Rwanda, Part Two?
"All Tutsis will perish. They will disappear from the earth. Slowly, slowly, slowly. We will kill them
like rats," intoned Radio Milles Collines at the height of 1994's 100-day Rwandan genocide, rallying Hutu militias to finish off the minority Tutsis. But after the horrific bloodletting, many of the Hutu fighters fled to the Congo, where they found refuge in remote regions and lay relatively low with their arms at hand. Now, say analysts, they lay at the heart of the Congo conflict that has recently displaced a quarter of a million people:
- "Congo's ethnic Tutsi rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, has used the threat they pose to justify carving out his own fiefdom in the mineral-rich east.
That fiefdom grew dramatically in recent days as his fighters advanced dozens of kilometers (miles) south to the gates of the provincial capital, Goma, forcing a beleaguered army and humiliated U.N. peacekeepers to retreat.
Nkunda called a unilateral cease-fire and suddenly halted his advance. It's unclear why, but there was certainly intense diplomatic pressure to do so. And seizing a city that's home to hundreds of thousands of people and serves as the regional headquarters of the U.N. and aid groups could have been difficult.
...Nkunda accuses Congo's army of supplying the Hutu extremists with arms, while Congo accuses Nkunda of getting support from Rwanda's Tutsi-led government.
Nkunda claims he must fight to protect Tutsis. But many residents of eastern Congo view Nkunda with deep distrust and say he is a Rwandan puppet. They charge that he has exaggerated threats to the minority Tutsi community and is more interested in power and exploiting lucrative mineral riches than protecting Tutsis."
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