Sorry, Wrong Country

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

Some of the bodies lie motionless on the Ugandan shore. Others float in the breaking waves or bob against tangled beds of water hyacinth. Most are mutilated: limbs slashed, heads missing, a scattering of pale forms indistinguishable from one another except the ways in which they died. The corpses, swept as many as 60 miles by the rain-swollen Kagera River in Rwanda to the edges of Lake Victoria, are the latest evidence of a savage war.

Seven weeks of such and estimates of a death toll anywhere from 200,000 to half a million have moved the world to tears -- but not much else. Why is it that the international community has proved unwilling or unable to stop the slaughter?

Calling it "a genocide" last week, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali angrily lashed out at the hand wringing. For weeks, he has pleaded with more than 30 heads of state but has managed to get firm pledges of men for a Rwandan peacekeeping force from only four African countries. "It is a scandal," Boutros-Ghali said at a New York City press conference. "All of us are responsible for this failure."

On the same day, President Clinton told the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy that "we cannot solve every such outburst of civil strife or militant nationalism simply by sending in our forces." Europe feels the same way. Belgium, Rwanda's former colonial ruler, lost 10 of its U.N. peacekeepers when the fighting broke out in early April. Said a government spokesman last week: "At the moment, we have no willingness to have contact with the so- called government in Kigali, which consists of a gang of murderers." Neither French troops nor French-equipped African troops are acceptable to the mainly Tutsi Rwanda Patriotic Front: France helped arm and train their opponents, the Hutu forces of the late President Juvenal Habyarimana.

Few Western governments are willing to risk their own soldiers to help Rwanda. Public outrage in Britain may be growing, but Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd answered an opposition member's challenge to act in Rwanda with the lament that there was no clear mission for British troops. Memories of the 18 soldiers lost in Somalia make the U.S. especially reluctant to intervene in a largely ethnic bloodbath in a strategically insignificant nation. Although both the U.S. and Britain voted two weeks ago in the Security Council to send a 5,500-strong U.N. force to Rwanda, Italy is the only non-African country that has said it is willing to participate.

The former colonial powers that used to intervene regularly have devolved responsibility to the U.N. European leaders agree with the U.S. that African nations should take the lead in policing Rwanda, even though they lack the money and equipment to carry out such a perilous mission successfully. Ghana, Ethiopia, Senegal and Zimbabwe have promised troops, and the U.N. hopes Egypt and Nigeria will also contribute. That only intensifies suspicion that the white West's refusal to come to the aid of black Africa is racist. Wrote columnist Simon Hoggart in the British daily Guardian: "Nobody you know has ever been on holiday to Rwanda. And Rwandans don't look like us. They have even less clout than Bosnian Muslims."

Long before Rwanda's descent into chaos, Western donors had grown exhausted by the problems that beset sub-Saharan Africa: the ceaseless wars, ethnic violence, political turmoil, massive poverty and persistent famine. The region leads the world in the number of refugees and people displaced within their own country's borders, surpassing South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East combined.

Even if the West were willing to help, no one is sure what should be done. "Boutrous-Ghali's outburst was not helpful," says a former U.N. peacekeeping official. "The members have got to get together and figure out what might work." Since the U.N. force was authorized, arguments have continued about what it should do, where the troops should be stationed, what their exact mission would be and how they would exit. U.S. officials question what any peacekeeping force can do unless both of the warring sides in Rwanda agree to a cease-fire.

That is not likely any time soon. The rebels control nearly 60% of the country and are advancing into the capital of Kigali. Government soldiers reportedly are abandoning the city. Although another round of cease-fire talks is scheduled this week, a rebel statement issued in Washington said any attempts to stop them now "would be like intervening in Berlin in April 1945 to prevent the Allies from defeating Hitler."

A Patriotic Front victory without reprisal killings might bring the only kind of contribution the international community is willing to make: a massive influx of humanitarian aid. Already the U.S. and many other countries have donated tens of millions of dollars in food, blankets and medicines to the handful of international-aid organizations still in Rwanda. But the fighting makes delivery of most relief supplies nearly impossible. "Money is not enough," says Ibrahim Osman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "Without serious military intervention, Rwanda cannot be saved."

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo/New York and Andrew Purvis/Kasensero