Word: tutsis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What they would do was vague: "facilitate" delivery of food and the voluntary repatriation of the refugees. How they would do that was equally unspecified. About 1,000 U.S. troops would take over the airport at Goma, the Zairean city nearest the fighting, held by Zairean Tutsi rebels. They would open a three-mile corridor between Goma and the Rwanda border to protect refugees walking home--though the border is in fact only a few hundred yards away. An additional 2,000 or 3,000 Americans would go to Rwanda and Uganda to airlift in supplies and the other...
...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...
...another wavelength, most U.N. officials, aid workers and the 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...
...refugees in Zaire, like so many apparently humanitarian crises, was essentially political. They were at risk because they were held as political pawns by their Hutu captors. The U.S. and the U.N. chose to respond to human suffering and not to the continuing war between Hutu and Tutsi forces--which holds no interest for Westerners. If the humanitarian mission had gone ahead without breaking the Hutu grip and sending the refugees home, another wave of agony was almost certain to convulse them in a few weeks or months. Now if the Hutu militants have lost their control, there...