Not just an isolated incident

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni vowed today (Wednesday) that Rwandan rebels who murdered 12 persons in south-western Uganda would be captured or killed, and disclosed that a battalion of Ugandan troops had pursued the group into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Reuters reported. Some 150 assailants had abducted a group of people on Sunday in the Bwindi National Park, mainly tourists who had gone there to see its rare mountain gorillas. They murdered four Ugandans and eight foreign tourists - Britons, Americans and New Zealanders. Speaking at a press conference in Kampala, Museveni apologised for what he termed the “laxity” of his government. He said the authorities “should have had the foresight to take precautions in Bwindi, which is quite close to the Congo border”. The murderers were reported to be members of the Interahamwe (‘Those who fight together’), the militia that spearheaded the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, during which hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and moderates from the Hutu majority were murdered. The Interahamwe, along with the former armed forces of Rwanda (ex-FAR), were among some 1.7 million Hutus who fled Rwanda in July-August 1994 as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control of the country. In eastern DRC and western Tanzania, tens of thousands of them trained, rearmed and plotted to retake control of Rwanda, according to information obtained by the UN International Commission of Inquiry on arms flows to former Rwandan forces, which released its final report in November 1998. When rebels moved to topple the late president Mobutu Sese Seko in then Zaire in 1996-1997, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus returned home, while others fled further west. According to information the Commission of Inquiry received from various sources, there were an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 FAR and Interahamwe active in Rwanda before the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) began its rebellion in the DRC in August 1998. Smaller numbers were reported in other countries: as many as 2,000 were believed to be in the south of the Central African Republic, 2,000-3,000 were said to be in one camp in the Republic of Congo. An estimated 5,000 to 8,000 were reported to be in the Sudan, according to the report, and significant numbers were also reported in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. After the rebellion began in August, most converged on the DRC, where they have benefitted from the shifting alliances of the past months. Based on “persistent reports received from numerous sources,” the Commission concluded that “the ex-FAR/Interahamwe, once a defeated and dispersed remnant, have now become a significant component of the international alliance against the Congolese rebels and their presumed sponsors, Rwanda and Uganda”. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) today cited reports that the perpetrators of the Bwindi attack left notes on the corpses of the eight tourists saying the massacre was in revenge for US and British support for Uganda. A survivor was quoted as saying he believed the abduction was aimed more at destabilising Uganda and reminding the world that there was a war in the DRC. The attack occurred across the border from Rutshuru, an area in the DRC that is considered a hotbed of activity by rival armed groups.