THE United States helped train the troops who spearheaded the overthrow of Mobutu Seso Seko.
US defence and state department officials revealed this week that crack US troops had begun training the Rwandan army in 1994 – just after the rebellion which led to the ascent of that country’s Tutsi-dominated government.
The Rwandan army went on to engineer and help carry out a successful rebellion against Mobutu’s government in what was then Zaire, now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwandan forces still in the former Zaire stand accused of massacring refugees in eastern Congo. A report presented at a House International Relations Committee hearing on the situation in Congo describes “widespread atrocities against civilian populations” by Rwandan forces. The United Nations is now investigating.
A senior state department official said that US forces had played no role in the fighting in the former Zaire.
But the military training – by small groups of US Army Special Forces and other units – had been “a three-year programme to professionalise the Rwandan military so they can observe the rules of war,” he said.
“Our position is that the present government there has a leadership committed to a smaller, more disciplined, apolitical army, and we should be fostering that goal.”
Rwanda’s vice president and defence minister. Paul Kagame, also studied in the US – at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
At the time the training began, nobody envisioned the role that tiny Rwanda would play in bringing down Mobutu, the ruler of one of Africa’s largest countries.
Kagame recently confirmed that his forces organised and supported the seven-month rebellion that ended Mobutu’s three-decade rule and propelled the rebel leader Laurent Kabila to the presidency of the renamed Congo.
Growing reports of atrocities against refugees have blighted the international reputation of Kabila’s government. He has sought to block investigations by journalists and human rights investigators.
The authors of the new US report, Boston- based Physicians for Human Rights, have said that a three-person team spent two weeks in Rwanda and eastern Congo and “received reliable reports that Rwandan military have committed, and continue to commit, widespread atrocities against civilian populations in eastern Congo.
Reports of robberies, rape and attacks by … soldiers are numerous within North and South Kivu (provinces).”
The killings “appear to be systematic attacks” aimed at eliminating the threat to Tutsi-dominated Rwanda from rivals of the Hutu tribe who fled into Zaire after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
State department officials said a Special Forces team from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, would leave soon for Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to train officers in “respect for human rights, the laws of war and the role of the military in a democratic society”.
South Africa’s deputy president Thabo Mbeki said last week that South Africa would review its decision to suspend weapon sales to Rwanda.
Arms sales were suspended late last year following reports that Kagame’s troops were undertaking raids into the former Zaire.
Mbeki said that many Hutu refugees returning to Rwanda from the former Zaire were resuming their fight against Kagame’s government.
“We are concerned that the government of Rwanda should have the capacity to protect itself against attacks,” Mbeki said. – The Washington Post