T A B L E+T A L K F--K! Is the word being overly used by the female gender? Join the discussion in Social Issues D A I L Y+Q U O T E Oscar! Best fawning hack R E C E N T L Y Not ready By Jeff Stein "We're not going to have a Desert Storm here. We're going to have a chemical or biological Oklahoma City." (12/10/97) Bring back J. Edgar Hoover By Jonathan Broder As far as the Clinton administration is concerned, anyone would be better than Louis Freeh, even a cross-dresser in pumps (12/09/97) The bully on the block By Ros Davidson Sport utility vehicles are taking an ever greater toll on smaller cars -- and killing the people who drive them (12/08/97) Purveyor of catastrophe By Jonathan Broder Maybe it's time for the U.S. to rethink an arms sales policy that keeps blowing up in its face (12/05/97) The ayatollah who came in from the cold By Christopher Hitchens John le Carré's outrageous attack on Salman Rushdie keeps the flames of censorship burning (12/04/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		T H E graveyards O F_H O P E WHY HAS IT TAKEN US SO LONG TO BELIEVE THAT THE NEW "GREAT HOPE" OF AFRICA MAY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR TERRIBLE MASSACRES? BY JONATHAN BRODER | After Laurent Kabila and his forces toppled the corrupt government of Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko in June, the fervent hope in Washington was that the new president of the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo would join Africa's new cadre of pragmatic, no-nonsense leaders with an aversion to corruption and an appreciation for free markets; leaders like Uganda's Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame, both of whom helped Kabila in his campaign against Mobutu. Last summer, human rights workers uncovered evidence of massacres of hundreds of ethnic Hutu refugees from Rwanda by Kabila's soldiers. For months, the United Nations has tried vainly to get a team of investigators to Congo to look into the plight of some 200,000 Rwandan refugees who fled into Zaire and later disappeared. This week -- with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright embarking on a seven-nation tour of Africa -- Kabila let them in. On Monday, a team, consisting of forensic scientists and human rights experts, arrived in the northwestern town of Mbandaka, one of the sites of the alleged massacres, to begin the grim field work. Their main road map is a detailed report compiled by Scott Anderson, a field officer for Human Rights Watch/Africa, who spent six weeks in western Congo during July and August, focusing on three villages along a 50-mile stretch of road, where atrocities committed by Kabila's forces have been alleged. Salon talked with Anderson about what he found, why the U.S. has been so slow to come to grips with the Kabila regime and what U.N. investigators should be looking for. In her speech in Addis Ababa Tuesday, Secretary of State Albright admitted that the United States didn't pay sufficient attention to the killings as they were occurring in Zaire before and after Kabila took power. What did she mean? The U.S. had given a great deal of political backing to the Rwandan government since it came to power -- after the 1994 genocide by the Hutus against the Tutsis there. So, when it learned of the Rwandan military's plan to attack the Hutu refugee camps and military bases across the border in Zaire, the message was, fine, as long as there isn't too much collateral damage. I don't think Washington ever imagined the attacks would involve so many civilian killings. Given the recent history of bloodshed in the region, how could they not imagine it? Everyone -- the U.S. and the international community included -- was very concerned about getting rid of these border camps, which posed a genuine threat to the new Rwanda regime. But no one from the international community was willing to go in and do the hard job of separating the armed Hutu militia from the civilian refugees. After the attacks, some 600,000 Hutu refugees returned safely to Rwanda, to everyone's great relief. However, another probably several hundred thousand fled westward, deeper into Zaire. Canada proposed the creation of a multinational force to go in and secure the areas where those refugees were, allow aid groups to come in and also create a safe corridor for the refugees to go back to Rwanda. But the U.S. was unenthusiastic. It didn't think the number of refugees was significant or that they needed aid. That's what Albright is apologizing for. Why was the U.S. "unenthusiastic"? That's a matter of speculation. I think some American officials in Kigali truly swallowed the Rwandan line that there were no significant numbers of refugees in Zaire in need of aid. But this is contradicted by their own intelligence. The Americans had satellite information. They had low-flying surveillance planes as well as people on the ground gathering information. And they had the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees telling them that hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing west. So there's clearly a political component here -- which, again, is a matter of speculation. What were some of the political factors in play? The proposed international force would have protected Mobutu's forces as well as the refugees. Maybe the U.S. wanted the Rwandans thrust into Zaire to bring down Mobutu. It's unclear. It could have been America's reluctance to get into another foreign involvement, especially in Africa. As you know, after Somalia, the U.S. Army is not allowed to have any casualties. Humanitarian workers are allowed to go in and get killed, but not the U.S. military. Maybe that's why the United States had not up to now denounced the massacres in Kabila's Congo, and why, when top international officials, including (Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights) John Shattuck, were turned back from alleged massacre sights, the U.S. only complained about problems gaining access. That has now changed, with the U.S. saying to Kabila, you'd better give investigators access. What changed Kabila's mind? The United States and the international community threatened to stop sending Kabila aid. But there is some confusion about these threats. The U.S. is supposed to give Kabila $10 million. Some people at the State Department say all aid is linked to Kabila's cooperation with the U.N. investigation, but in fact some U.S. aid is flowing to the Congo right now, and it's going to government officials. It has been determined that some of the massacres occurred during the heat of battle, when Kabila's forces, along with the mostly Tutsi Rwandan military, were advancing westward and Rwandan Hutu refugees got caught in the fighting. Could that have accounted for the massacres you investigated in western Congo? Not really. As the refugees moved west, the nature of the attacks changed. They became more indiscriminate. Long after former Rwandan military and militia members had fled the front lines, larger groups of civilians were left behind, overtaken by Rwandan troops and systematically massacred. There was no combat whatsoever in the areas I visited. N E X T+P A G E+| How they died