Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: Hutu Militias Are Still Crossing the Border

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Hutu Militias Are Still Crossing the Border

The first military liaison officers of Rwanda's new army took up positions in the southwest of the country as UN authorities held urgent talks on a rise in security problems in that area. I reported on the September 1994 deployment from the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

UN military spokesman Major Jean-Guy Plante declines to be specific. But he indicates the latest security problems in the former French-patrolled southwest have included physical attacks and threats against the only officials of the new Rwandan government stationed there until now.

These are a handful of customs and immigration officers posted at the Cyangugu border crossing into Zaire (Congo). UN peacekeeping force commander, Major General Guy Tousignant, met some of those officers during a weekend tour of the area.

One of them, Alex Mugabo, said in an interview at the frontier that their major problem is security.

“The security is not tough; we feel the militias are still crossing, this side and out, so we need -- if they could tighten it [security] ... there is no other problem.”

Security for the Rwandan officials at the Cyangugu border crossing is provided by Ethiopian soldiers attached to the UN peacekeeping force. General Tousignant acknowledges they are what he terms a "very small" group -- and its officers have disclosed their men are hampered by language problems and have been weakened by illness caused by spoiled rations.

The UN military spokesman, Major Plante, rejects suggestions that the Ethiopians are not up to the task. But he says General Tousignant has held crucial talks with his key field commanders to consider additional actions to tighten security, especially in the southwest.

The UN commander also scheduled an urgent meeting with Rwandan Defense Minister and Vice President Paul Kagame to review security matters.

The new government in Kigali has become increasingly vocal in its complaints about the UN's ability to curb activities by armed members of the country's defeated army as well as extremist militia. There are now suggestions the Rwandan government may speed up its plans for deploying more than just a few liason officers in the southwest.

General Tousignant acknowledged the possibility during his tour of the area.

“Where we cannot do that job, if we cannot protect everybody, then we must gradually allow the government to do that.”

The government soon plans to begin deploying additional elements of a civilian administration in the southwest. For the moment, their security will be provided by UN peacekeepers. UN officials say they are not planning to reinforce the current two thousand strong, mainly African force in the former French zone. But they indicate other concrete measures will be announced shortly to enhance security there.

Rwandan military units have stayed out of the southwest since French troops withdrew in August 1994 in order not to frighten displaced Rwandans now sheltering there into fleeing into Zaire (Congo).

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Hutu Militias Are Still Crossing the Border

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