Word: tutsis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...problem started in 1994 when the Kivus found themselves playing host to some 1.2 million Hutu refugees from Rwanda. Many of those refugees were members of the former Rwandan government, which had orchestrated the genocide of nearly 1 million Rwandan Tutsi. When the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front took over the country in July, Hutu began pouring into Zaire to escape retribution. There they set up vast encampments, from which their leaders launched raids and incursions back into Rwanda. By July 1996 the Hutu refugee militias were also murdering Tutsi tribesmen who lived in eastern Zaire...
...this proved too much for Paul Kagame, Rwanda's strongman. Enraged, Kagame recruited some 2,000 ethnic Tutsi living in eastern Zaire and trained them with his army. In October, when the Hutu persuaded local Zairian authorities in the Kivu provinces to expel all ethnic Tutsi from Zaire, Kagame ordered his commandos back into Zaire. The alliance of Zairian Tutsi rose to resist the edict, and Zaire's notoriously undisciplined army turned and fled. Within two weeks, the rebels had seized a swatch of eastern Zaire 600 miles long...
That response may seem extraordinary for a man whose two daughters were slaughtered, and it is far from certain that his attitude is shared by all Tutsi. Many made no effort to conceal their contempt for the returning Hutu. Many more, however, seemed to greet the returnees with Ruziga's air of orderly acceptance and restraint--an outlook that may stem from Rwanda's unique social structure. Unlike most African nations, which were cobbled together by colonial mapmakers, Rwanda was a tightly organized kingdom long before the Europeans arrived. A Tutsi god-king headed an elaborate system of civil administration...
...Hutu government and was unwaveringly implemented by obedient local authorities. Now, paradoxically, the same community controls--and the mind-sets they evoke--may offer the possibility of peaceful reintegration. Last Wednesday, Odetta Mukandari returned to her village and found her house occupied by Mbangukira Kabagare, a 70-year-old Tutsi. Mukandari didn't confront Kabagare; she didn't even knock on the door. Instead she went to live with relatives. Later, when she met him in the street, she simply smiled politely. As for Kabagare, he explained that the authorities had originally told him he could stay in the house...
Even with such compliance, however, 500,000 Hutu refugees will put a strain on the largely Tutsi Rwandan government. Its housing policy is quite clear: anyone occupying someone else's home is required to leave within 15 days of the owner's arrival. But most of those occupying others' houses are Tutsi who, like Kabagare, have nowhere else to go. The only solution is to build new homes, and the government is appealing to the international community, including the U.S., to send humanitarian aid instead of the 12,000 troops originally committed to rescue the Hutu in Zaire. Several hundred...