Rwanda - The Country

One of Africa's oldest proverbs-"When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled"-couldn't be better suited for the slaughter of Central Africa. Nearly a third of sub-Saharan Africa's 42 countries are mired in international or civil wars. Rwanda's got its candle wick dipped into both. How can one of the tiniest, lushest countries in Africa become one of the largest killing fields in the world? Tribalism.

Rwanda, like neighboring Burundi, is a rather simple (for most African states) hybrid of two tribes: the Hutus and the Tutsis. A four-year uprising made minor headlines every time Tutsi guerrillas would infringe on the territory of Rwanda's famous silverback gorilla families. When full-scale war broke out after the death of Burundi's and Rwanda's leaders in a plane crash, the majority Hutu tribe blamed the minority Tutsis and began indiscriminately slaughtering them. But the surprise success of the ragtag Tutsi rebels transformed them from freedom fighters into outright butchers. The Hutu-controlled government has been replaced by Tutsi rebels, and the wholesale massacre started being directed at the Hutus.

Now waves of refugees have been making tentative explorations homeward from eastern Congo (at least those who have not been slaughtered by Congo President Laurent Kabila's mostly Tutsi forces) under the auspices of the UN. Estimates put the Tutsi fatality toll at more than a million in the last few decades, and the number of refugees at more than twice that figure. The genocide in this decade has topped 1 million dead. Almost half of Rwanda's population of 8 million fled during the hostilities in April 1993; 10,000 per minute at its peak crossed the borders.

Rwandan leader Major-General Paul Kagame tried to bring the refugees back, particularly the Hutus, who fled the country en masse after Kagame's Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) came to power in 1994. Kagame ordered the execution of any soldier who killed a civilian. That he was so serious was evidenced by the 1,116 Tutsi soldiers jailed by Kagame in 1996. Eighty of them were officers-most facing murder charges. Now, there are 130,000 people in prison in Rwanda awaiting trial in connection with the slaughter.

For refugees returning from eastern Congo, though, there has been no guarantee of safety. Former neighbors have turned hostile. Some returnees are ostracized, some accepted, some murdered. Returning Hutus have been shot as war criminals.

In 1998, Rwanda became embroiled in Congo's latest installment of civil war, aiding guerrillas seeking to oust DRC President Laurent Kabila, who Kigali accuses of hosting the defeated former Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militia which engineered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In late May 1999, the Rwandan government announced a cease-fire with Kabila's troops, that would remain in effect as long as Kigali felt its border with Congo was secure.

"Anything which waters down that guarantee plunges us back into the conflict," one Rwandan government minister warned of the cease-fire.

Like sucking on a Tutsi pop, perhaps?