Africa: Exodus From Rwanda

The crossing gates at the Zaire border town of Goma were thrown open last week. No visas were required for entry. So there was no official count of the number of ragged, terrified people who passed through from the Rwandan side of the boundary. But the numbers were high, hopelessly high -- in the first few hours, as many as lived in the town itself. By the end of the first day, it seemed as though a fugitive city had squeezed in. By the end of the second, student Thierry Thabo Asumani, 23, observed that it was larger still. "A country is emptying," he said, "to set up a town."

Once again Africa in general, and the unfortunate nation of Rwanda in particular, has beggared Western experience and imagination. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Rwanda's civil war is nearly over. The mainly Tutsi rebels, whose people were victims of one of the largest genocidal slaughters in the last decade, have won. Two weeks ago, following a military campaign brilliant enough to make the textbooks, the Rwandan Patriotic Front took over the capital of Kigali. Last Thursday the rebels marched to within nine miles of the town of Gisenyi, the latest stronghold of their former tormentors -- members of the majority Hutu tribe who participated in the erstwhile government, the murderous remainder of the regime of Juvenal Habyarimana. By the weekend the R.P.F. vice chairman, Patrick Mazimhaka, made clear that the tables were turned. "They are the rebels now," he said. Handpicked Patriotic Front politicians gathered support from African neighbors and negotiated with the U.N. to make its rule official.

But rule over whom? In most civil wars, when the fighting dies, the warring parties stay put and reach some sort of agreement. That is not the case in Rwanda. Despite the R.P.F.'s selection of a Hutu as the country's next Prime Minister, and the rebels' assurances (thus far borne out) that they will not take mass reprisals, most of the Hutu, who now make up more than 90% of Rwanda's population, are engaged in what may be an unprecedented event -- the wholesale evacuation of a country.

The migration began three months ago, when fighting engulfed Kigali. Two hundred and fifty thousand Hutu from the eastern region fled east over the border of Tanzania, in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called "the biggest, fastest exodus" in the agency's history. In so doing, the Hutu created the UNHCR's largest, most crowded refugee camp. Both superlatives, unfortunately, were short-lived. As R.P.F. mortar fire zeroed in on the hills surrounding Gisenyi last Wednesday, another sea of refugees, many originally from the Kigali area, surged out. Jostling along narrow dirt roads, loaded with food, clothes, pots and pans, they massed over the Rwanda's western border. Just over three months ago, 3.5 million of Rwanda's population of 7.5 million resided in its western area. Now only 2 million remain; the rest seemed suddenly headed toward Goma. Exclaimed Panos Moumtzis of the High Commissioner's office, assessing the scene: "It's a river of people bleeding out of Rwanda!"