Chaos in the Camps

Abstract

The flood of refugees from Rwanda included both innocent victims and ruthless killers. Although U.N. supported and supplied, from the beginning the camps in Zaire were ruled by thugs.

Exodus: Hutus fleeing Rwanda in 1994.

Before 1990, very few fndividuals outside Africa were familiar with Rwanda, let alone had any expertise on the country. Those familiar with Rwanda knew only that it was the place where you could find mountain gorillas or that it was where Hutus were killing Tutsis, or vice versa. Even a person with knowledge of the latter might be hard pressed to identify Rwanda as the country in which Hutus were in power and Burundi as the country in which Tutsis were in power.

After the spring of 1994, perceptions changed. In the short term, Rwanda became infamous for producing the largest number of refugees in the shortest period of time. In July 1994, the extremist Hutu government was overthrown by the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). In the few days following this event, approximately 1 million Hutu refugees fled Rwanda to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC), and another half million fled to Tanzania.

In the long term, Rwanda became notorious for the event that immediately preceded this refugee outflow. In a matter of 10 weeks, Hutu extremists killed 800,000 civilian Tutsis in an intentional genocide, largely executed using low-tech killing instruments–machetes. This genocide made the high-tech industrialized killing machine of the Nazis, who targeted the Jews during World War II, look like an operation in slow motion. In Rwanda, the premeditated, large-scale, rapid slaughter of an average of 8,000 persons a day over a 100-day period took place after extremists seized power on April 6, 1994, when the plane carrying the Hutu President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began establishing camps in Zaire, as an estimated 1 million Hutus fled into that country. Intermingled with genuine refugees were perhaps a hundred thousand militant Hutu génocidaires and interahamwe (those who attack together), who were responsible for the killings in Rwanda. As Arthur Helton, a well-known refugee expert, wrote in his 2002 book, The Price of Indifference, the Zairian camps were “a dangerous amalgam of fighters and civilians…. Many of those seeking refuge had been involved with either the armed forces of Rwanda or Hutu militia groups, and some were fugitives of justice who had committed genocide.” Soon after taking control of the camps, these so-called refugee soldiers turned them into bases from which to attack Rwanda and target Tutsis living in Zaire (the Banyamulenge and the Banyarwanda). 1

Waiting at the Ruizizi bridge to pass into Zaire.

Security in the camps

The deposed Rwandan political and military leaders who took control of the refugee camps initially brought their own economic resources–most of Rwanda's hard currency (17 billion Rwandan Francs), vehicles, and other public assets, including 20,000 tons of coffee worth an estimated $50 million.

In the camps, they systematically rebuilt their armed forces, even as UNHCR did little to prevent it; eventually, their rebuilding was indirectly facilitated by UNHCR financial support. 2

Many have questioned UNHCR's approach to the camps, as well as the attitudes of the non-governmental organizations that worked with them. They charge that UNHCR failed to provide security–that in concentrating on delivering needed food and medicine in the camps, it ignored the refugees' human rights. Another claim–that when the camps were disbanded in 1996, hundreds of thousands of refugees perished–is a gross exaggeration. 3

On the other hand, aid workers had to work within an environment in which they regarded the provision of relief supplies as critical. The international community made no effort to provide the sort of force that would have been required to enforce the disarming of the warriors who took refuge in the camps in Zaire.

With the camps firmly under the control of its enemies, the Rwandan military targeted them. Helton sums up the situation: “[UNHCR's] incapacity and ultimately its unwillingness [to provide security], coupled with the failure to separate the armed elements from the civilian population, meant that the camps continued to pose serious security threats to Rwanda.” Although the U.N. Security Council considered deploying multinational military forces, “no mission was deployed … and the Rwandan army answered the security threat by attacking the camps.”

When considering the dangers posed by militant control of the camps in Zaire, four separate security issues must be considered:

• the physical security of the refugees and aid workers in the camps;

• the threat posed to the government of Rwanda by camps controlled by hostile militants;

• the threat posed to civilians in Rwanda who might identify the génocidaires and serve as witnesses against them in international trials; and

• the security of the food supplies allocated to the camps.

At first, physical security in the camps was nearly nonexistent. Women were raped; refugees were robbed of their rations; aid workers were threatened. Even in the fall of 1996, Laurent Kabila, then the spokesman for a Zairian rebel group working against strongman Mobuto Sese Seko, said, “Not a day passes without a refugee being killed.”

On January 27, 1995, in an attempt to remedy the situation, UNHCR signed an agreement with the government of Zaire to deploy 1,000 Zairian soldiers to protect the refugees, mainly in two camps at Goma and Bukavu. The Zairian soldiers were successful in establishing security in the camps, but they refused to disarm the refugee warriors. The result was relative calm and improvements in the food and sanitary situation.

Although the decision to employ the Zairian army to provide stability in the camps largely succeeded in providing a modicum of physical protection, it did not prevent the militants from indoctrinating the refugees to fear returning to Rwanda, from recruiting among them for new members of a military force, or from taxing them or taking a percentage of their relief supplies to help finance the rebuilding of the army.

Second, the militants were able to use the camps to launch attacks on the Rwandan regime across the border. Through the use of informants and the deployment of its own armed forces, over time the Rwandan government was able to reduce this threat significantly.

Third, the militants in the camps were a threat to Rwandan civilians who could serve as witnesses at the Rwandan and international trials of the génocidaires. Although the Rwandan government gradually countered raids against the regime, it was not as successful in protecting the civilian population. In June 1996 alone, 11 genocide survivors were killed by génocidaires who crossed Lake Kivu by boat from the camps in Zaire; nine witnesses who were expected to offer testimony at genocide trials were killed, and 28 genocide survivors and returnees were murdered at Satisnyi.

Eventually, however, these incursions became counterproductive and alienated the “hearts and minds” of the local population in Rwanda, including the Hutus, and the génocidaires refocused their militancy elsewhere.

The most important security threat posed by the militants in the camps were their attacks on the Tutsi Ban-yarwanda in north Kivu and on the Tutsi Banyamulenge in south Kivu in Zaire. Their attacks against these local populations near the camps eventually served as the catalyst for the collapse not only of the Mobutu regime in Zaire, but of Zaire itself, and for the development of a wider war.

By mid-1996, the génocidaires' attacks against the Banyarwanda were so concentrated and determined that the entire Tutsi population of North Kivu had been ethnically cleansed.

The Banyamulenge in South Kivu were better prepared for attack. But the Zairian government did not support them. On October 8, 1996, the governor of South Kivu gave the Banyamulenge population seven days to leave voluntarily or be forced out. Gen. Eluki Monga Aundu, head of Zaire's armed forces, declared war on the Banyamulenge (whom he correctly claimed were backed by Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, but erroneously claimed were supported by UNHCR). In the view of the Zairian government, although the Banyamulenge had lived in Zaire for as long as two centuries, they were foreigners living on Zairian soil.

Banyamulenge-led rebel forces (backed by Rwandan advisers and “volunteers,” and reinforced by Banyarwanda who had fled from North Kivu), engaged in battle against the Hutu extremists from the refugee camps, other rebel allies, and the Zairian army. On October 16, 1996, the organizational force behind them, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire declared itself. Laurent Kabila, initially the spokesperson of the organization, emerged as its leader.

The final security issue–that of food allocation to the camps–arose after October 16. When Kabila/Rwandan forces captured the camps in November, the Rwandan government closed the airport at Goma and cut off any land route for resupplying the camps with humanitarian aid. The non-governmental organizations and the United Nations responded that the action left those in the camps subject to imminent starvation and disease. The Office of the Secretary-General chimed in, maintaining that the refugees would “face certain death unless they receive immediate assistance.”

December 1996: Refugees return to Rwanda from Tanzania.

November 1998: Expelled from the camp in Zaire, refugees stream back to Rwanda.

But four days later, Ray Wilkinson, spokesperson for UNHCR, was able to relay, via CNN, a more reassuring account:

“The condition inside Mugunga was a lot better than people had anticipated, because there was water going into that camp and there was also food in that camp. … So until two days ago we didn't know, but from two days on, we realized they were probably in reasonably good condition.”

The issue of threats to refugees due to lack of food security turned out to be misleading.

Separating warriors from refugees

In August 1994, soon after the refugees arrived in Zaire, Gerard Kamanda wa Kamanda, Zaire's Minister of Justice, demanded that they leave by the end of the month. To facilitate their departure, Kamanda ordered the army of Zaire to disarm the warriors and permit the genuine refugees to return. The army, accountable only to President Mobutu, refused to follow Kaman-da's orders or those of Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo, head of the crisis government appointed by Mobutu in March 1993. From the beginning, how to separate the criminals from innocent refugees was a major issue.

A November 1994 secretary-general's report proposed a military solution, but the options “did not provide for the separation of the political leaders, former Rwandan government forces, including troops and militia, from the rest of the camp population” because it was considered a “risky, complex and very expensive endeavor” that would have required 10,000-12,000 troops. The secretary-general could only envision a diplomatic solution, which would have required a “political understanding” between the génocidaires and the new government of Rwanda. On November 30, 1994, the Security Council precluded military initiatives.

In August 1996, Mobuto was in Switzerland for an operation (where he remained until December), and Prime Minister Kengo led a highlevel delegation to Rwanda. At that meeting, both governments agreed to close the refugee camps and repatriate all Rwandan refugees. Although the two countries agreed on the timing and modalities of the return, the prime minister did not control the army, and therefore could not implement the agreement.

In a November 4, 1996 press release, Sadako Ogata, the High Commissioner for Refugees, admitted that from the outset the mixing of refugees and killers had been a problem. Once again, diplomacy was brought to bear to try to avoid war, as forces in the camps and forces aligned against them prepared for battle.

The result of the diplomatic effort was verbal. No real action was initiated. Nor was there any thorough assessment of the factors on the ground or any muscle brought to bear on the issue.

On October 10, 1996, after an international meeting in Geneva, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley announced an agreement to “gradually close the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire.”

On November 9, the United Nations approved the use of a multinational intervention force, which was authorized to launch a humanitarian mission to protect aid convoys to the camps and allow the voluntary repatriation of refugees. However, the force was specifically not given a mandate to separate the génocidaires from the refugees.

After the Mugunga refugee camp was attacked on November 14, 1996, refugees began streaming back across the border to Rwanda at the rate of 10,000 an hour. On November 14, Mugunga's defenses collapsed. As the ex-military, the intera-hamwe, and their families fled westward, some 640,000 Hutu refugees began the trek back to Rwanda, carrying all their belongings. The humanitarian intervention was aborted before it began because the Rwandan government denied access to Zaire through its territory.

The Rwandan government

Rwanda was not motivated to attack the camps because the Zairian army was in charge, as some have claimed. Rwanda wanted to prevent the persecution of the Banyamulenge and to rid the country of a source of incursions and assassinations. Revenge was also a motivating factor.

In addition, because many of them had become refugees after the Hutus' ascendence in 1959–and their own emergence as refugee warriors in the 1980s in response to the failure of any state to provide them the security of citizenship–the Rwandan Tutsis knew better than anyone else the negative long-term effects of a population left abandoned in refugee camps. The failure of the international community and the United Nations to separate the refugees from the criminals had driven home to the Tutsis the lesson that only they themselves could and would do what was necessary to protect themselves.

The searing and indelible effects of the genocide marked all Rwandan actions. The Rwandan government had repeatedly warned the international community that it would intervene if the security threat posed by the warriors in the camps was not eliminated. By summer 1996, the Rwandan government was determined to take action.

Camps run by thugs

The focus here has been on the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire and the spillover of the Rwandan civil war into Zaire. The opening volley of the final stage of that civil war began on October 13, 1996, five days after the civil war in Zaire began. It ended on November 14, less than four weeks later, with the rout of the génocidaires from the last refugee camp. The génocidaires had been decisively defeated.

This Rwandan civil war was but one of four civil wars under way in Zaire in fall 1996. It came to a climax on Zairian soil, and was the catalyst for the Zairian civil war, which began on October 8, 1996, and effectively ended six months later with the fall of Kisingani in March 1997. Laurent Kabila's subsequent assumption of power in Kinshasa was a foregone conclusion, although the Zairian civil war and Uganda's war with its rebels would last much longer.

Refugee experts like Gil Loescher and Arthur Helton have pointed out that nothing effective was done about the génocidaires' control of the camps or to help the refugees escape the control of the génocidaires. The refugees were virtually confined to the camps, which were built, financed, and supposedly controlled by the international community.

As bleak as this account is, the militants' control of the camps in Zaire was no exception. Camps for Cambodian refugees in Thailand were controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Palestinian camps, ostensibly run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), such as the one in Jenin, have become hives of terrorist planning and bomb-making activity, again with militants in control.

The question of who will control refugee camps needs to be addressed. Many camps are financed and supported by the international community, but controlled by militants–unless the international community is willing to intervene to establish security. The implications of this unresolved problem go far beyond the effects on local populations or even the parties in conflict. •