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Rwandans return seeking peace
By CARTER DOUGHERTY MUTOBO, Rwanda -- For men like Jacques Uwimpuhwe, the road from war in Congo to civilian life in Rwanda leads through a small camp of rudimentary buildings nestled in the mountains near Rwanda's western border. Here, men who left this tiny country eight years ago are getting their first peek at a peaceful Rwanda that is still sorting out the legacy of the 1994 genocide in which the majority Hutus murdered over 800,000 of the minority Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers. Uwimpuhwe, a 28-year-old Hutu with intense dark eyes and a gentle tenor voice, lost touch with his family after being uprooted from his hometown of Gisenyi, just over the border from Congo, and has little to show for his time away. "Look at me," he said, gesturing toward his worn, light green shirt and rainbow-colored flip-flops. "I have nothing but what I have on my body right now." Another camp resident, Gaston Niyonzima, a lanky man sporting a purple Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, said he hopes to join the Rwandan army and resume life as a second lieutenant in the country of his birth. "If the government wants to take me, I'd prefer to return to the army," said Niyonzima, 36. Mutobo, a Rwandan government camp supported by the World Bank and other foreign donors, is a sort of halfway house for combatants who are ready to become civilians but are unfamiliar with today's Rwanda. The men spend 45 days in an environment that is open -- they can leave if they want -- but also regimented, with civics lessons on human rights, AIDS, the role of women in society and democracy. They get three meals a day and sleep together in large dirt-floor shacks framed with stripped-down branches and covered with corrugated aluminum. When they get out, they will receive a blanket, some household items like pots and pans, and 39,000 Rwandan francs -- about $78. They will also have to return to their home villages to pick up the identification card that every Rwandan must carry at all times. In 1994, there were millions of people like Niyonzima, who left Rwanda with his wife, and Uwimpuhwe, who lost contact with his mother and five siblings when he fled. They were part of a chaotic mass of Hutus who left Rwanda when a Tutsi-led rebel army defeated the genocidal regime. Many who fled were ringleaders of the genocide. Others, like Niyonzima, were soldiers in the defeated government army. Uwimpuhwe fled fearing that the Tutsis would retaliate once in power. While the new Tutsi leadership did not attempt its own genocide, it did invade neighboring Congo to pursue Hutus who were reorganizing. The Congolese government called on the newly arrived Rwandans to repel the invaders. Uwimpuhwe, a civilian when he left Rwanda, was drafted into basic training in 1996. By 2000, he and Niyonzima, already a veteran, wound up garrisoned at Kamina, a sprawling Congolese military base once used by the Belgian army to assert control over the mineral riches of southeastern Congo. There, Hutu leaders, backed by Congolese government soldiers, told them to forget about returning to Rwanda. "They told us we'd first be beaten 600 times, and that there was killing without end," Uwimpuhwe said. "They told us there was no security in Rwanda." Then came an agreement reached in South Africa that led to the withdrawal of most Rwandan troops from Congo in September. Congo, in return, promised to end support for Hutu rebels and gave U.N. peacekeepers access to the Kamina camp. When information trickled into the camp that Rwanda was at peace, Uwimpuhwe, Niyonzima and 134 other Rwandans asked the United Nations for a lift home. On Nov. 10, a Russian-made transport plane lifted off from Kamina and landed in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, about two hours later. A bus brought them to Mutobo. Once he leaves the camp, Uwimpuhwe said he first plans to search out his family in Gisenyi. They have not responded to his letters, and he is prepared to lead a new life without them. "If I can't find my family, I'll have to start another one here for myself," he said. Uwimpuhwe produced from his breast pocket a tattered piece of paper with a purple stamp on it -- certification that he completed his secondary education while a soldier in Congo. But, casting his eyes downward, he despaired of ever returning to the study of European languages that he loved before being uprooted. "Maybe I'll be able to open up a small store and sell things," he said. "It's possible." For his part, Niyonzima said he will meet up with friends in Kigali from the former government army and who now serve in Rwanda's military. "I'm really looking forward to that," he said. "It's like being back with your brothers." This attitude worries the Rwandan government and foreign donors who are supporting the demobilization project. The main problem in trying to dismantle armies in Africa -- whether in South Africa, Angola or Mozambique -- has been that ex-soldiers turn to crime once the war is over. They are familiar with weapons and often develop habits of callousness toward civilians. Since most Hutu rebels returned to Rwanda only after being assured of their safety, the Rwandan government plays up this theme at Mutobo in an effort to steer them toward the straight and narrow. "We try to convince them that security in Rwanda depends on their own behavior as citizens," said Frank Musonera, director of the Mutobo camp. Even if they manage to scratch out a living, returning soldiers may still get caught up in the country's broad-based project to try lesser offenders of the genocide. Gacaca, as Rwanda's village-level courts are known, allow ordinary citizens to accuse perpetrators and have them tried before their peers. None of the men interviewed at Mutobo admitted taking part in the genocide, but any of them could face charges when they return home for their identification documents, Musonera conceded. For now, though, the Rwandan government simply wants to get them out of uniform and into the mainstream. "Here, we are not interested in who committed genocide," Musonera said. "That is the role of gacaca." But even the modest goal of bringing the men back from Congo will take patience. There are 15,000 to 50,000 Hutu rebels at large, and many of their leaders have no incentive to return to Rwanda because they face prison for their role in the genocide.
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