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Subject:

HEADLINE: Blame to Share in Africa

Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:23:32 퍝 (MET)

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March 11, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 31; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 628 words

HEADLINE: Blame to Share in Africa

BYLINE: By Makau Mutua; Makau Mutua is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

BODY: The recent massacre of eight Western tourists in Uganda was a horrible event, but the response of the Ugandan and Rwandan Governments has been just as chilling. Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, who came to power in a coup in 1986, vowed to kill the suspects on sight, even before their guilt was established.

Several days later, he announced that Rwandan and Ugandan forces had killed 15 Hutu militiamen. And with the tacit approval of the United States and Britain, Mr. Museveni has suspended all human rights for the Hutu in the troubled area.

It took the deaths of the Western tourists to focus attention on abominations being committed in the region. Hundreds of African lives are being lost each day because of a conflict that pits Congo (formerly Zaire) against predominantly Tutsi rebels who are backed by the Governments of Uganda and Rwanda.

The United States has a history of backing African dictators. Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Samuel Doe of Liberia were darlings of the West, just as Mr. Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame, the de facto head of state in Rwanda, are now. Like Mr. Mobutu from the 1960's to the mid-90's, Mr. Museveni, whose country the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are trying to make a success story, has become the policeman for American interests in East and Central Africa. The United States has extolled him as a model leader.

Mr. Kagame and his minority Tutsi Government in Rwanda owe their power to Mr. Museveni. Now the United States is assisting their campaign to overthrow another despot, President Laurent Kabila of Congo, and replace him with a more pliable client.

Despite support from the West, Mr. Museveni is facing a longstanding insurgency at home, and Mr. Kagame rules a country that is more than 80 percent Hutu. It is only a matter of time before the Hutu, many of whom fled to Congo after the mass Hutu killings of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994, recapture power in Rwanda -- unless a democratic power-sharing arrangement can be worked out between the Hutu and the Tutsi. In the past couple of years, Hutu rebels have overrun prisons and other Government installations in several parts of Rwanda.

But Mr. Museveni and Mr. Kagame want the West to believe that they can exert effective control in the region and that Western aid should be increased. Mr. Museveni's message to the suspected killers seems clear: for every white tourist's life taken, his Government will take dozens of Hutu lives. Unfortunately, his crackdown, far from pacifying the region, can only beget more violence.

Mr. Museveni is not the only one responsible for the current crisis. Tour operators and the Western countries should not have allowed tourists to travel to the vortex of the Central African conflict. Just imagine tourists traveling to Kosovo today, or to Bosnia during its civil war.

In Rwanda, we cannot ignore that the Hutu make up the vast majority of people, and that the country belongs to them no less than to the Tutsi. American support is not enough to re-establish exclusive Tutsi rule. And revenge executions of Hutu suspects are no answer, either. The killers of the tourists should be apprehended and tried in Ugandan courts. The United States cannot, by its acquiescence, appear to tolerate the human rights violations by the Rwandan and Ugandan Governments, even as it calls on China and other countries to respect them.

In the long term, the United States should support African-led efforts for a settlement between Mr. Kabila and the predominantly Tutsi rebels, along with the withdrawal of all Ugandan and Rwandan troops from Congo. Only a multinational peacekeeping force, so readily deployed elsewhere in the world, can secure the borders of all three countries.

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