Not far from Zaire’s border with Rwanda, relief workers found a little boy sitting on a pile of guns and corpses, next to the bodies of his parents. The child, 2 or 3 years old, couldn’t say his own name, so his rescuers called him Pinocchio. Apparently he had been sitting there for two days, after a mortar bombardment panicked a crowd of refugees, setting off a mad stampede in which more than 100 people were trampled to death. “He started screaming at me when I came near him, and then, once I gained his trust, he sort of clung to me,” said David Syme, an American relief executive. “I’ve spent 20 years in Africa. I’ve seen it all. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
No one had seen anything like the sudden exodus from Rwanda. It turned eastern Zaire into hell on earth – a vast, bleak landscape teeming to the horizon with a solid carpet of refugees, desperate from hunger, thirst, disease and fear. For people in affluent countries, it was a week of heartbreaking images: a mother who has walked all the way across Rwanda opens a tiny bundle to reveal the placid face of her child, who died two hours from the border. A husband tenderly holds his wife’s hand as she lies dying from cholera, despite an intravenous drip. A child wails as he tries to wake up his dead mother.
The terrified flight from Rwanda dwarfed the other mass migrations of a stricken decade. By the end of last week, 2 million or more people, a quarter of the population, had left the country, and nearly as many more were thought to be refugees within their own borders. Most of the exiles were Hutus, losers in a vicious civil war that saw the mass slaughter of the rival Tutsis – perhaps as many as 1 million of them. The Hutus were driven out of Rwanda, not by the Tutsi-led victors, but by their own rulers, who apparently hoped to create a vast diaspora, and a potent army in exile.
But the refugees sought sanctuary in a barren place: hard, volcanic ground alongside the toxic water of polluted Lake Kivu. They were beset by a Biblical array of pestilence: cholera, dysentery, bubonic plague and measles. By last Friday they were estimated to be dying at the rate of one a minute, and the pace seemed sure to rise.
Finally, after months of looking mostly the other way, the rest of the world took action. Even the most advanced nations haven’t yet figured out how to make peace in a war like Rwanda’s. But relief is something they know. Bill Clinton announced an “immediate and massive increase” in U.S. aid, to about $250 million. Other countries, notably France, were already engaged, along with a host of over-burdened relief agencies (chart, page 31). The first U.S. military personnel arrived in Goma, the Zairean epicenter, last week. Three weeks from now, there will be 4,000 Americans on the ground in Zaire, Uganda, Kenya and probably Rwanda. How long will they stay? “Weeks at least, probably months,” said a senior Pentagon planner.
Civilian relief workers were anguished by their losing race against death. In Goma, Stephen Skakel, a 27-year-old American, noticed an emaciated woman sitting in the dirt with three small children. “She didn’t look at me, but I saw her eying my water bottle,” he said later. “I looked around to see if any other refugees were nearby. You can cause a riot by handing out supplies unofficially.” No one was looking, so Skakel sauntered over to the woman and dropped his water bottle next to her. “It’s not fun to play God and figure who gets what,” he said. “I just thought she looked like a sweet woman.”
It can take months to die of starvation, but cholera, dysentery and simple thirst kill far more quickly. The best solution to the crisis in Zaire was for the Rwandans to go home. The United Nations urged them to leave, and a few trickled back, despite warnings from the Hutu leaders that the new rulers of Rwanda would kill them in revenge for the massacre of the Tutsis. “But already there are people dying from hunger [in Zaire],” Beatrice Mukanfizi, a Hutu, said as she returned to Rwanda. “Even if I do die, at least I die at home.”
Most of the refugees stayed put. Zairean troops temporarily closed the border after a hand grenade dropped by fleeing Rwandan soldiers went off accidentally, killing three refugees. The Hutus stayed in their hellish surroundings because they were afraid of their own leaders, and of the Tutsis, once their overlords. “The Tutsis ruled with an iron fist for four centuries,” said Rosamond Carr, an American-born plantation owner whose Hutu servants harbored Tutsi children for months before they were found and slaughtered. “Millions of people are fleeing not only out of fear of retaliation, but because they refuse to go back to being slaves in an unfair social order.”
The new government of Rwanda said it wanted reconciliation. The victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front seemed to be making a serious effort to prevent atrocities by its own troops. It also appointed moderate Hutus as the country’s new president and prime minister, though real power appeared to reside with the winning army commander, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, who became vice president and defense minister. “There is no need for anyone to flee Rwanda,” Kagame said early last week. “We guarantee all Rwandans stability and security.” But he added that some people “have a lot of blood on their hands and will have to answer for it.”
Many of the refugees who stay in Zaire may die before help reaches them. And meanwhile, their crops are rotting in the fields back home. Rwanda is an agricultural country, rich enough to sustain 8 million people on a territory roughly the size of Vermont. But untended crops and livestock soon wither away. With the civil war over, at least for now, the next threat facing Rwanda is famine. “I am not interested in leading a country that is empty,” the new prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu, said last week. For now, however, Rwanda is a nation half populated by ghosts – and tormented by its own implacable demons.
title: “A Race With Death” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Pedro Stuart”
Not far from Zaire’s border with Rwanda, relief workers found a little boy sitting on a pile of guns and corpses, next to the bodies of his parents. The child, 2 or 3 years old, couldn’t say his own name, so his rescuers called him Pinocchio. Apparently he had been sitting there for two days, after a mortar bombardment panicked a crowd of refugees, setting off a mad stampede in which more than 100 people were trampled to death. “He started screaming at me when I came near him, and then, once I gained his trust, he sort of clung to me,” said David Syme, an American relief executive. “I’ve spent 20 years in Africa. I’ve seen it all. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
No one had seen anything like the sudden exodus from Rwanda. It turned eastern Zaire into hell on earth – a vast, bleak landscape teeming to the horizon with a solid carpet of refugees, desperate from hunger, thirst, disease and fear. For people in affluent countries, it was a week of heartbreaking images: a mother who has walked all the way across Rwanda opens a tiny bundle to reveal the placid face of her child, who died two hours from the border. A husband tenderly holds his wife’s hand as she lies dying from cholera, despite an intravenous drip. A child wails as he tries to wake up his dead mother.
The terrified flight from Rwanda dwarfed the other mass migrations of a stricken decade. By the end of last week, 2 million or more people, a quarter of the population, had left the country, and nearly as many more were thought to be refugees within their own borders. Most of the exiles were Hutus, losers in a vicious civil war that saw the mass slaughter of the rival Tutsis – perhaps as many as 1 million of them. The Hutus were driven out of Rwanda, not by the Tutsi-led victors, but by their own rulers, who apparently hoped to create a vast diaspora, and a potent army in exile.
But the refugees sought sanctuary in a barren place: hard, volcanic ground alongside the toxic water of polluted Lake Kivu. They were beset by a Biblical array of pestilence: cholera, dysentery, bubonic plague and measles. By last Friday they were estimated to be dying at the rate of one a minute, and the pace seemed sure to rise.
Finally, after months of looking mostly the other way, the rest of the world took action. Even the most advanced nations haven’t yet figured out how to make peace in a war like Rwanda’s. But relief is something they know. Bill Clinton announced an “immediate and massive increase” in U.S. aid, to about $250 million. Other countries, notably France, were already engaged, along with a host of over-burdened relief agencies (chart, page 31). The first U.S. military personnel arrived in Goma, the Zairean epicenter, last week. Three weeks from now, there will be 4,000 Americans on the ground in Zaire, Uganda, Kenya and probably Rwanda. How long will they stay? “Weeks at least, probably months,” said a senior Pentagon planner.
Civilian relief workers were anguished by their losing race against death. In Goma, Stephen Skakel, a 27-year-old American, noticed an emaciated woman sitting in the dirt with three small children. “She didn’t look at me, but I saw her eying my water bottle,” he said later. “I looked around to see if any other refugees were nearby. You can cause a riot by handing out supplies unofficially.” No one was looking, so Skakel sauntered over to the woman and dropped his water bottle next to her. “It’s not fun to play God and figure who gets what,” he said. “I just thought she looked like a sweet woman.”
It can take months to die of starvation, but cholera, dysentery and simple thirst kill far more quickly. The best solution to the crisis in Zaire was for the Rwandans to go home. The United Nations urged them to leave, and a few trickled back, despite warnings from the Hutu leaders that the new rulers of Rwanda would kill them in revenge for the massacre of the Tutsis. “But already there are people dying from hunger [in Zaire],” Beatrice Mukanfizi, a Hutu, said as she returned to Rwanda. “Even if I do die, at least I die at home.”
Most of the refugees stayed put. Zairean troops temporarily closed the border after a hand grenade dropped by fleeing Rwandan soldiers went off accidentally, killing three refugees. The Hutus stayed in their hellish surroundings because they were afraid of their own leaders, and of the Tutsis, once their overlords. “The Tutsis ruled with an iron fist for four centuries,” said Rosamond Carr, an American-born plantation owner whose Hutu servants harbored Tutsi children for months before they were found and slaughtered. “Millions of people are fleeing not only out of fear of retaliation, but because they refuse to go back to being slaves in an unfair social order.”
The new government of Rwanda said it wanted reconciliation. The victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front seemed to be making a serious effort to prevent atrocities by its own troops. It also appointed moderate Hutus as the country’s new president and prime minister, though real power appeared to reside with the winning army commander, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, who became vice president and defense minister. “There is no need for anyone to flee Rwanda,” Kagame said early last week. “We guarantee all Rwandans stability and security.” But he added that some people “have a lot of blood on their hands and will have to answer for it.”
Many of the refugees who stay in Zaire may die before help reaches them. And meanwhile, their crops are rotting in the fields back home. Rwanda is an agricultural country, rich enough to sustain 8 million people on a territory roughly the size of Vermont. But untended crops and livestock soon wither away. With the civil war over, at least for now, the next threat facing Rwanda is famine. “I am not interested in leading a country that is empty,” the new prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu, said last week. For now, however, Rwanda is a nation half populated by ghosts – and tormented by its own implacable demons.
