Word: hutu
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Last week the U.S. found itself abruptly rushed into action. The rising hullabaloo from aid workers, news reports and foreign governments warned of an imminent holocaust among the Hutu refugees. The advocates clamored for immediate military intervention to save them. The news and pictures out of Zaire certainly looked sickening. Some 500,000 Hutu were said to be huddled in the Mugunga camp, held captive by Hutu militias, cut off from food deliveries. As they do so often, the images began to galvanize political leaders. Aid officials called for immediate help, France demanded action, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali...
...this was the plan, it had some sizable holes in it. Mugunga was nine miles farther into Zaire than the airport at Goma. Those inside Mugunga could not leave because they were being held in place by militant Hutu militias. And the camp was under siege by ethnic Tutsi rebels from Zaire, probably assisted by the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda. Another huge portion of refugees was presumed to be scattered in Zaire's forests. If Canadian, American, French, British and other soldiers simply sat on the tarmac in Goma, how would food ever reach the people who needed...
...leader of the Tutsi rebels, Laurent Kabila, talked of a more grandiose mission entirely. They expected not just simple handouts but a major effort to settle the violent tribal and political quarrels. Kabila told a news conference that any force that came in without a mandate to disarm the Hutu militias "would be useless." Others figured events and pressures on the ground would induce mission creep. "Let's get them in on one mandate," said a U.N. official in New York City, "and see what happens when they get shot...
...Friday, however, it was embarrassingly evident that mission planners had known even less than anyone realized about the reality on the ground. The attacking Tutsi rebels finally routed the Hutu militias, who fled west from the Mugunga camp. Freed of their coercive overseers, thousands upon thousands of men, women and children then simply stood up and began pouring down the straight tarmac road toward Rwanda. By Saturday, 200,000 had crossed the border, and 350,000 more were on the way. They "looked healthy," reported Ray Wilkinson, a U.N. spokesman on the border. The formerly intimidated masses for whom...
GOMA, Zaire: Rwandan refugees and displaced Zairians began flocking toward home today as if the doors to their cells suddenly had been flung open, and across the world, diplomats were crossing their fingers. A Tutsi offensive had driven Hutu forces westward into Zaire, potentially forcing the Hutu militias to relinquish control of the bursting Mugunga refugee camp that has served as a barren purgatory to more than 1 million people, and as cover for thousands of militiamen hiding from their enemies. A significant exodus would greatly ease the need for the U.N. humanitarian and military intervention that has been hurriedly...