DESTINATION RWANDA
Rwanda is a war zone, and as such it's no place for travellers. The brutal fighting in the country has its roots in the political power struggles between two social groups, the Tutsi and Hutu, which date back to the post-WWI colonial period, when Belgium ruled Rwanda indirectly through the privileged Tutsi minority. Over the years, the Tutsi and the Hutu rose up against one another regularly, then in 1962 independence brought the Hutu majority to power. Certain Tutsi factions, unwilling to accept their loss of privilege, formed guerrilla groups to mount raids on Hutu communities, which in turn brought on Hutu reprisals in which thousands of Tutsi were massacred and tens of thousands fled to Uganda and Burundi.
The intertribal issue waxed and waned over the years, with Rwandans of both groups living as neighbours, until October 1990, when the country was invaded by some 5000 well-armed Tutsi exiles from their base in Uganda. Within days, the European-backed Hutu army went on a rampage against the Tutsi and any Hutu suspected of collaborating with them. The same thing happened in 1991 and 1992. In 1994, after years of fiery anti-Tutsi government rhetoric, the conflict erupted again on an incomprehensible scale, and Rwanda became the scene for the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII. In just three violent months, some one million Rwandans were butchered, the vast majority by civilian militias trained by the military and armed with machetes, grenades and assault rifles. A further three million Rwandans fled the country to refugee camps set up for them in neighbouring countries. The killing spree raged unabated for months before the United Nations Security Council would recognise the massacre as an attempt at genocide and authorised the deployment of troops.
Despite further international monitoring, the fighting continues today, mostly in the north-western portion of the country, where troops of the Tutsi government that seized power in July 1994 work to track down Hutu extremists holed up in mountain camps. Tens of thousands of unarmed civilians were killed in 1998 alone, and to further complicate matters, Rwanda's troops are also now involved in rebel efforts to oust their one-time ally President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
