Tourist Killings Are Latest in Long Line of Horrors

The brutal killing of eight foreign tourists in Uganda this week was just the latest horror in a conflict that in five years has given birth to a genocide in Rwanda and two wars in neighboring Congo.

The attack serves as a tragic wake-up call to a world that may have doubted the seriousness of the threat posed by Hutu rebels who have been waging a terror campaign in Africa’s Great Lakes region, Rwandan government officials said.

The Hutu rebels, in a conflict rooted in ethnic hatred and the quest for land and power, represent one of the region’s toughest obstacles to lasting peace and stability, analysts say.

“They are still a force to deal with,” said Salih Booker, director of the African studies program at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. “They are present in Congo, active in parts of the forests in Uganda, and they’ve demonstrated their capacity to do raids in Rwanda.”

Neighboring Burundi has also been jolted in recent months by Hutu insurgents.

Although their political objectives are unclear, the extremists appear intent on perpetuating the blood bath they started five years ago in Rwanda’s genocide and in fostering Hutu supremacy. With machetes and guns, they have continued to push for a greater say in governance and wider inclusion for Hutus--who are the largest ethnic group in the Great Lakes region.

“In numbers, they are the majority, but they are in the minority in terms of their political clout,” said Brian Johnson Thomas, a documentary filmmaker who has worked and traveled widely in the Great Lakes region. “This is why they feel marginalized.”

Hutus Regroup in Refugee Camps

Hutu militiamen were responsible for the 1994 massacre in Rwanda of more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The extremists--among them remnants of the Rwandan army, militia groups and disaffected Hutu youths--fled with 2 million Hutu refugees into Congo, then known as Zaire, and Tanzania.

The security of the refugee camps gave them the opportunity to regroup, retrain and rearm.

From there, they launched attacks into Rwanda in an attempt to dislodge the Tutsi-led government now in power.

With the launch of a rebellion in Zaire led by the country’s current president, Laurent Kabila--and sponsored by Rwanda and Uganda--most of the Rwandan Hutu refugees returned home.

The rebel hard-liners, however, were forced deeper into the dense, inhospitable jungles of eastern Congo.

Today, there is evidence that Rwandan and Burundian Hutu extremists have joined forces with Kabila--now a foe of the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that propelled him to power--as he tries to crush dissenters in eastern Congo.

In general, Rwandan and Congolese Tutsis have borne the brunt of bloodletting unleashed by Hutu rebels, the exact number of whom is unknown.

But the killings of the foreign tourists--including two Americans--signal an increased determination by the Hutu extremists--in some cases backed by disgruntled civilians from their ethnic group--to capture the attention of the international community, which they believe has ignored their grievances.

The abduction of the tourists, who were on an adventure trip to track gorillas, got the world’s attention.

“It is an attempt to use terror to make some point dramatically,” Mahmood Mamdani, director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said of the rebel attack. “Now terror is being used to brutalize in order to dramatize . . . and to underline the dramatization by shifting the victims from locals to foreigners.”

Six hostages were sent back to a camp at the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park with a grim note stating the rebels’ intent to make western Uganda a war zone and to target U.S. and British tourists because of their countries’ support of Rwanda and Uganda.

The United States and Britain, among other Western nations, have shown overwhelming sympathy and support for the current Rwandan Tutsi-dominated government in the wake of the 1994 slaughter.

On a visit to Rwanda last year during an African tour, President Clinton said the United States and the rest of the world must share the blame for failing to stop the bloodletting in 1994.

Meanwhile, Uganda has been heralded by the West for its progressive economic reforms, and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been praised for his democratic policies--despite the fact that he is yet to embrace pluralism. Uganda has also received U.S.-sponsored military training in preparation for an anticipated all-African peacekeeping force.

However, many Hutus in the region feel locked out of the halls of power.

“You can see from the time of the genocide, the moderate Hutu group--whose characteristic has been that it opposed the genocide but had demanded the right to organize independently of the [ruling, Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front]--has been increasingly alienated,” said Mamdani, a native Ugandan.

The Message of Brotherly Love

Rwandan government officials insist that they are promoting a policy of reconciliation and national unity by building an inclusive political process, establishing the rule of law, resettling repatriated refugees and bringing to justice those responsible for the genocide.

Rwandan citizens are no longer required to carry identity cards stating their ethnicity. Nationals are also being encouraged to attend monthlong solidarity camps at which they are bombarded with the message of brotherly love, taught about the origins of Hutu-Tutsi mistrust and instructed in proper communal behavior.

But the key to reconciliation, Mamdani said, “has to be how to create space for organized and independent Hutu opinion. . . . We seem to have come to the point where the political spectrum is once again characterized by a power which cannot tolerate any opposition.”

In some cases, Hutu extremists in Rwanda and other Great Lakes nations have succeeded in mobilizing support among ordinary citizens who share their ethnic identity and are an easy source of sympathizers for their cause. Their goal has been “to manipulate the plight of your average poor Rwandan Hutus who are no longer refugees but are not happy at home,” Booker said.

Rwandan officials have clearly run out of patience with the Hutu extremists--who the officials say have mentors and leaders based abroad--and they are calling for an international crusade against the rebels.

“The recent killing of these innocent tourists has proved our point,” said Maj. Wilson Rutayisire, a Rwandan government spokesman. “We have been vindicated that these guys do not desire reform. They are not in a position to be extended an olive branch. . . . They are simply criminals.”

FBI agents are assisting Ugandan soldiers in a hunt for the tourists’ attackers.

A Lasting Peace Seems Insurmountable

Uganda’s army said Thursday that 15 of the 120 or so Hutu rebels who abducted the tourists have been killed in an ambush in Congo, and it vowed to hunt down the rest. But the prospects for finding and eliminating all of the rebels, and establishing a lasting peace in this region, appear dim.

Monitoring and keeping tight control over the harsh and volatile border regions of Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Burundi is an almost insurmountable task.

Like Hutus, many of the area’s other ethnic groups harbor an age-old deep distrust for Rwandan Tutsis and their Ugandan allies, so they are less sympathetic about violence against them.

In addition, the flow of sophisticated weapons from countries such as Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad, which are supporting Congo’s Kabila in his war against internal rebels, has provided the crucial ingredients for a protracted conflict.

“Events in the region over the last decade have been leading to an increased polarization, a far more widespread use of military means to solve political questions,” Mamdani said.