They come in single file, a line of ragged gunmen, slapping 30 pairs of black gumboots down the orange forest-track. Without pausing, the lead man unshoulders his rifle and swings left. The next turns right. The rest follow suit; covering every hut and shadow of Cyaminunu, a tiny village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with a precision unknown in Africa’s bedlam wars.
The village’s traditional warriors — until now, a raucous gang of drunks — gape in silence, then slope self-consciously away. Not for them this meeting with the fugitive remnants of Rwanda’s genocidal ‘Interahamwe’ Hutu militia: murderers of 800 000 innocents, Tutsis and Hutu moderates, in 100 blood-filled days in 1994.
Last to arrive, the Hutu leaders: six middle-aged men, in the same black wellies and a show of civilian garb. One is clearly in charge. Slight and smartly dressed, he presents himself as Jean Gubosisse, a civilian representative of the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Interahamwe’s reincarnation, which is almost certainly a lie. Villagers say that he is Major Hagai, commander of around 1 000 Hutu militiamen hiding in the rainforest around Cyaminunu. Most of them could not have taken part in Rwanda’s genocide because they are children. But to look into the gaunt face of ‘Gubosisse’ is to wonder what role he played.
This meeting is the first between the UN and the leaders of an estimated 15 000 FDLR fighters haunting eastern Congo, where they fled from the Tutsi army that ended the genocide. Its aim is to persuade them to give up their guns and go home. And for this there is a desperate need, as revealed by another terrible statistic last week. According to the estimate of the International Rescue Committee, a US charity, four and a half years of war in Congo have cost up to 4,7-million lives — the heaviest death toll in any conflict since the Second World War. And the Hutus are its main cause.
Congo’s war began when Rwanda’s Tutsi government invaded to hunt the Hutus down. The invasion sparked a regional war, which at one time saw nine national armies fighting on Congo’s soil. Most have now withdrawn. But while the Hutus remain in Congo, so — Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame suggests — will Rwanda. Within Rwanda’s vast area of occupation — held principally through its murderous rebel proxies — the killing rages on.
Much is at stake. Representing the international community is Jason Stearns, a 26-year-old American UN officer. Four Uruguayan peacekeepers were supposed to add muscle, but the UN’s locally hired truck broke down a day’s walk away and they are lagging.
Gubosisse seats himself in the shade of the church, on a small hill beside the village. The bare hill tumbles into tangled green forest, with silent militiamen picketed at its edge. As the meeting begins, he sets out his rules: nobody will be present and nothing discussed unless previously agreed; the meeting will be in French, not Swahili; no one will record him introducing himself, although tape recorders may be switched on later; there will be no photographs. Drunk still, the local warriors’ representatives begin to fidget.
Stearns makes his proposal. While he would repatriate any FDLR members who wish to return to Rwanda, he cannot force them. Around 800 Hutu deserters have already returned. In Rwanda, they are sent to government demobilisation camps for 45 days, to learn about the country they fled. After this, most are free to return to their fields. Only a small minority of the Hutus in Congo are wanted for trial in Rwanda. About 30 are wanted by the international genocide tribunal in Tanzania. ‘It’s entirely voluntary,’ said Stearns, struggling to make a virtue out of the UN’s feeble mandate. ‘It’s up to you to make the decision — a difficult decision, we understand — after seven or eight years in Congo. Thank you.’
Gubosisse pauses. Then, in precise French, he replies. ‘The FDLR was formed to defend Rwandan Hutus in Congo; we are not fighting to attack Rwanda but to defend them. Kagame’s army massacred Hutus in Rwanda. When they fled to Congo, it massacred them here. It massacred them in UN refugee camps. It chased them into the forest, and it massacred them there. To this day, Rwanda is killing Rwandan refugees in Congo. In the process of its aggression, three million Congolese have died. Yet the international community has never denounced it. Thank you.’
This is all true, even if Gubosisse overlooks those 800 000 dead Rwandans. In the genocide’s aftermath, according to Human Rights Watch, Kagame’s Tutsi rebels slaughtered about 150 000 Hutus in Rwanda, and several hundred thousand more in Congo. Most were civilians. Western donors, who supply 70% of Rwanda’s budget, barely murmured. Nor do they baulk when he locks up his opponents — like the former Hutu Prime Minister, Pasteur Bizimungu, another hero of the struggle to end genocide. It is partly because of this that Hutu children still follow men like Gubosisse.
Stearns struggles to engage Gubosisse in debate. ‘This year all Rwandans will have the chance to vote in elections,’ he said. ‘It is easier to change Rwanda from inside the country than from Congo. By returning, the FDLR will deliver a strong message that it is for peace and not war.’
Gubosisse counters: ‘But how can you guarantee the security of our people in Rwanda when political dissidents are in prison or fleeing for their lives? We denounce the complicity of the international community in the slaughtering of Rwandan refugees in Congo.’
The meeting is not going well. ‘I am tired of the forest,’ Gubosisse continues. ‘I want to cultivate my own land — but the political climate in Rwanda is not favourable for my return. Thank you.’
The light is fading, and so is Stearns’s opportunity. ‘To end the war, a fine gesture is required,’ he said to all six Hutu commanders, though only Gubosisse will meet his gaze. ‘Let me speak to your soldiers, let me ask the children to come back, to prove that there is no war in Rwanda.’
‘The volunteers have already gone back, there are no more,’ Gubosisse snaps. ‘But we will convey your message to our commanders. Thank you.’
The meeting is over. The Hutus head north to the forest, we trudge south towards Rwanda. Suddenly, Stearns is caught in a frantic exchange with a local man. He has a Hutu deserter in his home. Can she be smuggled away?
Two days later, Mabula Afisa, a 37-year-old Hutu militiawoman and former Rwandan police sergeant, reaches the border town of Bukavu. She pours scorn on Gubosisse’s bold claims. ‘Life in the forest is terrible, we have no schools, no medicine, no clothes,’ she said. ‘Our leaders say we’re fighting our way back to Rwanda, when it turns out we can just go. If our soldiers knew this, they would all desert at once.’
Mabula heard there was peace in Rwanda from a Congolese trader. When she said she was leaving, Gubosisse took her four young children hostage. When she fled, he ordered that she be hunted down and killed. Even without her children, she is determined to go home. ‘If I had stayed, they would have kept my children from me,’ she said. ‘If I go home, maybe they can follow me.’
In the UN’s Lubero repatriation camp, 480 kilometres north, another deserter tells a similar tale. ‘Our commanders tell us they are murdering Hutus in Rwanda,’ said Dukuzumurenyi Jouibne. In Rwanda, he hopes to find his wife and four children, whom he has not seen since being pressganged by the FDLR in 1997. ‘I have nothing to fear,’ he says. ‘I’m Hutu, but I’m not guilty of any crimes.’
Jouibne was one of the last Hutus to pass through Lubero. Shortly afterwards, Rwanda’s proxy rebels, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), attacked and scattered his militia, just as they were due to meet the UN. If Hutu leaders want to keep their fighters in Congo, so does Rwanda.
‘Every time we contact a new Hutu group, the RCD disperses them,’ said a senior UN officer. ‘Our hands are tied. Without political will, the UN is powerless.’
It is all bad news for the war-ravaged people of eastern Congo, caught between two vicious foreign enemies and unprotected by the UN mission .
On the track from Cyaminunu, we pass Belia Hamabura. Two years ago, the Hutus pillaged his hut and raped his two sisters. Last year the RCD torched his hut and shot his father. He doesn’t know why Rwanda’s Hutus or Tutsis are here. ‘We just pray they will all leave. And Congo will have peace.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â