behind them.

As Plante reported the departure of the Rwandan military officers for the former “safe zone,” Tousignant summoned his battalion commanders for a meeting in the capital, Kigali, and was supposed to talk with Defense Minister Paul Kagame, the Tutsi who led the RPF to victory in the civil war.

Refugees who fled into the “safe zone” are predominantly poor Hutu farmers but include thugs who took part in the killings. Stoking their wariness about the new Rwandan government’s intentions are rumors spread by officials of the old government, now across the border in Zaire, that the RPF’s Tutsi-controlled army is bent on vengeance.

An estimated 28,000 members of the defeated Rwandan government’s army were driven into Zaire along with the huge refugee population. Aid workers have reported that the soldiers are regrouping in the refugee camps. But U.N. officials have announced that some have gone over to the RPF.

Plante said Monday that about 40 of the 210 members of the old gendarmerie, or police, in the southwest had pledged their loyalty to the RPF as it prepared to send in its officials. They and other policemen voluntarily surrendered more than 170 weapons, he reported.

Last week, Shahryar Khan, the United Nations’ special envoy to Rwanda, said 400 soldiers who had fought for the defeated government had joined up with RPF forces. Civilian officials from the old regime also were pledging loyalty to the new leaders, he said.

“Large numbers of civil servants, magistrates and teachers have sent in their particulars and have been asked to continue working,” Khan said.