Kind Words, But Not Much More

The pictures are as appalling as any that have come across global television screens, yet no one is calling for direct intervention to stop the month-old killing spree in Rwanda. However troubled they might be by the scale and ferocity of the slaughter, Western nations have offered little more than emotional expressions of sympathy for the victims.

The American appetite for such missions, even in cases of dire human need, has been dulled by experiences like Somalia. "Lesson No. 1," President Clinton said last week, "is, Don't go into one of these things and say, maybe we'll be done in a month because it's a humanitarian crisis." His reluctance mirrors the public's: a TIME/CNN poll last week showed that only 34% of respondents favored doing something to quell the violence, while 51% opposed any action. Clinton confirmed that judgment with a new presidential directive on U.S. participation in peacekeeping abroad: those operations, it says, "should not be open-ended commitments, but linked to concrete political solutions."

Rwanda is an almost perfect example of the problem Clinton's directive addresses. The horrifying slaughter is another explosion in a mainly ethnically based civil war that outsiders understand imperfectly if at all -- and therefore do not know how to solve. No one is even certain what sort of diplomatic efforts might persuade the Rwandan factions to halt the bloodletting. The only obvious alternative to traditional diplomacy would be for a well-equipped army to move into Rwanda -- shooting if necessary -- and force a cease-fire. But no one is volunteering for such an army.

A U.N. peacekeeping force already in Rwanda to police an agreement last August for power sharing with Tutsi rebels in the Hutu-led government was hastily reduced from 2,600 to 470 when the massacres began and 10 Belgian blue helmets were killed. The signal sent, says a senior African diplomat, "was, Look, you are on your own. You may do whatever you want."

Sanctions, the response of choice at the U.N., are widely regarded as useless in this case: Rwanda's economy is already destitute, and people are fighting just to stay alive. As the situation worsens, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is looking for about 8,000 troops to send into the country to stop the killing. He has asked the Organization of African Unity to take on the responsibility, but has had no response.

Special envoys are in motion, and humanitarian organizations are pleading for the creation of safe havens for refugees inside Rwanda. But the example of Bosnia's safe areas encourages no one, and the only aid being delivered is to the vast new camps across Rwanda's borders in Tanzania and Burundi. At the U.N., there is only a vague hope for a cease-fire. "We are at a loss to know what to do," says an Asian delegate. The butchery is "inhuman, ghastly," says U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda David Rawson. Still, says another State Department official, "it's not that we have any plan." There is not likely to be one anytime soon. "We have got to hope that these people will understand that they are brothers," says Rawson. "They cannot kill each other forever." The tragedy is that thousands more are likely to die trying.