The Swagger of Defeat

By Kevin Fedarko

As a Red Cross nurse caring for injured and dying Tutsi slaughtered by Hutu fighters during Rwanda's civil war, Sara Rossi never anticipated that she might one day be forced to heal the men behind the atrocities. Yet that is what she now does in a Goma hospital: she tends to vanquished Hutu soldiers who fled across the border into Zaire. "We're saving the lives of those who did the massacres," she says. "They fell so low we couldn't turn our backs on them."

Along with the rest of their armed countrymen, these men bear responsibility for the tragedy that has engulfed Rwanda. It was the presidential guard, the army and its militia that took the lives of nearly half a million Tutsi civilians during three months of warfare. Last month, when they were defeated by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Hutu soldiers spread rumors that the new government was killing Hutu civilians, igniting the panic that drove more than a million refugees across the border to Goma. Now, as an army in exile, these same men prolong the nightmare by discouraging their hungry, disease-ridden compatriots from returning home. Next, they defiantly vow to resume the war.

Everywhere one looks in Goma, swaggering soldiers are mistreating those they are meant to protect. They cut to the front of ration lines reserved for malnourished civilians. In a special military camp, they drive wood-laden trucks, while elsewhere refugees shaking with sickness must tote fuel by hand. But mostly they simply loaf, squatting outside their tents, guzzling home- brewed banana beer and smoking marijuana until their eyes take on a red, glassy light. "These soldiers could be distributing food, keeping the roads clear, looking after orphans," says Martin Collier, a driver with the aid group Assist. "Instead, they just stand here with their hands in their pockets."

The Hutu soldiers behave less like a vanquished enemy than an invasion force in waiting, and the taste of defeat seems only to have sharpened their appetite for more fighting. "The war's not over," says Corporal Xavier Ndayisaba, 22, who has just been treated for cholera. "If we can get weapons, we'll fight again. There are enough of us to liberate our country."

Not only are there enough of them -- 30,000 in Goma, 8,000 more south of Lake Kivu, and 2,000 in the French safe zone in southwest Rwanda -- but they are surprisingly well organized. Units have stayed together, and the command structure is intact. Wounded soldiers are visited every day by their colonel, twice a week by the army's Chief of Staff. While other refugees starve, the Rwandan military receive not just rations but something even more important: money, in the form of Rwandan francs brought by the fleeing former government from Kigali. "Every soldier continues to receive his salary in exile," declared Sergeant Major Charles Bonimpaye. "An army has to have order."

It also has to have guns. Although Zairian soldiers disarmed the first Hutu troops crossing the border last month, the Zairians have refused to rule out the possibility that the weapons may eventually be returned. "We haven't decided yet," confided Zaire's Defense Minister Mudima Mavua, while his aides quaffed pink Moet & Chandon at a luncheon party just miles from the camps. In any case, so great was the flood of refugees that many soldiers managed to keep their guns. These are now hidden; the only arms visible are the machetes the soldiers use to prove that they mean business. "There's a lot of intimidation," said a Western official. "The soldiers tell the refugees, 'If you go home, you'd better be careful. Because we're going back. And we'll get you.'

An even more effective deterrent is the rumor that returning Hutu are being killed by vengeance-minded Tutsi. Whether those tales are true or simply -- as Tutsi authorities insist -- propaganda, they play directly to the strategy of the Hutu leaders. The calculus is as simple as it is brutal. Afraid of execution if they return home, the Hutu soldiers' only claim to power rests on maintaining a constituency they can control -- the refugees. Says Mike McDonagh of the Irish charity Concern: "They are finished if the people go back. These men would do anything to make the refugees stay."

The key to their future is Zaire, which could support the army in exile or pressure it to disband. President Mobutu Sese Seko has strong links with the defeated troops. But Western governments are hoping that Mobutu can be persuaded not to cause trouble.

The new government in Kigali insists that the Hutu army is finished. "When we heard that the Hutu Chief of Staff was regrouping his forces," Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu said last week, "we laughed. It's a joke." Maybe so. But the squalid camps could prove ideal for nurturing the kind of organized hatred that can sustain conflict. Anyone who doubts the Hutu soldiers' resolve to rejoin the battle need only talk to Sara Rossi, the Red Cross nurse. "You can feel their desire for vengeance," she says. "I'm afraid that they will rearm and start the war again."

With reporting by Lara Marlowe/Goma, Marguerite Michaels/Kigali and Ann M. Simmons/Washington