SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS Tables
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43–123 CC
1996
REFUGEES IN EASTERN ZAIRE AND RWANDA
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
DECEMBER 4, 1996
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
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COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
TOBY ROTH, Wisconsin
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
JAN MEYERS, Kansas
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
JAY KIM, California
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
DAVID FUNDERBURK, North Carolina
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio
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MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
MATT SALMON, Arizona
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
TOM CAMPBELL, California
LEE H. HAMILTON, Indiana
SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
TOM LANTOS, California
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
HARRY JOHNSTON, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
ALBERT RUSSELL WYNN, Maryland
JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
VICTOR O. FRAZER, Virgin Islands (Ind.)
CHARLIE ROSE, North Carolina
PAT DANNER, Missouri
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RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff
MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
PETER T. KING, New York
DAVID FUNDERBURK, North Carolina
MATT SALMON, Arizona
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
TOM LANTOS, California
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
GROVER JOSEPH REES, Subcommittee Staff Director and Chief Counsel
ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Professional Staff Member
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DAVID WAGNER, Professional Staff Member
DOUGLAS C. ANDERSON, Counsel
C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
Ms. Phyllis E. Oakley, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State
Amb. Richard W. Bogosian, Special Coordinator for Rwanda and Burundi, U.S. Department of State
Mr. Michael Mahdesian, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Humanitarian Response, U.S. Agency for International Development
Mr. Vincent D. Kern, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense
Mr. Roger P. Winter, Executive Director, U.S. Committee for Refugees
Mr. Lionel A. Rosenblatt, President, Refugees International
Dr. Chester A. Crocker, Chairman of the Board, U.S. Institute for Peace
Dr. Alison L. Des Forges, Consultant, Human Rights Watch/Africa
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Ms. Phyllis E. Oakley
Amb. Richard W. Bogosian
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Mr. Michael Mahdesian
Mr. Vincent D. Kern
Mr. Roger P. Winter
Mr. Lionel A. Rosenblatt
Dr. Alison L. Des Forges
Additional material submitted for the record:
Letter to Chairman Smith from Mr. Roger P. Winter
Article entitled ''Needed: Proactive African Engagement,'' by Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, The Washington Times, December 13, 1996
REFUGEES IN EASTERN ZAIRE AND RWANDA
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1996
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Smith (chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will come to order. Good morning.
Today's hearing will explore the causes and possible solutions of one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the history of the world.
In 1994, the world watched helplessly while an estimated half-million men, women, and children, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists who then controlled the Rwandan military. Later in 1994, after the Tutsi rebel army had defeated and replaced the forces of the former government, an estimated 2 million Hutus fled to Zaire and other neighboring countries within a period of only a few days. Many thousands of these people died of starvation or disease.
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An estimated 1.2 million were provided temporary shelter and basic necessities in refugee camps established by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Unfortunately, these camps provided safe haven not only for genuine refugees but also for former soldiers of the Rwandan Army and associated Hutu militias who had committed atrocities against their Tutsi countrymen. These elements soon established a shadow government within the refugee camps, controlling the distribution of food to refugees and using the camps as bases for armed incursions into Rwanda.
The UNHCR, the Governments of Rwanda and Zaire, and donor nations, including the United States, became increasingly exasperated with this situation but were unable or perhaps unwilling to separate the terrorists from the refugees. This apparent stalemate lasted for over 2 years.
The preferred solution of almost everyone involved in the operation was for the refugees to return voluntarily to Rwanda, but the overwhelming majority refused to return. There were many reasons for this refusal. The Hutu extremists, the so-called ex-FAR, or Interhamwe, feared punishment for the atrocities they committed before they left Rwanda.
Among the vast majority of camp inhabitants who were innocent victims and not perpetrators of violence, many appeared to have been held as virtual hostages by the ex-FAR and Interhamwe. Others, however, appeared to have been afraid that violent retribution would be taken not only against returnees who had committed atrocities but also against Hutus innocent of any crime who might be regarded as guilty by ethnic association.
These fears were not irrational. Between 1994 and 1996, there have been numerous reports of atrocities against Hutus in Rwanda, including reports that returning refugees and displaced persons have been summarily executed by government forces. As recently as July of this year, Human Rights Watch condemned the killing of at least 132 unarmed civilians by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army.
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During September and October of this year, the refugee camps in Zaire were attacked and overrun by rebel militia representing the local ethnic Tutsi group, Banyamulenge, apparently with the active support of the Rwandan Army. A million refugees became refugees twice over. Once again they faced starvation, disease, and armed attackers.
The United Nations Security Council debated whether and how to deploy a multinational military force. Early in the deliberations, it became apparent the primary emphasis in any such operation would not be to provide immediate relief to the affected refugees in Zaire but, rather, to facilitate their repatriation to Rwanda. Then, after agreement in principle had been reached on the multinational force, but before it could be deployed, an estimated half-million refugees suddenly turned around and walked back from Zaire to Rwanda.
The immediate reaction to this stunning development seemed to be that the problem had taken care of itself. The United States Ambassador to Rwanda stated publicly that the remaining Rwandan refugees in need of repatriation appear—and I quote—''appear to be in the tens to twenties of thousands rather than in vast numbers.''
Even after it became clear that the Rwanda Hutus had not yet returned to Rwanda, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, media accounts seemed to reflect the perceived vision that these people must consist overwhelmingly of ex-FAR criminals and their hostages.
More recent reports, however, make clear that the crisis is far from over. Refugees coming out of the jungle are suffering from serious malnutrition. More ominously, some recent groups of refugees include many women and children, but there seem to be very few men, and once again there are reports of massacres of unarmed refugees.
Some of these massacres may have been perpetrated by ex-FAR soldiers to deter their fellow Hutus from returning to Rwanda, but others appear to have been committed by Tutsi rebel forces, the close political and military allies of the Government of Rwanda into whose hands the international community is encouraging these refugees to return.
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In responding to what we all hope will be the final stages of this ongoing human tragedy, I hope our policymakers will keep four sets of questions in mind, and I will ask our witnesses today to address each of these questions.
First, what is happening to the refugees in Eastern Zaire, and what can we do about it? Are people starving to death? If so, how quickly can we negotiate with the Tutsi rebels for access to these people by humanitarian organizations? We can presumably use the good offices of the Rwandan Government, with whom the U.S. Government seems to have developed an extremely close relationship.
If, however, we cannot get immediate access, and if people will die during the time it takes to negotiate, then how soon can we begin emergency airdrops of food?
Most important of all, is there any truth to the reports that refugees are being systematically killed by the allies of our allies? If so, what can we do and what have we done to put an immediate end to the killings?
Hopefully this hearing will send a message to all involved, and hopefully the Administration and everyone who speaks can send that collective message that the U.S. Government will not support anyone, any people, who commit atrocities or commit massacres.
Second, what is happening to the refugees who have returned to Rwanda? The President of Rwanda went to the border to welcome some of the first returning refugees. Has this reassuring gesture been borne out by their experience when they return to their homes? What can we do to ensure that the refugees whose return we are facilitating will be allowed to live in peace and that those who are accused of crimes will be tried according to the rule of law?
Third, in light of the answers to these questions, is there still a useful role to be played by a multinational force? Even if such a force is not needed to facilitate repatriation, is it necessary to provide logistical support for humanitarian efforts to provide emergency relief to refugees dispersed in remote mountainous areas? If so, can we prevail on the Zairean rebels who control these areas not to conduct hostile operations against forces engaged in this humanitarian work?
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Finally, amid all the concerns with the logistics of repatriation, what consideration is being given the people who are unwilling to return to Rwanda, not because they committed atrocities, not because they are hostages of the ex-FAR or the Interhamwe, but because they reasonably fear, based on recent experience, that they could be persecuted because of their ethnicity or their former political associations?
Unless we deny that there are any true refugees in this population, we must choose between three options: First, genuine refugees who do not wish to return to Rwanda can be resettled in safe countries; second, they can be given safe haven in reconstituted refugee camps until it is clear that they can return to Rwanda, whose government has established a track record of nonpersecution; or, third, they can simply be given no other option but to return to Rwanda, and when they offer no physical resistance, their return can be characterized as ''voluntary.''
This last option is the one that will be chosen by default if no other arrangements are made. In many refugee crises, the international community devotes so much of its energy to promoting the return of people who are deemed not to be refugees that it sometimes loses sight of those who are most in need of protection. Even if the nuts and bolts of major refugee operations consist largely of repatriation, I believe we must never forget that at the heart and soul of refugee policy is protection.
Mr. SMITH. I would again like to ask Mr. Hamilton or Mr. Payne if either of them would like to make an opening statement.
Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Chairman, I just want to commend you for calling the hearing and for your excellent opening statement. We look forward to the testimony of our witnesses.
I believe Mr. Payne does have an opening statement, and I yield to him.
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Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much.
Let me also commend you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very important hearing on the crisis in the Great Lakes region. I am pleased that even though we are officially not in session, that this crisis is very important and that you saw fit to call this important hearing, and once again I commend you for that and thank the Ranking Member for yielding his time.
Although I am encouraged by the flow of refugees, the grimmer reality is that 43,000 children are separated from their families in what AID workers claim is the largest number of unaccompanied young refugees since World War II.
According to the Kigali-based International Committee of the Red Cross, tens of thousands of other children who did not make it home may be wandering in the wilderness without their parents in Eastern Zaire and at the mercy of soldiers and, of course, being exposed to hunger.
As chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and as a Member of the Subcommittee on Africa, let me just say that I supported the Administration's decision to send troops to Goma and Bukavu in the eastern province of Zaire, as was the plan in the early part of November.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to the President last week stating that we still believe that some type of international military presence is needed to help the thousands of refugees still in south Kivu and the 600,000 refugees in Kigali, Rwanda. We have not received a response as of yet. Although many have gone home, hundreds of thousands are still mostly in Bukavu and Uvira in Zaire, Tanzania, and Uganda. So the situation we have today is the direct result of failing to address the situation adequately 2 years ago.
Besides the multilateral forces, we could have provided logistical support. For example, we promised 50 armored personnel carriers several years ago, but to date we have still only sent 30 to Uganda. This certainly prohibits a meaningful operation.
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In the early part of November, I understand that the U.N. Special Envoy for the Central African Region from Canada was the first to commit to sending troops, followed by the French. Much to our dismay, our U.N. representative, Madeleine Albright, has done the opposite, participating in one stalling maneuver after the other.
The Canadians have stated that they are still willing to send troops to Zaire; however, they cannot do it alone. The United States, if we are going to be active participants in post-cold war humanitarian efforts, we cannot afford to stand by and let thousands of people die while we make up our minds.
I hope we will not pursue a policy concerned only with globalization of trade and turn our backs on humanitarian issues. We see this tremendous emphasis on the whole business of having trade barriers dropped and recent trips by our Administration to Asia, but if we are going to turn our backs on real humanitarian issues, then I think this is a flawed policy.
This crisis has erupted also as a result of the failure of enactment of an arms embargo. These arms continue to traffic to the former Rwandan Government forces based in neighboring countries, particularly Zaire, Tanzania, and Kenya, in violation of the international arms embargo.
Finally, we still have to deal with the 85,000 Hutu perpetrators of genocide and the land disputes due to refugees returning home. There are still very serious problems inside Rwanda. This may have averted a human disaster in Zaire. However, we should continue working to reduce tensions in order to avoid conflict in Rwanda and continued and increased conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi. We want to prevent escalation of fighting along the Ugandan and Zaire border, possibly with a spillover into Tanzania, Kenya, and maybe even into Zambia and Sudan.
Once again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing, and I look forward to hearing our witnesses.
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.
Mr. SMITH. I want to welcome our Administration witnesses and express my gratitude for their coming this morning. First, I want to introduce Phyllis Oakley, Assistant Secretary of State with the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. In her career as a foreign service officer, Ms. Oakley has had a wide range of assignments, including Deputy Spokesman of the State Department and Desk Officer for Afghanistan. From 1979 to 1982, she was stationed in Kinshasa, Zaire, where she served as assistant cultural affairs officer.
Before yielding to Secretary Oakley, I want to introduce the rest of the panel and then ask you to proceed.
Ambassador Richard Bogosian has served as the State Department's special coordinator for Rwanda and Burundi since June 1995. Before assuming his current position, Ambassador Bogosian was the special envoy to Somalia and Chief of Mission at the U.S. Liaison Office in Mogadishu. Previously, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Niger and Chad.
Michael Mahdesian, Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Humanitarian Response of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In that capacity, he oversees the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and has traveled to Haiti, Angola, and South Africa.
Finally, Vincent Kern is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, a position he has held since June of last year. Mr. Kern received his master's degree in public administration, with concentration in national security affairs, from Harvard. And we welcome him as well.
Secretary Oakley, please proceed as you wish.
STATEMENT OF PHYLLIS E. OAKLEY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
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Ms. OAKLEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman.
Few of the problems the United States faces are as challenging as the political and humanitarian situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and so all of us welcome the opportunity to review with you the current information on the status of the several refugee populations and the international response.
I have tried to shorten my statement a bit this morning because there are so many aspects that I know that we want to cover, but, as you know, I would be glad to answer any of your questions.
Rwanda and Burundi, in particular, have been plagued in recent decades with periodic rounds of ethnic massacres and consequent refugee flows. Each has been burdened with refugees from the other, as have nearly all of their neighbors. All here present know well the tragedy of genocide that took place in Rwanda leading to refugee outflows in 1994 that shattered all previous records for magnitude and rapidity.
In mid-October of this year, we entered yet another phase in what seems to some an unending cycle of conflict in the Great Lakes region. Goaded by government announcements that they would be stripped of their Zairean citizenship, Zairean Tutsis mounted an armed insurgency in Eastern Zaire. Joining forces with other Zairean opposition elements and backed by the present Rwandan Government, they have taken control of a swath of Zairean territory along the Rwandan and Burundi borders. They attacked and dispersed all of the 40-some refugee camps in Eastern Zaire that housed some 1.2 million refugees from Rwanda and Burundi.
In the ensuing chaos, many of the Rwandan refugees were able to break free of the former Rwandan Government, former Rwandan Army forces that had been intimidating them into remaining as refugees in Zaire. To date, some 600,000 have returned to Rwanda, most in massive movements between November 15 and 20. Almost all of these have now returned to their home areas or communes, where they are being registered and receiving a settling-in package of assistance that includes 2 months' worth of food. Remarkably, given the still very fresh pains of the genocide, human rights monitors have seen almost no cases of retribution.
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As squatters whose old homes have been destroyed in the earlier war and genocide or who had recently returned from long-term exile are required to vacate the homes of the newly returning refugees, there are bound to be some tensions. To help calm the situation, the Government of Rwanda has temporarily suspended new arrests for genocide except in cases of egregious perpetrators.
We are, of course, delighted that so many of the Rwandan refugees in Zaire have returned home, while mourning what we assume to be the thousands of deaths that have resulted from the attacks in the camps. As you know, the situation of Rwandan refugees in Zaire had presented the entire international community with an acute moral dilemma: How to separate effectively and humanely the legitimate refugees from armed elements of the former regime and from those who would not be entitled to refugee status given their role in the 1994 genocide.
In all of our attempts to accelerate voluntary repatriation of refugees to Rwanda, we focused on three areas: Creating a safe context inside Rwanda for repatriation, ensuring that international assistance programs were conducive to achieving repatriation, and stopping the intimidation of refugees by convincing the intimidators to accept return. Our relative success in the first two areas was overshadowed by our collective failure in the third. The attacks by the Zairean rebels broke the intimidators' hold for a large share of the refugees.
There remain, we believe, between 200,000 and 400,000 refugees who have been registered in the Zairean camps. You are no doubt aware of the rather shrill debate that is taking place about numbers. Good numbers simply are hard to come by. We do not know how many dispersed refugees and displaced Zaireans there are or in what condition they may be. Aerial surveillance, which has had a lot of difficulty with cloud cover, we now recognize that it has indicated that there are concentrations of people in Eastern Zaire adding up to over 200,000.
It is obviously critical that the international community have ground access in order to assess numbers and needs. It is equally obvious that under current conditions there is active fighting still taking place in Eastern Zaire. We are very encouraged, nevertheless, by recent international access that located some 40,000 people between the Goma and Bukavu sectors and has arranged to get them repatriated to Rwanda.
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Another hotly debated topic is whether a multinational military force is necessary to carry out humanitarian operations, as was authorized by the U.N. Security Council in November. Both the mission and the implications of introducing another force into the already very militarized and volatile Eastern Zaire area must be handled astutely. Military planners are working with the humanitarian community to explore the prospects for airdrops to those stranded refugees and displaced persons who may be in need of emergency rations.
Everyone is well aware of the potential difficulties in getting supplies safely to the intended beneficiaries. UNHCR has stressed that airdrops should be considered as a last resort only.
Some 62,000 of the 143,000 Burundi refugees in Zaire have returned to Burundi since mid-October, in many instances to a very uncertain welcome, as Burundi itself continues to be convulsed by ethnic violence. We are particularly troubled by the reported massacre of up to 400 returnees who had sought shelter in a church. The special representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to the Great Lakes region is urgently looking into the issue of safe return areas for Burundi refugees who at present cannot remain in Zaire.
I would also like to call your attention to the situation in Tanzania, where there are currently over 700,000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire. The number of new refugees from the fighting in Burundi continue to grow, potentially straining the response capacity of relief agencies in Tanzania. UNHCR has already increased its emergency planning figure from 100,000 to 200,000. At the same time, it should be possible for the over 500,000 Rwandan refugees to contemplate orderly voluntary return to Rwanda.
The Government of Rwanda is anxious to bring all of the refugees home in the coming weeks. Doubling the massive returns to Rwanda would, of course, create additional strains on absorptive capacity, but there certainly is little reason for people to languish as refugees any longer than need be.
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We have at least five humanitarian objectives for the coming weeks and months. We want to assist the Rwandans in meeting the challenge of welcoming and reintegrating the 600,000 who have returned in recent weeks; we want to locate and assist those refugees stranded in Zaire; we want to assure that displaced Zaireans receive the aid they need; we want to work for a rapid but orderly voluntary return from Tanzania to Rwanda; and we want to assure that Burundi who need it can find safe asylum.
In recent days, the U.S. Government has programmed an additional $145 million in humanitarian and development assistance. This brings our total humanitarian contributions since 1994 to about $1 billion. We are directing the greatest share of the new funding to the challenges of rapid reintegration and recovery and reconciliation inside Rwanda. There will be a particular focus on the needs of women, both because there are so many female-headed households in the aftermath of Rwanda's upheaval, but also because we believe this is a fruitful path toward the kind of genuine reconciliation that Rwanda will need.
Now, I would like to turn to my colleague, Ambassador Dick Bogosian, to review for you the incredible complexity of the geopolitical situation in the Great Lakes region that has been mirrored in all of the refugee flows about which we have been speaking.
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD W. BOGOSIAN, SPECIAL COORDINATOR FOR RWANDA AND BURUNDI, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. BOGOSIAN. Good morning.
The Great Lakes situation presents the international community with one of the most difficult and complex sets of issues in the world. In a region encompassing over a million square miles, which is the home of around 100 million people and includes unique ecological, economic, and geographical areas, there is a range of political, social, and security problems that run the risk of getting beyond the control of the citizens of the region and of the larger international community.
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The focus of today's discussion is the refugee and larger humanitarian crises. I would like to place these developments in a larger geopolitical and diplomatic context. My prepared testimony discusses this context in more detail than I am able to do here. However, the key points to note include the following, which I draw from my written testimony.
First of all, I think the key point to note is that in this context in which I am speaking—that is, the broad geopolitical issue—the center of gravity of concern has shifted from the refugee problem of Rwanda to the overall situation in Zaire. Whereas up to a couple of months ago many of us felt that the key issue that underlay the instability of the region was the refugee presence, particularly in Eastern Zaire, I think the developments over the last few weeks, both in terms of reducing, if not eliminating, the refugee problem, but exacerbating the overall political situation in Zaire, now makes Zaire the top issue, to put it that way, in the region. But it is one of several.
First of all, as far as the Rwanda political situation goes, and accepting at the outset that a serious refugee problem continues along the lines that Secretary Oakley has just stated, as a general proposition, the grip of the former Rwandan Army, the ex-FAR and the Interhamwe, has been broken. It is not clear how powerful they are, whether they might resume their activities, but, as a practical matter, the kind of hold—you used the word ''hostage''—that they held before has been broken.
In addition, the network of refugee camps that provided the locus of their support has been broken, and the flow of assistance which they used to provide material support has been broken as a practical matter.
In the context of internal Rwandan politics and policies, the next big event, we expect a large-scale return of Tanzanian refugees. This will strain the situation. The other speakers today further will describe what is going to be done in the assistance area. But that will bring to the forefront a broad range of issues in Rwanda, some of which you anticipated; which is to say the ability to develop a system of justice that is fair in both directions that does not add up to a human rights problem as exemplified with the overcrowded jails but also brings to justice those people who perpetrated genocide a couple of years ago.
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That is going to be a very tall order on the Rwandan side, and I will say a word or two more about that in a moment.
On the issue of military in the region, I just want to note that the Government of Rwanda remains aware of foreign intervention, and, as a result, they have been reluctant to support a multinational force, although they have not been completely negative. It remains to be seen what is going to be needed and to what they will agree.
In the meantime, they have agreed to provide certain U.S. military personnel the same privileges and immunities as experts under our technical cooperation agreement. We hope to get more from them in the context of what we would want under our status-of-forces agreement. We have some of what we need; we will be trying to get more.
In short, they are relatively forthcoming with us bilaterally. They are more reluctant in any multinational context. And I do want to note that we have had a small number of military in the region. I assume Vince Kern will address that.
Our principal objectives in Rwanda remain to assist the government making peace with its neighbors, absorbing the refugees, and reconstructing the civil society. In that context, the issues of human rights and justice loom large. As you know, there is the whole question of the international tribunal and there is the question of the national justice system in Rwanda.
To the extent that national reconciliation is the key to peace in Rwanda, clearly justice is the key to reconciliation in Rwanda. Those will be important elements of what we do.
In addition to various programs that I think Mr. Mahdesian will be mentioning, I just want to note that we support a large increase in the number of human rights monitors in Rwanda. This effort is getting under way. I would just note that Assistant Secretary Shattuck expects to be in Europe in the next few days. I am pretty sure he will be talking about this with the head of the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights.
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I had thought that our request for additional support was with you. I understand it is not here yet, but I am pretty sure if it is not here yet, it will be coming very soon, and we hope that you will support our efforts to expand our own support for human rights monitors in Rwanda.
We think it is very important to have a relatively large-scale presence of human rights monitors who can monitor these developments that have to do with many of the points you have raised about the need to make sure that people are treated appropriately, that the justice system works, and all the rest. And what is more, the Rwandan Government is in full agreement with this. So in that sense, we have the basic political understandings, and what we need now is both the people and the financial support for that.
In the context of this broad set of issues, in Eastern Zaire what we appear to have at the moment is a rebel group that includes both the Banyamulenge, which is to say the Tutsis from southern Kivu, or Zairean Tutsis, but also people in Shaba, from Kasinde, and other parts of Zaire. They claim that they want to replace Mobutu, whom they describe as corrupt. They claim they want to maintain the territorial integrity of Zaire, that they want to do this all by peaceful means and all the rest. It remains to be seen just how successful they will be.
As you know, a couple of weeks ago many of us had never even heard of these people, let alone taken them seriously, and yet they seem to win one military victory after another. They have recently taken the town of Bunia, which is north of north Kivu. There are reports they are in Kisangani. We do not think that is true, but they do seem to be heading in that direction. They have taken Walikale, which is beginning to move fairly far west from the Kivus. In short, they are moving north, west and south, and they are a force to be contended with whether we like it or not.
On the question of access, at our urging, they have improved access for the relief community. I do not think it is fully satisfactory yet, but I understand, for example, that in the last 24 hours some relief people have been able to go south of Uvira, or south toward Uvira, and that is the first time that has happened. So in a way there is progress. Unfortunately, to get that, you have to talk to them, and that raises issues that are very troubling in Kinshasa. We can talk more about that later, if you want.
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Like the Rwandans, the alliance is somewhat skeptical of the multinational force. Informally they have indicated that they are prepared to let the U.S. military in. We have not at this point moved on that. Our military have not entered Eastern Zaire.
In terms of some other aspects that you have raised, we are concerned about reports of Ugandan attacks across the border in Zaire, even if it is in response to rebel Ugandans attacking Uganda. That just gives you an idea of how complicated this is.
Similarly, we are concerned about reports of the kinds of human rights violations by the rebels that you have mentioned. We have raised this with both the Governments of Uganda and Rwanda. In fact, we have further instructions going out today to urge restraint on their part, because this leads to the next issue.
Quite apart from what they are doing in Eastern Zaire and all the refugee-related issues that led to that, there is the broader issue of the stability of Zaire. Zaire is in a very difficult period. As most of you know, Mobutu is ill. He is out of the country. It is not clear how sick he is, whether he is going to die, whether he is going to return. But Mobutu is an issue. He is not only a person who still has influence in Zaire, but, if you will, the succession is now an issue, and it is not at all clear who will replace him or how that will be done.
There is a lot of political posturing and maneuvering going on. In the meantime, the Zairean Army, which we refer to as the FAZ, from its French acronym, is thoroughly discredited in Eastern Zaire. Not only have they essentially not really fought and lost, but they have fled. And even when FAZ soldiers are present, as in Kisangani, they are very disruptive.
Zaire, de facto, without an army, could become stable. We think the generals could still play a political role. But as long as the situation in the east remains as it is, and the army remains as it does, we do not see the army in the short run dislodging the rebels. We do not see the political situation as being much better in the short run because of all the inherent problems.
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Our policy in Zaire is to promote a cessation of hostilities to assist the repatriation of all Rwandan refugees. And I would just note that the one thing the Rwandans and the Zaireans agreed on was that the refugees should leave. We recognize Zaire's sovereignty and territorial integrity. We think it is important to keep the democratic transition on track.
I will just note in passing that some of our European colleagues who have been working on this issue have told us they think it is more important than ever to move toward elections in Zaire. We do believe that at one point the Banyamulenge need to have their Zairean citizenship restored, and that is difficult right now in the political context. But in a nutshell, that is our policy toward Zaire, and, indeed, that is what we will be working toward.
In the meantime, the Burundian situation remains. The Burundian ambassador came to me the other day and said, ''We are worried you have forgotten us.'' We have not forgotten them, but obviously Eastern Zaire has attracted more attention. But all the fundamental problems in Burundi continue. They have an insurgency that has lost its base in Zaire, but it is either in the country or in Tanzania. They continue to fight. The army of Burundi, as Phyllis has indicated, gets out of control and conducts terrible human rights disasters from time to time. We have expressed our concern, and we continue to do so.
Our goals in Burundi remain the same: a negotiated cease-fire followed by talks aimed at the restoration of constitutional government. Unfortunately, the climate for national reconciliation is not particularly good right now, but we continue our efforts.
My colleague, Howard Wolpe, has been working assiduously in that direction, and he continues to go to the region in an effort to see what he can do to help.
On a multinational force, I will just state that we remain open-minded to a multinational force operation with a clearly defined mission. On the other hand, we do not want to commit to an operation without knowing, for example, the whereabouts of the target population, just for the sake of doing something.
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You mentioned airdrops. This issue is before us. Our military is looking at what is needed, but I assume you are aware of the criticism of airdrops. And, indeed, one of the concerns is that the ex-FAR or some other, ''strong group'' will get the food meant for the weak civilians. It turns out to be a very controversial issue; yet we recognize that in the absence of anything else, that may be about the only thing we can do.
Zaire's problems, we recognize, require attention. The Europeans have been very strongly urging us to do more. But I think we need to understand the limits of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1080. They deal with the repatriation of refugees.
Zaire is an urgent issue, but it is not necessarily covered by 1080. So there are times you will hear people urging us to do things under the rubric of 1080, and I think we need to be careful about what is and is not appropriately done under that.
There are a number of diplomatic initiatives under way. Ambassador Chretien is expected to return in the next day or so from his efforts in this region. He will be reporting to the Secretary General. We do not know what he will say in his report, although he has kept in close touch with us. While I was in the region a couple of weeks ago, I talked to him often, and I know he has been briefing our ambassadors in the field, but we still do not know exactly what he will recommend in his own report.
The Africans are meeting in Brazzaville today. Unfortunately, the Rwandans and Ugandans chose not to go to that meeting. I think they probably believe that the Nairobi forum which President Moi has convoked is the more appropriate forum to discuss their concerns. There is a Franco-African summit in Ouagadougou this week. So there will be a number of meetings that will bring the Africans together.
Another idea that is out there is the notion of an international conference on the Great Lakes. We endorse that idea, but we believe it needs to be a very carefully prepared conference. A conference would help crystallize a number of the efforts that are under way and could put in place legitimate internationally recognized activities that may include some form of peacekeeping or peace monitoring. They could include conflict resolution mechanisms and perhaps various forms of coordinated international assistance.
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So we think that in the long run a conference of that nature is worthwhile, but it is not clear when the right time would be to do that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am prepared to answer any questions you may wish to ask.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bogosian appears in the appendix.]
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MAHDESIAN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. MAHDESIAN. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to have this chance to discuss the emergency situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
I would like to focus my comments on the humanitarian assistance efforts, particularly our efforts to deal with the returning refugees to Rwanda, and I would also like to touch on the prospects for moving beyond the crisis in the region toward more meaningful long-term development prospects.
The massive and sudden migration of refugees and displaced persons has created a crisis of huge proportions, but amid this crisis we also see the first hopes for resolving the 2-year-long refugee emergency in Eastern Zaire on a more permanent basis.
If I can just reinforce what Assistant Secretary Oakley and Ambassador Bogosian said about Eastern Zaire, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the situation there. It is more important than ever that the humanitarian agencies gain access to these areas to determine the number, the composition, and condition of the refugees in the region, and, most importantly, these agencies will also need to provide humanitarian assistance to these populations. As Ambassador Bogosian said, in the past week there has been some increased access to these populations, and we hope this access will continue to improve.
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Turning to Rwanda, there has been a wide agreement among the donor community as well as the Rwandan Government that the integration of refugees and the provision of humanitarian assistance should be part of a larger framework of reconstructing Rwanda. Any emergency programs should be considered in the context of Rwanda's longer-term needs.
Much action has already been taken to address this crisis. Food and other humanitarian supplies were prepositioned in the region, and as the refugees began to return, relief agencies quickly established way stations to provide food, water, health care, temporary shelter, and sanitation services. Special care was also taken for unaccompanied minors. The Government of Rwanda has cooperated in all these efforts.
Now the returnees have reached their home communes, and further assistance is being focused there. The World Food Program and the nongovernmental organizations have developed a geographic division of labor for food distributions, and these distributions are now under way. Relief organizations are also working with the government to help meet urgent shelter needs and upgrade the health and water systems.
All parties agree that the relief and rehabilitation assistance should be provided in an equitable manner to both the genocide survivors inside Rwanda as well as to the returnees who are coming back as a means to avoid exacerbating tensions between these two groups.
The U.S. response to the current crisis began on October 26, when USAID employed its DART team—Disaster Assistance Response Team—to Rwanda to assess the needs and provide funding to support the repatriation of refugees. The DART has also participated with the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, to plan humanitarian assistance and has assigned a humanitarian adviser to the top-ranking U.S. military officers in Rwanda. We have also deployed five epidemiologists with the Centers for Disease Control to the various U.N. agencies working on the ground there.
Prior to the Geneva meeting on the crisis, the United States announced we were adding $145 million to our contribution to the Great Lakes region, primarily for Rwanda, and the breakdown of this funding is included in my written testimony, but I would like to focus particular attention on some of our transition and development programs.
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The greatest challenge facing Rwanda will be whether the two groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus, can live together with mutual respect for human rights. At the Geneva meeting, the USAID Administrator, Brian Atwood, highlighted the justice system as the sector in particular need of help. The USAID Office of Transition Initiatives has been focusing on human rights monitors and justice issues, including the crowded prisons, and we will expand our efforts in these areas. It is expected that the prison population, already overcrowded, will be increased as some of the returnees are investigated for war crimes.
The USAID development program is also oriented toward the administration of justice and the rule of law. In addition to support for the International War Crimes Tribunal, development assistance supports training at the National Law School and the establishment of a national identity card system which, for the first time, will not identify individuals by ethnic origin.
The U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, with funding from USAID and the State Department, plans to increase the number of human rights monitors from the current 110, in phases, up to a total of 300, over the next year inside Rwanda. And I am particularly proud of our efforts in the last 2 years to help turn this program around and make it one of the more successful efforts in Rwanda's transition.
In striving to foster a climate of respect for the rule of law and human rights, the director of the human rights field operation in Rwanda announced in Geneva he would undertake the following activities: Develop and strengthen the capacity of the judiciary, empower people through the dissemination of information, coordinate closely with the international committee of the Red Cross on detention issues, and break the cycle of impunity through prosecution of those who committed genocide. Shelter and property rights will become a key issue as well.
The Rwandan Government has given squatters 2 weeks to vacate dwellings belonging to returnees. We can expect significant property disputes as returnees find their homes have been occupied during their absence. The Rwandan Government must have a means of adjudicating these disputes.
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Rwanda's Ministry of Rehabilitation and Social Integration will focus on resolving the housing issue. Meanwhile, the government has set up temporary transit centers to house returnees, displaced residents, and Zairean refugees. We see the shelter needs as being urgent, and we will be reviewing these needs and are prepared to provide resources to help address this problem.
USAID's chief of staff, Dick McCall, is now in Rwanda assessing additional requirements of the government in both the justice sector and the resettlement, reconstruction, and redevelopment of the economy and the social infrastructure. Anyone who has been to Rwanda recently has seen that the adverse effects of the 1994 war and genocide still affect both the population and the economy as well as the socioeconomic situation of Rwanda, but the situation there has improved over the last 2 years.
In late 1994, Rwanda had no judicial system, but in 1995 significant improvements were made. The National Assembly was established, the Supreme Court was nominated, local civil administrators have been appointed, and a police force has been established. The U.S. Government has played an important role in stabilizing and supporting the new government in its efforts to rebuild the infrastructure and reestablish operations with key ministries.
As we move to the future, it is important that the donors avoid the mistakes of the past. This means that we must operate under a common strategy and framework to ensure that the international assistance is genuinely supportive of the needs of Rwandans and to ensure that we are not working at cross-purposes, as has sometimes happened in the past.
The Rwandan Government's development plan constitutes the strategic framework into which the future assistance program should fit. We believe it is important to invest a small amount of development assistance to continue Rwanda's progress from relief to development.
In conclusion, I would like to commend the international community, the donors, the United Nations agencies, other international and nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector for its quick and effective response to the crisis in the Great Lakes region. Of particular note is the dedicated work of the U.S. private voluntary organizations who work with us as partners in this region.
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I would like to express appreciation for the cooperation of the Government of Rwanda in its efforts to absorb the massive influx of returnees to the country. They have been a good partner, and we hope the spirit of partnership continues because much work remains to be done.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mahdesian appears in the appendix.]
STATEMENT OF VINCENT D. KERN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR AFRICAN AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. KERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify.
I have a written statement for the record, but rather than cover some of the same ground that my colleagues have covered, let me just focus on two issues. The first deals with the standing up of an MNF and the second with U.S. forces that are presently in the area.
Late last month, we joined military planners from more than 25 countries and international organizations at our European headquarters in Stuttgart and developed a general framework for a military concept, a mission statement, and possible response options for the crisis. Last Friday in Ottawa, the Canadians hosted the first meeting of the MNF steering board.
In addition to standing up the MNF headquarters, the board agreed to planning for the aerial delivery of emergency humanitarian food supplies into Eastern Zaire as a possible MNF mission. Meanwhile, the MNF force commander, General Baril, has been consulting with regional governments and has received approval to establish his MNF headquarters in Uganda, with a forward headquarters in Kigali and a rear headquarters in Stuttgart. He is also working with regional governments to obtain status of forces—SOFA—agreements with us and other international troop contributors to develop appropriate rules of engagement—ROE.
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The joint staff has been working actively with the Canadians to develop comprehensive command and control arrangements. While we await a final decision on U.S. military participation, I can assure you that our forces will remain under the command of a senior U.S. military officer.
Turning to the second issue today, we have in my statement, as of yesterday, said 451—the number today is 446—personnel in the region, including 328 in Entebbe, Uganda; 22 in Kigali, Rwanda; and 96 in Mombassa, Kenya. We have in Entebbe, we have a joint task force headquarters staff, a TALCE, our reconnaissance aircraft, and force protection units. In Kigali we have a small forward headquarters, a civil military operations center, and a media information team. And in Mombassa we have another TALCE, which is an airlift control element.
With an air bridge and civil military elements in place, our forces are ready to assist with the humanitarian relief operations and to help fashion a comprehensive media campaign message with the UNHCR that will further facilitate the return of refugees and their resettlement. We, of course, will continue to consult with Congress as details of the mission are finalized.
Let me stop there and say that all of us are now willing to answer any questions that you or the other Members might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kern appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Thank you all for your excellent testimony. I would like to begin questioning, and then I will yield to my distinguished colleagues. On the numbers issue, there has been—I think shrill is the word to use—rhetoric, Secretary Oakley. It is always a problem to get accurate numbers, and I know that reconnaissance efforts have been hampered by bats, smoke, heavy foliage and other problems. The UNHCR, as recently as Monday, put the number at 700,000. Some of the groups have suggested numbers in that vicinity. Many of us were taken aback when our ambassador to Rwanda, Robert Gribbin, put the number in the tens of thousands on November 21st. Of course, I am sure he was acting in good faith based on reliable information. It is very important, I think, for us in our response to at least have an accurate picture of what the numbers are.
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I think you gave your number before, 200,000 to 400,000, is that correct? What efforts are being made to locate and count those hard-to-find groups, the people who go into the forests and that is the last you see of them and aerial photography is unlikely to count them? What is being done to try to get an accurate picture so we can measure our response based on that?
Ms. OAKLEY. Let me just say that I think in refugee situations we always strive for accurate numbers, knowing that they are extremely difficult to get, and that we know from long experience with refugee problems that there is a tendency to overcount because it ensures greater food deliveries for one thing, and it is very hard to do. There have been efforts to update censuses that have been taken earlier. They were met with certain resistance in various places. We all say that our numbers are estimates. That is why we have given a range between 200,000 and 400,000. But we would even admit that possibly there could be more.
Then there is the whole question of the Zaireans who are displaced and in need of assistance. Again, nobody knows how many that is.
It is clear in all of this that what we really need is access on the ground and access via the agencies, particularly led by UNHCR. They have been allowed into the Goma area. They were allowed then a little further into the Magunga camp area. Every day we have reports that they are allowed to go a little further.
There is this question of the fighting that goes on. We do not want them to be put in harm's way. On the other hand, we are trying to push that as far as we can.
The area really that has been more difficult is the area around Bukavu and Uvira. We did have reports this morning that we expected some of the aid agencies to be able to go further inward into Zaire to get a better feel on those areas, and we will keep pushing it as hard as we can. In the same sense we hope for breaks in cloud cover, we hope that our surveillance gets lower and better, and we are doing everything we can, but it is an imprecise science.
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Mr. SMITH. Just on a related note, numbers do drive policy, particularly here on the Hill. The breathtaking spread between tens of thousands to 700,000, and 200,000 to 400,000, raises questions when we are trying to allocate resources to other uses. Just as a footnote, if you could answer, does this problem of overcounting also apply in the area of population control and census where we do not have really a clue how many people really do live in country X, Y or Z?
Ms. OAKLEY. First of all, we would never use the word ''population control.'' I think that many countries have developed pretty good techniques to measure people just as we have in our own country. But there are always kind of margins.
I do not think anybody has ever tried to estimate how many people are appropriate or right for a country. What we have tried to do is look at growth rates, look at development of gross national product, trying to see that the percentage of growth does not overstrip the percentage of development and trying to bring those figures into balance. I think that that has always been our approach on these things.
I find that numbers are always slightly iffy, even the census in the United States.
Mr. SMITH. We have heard a lot about atrocities committed by the ex-FAR forces against refugees, but little about the killings by Zairean rebels who are closely linked with our ally, the Rwandan Government. For example, on November 17, Tutsi rebels in Zaire reportedly massacred hundreds of civilian refugees, some of whom they had lured with promises of return to Rwanda. Many returning refugees have also reported that the rebels seized men and boys and did not let them return to Rwanda with their families. It is suspected that many of those men have been killed.
Ambassador Bogosian stated in his remarks that we have sent a strong signal. If you could specify what that signal was and also whether or not we, the United States, are supporting either directly or indirectly through the Rwandan Government any of those rebel forces that are in operation?
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Ms. OAKLEY. Let me answer part of that, and then I will turn to Dick.
We, too, have heard these stories of the massacres in Zairean territory; there have been some reports that have come back through people who have returned to Rwanda. Again, access on the ground is the most important thing that we can get, not only to look for evidence of massacres like this, of mass graves or sites, but to be able to talk to the people that were involved. It is of great concern. That climate of killing with impunity has been, if you will, at the base of the problems in the Great Lakes area for some time.
We are addressing it, as my colleagues have talked about, and the only other thing that I would like to say on this is that I think we know that in the end the truth will come out. We may not get the information as fast as we want, but I think we all feel pretty confident that we will be able to find out what happened.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador.
Mr. BOGOSIAN. To take your last question, we provide no support to the rebels. We have been in touch with them. We discuss things with them, such as access. In that sense, perforce we have to have meetings with them, talk to them and all the rest. This does not suggest anything in the way of either political support or official recognition.
Even if, say, on the issue of Banyamulenge citizenship we have an opinion that happens to support theirs, on the political level we support the territorial integrity of Zaire. There is a government that we recognize and with which we deal. We have an ambassador accredited to that government and all the rest.
I might note in passing that officers from our embassy in Kinshasa recently were in Bukavu, partly to remind everybody that it is the embassy in Kinshasa that is responsible for that neck of the woods.
On a practical level, because of the geography, we have had people in our embassy in Kigali talk with representatives of the rebels, or we have had our guard team, for example, go into Eastern Zaire because that is where the locus is of their questions. And I think it is important to make that clear because that can get a little fuzzy every once in a while. The rumor mill works.
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Regarding the specific issue that you raised, in a word, we have not been able to confirm whether those allegations are true. But irrespective of that, we have told the rebels, and we have mentioned this to the Government of Rwanda as well, that we cannot tolerate any action of that nature. This is somewhat similar to the kinds of problems we run into in Burundi and in Rwanda from time to time. And we make public statements, and we tell them privately, that this is something we cannot tolerate.
I might just note that we were particularly disturbed by the reports that you mentioned because up until then, the information we were getting was rather different. For example, we had been told that they had gone to the Burundians, after they had taken over Uvira, and said, we think you should leave. They made it clear that they want the refugees out of there, but they didn't force them.
We have reports that their behavior as a general matter in places like Bukavu is noticeably better than what had existed earlier. So it is particularly disappointing if, in fact, this phenomenon is occurring, and we have made that point to them.
Mr. SMITH. Let me follow up. The Rwandan Government receives some support from us. Does it also receive military training?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. We have a small IMET program in Rwanda that, frankly, has been fashioned after close consultation with congressional staff. Vince might be able to describe in more detail. It is what is referred to as enhanced IMET. It deals almost exclusively with what you might call the human rights end of the spectrum as distinct from purely military operations. There is no substantial military assistance at the moment.
Mr. KERN. It is the expanded IMET program which we, as Dick said, fashioned in consultation with the Congress. We are talking about the softer, kinder, gentler side of the military training, focusing on improving skills in areas such as civil/military relations, the role of the military in a civilian society, those sorts of programs. We have not provided Rwanda with any of the sort of basic military training that you would get at Ft. Bragg officer training, those sorts of things.
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Mr. SMITH. So you would be convinced that U.S. sources would not be used, or training, or diverted in any way to help rebels who might be committing massacres.
Mr. KERN. I do not see any way that could possibly happen.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask, on the issue of returning, yesterday we learned that the U.N. human rights monitor stated that they had received reports that Rwandan refugees returning home from Zaire had been killing people described as pro-genocide survivors. I know you made the appeal, and I certainly concur in that, that more human rights observers on the ground, the better for all involved. What has been the information that we have been getting about on the ground returnees? Have they been mistreated? Is this an isolated incident that the U.N. monitors are talking about, or do we have a problem here?
Ms. OAKLEY. As I understand it, that report, I think, referred to what had happened inside Zaire, not what was happening inside Rwanda. And I think I did make a brief reference to this; people have been very concerned that people returning would immediately get into situations of conflict when people returning to a village were seen as those who had perhaps participated in the genocide, plus the questions of housing, and the question of lands and farming.
I think the Government of Rwanda's rules and laws on this have been pretty strict. And, as I said, I think most everyone has been pleasantly surprised that so far those incidents have been kept under control. I think the press has played a very active and important role in this as well, reporting from various communes how families are waiting or living with neighbors or with relatives. But I think it is a very worrisome situation that unless we can show everyone, not just the returnees but those who stayed, that there is some sort of assistance on the way, that their lives will get better, they need to work together, to look to the future and not to the past.
This is where I think all of us have to work so closely together.
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Mr. BOGOSIAN. If I may say, I would answer your question two ways: The general experience over the last couple of weeks has been not just good, but very good. In fact, it almost strains credulity that so many people could come back carrying so much emotional baggage and not have more incidents.
Obviously we don't have people everywhere, but I think we do need to watch two or three areas. First of all, there is a severe problem of housing and shelter, and it seems inevitable that there are going to be problems there. As Mr. Mahdesian mentioned, that is an area that the donor community is going to zero in on because it is clear that that is going to be a problem; that there is the twin problem of people who are in Rwanda perhaps taking retribution against others who are thought to have committed genocide, and people who were, let us say, outside who want to kill witnesses. It has happened before, and it could happen again. The report you mentioned is one that I just saw this morning. We do not have much further information on it. Then there is the question of arrests that may be without the normal protections that you would expect.
So there is a whole range of possible problems that have not happened yet, but we would not be too surprised if they do happen. I think one of the principle objectives of the donor community is moving fast enough to try to keep those things from happening.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Hamilton.
Mr. HAMILTON. I have appreciated your testimony, and I understand that you are dealing with a very difficult, very fluid situation. I do want to express my appreciation to you for the extraordinary efforts you have made in trying to alleviate the difficult humanitarian problems in the region.
Mr. Kern, you had a phrase in your testimony which I am going to quote out of context, but it sums up my feeling toward all of this. You said you are awaiting the decision. That is what I have been doing for the past few weeks. I have been awaiting the decision. I don't know quite by whom or what kind of a decision, but I must say this: with all of its fluidity and the dynamics of it, the complexities of it, I nonetheless am struck by the fact that things seem to have been for weeks now in a holding pattern, and I really don't know that I understand why. You acknowledge we have a humanitarian crisis there. What is holding up a firm, strong response to this crisis?
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One thing, I gather, is that the governments in the region do not want us there. At least they do not want a military force there. And if you don't have a military force providing some secure environment, which is a phrase I take from Bosnia, then you really can't get done what you ought to get done and want to get done in terms of humanitarian relief.
I don't know if we have a common position worked out among the countries, the Canadians, the French, the British and ourselves. I certainly understand we do not have all the information we want, but you never have all the information you want. I don't know of any international crisis where you have complete information; you always have to operate on less than perfect information, it seems to me.
Maybe you can help me by identifying what is holding things up here? Why is this thing so difficult that we in the U.S. Government are in a holding pattern for weeks trying to decide what to do?
Let us try to identify the factors. OK, it is hard to get intelligence. That is one factor, right? You don't know what the situation is, and you are not going to know until you get people on the ground, right? And they are not going to let us put people on the ground apparently.
The governments are holding us up, right? They will not let us come in there with the kind of force that we think is necessary.
What else is holding us up here? Why can't we move on this thing more effectively?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. If 2 weeks ago we deployed 10,000 troops, and as a result 500,000 refugees returned, would you have considered that a very successful operation? They did it before we got to that point, and that raised a question of what remained to be done.
As we have discussed, there was a debate over the dimensions of the issue. Two things have happened; some 600,000 or more refugees have returned to Rwanda and another 70,000 or 60,000 returned to Burundi, and the international donor community pledged some $700 million for Rwanda. That is being implemented. So it may not be as dramatic as deploying troops, but in essence the need for troops diminished.
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Second, in a negative sense, even though we——
Mr. HAMILTON. Hold on there. You think we are really making good progress here?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. I think there have been very important developments in three regards: First, a lot of refugees have returned home. That was one of our objectives. Second, the refugee camp structure and the hold of the ex-FAR over those refugees has been broken. And third, the donor community, including many organizations and governments, met with the Rwandans, and mutually agreed that the Rwandans had sensible proposals. The Rwandans generally were pleased with the donor community's proposal. They have come up with a pretty big program that has not been fully implemented, but it is on its way. I think that is a fairly significant accomplishment.
On the other hand, you are right, there are many problems, mainly in Eastern Zaire, that up until now have prevented a common decision to deploy troops.
Mr. HAMILTON. Why don't these countries want us there?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. First of all, in the case of Zaire, if you are going to operate there, you better have some kind of an understanding with the rebels. General Baril was just in Eastern Zaire, and he met their leadership. The Government of Zaire considers this meeting a stab in the back. They say, you are dealing with people who are rebels, who have no authority, and you should not be based in Uganda, you should deliver the aid strictly within Zaire.
Mr. HAMILTON. The rebels do not want us there either.
Mr. BOGOSIAN. The rebels have been very reluctant regarding a multinational force because they believe—let me back up a minute. At the Nairobi meeting of last month, a meeting that included representatives of Rwanda and Uganda, Zaire, Tanzania and Kenya, one of the things they called for was a neutral multinational force. They do not believe that a multinational force that includes the French is neutral because they believe that the French supported the ex-FAR and so forth, and that has been the principle stumbling block.
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Mr. HAMILTON. Why can't you just exclude the French?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. That is a pretty difficult thing to do as a practical matter.
Mr. HAMILTON. The French want to be there. Is this one of the major obstacles in all of this, the French?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. The way I would put it is that——
Mr. HAMILTON. You wouldn't put it as bluntly as that.
Mr. BOGOSIAN. A major complication are the problems that the Rwandans, Ugandans and the rebels have with the French participation and others. It is not that simple. On the other hand, though, there are those who question the need to deploy a military force if the relief communities can carry out the task by itself. If that is the case, that suggests a diplomatic effort to get the rebels to permit the access that we need.
Mr. HAMILTON. Does the relief community want a military force?
Ms. OAKLEY. I would say that originally Mrs. Ogata, as the head of the UNHCR and as the lead humanitarian voice, wanted this because she felt that it was the only way to get access to these refugees who were in the camps. The situation changed very dramatically. I think I said that UNHCR now views that the force is not quite necessary. What they need, first of all, is a cease-fire and then access to the refugees on the ground. They have been, I think——
Mr. HAMILTON. Let me understand. The private communities, the relief communities, they don't want the military force either?
Ms. OAKLEY. The question is, is it worth it?
Mr. HAMILTON. Do they want it, or don't they?
Ms. OAKLEY. I would say they do not want it. They want diplomatic efforts.
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Mr. HAMILTON. I understand some of the complexities here, but it does seem to me that if you are going to be effective in the delivery of humanitarian assistance to people who certainly need it, hundreds of thousands of them apparently, you have to have some assurance of security. That is how it appears to me. I may not be right about that, but apparently nobody wants it. The countries do not want it. The rebels don't want it. The humanitarian community does not want it.
Ms. OAKLEY. I think in a situation like this, if I may just point out the complexity of it, the basic problem is that the Government of Zaire has not provided the security environment that one would expect. Contrast that with what the Government of Tanzania has done, of maintaining order and security in the camps. So we have been dealing with a security vacuum in Eastern Zaire, with a very fast-moving situation.
Mr. HAMILTON. The Zairean Government is not going to be able to provide that?
Ms. OAKLEY. That is right. And what Mrs. Ogata had done in Eastern Zaire in this period of 1994 to 1996 had been to create her own security force. These were Zairean troops that were basically loaned to her for organization and support, that managed the security in these camps. She had called for various types of monitors because she knew that the security situation there, was extremely difficult and that there was for her no way of separating out the military and the authoritarian systems.
I think that there have been, again, changing attitudes. Clearly the Security Council felt in the beginning a force was needed. Mrs. Ogata did, too. Her thinking, I think, has evolved. She has been contemplating security for aid workers going in to find these refugees. It is not that you don't need security, because I think we would all agree that you do need security in a situation like that to help round up the refugees, to provide the corridors for them to return, to ensure the safety of the relief agencies. The question is, what is the most effective way to provide that?
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I think that is where the ambivalence has occurred. How do you provide that security in the most effective manner?
Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for being lenient on my time. I want to emphasize that I really do appreciate what you are doing. I think I have some appreciation also of the complexity of it. As you can tell, I also have a good bit of frustration with the whole thing. I guess I will have to wait for that decision a little bit longer.
May I ask one other question? I think you said we put a billion dollars into all of this. How does that stack up with what other people are putting into it? If you don't have the information, you can supply it to the committee. One of the things we are always interested in up here is the question of burden-sharing. Usually that word is used in a little different context. We would like to know what others are doing as well.
Ms. OAKLEY. I would be happy to provide that in the breakdown that we have. We have certainly been, I think, a leading supporter of humanitarian assistance since 1994, but I would like to give you a more detailed breakdown of what the EU has done because they have also been very active, and other countries as well.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, that will be included in the record.
[Ms. Oakley submitted the following reply:]
During the period 1994–1997, the international commmunity has contributed some $2.1 billion for humanitarian assistance programs in the Great Lakes region. Of that amount the United States contributed nearly $1.1 billion, the EU contributed some $523 million, and another $846 million was contributed by other members of the international donors community. Following is a list of the top contributors:
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Mr. HAMILTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much.
There was a proposed meeting in Germany 3 or 4 days ago with the allied forces, the Canadians and the U.S., so forth. Did that meeting take place, or has there been a series of meetings in Europe dealing with the situation in general?
Mr. KERN. There was a meeting in Stuttgart at the end of last month in which more than 25 countries, mostly European, but some African countries as well as international organizations participated. They laid out the different possible roles for an MNF in this new situation. Planning is ongoing for all of those possibilities.
There was then a meeting more recently in Canada where the steering board was established and where the steering board authorized the establishment of a headquarters in Uganda and planning for air drops, which was not discussed in the Stuttgart meeting but which was added as a possible mission.
Mr. PAYNE. The whole question of the intervention—I support that that has been discussed at these meetings; whereas, Mr. Hamilton was asking where does it stand as relates to forces being on the ground either in Kigali or in Uganda or in Zaire or somewhere; is that still being discussed or is it the surveillance and the air drop that is now the new order of the day?
Mr. KERN. The Canadians, now that they have been authorized by the steering committee to move from Stuttgart to put a headquarters into Uganda, are in the process of doing that and will deploy about 450 people for both the headquarters element and for the airlift element.
Mr. PAYNE. So the whole question of having ground troops that the Canadians were going to lead and that the U.S. initially talked about having some participation with, and other countries, that whole plan now is felt not necessary and it is scrapped, or is there still a discussion about the use of ground forces?
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Mr. KERN. There is still planning for that. One of the options that is being looked at would be entering of ground forces into Eastern Zaire in a permissive environment. Another one that is being planned on would be ground forces going in an uncertain environment. So that planning continues. But as of right now, there are no ground forces in the area or deploying into the area that would be designated for Eastern Zaire. They are there for airlift and for headquarters elements in Uganda and Mombassa and also a smaller element in Kigali.
Mr. PAYNE. We have heard the numbers problem and we can't get a fix on exactly how many people there are, but we can assume that there are still several hundred thousand people. I guess anyone could try to answer.
How are they surviving? What is happening to them? I would assume, as I have indicated, that there must be close to 50,000 children. It has to be separated from—what is the concern at least about the children? What is happening to that group?
Ms. OAKLEY. May I take a stab at answering your last question first? The majority of the children that we know about who have been separated from their families are actually back in Rwanda, and there are specific organizations that have taken on this responsibility of tracing and locating parents and family for these children. We have learned a lot about how to do that, including from Mozambique, where photos taken and circulated have been helpful in identifying families.
I think that we realize that we will not be able to pair up all the children with families or communities where they belong and we also know that it is going to take some time to do that. But I think we feel pretty confident that those people are being cared for and we are making the best effort we can to help all these people be relocated.
The problem with those that remain in Zaire is another whole set of problems. We hear reports that we await to be confirmed about people moving further west into Zaire in territory that is very difficult, the terrain is not smooth or easy. There are very few roads. There is a great deal of tree canopy that makes identification impossible. Some have been reported to be going toward Kisangani, others further west. We keep trying to get as accurate a picture as we can of those and to get access to them.
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The International Organization of Migration has been very active in this area. They have been the people who have rounded up the trucks and tried to provide transport for these people because generally they are in not very good condition. They have been wandering for some time. They need assistance getting home. We have not heard any stories that those people that finally have identified themselves could not get back to Rwanda. The real problem has been finding the people. Once we find them, I think we feel pretty confident that we can help them.
Mr. PAYNE. Just a question regarding the situation in Zaire, I guess which created this, one of the problems of the rebels, who have been there for hundreds of years and all of a sudden the Government of Zaire just said they cannot, I guess, be citizens anymore and wanted them to leave.
The other question, of course, that the rebels, as you indicated, really are reluctant to have an international force come in, and particularly the French, because it was felt that the French would simply prop up the Mobutu Government again, and I think that the rebels certainly would feel that would be the wrong thing to do.
I just have a general question that I have asked for the last 3 or 4 years. When we talk about Zaire, our answer has usually been, well, nobody else can hold the country together. I have always criticized our policy to Mobutu because I felt that we propped him up through the years because of the cold war and we needed an ally to the United States. He was fighting communism. He was massacring his people but he was fighting communism and therefore we supported him.
Now that all of the need for people to fight communism is over, I continually ask, why can we not work toward taking the man you put in, out? And they say, he is the only one that can keep Zaire together. That is like an answer that he is going to live forever. They say, Mobutu is getting ready to die; what do we do? If we had worked on some kind of solutions in a forceful way, it would not be to the point that he is dying, because everyone dies sometime.
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Is there any plan that we have from the State Department or anyone in our government that has been dealing with Zaire, the transformation of its government, if and when that has to happen, and what kind of a policy are we thinking about; because our policy was we have to keep Mobutu there because he is the only one who can keep Zaire together, and it is indicated now that he is on the way out. What is it that we are thinking about? Does anyone know?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. Well, in terms of Zaire, the policy has been for some time that the country needs a legitimate political structure that as far as we can tell would derive from free elections. I think the feeling among those most familiar with Zaire that I have come across is that this is more necessary than ever and, therefore, one needs to move in that direction.
I know that the European Union is prepared to spend a lot of money, something on the order of $100 million, toward the election. The United Nations is working in that direction as well. They either have or are on the verge of appointing special coordinators for that, and certainly the U.S. policy is consistent with that.
I think one thing you can say is there is a fairly broad international consensus that, given the size and complexity of Zaire, the only way to get legitimacy and to overcome the problems that exist, be it corruption or what have you, is to have free elections, as difficult as that is going to be. Just mounting them is going to be a major task and expensive as well. But I think it is fair to say at this point that that is probably one thing everybody agrees to.
I think it also maybe needs to be said that there is a consensus that the territorial integrity of Zaire should be maintained, which is not the same as saying that people are not raising questions about what do you do about the size and diversity of Zaire. And on our part, I think we tend toward encouraging some form of federalism or some sort of autonomy, something that takes into account the diversity of the country.
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As you can imagine, after the events that have occurred there is a need for a fresh look at this. I can assure you that that is being done. In fact, the memos are piling up and the meetings are going to be held.
Mr. KERN. There is a meeting being held right now.
Mr. BOGOSIAN. We are late for a meeting on Zaire. But these issues are all being looked at.
My sense and my prediction is that we will reaffirm the territorial integrity of Zaire. We will reaffirm that the way to get there is through free elections. There will be certain side issues of that. For example, obviously we are not going to support a civil war and, therefore, to the extent that we talk to the rebels, we are going to encourage them to join the legitimate political process. Of course, what they are going to say, and in fact they have said is, will you help us in effect get in that? That raises questions about what our role should be.
One of the complications is how do you do that in an environment where the army has fallen apart and two provinces in the east are under rebel control? How do you persuade the government to negotiate when they have not had a victory? These are problems that have to be dealt with, but they are real nevertheless.
I think one of the most difficult problems that is going to face the international community is what do you do with the army? Do you think that the U.S. Congress would support a strong military assistance program of the United States in Zaire? My guess is no. But it is awfully hard to imagine that country pulling itself together without an army that is not utterly corrupt and a danger to its own citizens.
Do you put something else in its place? Do we need some kind of international force there while the country pulls itself together? These are very difficult questions that maybe somebody is going to have to look at now.
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But on the basics: Support the territorial integrity of Zaire, which I assume that the Africans will agree to, and that is important; support elections and then—the Europeans are particularly adamant on this—come up with some kind of serious assistance program for Zaire. We are stopped in our tracks because of the Brooke amendment and everything else.
So some of the ''answers,'' at least for us, have other problems that are going to have to be overcome, but I think the answers are there one way or the other.
Ms. SARE. This panel is lying. I have to speak.
Mr. SMITH. Order in the committee room.
Ms. SARE. We should be investigating Barrett Gold Company in Zaire. It has concessions to——
Mr. SMITH. I am going to have to ask that you be removed.
Ms. SARE. That is fine. I hope you will pursue the question of population control.
Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will be in a very brief recess while the young woman is escorted out, unless you would like to cease.
Ms. SARE. I would like you to ask them about this company.
Mr. PAYNE. I will conclude my questions but it certainly is very, very difficult, as you have indicated, and I am glad that there is heightened attention being brought to the question of Zaire. I think that is really one of the real problems during the last decade or more—the thing that disturbs me is that we knew that this point was going to come at one time. I just do not understand how a State Department, and especially since we were, when they put Mobutu in—I am not saying the panel here is responsible, but it is our creation, our creation of Mobutu and the difficulty that—and the corruption of every one talking about how corrupt Mobutu has been—this has been common knowledge for the last 20 or 30 years. His villa is in Europe. We just continually look the other way. Now we have a very, very serious situation there. I mean, even to the point of intervening to prop Mobutu up in the 1960's, when he was weak.
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And so my concern, and I appreciate the chairman's diligence in allowing me to pursue this point, because I would hope that when you go back to your meetings, and particularly the Congressional Black Caucus has been extremely concerned for, as I mentioned, the last 8 years that I have been involved with this, about what happens to Zaire. We saw this coming and now it is here.
It would make the situation of 6 million people in Rwanda pale, to 50 million in Zaire, just like the 100 million in Nigeria where we are still, in my opinion, not having a very defined policy on what to do there. I would want you to certainly take back at least the Congressional Black Caucus concern about the situation in Zaire and hopefully there can be some kind of resolution started anyway.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Just a parenthetical on that; we all know that there are reports that Mr. Mobutu may have upwards of $4 billion stashed away in a country. When the country is in some dire straits, for somebody to have personally enriched himself, even if it is half of that or a fourth of that, is mind-boggling.
Let me ask some additional questions, and then I will yield to my colleague if he has any additional comments or questions.
As I think you know, Secretary Oakley, The New York Times reported a few days ago that abortifacient abortions, or chemical abortions, are being given to women who are not the victims of sexual violence in these refugee camps. We are not talking about rape victims. The consensus breaker, it seems to me, is when abortions are given or chemical abortions, in this case birth control abortions, simply because the child may not be wanted. I for one—and I think there are a large number of people and this includes some in the NGO communities—am outraged that that is going on.
In your written testimony you make reference to Bosnia. I was very concerned as to what was happening in Bosnia. I held hearings in the Helsinki Commission, which I also chaired; heard from actual rape victims. And I think there is a concern that rape victims are in a whole other category, even though I do think their children are of value. But here we are talking about birth control abortions.
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I think if there is one true consensus breaker in our effort to try to provide the maximum effort for those who are suffering in Central Africa, it is when another layer of violence, taking of those children, is imposed upon all the other violence that we see going on.
Ms. OAKLEY. Thank you for the opportunity to address this issue. I know it is important to you. I had written it into my statement, but in the interest of time I had cut it out.
We could spend a lot of time on this, but let me just make two or three brief comments. The U.S. Government does not promote abortion and does not support the performance of abortion. That is clear. We have stated that over and over again. I can assure you that remains our fundamental policy.
We do attach great importance and I must say it has been with some pride that we have tried in my bureau to integrate reproductive health services into primary health care programs for refugees. These services include safe motherhood and child survivor programs, prevention and management of the consequences of sexual violence, and protection against sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-AIDS.
The incidence of sexual violence, including rape, is very high in refugee situations. We know this from the example of Bosnia. The number of women raped during the 1994 Great Lakes crisis is reported to be in the tens of thousands, with the result being many of these unwanted pregnancies. For refugees, even the most optimal living conditions often barely meet minimum health standards. Overburdened health care resources and susceptibility to disease, especially sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-AIDS compound a refugee woman's reproductive health risks. The breakdown of traditional social structures, combined with decreased resources for refugee women, too often leads to increased risk-taking behavior, including prostitution.
We firmly believe that reproductive health services should be based on expressed need and sensitive to people's cultural, ethical and religious values and must be responsive to refugee conditions. We have funded reproductive health activities within the broader components of primary health care programs for over a decade.
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Now, to this specific question that you asked about—these abortifacient things. UNHCR, in collaboration with a wide range of U.N. agencies and NGO's, including WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, CARE, IRC, ARC and IFRC, has recently defined emergency contraception as part of the minimum initial service package. In defining these guidelines, they have talked about sexual and gender-based violence which is strongly associated with situations of forced population movement. In this context it is vital that emergency post-coital contraception supplies are available to those women who request it. This should neither be seen as a substitute for other contraceptive methods or as abortion because these, as you said, chemical products are to be used before conception, before the implantation.
We are getting into an area that is very technical and very medical, but let me close by saying again and assuring you that we are not promoting abortion, nor do we support the performance of abortions.
Mr. SMITH. Semantics become important here because I have raised this issue with UNHCR. To redefine something as not abortion when it is after conception is a semantic gymnastics game that one is playing. I say that with all due respect. A new life is being destroyed, and we can play games with that and say it is before implantation, but implantation is not the beginning of life. Whether one values or does not value that life, these are chemical abortions that destroy that existence.
Ms. OAKLEY. Congressman, as you very clearly have pointed out, there is a very wide difference of opinion on these definitions. I think that it is more than semantics. It is a medical definition. We have adopted the definitions that have been adopted by our own Federal agencies and by the World Health Organization on this.
Emergency contraception is what we are talking about and we believe that it works. And our definition: that it prevents pregnancy, it does not abort pregnancy.
Mr. SMITH. Again, I think we are playing games with words because the intent of contraception is to prevent conception from happening. Once it happens, a unique individual is created, and from then on what one does anytime during that continuum right up until birth, after birth, right up to 80 years of age is the ending of a human life. I find it very reprehensible that some, including the Administration, are promoting this. Again, we are not talking about sexual violence, we are talking about someone who simply did not have protected sex.
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Ms. OAKLEY. Again, I will go back to my original point on this: We do not view that it is abortion. I think our position on that has been clear and I think that we will agree that we will disagree.
Mr. SMITH. One final footnote about redefining certain things: there are those who would say that the victim of a partial birth abortion, where the child is three-fifths of the way born, is not a child, as we had in the case of this past congressional session when President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have prevented partial birth abortions on demand. There are some 1,500 in my own State that take place every year, and thousands of others, we don't know the exact number, contrary to the assertions that it is a very small number.
Recently the whole world was aghast because a child was found in Delaware having been killed by its parents, allegedly, immediately after birth. They could claim, and mistakenly of course, that the child was not a child 5 minutes before birth, and that is exactly what partial birth abortion allows. That is where semantics, I think, do a grave injustice to the value and dignity of every human life, which I happen to believe has inherent value, whether it be a refugee, whether it be a woman, a child, or a father. They all have, in my view, basic fundamental human rights, of which life is the principal.
Let me ask a question in regard to the return policy. Do you agree that true refugees who are not liable for past atrocities should not be forced back to Rwanda against their own will? And are there any mechanisms in place right now so that if someone raises their hand and says, ''I don't want to go back, I have a well-founded fear that I will be persecuted and perhaps killed,'' they will be accommodated?
Ms. OAKLEY. Let me just repeat that of course our policy is that refugee return should always be voluntary. I think that is very clear in what we have said and have consistently maintained. I think we are going to get to this position in Zaire when we finally do have access to some of the refugees.
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Some of them, particularly those closely associated with the ex-FAR forces and the Interhamwe, are not going to want to go back to Zaire. Mrs. Ogata and I have discussed this issue. I think that even when we have been talking about changing the structure of the camps in Eastern Zaire, we all were always aware that there was going to be a group that would not want to go home. Some, I think, will feel that they cannot go home.
The question is then, what should we do with these people? That was an issue that we had, if you will, put down the road a little bit to deal with. We would certainly need the cooperation of the Government of Zaire. I think we would have to consult with others about this. The question is are those people, then, at a certain point not considered refugees? And how far should UNHCR and the other international and other private organizations go in taking care of those people? It is going to be an issue. Again, let me just stress that access is the key to get to those people and to really discover what they want to do.
Mr. SMITH. Are refugees apprised of the possibility of going to another country like the United States, and do we have any mechanism for trying to inform people that that is a possibility if they are true refugees?
Ms. OAKLEY. I think that the plan would be that when UNHCR does go in to have access to these refugees, that they are protecting people who are with them. And this would certainly be something that would be asked of these people, particularly those who refuse to go home. We do have a refugee resettlement program. I think if some of these people were perpetrators of genocide, we would particularly not think that they were qualified for resettlement in the United States.
Mr. SMITH. Without question, they should be held accountable.
Ms. OAKLEY. But this local integration, if you will, which is always the third element of dealing with refugees after repatriation and resettlement, would be something that we would have to consider. I think that we would want to consult very closely with other organizations involved in this.
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Mr. SMITH. Let me ask, on the 80-plus thousand, I think U.N. Rights Watch put it at 83,000 people who are in prison awaiting trial, some of whom may have died—as a matter of fact there are reports that several have died because of inhumane conditions—what kinds of access do we or groups like the International Red Cross or others have to ensure that they are not being tortured or in any way mistreated and are hopefully going to get a fair trial?
Ms. OAKLEY. Let me turn to Mike Mahdesian for this. USAID has been more involved in support for the justice system than we have been.
Mr. MAHDESIAN. Well, I think the Red Cross, as well as the human rights monitors and others, have had access to this population. As far as what we are doing, we are trying to help the Rwandan Government and the international community get a handle on the scope of this problem.
We have been doing random samples of the prison population in order to find out how many cases have files, how many have been investigated, and what are the actual charges. The Rwandan Government has passed a law on the genocide which categorized different levels of involvement in the genocide with commensurate penalties, and we are trying to get a fix on what are the most egregious cases that are in prison, and how much it will cost the Rwandan Government in dollars as well as time to deal with this population.
I think once we get a handle on that, then we will know how to help them streamline it more.
Mr. SMITH. What kind of interface is there with the International Tribunal on Genocidal Crimes?
Mr. MAHDESIAN. Interface with who?
Mr. SMITH. With the local efforts to prosecute these people.
Mr. MAHDESIAN. I am sure that there is some communication. The tribunal has tended to do its own investigations and try to keep a wall around its methodology and its investigations, but I would certainly hope that there is some communication there.
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Mr. BOGOSIAN. They basically have different tasks. The tribunal tends to go after people who are not in Rwanda, who in many cases are what they refer to as the big fish. They have their court and the jail that goes with it in Arusha in northern Tanzania, and Judge Arbor, the new chief prosecutor, is in The Hague. So to begin with they are spread out a little bit.
The Government of Rwanda is looking more after the people in Rwanda itself. There are times the relationship has been kind of strained, when the tribunal says, ''This person is ours,'' and they have slightly different rules. For example, the Government of Rwanda has the death penalty. The tribunal does not. So in that sense, as you can imagine, Rwanda is going to feel it is inadequate if you have a chief perpetrator of genocide who gets away with life in prison.
As you know, none of the cases have really come to trial yet so there is not much of a track record there. There is some relationship, but by and large they go their separate ways.
Mr. SMITH. Do you think that, among the 83,000-plus in prison, there are some of those whom the International Tribunal may be seeking?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. I think it is unlikely. I think the tribunal frankly is barely able to keep up with those people it is looking after. And, again, they are focusing more on the people who are outside the country. In fact now you have this issue of, given the changes in Zaire, might some of those people come up? Of course, a lot of people who have come into Rwanda have confessed to being with the ex-FAR, anyway. It remains to be seen how the judicial system works.
There is a hope that with the security threat gone, which is to say the breakdown of the camps and so forth, the government, particularly since it has its law now, might get moving a little more expeditiously on the cases. The tribunal will take the high profile cases.
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In the case of the crowded jails, a lot of people, including, I think, most of us, have visited the jails. They are awful, as far as that goes. As for real torture, I do not know if we have seen torture, other than the mere fact that they are squeezed into these jails.
They have what amount to local jails. These are the ones that are really bad; people stuffed into something that looks like a garage, and often they suffocate. So it is not so much that there is active torture as much as the system itself adds up to that.
Mr. SMITH. Do we have any estimates as to how many died?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. I could try to find out. I do not have that number at my fingertips.
Mr. SMITH. And we do press the Rwandan Government to try to at least treat those people humanely?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. Indeed.
Mr. SMITH. One final question, then I would yield to Mr. Payne.
On December 2nd there were two reports by Reuters. One began, and I would like to know what your reaction to this is: ''Belgian Defense Minister Jean-Pol Poncelet on Monday slammed what he called the world's chronic indecisiveness in dealing with the crisis created by the presence of Rwandan refugees in Zaire. The chronic indecisiveness''—this is his quote—''of the international community on how to intervene in the region of the African Great Lakes has unfortunately not given the Western European Union a chance to show it was ready to act and that is regrettable.''
On the same day, the United Nations Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali, again called for troops in Eastern Zaire, saying that they are needed, and made an appeal for that again.
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Mr. Hamilton was, I think, going in this same direction. There seems to be a waiting game going on.
How do you respond to this Defense Minister's charges, and where do you think we go from here?
Mr. BOGOSIAN. To some extent it sounds like he is complaining about the inability of the European Union itself to reach a consensus, and we know that there are divided views among European countries about whether to intervene or not, and the degree to which the intervention should be more related to re-establishing Zairean authority in Kivu as distinct from evacuating refugees.
As I mentioned in my own testimony, we are open to considering missions that make sense, but we are reluctant to go in just to be seen to be doing something, and that is the criterion I think that we are trying to deal with here.
I think at the outset it was our judgment, after consulting with Mrs. Ogato and others, that there would be a need for some kind of security corridor so that the refugees could repatriate with an adequate measure of safety. The question has come up whether that remains the case when so many of them have repatriated without that, and apparently with minimal difficulty.
What we have now, I think, is a situation where there are still some problems, such as getting to the refugees, but there is also a war going on out there, in a manner of speaking, and one has to take into account whether or not the international community is prepared to fight their way in. That would represent a much higher level of potential violence and a much more expensive operation, and these decisions cannot be taken lightly, particularly if it appears that you can get the job done by the relief community without military.
Those are the things we have been looking at, and at the moment we are, as Mr. Kern indicated, looking at the different possibilities: going in in a benign environment; going in in a more hostile environment.
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I would anticipate that General Baril, who is the more senior military person, might be putting forward some recommendations soon, but up until now we have not seen them.
Mr. SMITH. Let me just follow up on that, because my concern, and I think all of our concern has to be that while we are waiting for access, how can we be sure people are not dying? Every day, as they are becoming more weakened by disease or malnutrition, these people are put in harm's way and a number could be calculated as losing their lives.
In response earlier to one of the questions about the kids who have missing parents, we may know about the 50,000 in Rwanda, but many of these, since we have again very huge discrepancies as to how many people are actually wandering, many of these could be kids and they could be dying.
I know there is always a reluctance as a last-ditch attempt to do airdrops. Supplies may fall into the wrong hands, but some may fall into the right hands, especially since we do not know when or if access is going to be provided. Again, I am making an appeal why I think airdrops are important, because again people could be dying while we are negotiating and every day means a certain number of people die.
Ms. OAKLEY. Well, let me say this. I did comment that airdrops are a last resort, but they have not been ruled out. And airdrops have been successful in providing humanitarian supplies in places where it is difficult to get trucks, particularly when you have people on the ground to distribute it.
And this gets back to the question of access. In the interior, it very well may be that when we get access, and if people are in bad shape, that the concept of trucking in is simply not going to work. And in that situation, then we very well might want to do airdrops.
So I do not want you to think that this has just been dismissed, but right now the focus has been on this ever-expanding access and working with the rebel leadership to get to these people. I think we should have a better idea in 2 or 3 days of what we are going to need to do.
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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I can see that the time has expired, but I too would just like to say that I would hope some decisions could be made.
Many of us felt that there was indecision initially when the situation began after the plane crash of the two Presidents; that had there been some more cooperation at that time, that there were African countries willing to go into Rwanda to prevent the genocide, as the French finally did with the Operation Turquoise, of course for different reasons. But there was a feeling that much of this could have been prevented had we taken the initiative to transport African countries' troops that were willing to go in to create protective corridors in early April and early May, that perhaps the genocide could have been prevented.
We did a disservice by our reluctance at the United Nations to support the questioning of the cost of logistics and so forth, and as a result we just have this continuing saga of human misery. I just hope that there can be some assertive action taken on the part of the Western countries, in cooperation with African countries that are willing to participate, and that we can really try to see some resolution, to see this continued tragedy come to some ending.
Thanks again, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne, and I want to thank our distinguished witnesses and wish you well in your efforts to mitigate the misery, not only in Africa but elsewhere in the world, and thank you again.
Mr. SMITH. I would like at this time to welcome our second panel to the witness table, and I will introduce them as our first panel is leaving.
Roger Winter has served as executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Services of America since 1994, and has been the director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees since May 1981. Prior to joining the USCR, Mr. Winter was director of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, and that was during the Carter Administration.
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Lionel Rosenblatt is the president of Refugees International and an internationally recognized and respected expert on refugee emergencies. During his prior career as a foreign service officer, Mr. Rosenblatt was stationed in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Thailand, and received numerous State Department honors for his service. Mr. Rosenblatt has recently returned from a trip to Zaire and Rwanda, where he personally observed the crisis facing the refugees in that region.
Dr. Chester A. Crocker is the Landegger Distinguished Research Professor of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, as well as the chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace. From 1981 to 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Dr. Crocker earned both his Master's and Ph.D. Degrees from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and has written and lectured extensively on U.S. foreign policy and African affairs.
And, finally, Alison Des Forges is a consultant to Human Rights Watch and is the organization's expert on Rwanda and Burundi. Dr. Des Forges, who received her Ph.D. from Yale University, has taken 17 field missions to those regions over the last 3 years. In addition to her information-gathering efforts, she will serve as an expert witness for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which will begin the trials of people accused of genocide in January.
I would like to ask Mr. Winter if he would begin.
STATEMENT OF ROGER P. WINTER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S. COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES
Mr. WINTER. Thank you. As one of those refugee nongovernmental organizations that focuses on Rwanda and Burundi, that has been negative about the issue of the planned military intervention in the region, I would like to try to explain my position and how I come to it.
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First of all, it is simplifying just too much if you think a humanitarian refugee emergency is only humanitarian. It is always intensely political. And, therefore, it becomes very important that you do an adequate political analysis; that you not just do anything or just do something, but that you do it right; you do it in a way that tends toward a solution, and particularly in the case of the Rwanda-Zaire border.
Over the last couple of years we have consistently gotten it wrong. We have in fact propped up people who committed genocide. We enabled them to continue to hold large numbers of civilians hostage, and to continue to build a military capacity to finish the genocide that they undertook in 1994.
So understanding the politics on the ground and getting it right is what this discussion has to be all about.
Now, from our perspective, we felt 3 or 4 weeks ago that the developments were not taking adequately into account the situation of the rebels themselves. After all, these are the fellows with guns who hold the territory in which the civilians we were seeking to assist; they were holding sway in that area.
So understanding them, where they were coming from, and what their objectives were was something we tried to undertake as an organization, because we believed that that was a perspective which, if not taken into account, would cause American soldiers or other soldiers potentially to be injured, and could cause an intervention intended to do good things actually turn out quite negatively.
So I went and I spent the better part of a week in Eastern Zaire with the chairman of the rebel alliance—this is before the mass repatriation began and during that repatriation—seeking to understand what his movement was all about and what they were thinking. I am not here as a spokesman for it, I want to be very clear, but I do want to be equally clear that understanding what they are trying to do is a part of the puzzle that needs to be understood.
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What I found, after living in this fellow's headquarters for basically 4 days and talking with him each evening, during the day, as things were unfolding there, was that he had a dramatically different perspective on what was going on than did the whole rest of the world, because the whole rest of the world had a very Rwanda-focused, Rwanda-centric perspective of what was going on: These are Rwandan refugees, they need to go back to Rwanda; the Rwandan Government may be involved in the hostilities across the border. It was very Rwanda-focused perspective.
On the other hand, if you spend enough time with the rebels, you find out they have a very Zaire-focused perspective, in fact Kinshasa-focused perspective. The two perspectives do have an overlap, obviously in the Eastern Zaire area. But the drive that is causing certain kinds of decisions to be made really comes from these very differing perspectives on what is going on.
Now, from the Rwanda-centric perspective we spent a lot of time talking about what is the involvement of the Rwandan Government in the generation of the hostilities in Eastern Zaire, and I have no doubts there has been some. It would certainly be in the interest of that government to have some involvements over there, because the rest of the world certainly was not taking their security concerns into any kind of account.
But there is a bad rap that often gets given. The United States did it all the time in the civil rights days here in 1960. It was always outside agitators that caused the problem. Zaire is a country in which plenty of people have very legitimate reasons for being very unhappy in their own right. Zaire does not require outside agitators to actually cause a problem.
In the case of the Zairean rebels that I spent time with, many of them, as you know, are Tutsi, but many of them are not, and there are allied groups that are certainly not, whose orientation is not Rwandan in any sense of the word. What they had done is, they had watched how, after the genocide occurred in 1994, the very perpetrators of the genocide fled to Zaire, wound up largely being supported by your tax dollars and mine, able to hold massive numbers of people hostage and to form links with corrupt and very bad elements in Zairean society, and actually continue the genocide in place in Zaire.
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What they did earlier this year, in particular in the region in north Kivu called Masisi, is they liquidated large numbers of Tutsis and others and expelled many others to Rwanda. There was no international outcry. There was no condemnation from the United Nations. Only my colleagues at the Human Rights Watch/Africa and our organization really made a high level of criticism about what was going on.
But these rebels were watching this. They watched the coalition that took place in northern Kivu. They watched the continuing genocide. Many, at least the Banyamulenge portion of that rebel group, were robbed of their citizenship. Killings were on the increase. They were told October 9th that they all had to leave the country. They were being massively expelled.
And the Zaireans and the others are rubbing their hands thinking how they are going to get their hands on the properties of all of these very successful people who were going to be expelled from the country.
And these rebel types said, ''No, it is not going to happen to us the way it happened up the road in Masisi,'' and they took up arms. And that is what has triggered the rebellion, not some kind of prompting from Kigali and Rwanda. They had plenty of reason to undertake arms. In doing that, they saw both the Rwandan murderers, of whom there were plenty in the region, and the Zairean officials as their enemy, and they undertook to attack both of those.
I was with the chairman, Kabila, before they broke the grip on the refugee population at Mugunga. He told me, ''These international people are going to come, and who are they? They are French. They are people that do not take any interest in us when we are in trouble, and they are going to come here, and what will be the net impact when they arrive? First of all, they will preserve Interhamwe and ex-FAR, and, second, they will stabilize the government in Kinshasa. These are my enemies. Why should I cooperate with an international intervention which really preserves my enemies, puts them in a position where they can at some time in the future liquidate us or expel us from the country?''
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So Kabila has no vested interest in actually collaborating with the kind of intervention that was approved by the Security Council. So in my view, if there was to be an international force to go in, it had to do a proper political analysis that was not done at the United Nations. It often is not done at the United Nations, and it needs to adequately take into account the realities on the ground.
The State Department, the United Nations, they want to deal with governments, but very often governments are not in control, very often governments are not good. Sometimes rebels are better than governments. That was the case with George Washington, and it is the case that you have to take the entire perspective into account.
My feeling is similar to the analysis that I received from that gentleman, that an international force would have in fact preserved his enemies, and I understood very well why he had a problem with that. In a case where a military force is essentially going to invade, because that is the way he saw it, inadequate communication, inadequate analysis causes people to get hurt.
So we went out of our way to try to frame an approach in which we thought that we could fully recognize that a humanitarian emergency exists in Eastern Zaire, fully, by the way, also recognizing that a humanitarian emergency exists in Rwanda. And you do not want to be blind to that.
Rwanda got a 10-percent increase in its population in 96 hours. It is a country that does not have anything, that is 30 months off a genocide, that has a lot of healing to do. Big problems there also. They need to be equally weighted with that, in my view, because we cannot sacrifice the stability necessary in Rwanda in the way we deal with Zaire.
So it was our view that the approach of the Security Council, while it may have had some initial value, it caused the rebels to want to change the equation on the ground, to defeat their enemies piecemeal before the internationals came and froze the situation on the ground. It became clear to us that at some point the continued discussion of that kind of invasive combat force actually might have become an obstacle to getting on with the task of assisting the civilians that truly needed it.
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And our recommendation has been, since I came back about 2 weeks ago, that we work toward that very permissive environment that some of the preceding panel members referred to. And the way you do that is, you put to bed once and for all the idea that you are going to essentially drop a combat military force into Eastern Zaire.
It is my belief these rebels are not saints. I have no brook for them whatsoever. But it is my belief that if you analyze the politics of the situation, you find out that it is by and large in their interest both to see refugees returned to Rwanda and to see others who are in need, like war-affected Zaireans, receive assistance.
What is a problem for them, however, is so long as a threat of—in their view—a military invasion is there, they do not know why they should be letting nongovernmental organizations in from France and from the United States and from the other countries who may in fact be going to, ''invade them'' shortly down the road.
So the way to do this properly, at this point, is to recognize that the original conception is an idea that has come and gone. It is past. It ought to be past. There may be military aspects of a humanitarian initiative that need to be undertaken, but in my view the idea of basing a humanitarian operation in Rwanda or even—it is acceptable as far as I am concerned—in Entebbe is actually the right way to go.
Because once you put to bed the idea of an invasion, I believe we will find it and the rebels will find it increasingly in their interest to collaborate. In fact, the diminishing of the viability of the original combat-oriented military operation, the fact that is passing away I think has something to do with the improved access that the preceding panel was speaking of.
I want to be very clear. There is an emergency in Eastern Zaire. There is an emergency condition in Rwanda. The way you get it done, in my view, is to put the old conception of a military intervention to bed, base a humanitarian operation in Rwanda, so the refugees that remain and want to return will see their help coming from Rwanda. That will also help ultimately entice people back from Tanzania, which is sort of the next leg of this thing that is not going to be that far down the road.
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I believe if you do it like that you will find out you need less of a military capacity. You are talking about numbers. If you accept the U.S. Government's range of the 200,000 to 400,000—we, too, have always felt the numbers have been estimated too high—that is well within the ability of the humanitarian relief community to begin to deal with, except in one aspect, and that is to the extent that the ex-FAR and Interhamwe types still control large numbers of people.
And the military force from the outside was never going to deal with that anyway. We have said over and over again that was not part of the agenda. That, by the way, was the fatal flaw, in my judgment, in the conception of this military intervention in the first place. If you were not going to do that, you largely are not necessary in terms of a combat military operation.
Thanks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Winter appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Rosenblatt.
STATEMENT OF LIONEL A. ROSENBLATT, PRESIDENT, REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL
Mr. ROSENBLATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sir, with your permission, I will read from a statement which I will submit for the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, all of your written statements and those of the previous panel will be made a part of the record.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. Mr. Chairman, we at Refugees International wish to thank you for convening this hearing on the humanitarian and political crisis in Eastern Zaire. With over a million refugees and local citizens displaced in Eastern Zaire, many of whom are still unaccounted for, we are facing one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in recent memory.
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I returned last week from the Great Lakes region, an area where we at Refugees International have had representatives on the ground for most of the last couple of years. We have been interviewing refugees and other humanitarian agencies and, above all, trying to get at the question which was at the core of your questions to the first panel, which is what do we do to move ahead with the emergency.
We have, as you know, 600,000 refugees back in Rwanda. That led to some optimistic pronouncement initially that the problem had been solved. But as we all know, whatever the actual number, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees still out there, cut off from their internationally supplied water and food for over 4 weeks now, and many of them in increasingly dire conditions. Their needs must be uppermost in our response.
I wanted to indicate that I guess if we look back on refugee crises that I have been involved with, from Cambodia to the Kurds to more recent events, we have here the largest single number of people who have simply disappeared. They are wards of the international community. They were in camps supported with our tax dollars, with the contributions of many nations. They have disappeared, and we need to be more effective in tracking them down. I think that sense of urgency that you are hearing today is given that the problem is a very important one.
The first key is access. I was not satisfied with the Administration's response that we just heard, which is that better access may be 2 or 3 days down the road. We have had better access promised now, always just over the next little period, and I think we have to get at that.
And it is in that context that we still feel that the international force may have some utility. Because if the access is not granted to the humanitarian organizations, we do not have them pushing to the outer edge of the envelope on their own, then obviously they are going to need the help of people who can provide for their security.
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Roger Winter, with whom we have worked and have a lot of respect for, may be right that it is counterproductive in terms of the minds of the leaders. But then the leaders of the rebel force ought to go ahead and give us the access, and preclude the use of force except for continued reconnaissance.
One of the things I wanted to point out is, because the force has at least been put on the drawing boards, you have intelligence coming from both satellites and fixed-wing reconnaissance that we would not otherwise have. We want to keep that coming.
So I would say the force comes into play as a negotiating element, based in Rwanda, not endangering the current balance of power in Zaire, not allowing the French to get a chance to get into Zaire, all of which I agree with. But if the force can help get access, fine.
If the human organizations can get that on their own, that is even better, but I want to get at that. The response that we heard today is unacceptable, which is that 2 or 3 days from now we will have our access to hundreds of thousands of people who are in increasingly dire shape.
We have interviewed a number of survivors, and in several instances the survivors talk about dead and dying they left along the way. We have to assume, projecting from that, that before long we are going to have a death toll that reaches into the thousands and tens of thousands unless we break the current gridlock, and I think that we have to start with that access question.
I would have liked to have asked further questions from the U.S. Government panel. One day we will do hearings differently, so people like us can actually question some of the government witnesses.
I would have wanted to ask, definitively, what kind of contacts are we having with Mr. Kabila? Are we pursuing him relentlessly on this issue? Are we meeting some of his concerns as outlined by Roger Winter and others? Are we getting at this issue in a maximally effective way? I left over a week ago now from Bukavu, and access was a day or two away at that point. Still a day or two away.
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Let me quickly survey our other recommendations, access and identifying where the refugees are being the most important.
We also think on the Rwanda side that we ought to be ensuring that the aid is there. It has undergone a population increase. It needs maximum assistance. We need to increase the number of human rights monitors there, without question. All that has been touched on already in testimony.
In Burundi we have to distinguish that people going back there cannot be protected. There is a continuing spiral of violence by both the army there and the Hutu militias, and there ought to be an exception to any refugee going back there.
One point we would like to make is that on the humanitarian needs in Burundi, we ought to be sure that we are allowing an effort of the human rights aid without exception, without strengthening the hands of any of the organized parties. We probably need to be more flexible on how humanitarian aid comes into the country of Burundi at this stage.
I would close by simply noting two longer-term recommendations that we have long made, that I think still fit in the current crisis in Eastern Zaire and in the region.
First, we think that the U.N. system needs to be strengthened, both in terms of the way it coordinates among the various agencies on the ground and in terms of a political voice for the international community that gets at some of the root causes and either prevents a return to violence in Rwanda or tries to do a better job in Burundi.
We felt there should be, within the organization, a world-class figure in charge of the efforts in this region to avoid duplicating roles, and we call such a person a ''super envoy.'' And in our view that should be someone who is well-known internationally, has his or her own access internationally to the leaders of the countries, of the region, and would begin to work aggressively ahead of the curve of violence. We have not gotten ahead of that now in the last few years.
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Second, I would note our strong endorsement for a rapid response force of some sort. If we had had that, we would not have to result to a multinational force and not constantly be looking over our shoulder at the French, which is a real problem. How do we contain them and still move forward? We would have a tool either under the United Nations or, as the Administration proposed, an African response force, but we should move ahead on that as well.
In closing, let me thank you again for focusing on this urgent crisis. I hope as a result of the hearing we will see better access, better reach for the humanitarian organizations, because if we do not have a rescue soon of the hundreds of thousands still unaccounted for, we will only later learn, as we did in the genocide, the toll has been tremendous, and that we acted again too late.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Rosenblatt.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rosenblatt appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Mahdesian is still here. And you may not be the one that might have the information, your other three colleagues might have it, but I was wondering too about the question of contacts with Laurent Kabila. Peter Whaley, if I am not mistaken, met with him on Friday, and if you could give us an update we would ask that for the record.
Mr. MAHDESIAN. I do not have an update about the embassy contacts.
Mr. WINTER. I can tell you how it got started, but perhaps you want to hear from the other people first.
Mr. SMITH. You can answer that briefly.
Mr. WINTER. On the 14th of November—which was a Thursday, if I recall correctly—anyway, the date of that Thursday was the day in which the breakthrough at Mugunga Camp occurred. On Friday, Mr. Kabila understood he had a meeting with General Smith scheduled in Goma. I was with him that day and he said he expected to meet with Smith in the afternoon.
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That evening, when I saw him again for dinner, I asked him what Smith had to say. He said that Smith did not show and he had not had any communication. At the same time, he was hearing on the Voice of America Secretary of Defense Perry announcing that the multinational force would coordinate with the Rwandan Government, coordinate with the Government of Zaire, but expected the acquiescence of the rebels.
He got very concerned about that, and he asked me if I could get some Americans for him to talk to. At 2 o'clock in the morning, Saturday morning, I crossed the border, went to Gisenyi, called people from the American embassy, the military attaché, asked him if he could set something up. He said there was a group of them, including Peter Whaley, coming up the next morning.
I met with them in the morning, tried to set something up. Their reaction was, ''No, we are not going to meet with Kabila. We have relations with the Government in Kinshasa. If he wants to meet with us he will have to come to the border and talk across the border with us.'' I said if I could set that up, fine.
I could not set it up within Whaley's timeframe. I went back to Kabila and explained to him the American delegation had gone back. He said, ''I do not want problems with the Americans; if the Americans won't come to me, I will go to them.''
And he asked me if I would return to my hotel in Kigali, which I did. At 6:45 Sunday morning, whatever the date was, he called me and said, ''I am here. Can I meet with the senior Americans?'' And we had already arranged it with the embassy personnel, and that is when he met with Ambassador Bogosian, Peter Whaley, Ambassador Gribbon, and a colonel from General Smith's staff, and that was the beginning of the process.
I do not know what the more recent ones have been. But it scares to me to think there might have been U.S. military troops deployed in his territory without that level of conversation occurring.
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Winter.
Mr. SMITH. Dr. Crocker.
STATEMENT OF CHESTER A. CROCKER, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE FOR PEACE
Mr. CROCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to testify here at this important hearing.
In the interest of truth in advertising, I would like to indicate that much of the immediate refugee crisis, much of it, not all of it, has been diffused by the return to Rwanda of 600,000 Hutu refugees from the camps in Zaire. And I would like to add that I have no independent expertise on the basis of which to speculate about how many more Hutu civilian refugees remain in Zaire, either seeking shelter and support on their way back to Rwanda or as the captives or dependents of the Hutu militias who are fleeing deeper into Eastern Zaire.
I would prefer to confine my brief remarks to some of the political factors that we should bear in mind as we look at this overall situation in central Africa. I think the starting place is to point out you really cannot have any such thing as a purely humanitarian foreign policy. Other speakers have addressed that point. I just want to underscore it again and again and again.
A decision to intervene has effects on the balance of power, on the political balance and the military balance. It affects lifelines, it affects food chains, it affects the economic resources of the men and the boys with the guns, and it is really as simple as that. By the same token, a decision not to intervene, not to become involved diplomatically or politically, has direct political implications and affects the balance of power locally on the ground, as well.
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So I think if we could rise above the very American urge sometimes to do the right thing but keep our hands clean, and recognize that in practice intervention and nonintervention both have political consequences, we might, in fact with your help, Mr. Chairman, elevate this whole discussion and debate. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have a feel-good humanitarian policy in central Africa that escapes involvement and political consequences.
If you look at both the current situation and the situations that have preceded it in Eastern Zaire and in Rwanda, I think it is fair to say that we cannot escape in this country some responsibility for those situations. And I could not agree more with Congressman Payne's earlier comments on that very point.
That said, let us look ahead a little bit. Where do we go from here?
I think it is fair to say the Rwandan crisis is by no means over. There are many humanitarian issues that remain to be resolved. There is certainly an important role for the international community in making certain that returning refugees face improving conditions and conditions that give them confidence, give them hope, give them some sense of a physical security.
It is also important, and the next witness will be talking with real authority on this subject, that we do everything we can to invigorate the judicial process both inside Rwanda and in the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda, because that will send a message across the region that people will be held accountable if that process works. If it does not work, it is an invitation for more of the same.
Second, I would like to make the observation that Rwanda's tragedy is expanding into a central African tragedy, because it is spilling across borders into a country which by any definition is a major country. And it is destabilizing that country at a time when that country, Zaire, is already in very, very bad shape, for all sorts of reasons that we can discuss and which you are familiar with.
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So what is happening is that Rwanda is aggravating the institutional and political crisis of Zaire. By the same token, Zaire's crisis is aggravating the Rwandan refugee situation. So the two of them really are very tightly interlinked.
Now, what does that really mean? I think it is a very dangerous situation in central Africa. It should not be underplayed. We should not think because we can get a refugee story off the front page for a day or two that we can begin to focus on other regions of the world. There is the potential for what has been going on in the Kivus to expand beyond the Kivus, which would be a circumstance that is really quite dire for the whole of Africa, for the international community, and we would wind up ultimately paying, as we always do.
A country of 45 million people bordering on nine African states is not one you can sort of walk away from. I am not saying for a moment that this is an issue of what do we do with or for Mobutu. I think that the past tense should be used in talking about that. He has been withdrawing from leadership of his country, disengaging from leadership in his country for years, and may soon be gone from the scene. So what is essential is to get a legitimate transition to a post-Mobutu era, and that includes a whole series of things, including elections but also including the strengthening of Zaire's State institutions, which in my view is a very important agenda item.
I am aware, Mr. Chairman, there are those who speak about the artificiality of African boundaries and how let us let it happen, and maybe it would not be such a bad thing if some African countries, especially big ones, were to fall into their logical ethnic pieces. That, in my view, is playing with fire. There are literally hundreds of ethnic components within Zaire alone, and there are thousands of would-be ethnic champions and warlords who would exploit and aggravate and mobilize ethnic hatred if given half the chance. So that is not, in my view, the way to go.
Finally, this is a part of the world where a failure of American leadership will be noticed and will have grave consequences. Everybody else will be let off the hook if we do not develop a serious policy toward central Africa. We do not have one at present, in my judgment.
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It is time for the senior-most levels of our government to engage on a sustained basis with the senior-most levels of other key governments, that includes the French, to see to it that what has already begun to happen in Eastern Zaire does not become a Zaire national phenomenon and a central African phenomenon. I do not believe our challenge in central Africa is to contain the French but rather to engage the French, and unless we do that it will not work.
So those are a few observations on the broader political situation. I thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Dr. Crocker.
Mr. SMITH. Dr. Des Forges.
STATEMENT OF ALISON DES FORGES, CONSULTANT, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH/AFRICA
Ms. DES FORGES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like the other panelists, I too am very grateful for the opportunity to appear here and also very appreciative of your having organized this hearing.
Many of the speakers here this morning, and the Members of Congress, as well, have referred to the extent of the emergency, the sense of crisis, and so on. Why do I have the feeling that these are only words? There is nothing moving, and I must say I share Congressman Hamilton's great frustration at the delays which go on interminably. And I have to say I wonder if there is not some relationship between the continuing delay on the ground in obtaining full access and the continuing delay on the other side of the ocean in terms of moving forward with this multinational force.
The latest contacts that I have had with the Canadians suggests that the earliest possible action would be sometime in January. It is now the 4th of December. The crisis has been going on for somewhat more than a month. How much longer will people deprived of shelter in the rainy season be able to stumble along without the necessary supplies?
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Again, the sad echoes of past failure haunt this hearing with the prospect of people, well-meaning people, somehow not getting their act together to take the kinds of decisions that must be taken. In addition to this question of delay, and of course related to it, is the question of access for what. Not only what is this force to do, but what are those wonderful nongovernmental humanitarian organizations supposed to do once they get there?
And here I think is one of our fundamental problems, is a refusal to come to grips with what Dr. Crocker has just suggested, with the inevitable political and human rights implications of a decision to intervene. Delivering food and medicine and water is very well, but what is the point of delivering that if the recipients are about to be shot? If the ultimate objective here is to make it possible for refugees who choose to return home to do so, there must be an element of security provided to them.
Now, this works in two facets. They must have security to make their choice freely, without the pressure and without the guns pointed at them by the Interhamwe and the ex-FAR. Our field researcher on the ground has reported, on the basis of her interviews with people coming across the border, that there is widespread testimony of people being forced to leave Mugunga Camp in the company of ex-FAR and militia at gun point or under severe pressure. We do not know how many, but as long as there are some people who are held under those conditions, as hostages, that must be part of our ultimate decisionmaking.
We are also extremely concerned about reports of refugees being selected out, male refugees and adolescent boys being selected out by rebel forces before the rest of the group is permitted to continue home. We do not know the fate of the men who are selected out, but I think we can all guess.
If the intention of an international intervention is to permit anyone who chooses to return home to do so freely, then that guarantee must be extended to males as well as to females and to adults as well as to children. It should not be a selective opportunity based upon whatever criteria are decided by people on the ground.
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With those considerations in mind, the ultimate objectives of this kind of intervention can simply not be met from an airplane. There is no way that you can provide the security guarantees, not just to the workers, the humanitarian workers, but to the refugees themselves, without having an effective force on the ground.
The humanitarian organizations themselves, I believe, are divided, and I am not sure that Secretary Oakley has effectively taken a poll of humanitarian organizations. I have not taken that poll either, but I suspect there is a division of opinion and that there are some of them who feel that a force is absolutely crucial for them to operate effectively.
I also notice that Secretary Oakley talks now about the need to have effective distributors on the ground even if the supplies themselves are dropped by airplane; that represents really a different concept from the concept of simply opening the cargo door and shoving out the bundles.
The ultimate question of access is, of course, and most immediately, in the hands of Mr. Kabila and his forces. It is most instructive to have Roger Winter's comments and to have the opportunity to add to our knowledge of this movement by someone who was there and who spoke with Mr. Kabila.
I think it is important to recognize, as he suggests, the Zaire-wide focus of Mr. Kabila himself, but it is also important to remark that, I believe, the agreement establishing the movement of the ADFL was actually signed in October, and at that point Mr. Kabila was named its chief spokesman, and not its President or chairman or commander-in-chief or whatever else. And yet here we are looking at a progression which was so astonishingly rapid that a movement which created itself in October has, by the first week of November, the effective control of a substantial band of territory, and has in the process bombarded and shot at 40 refugee camps in order to close them down.
The relief, and I think we can almost say the gratitude which has been felt by significant officials of the American Administration, and I think perhaps by administrations in other countries as well, that someone did the job for us, is a very significant part of what has influenced policy decisions up until this point.
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I am very pleased to applaud and congratulate the Administration for the stand which it has taken as of today, asking that the ADFL begin to implement some serious consideration of human rights issues in its behavior in this region. The use of military force on unarmed civilians, the arbitrary detention and removal of men from groups of refugees returning home, and indeed the very intervention, the very prohibition of access to humanitarian organizations, keeping them from people in need, are all violations of international humanitarian law, and we need to say that very clearly, very publicly and very forcefully.
The question of how one can best influence Mr. Kabila and his forces to improve their human rights record and take the necessary measures to investigate these human rights abuses, and bring to justice the people guilty for them, is a very important question.
Mr. Chairman, you have very forcefully, shall we say, expressed the linkage which some of us feel may exist both between the Rwandan Government and Mr. Kabila's forces and between the U.S. Government and the Rwandan Government, which puts us in a unique position of both obligation and opportunity to, in effect, take a very, very strong position on these human rights questions. And it is, as I say, with considerable relief that I see that the Administration has now begun doing that.
To turn for a moment to the question of what is happening to the refugees inside Rwanda, we are all extremely gratified and satisfied that the return of the refugees has been accomplished within Rwanda with relatively little difficulty thus far.
We have had some reports of, again, young men having been taken and apparently killed on the way home, but this has not been a widespread phenomenon. We have also had reports, I presume the same ones that were referred to earlier today, about survivors killed, and I believe it was not in Zaire—survivors of the genocide killed—it was not in Zaire but in Gisenyi, in the northwestern corner of Rwanda.
Providing for the security of the survivors of genocide and the witnesses of genocide, as well as providing security for the returnees, is of course an enormous problem and one for which we should stand ready to give support. Here I think the mention of the increase of the human rights monitors—and I hope that the Administration will indeed see that the request they thought was here does in fact get here, with due regard to the sense of emergency we all feel, of course, about this issue, so that that can be acted upon promptly. In that context, I would mention that the European Union has already taken action and has voted additional funding for human rights monitors.
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The justice system has been referred to this morning, and indeed the tragedy of those detainees is of very serious concern for all of us. Let me mention that the return of refugees from Burundi in July and August has caused relatively little comment, and I believe has not been mentioned at all here this morning, but there are 80,000 people who were returned, and again under very questionable circumstances. We cannot presume that all 80,000 of those people were happy to go home but they, in effect, had no choice.
At the time of their return, the Rwandan Government announced that there would be no immediate arrests and there were none. At this point, somewhat more than 1,000 of those 80,000 people have been arrested. That is 2 or 3 months after. Looking down the road 2 or 3 months, if a similar proportion of those returning from Zaire are arrested, there will be 75,000 more people detained, and I would speculate that the proportion may even be higher of those arrested returning from Zaire simply because of the nature of the population that was in Zaire.
In these circumstances it is, of course, of crucial importance that trials begin. The law is now in place. It took a great deal of political discussion for that to be passed but it has been passed. The judges have been trained. The police inspectors have been trained. There are hundreds of dossiers ready and yet there are no trials. This has got to be a major focus of U.S. pressure within Rwanda to get those trials started, and also to insist that they be conducted with due regard to the right of defense, which the government has publicly acknowledged.
Our person in Butare was able to attend a recent briefing of prisoners in Butare prison about the terms of the law, and they were publicly assured that they had the right to defense and to have access to defense counsel. I am not sure whether any American lawyers will be able to be involved in providing that defense to the accused, but lawyers in Europe have already begun to organize to make their services available.
In connection with keeping a relatively, shall we say, secure atmosphere inside of Rwanda, it is of great importance to stress bringing to trial soldiers who are accused of killing civilians, and there are hundreds of soldiers also who have been arrested. Some of them have been perhaps brought to trial, but considering that we have a military training program which is apparently largely focused on questions of human rights, I would suggest that it be a very appropriate point of pressure for our government with the Rwandan Government that trials of Rwandan military go forward immediately. Again, there should be no impediment. The legal framework is there, the personnel are there, so why are these trials not being held?
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One more quick point on the question of not just the judicial system but the Administration in general which is of major concern to me. We have talked about providing identity cards with no ethnic category on them, and I applaud that. Again, that is a measure which we recommended significantly before the genocide and which the U.S. Government chose not to act upon.
But I would provide this caution. In providing, in funding training programs and in assisting in the establishment of a functioning administration and judicial system, donors understandably have not wanted to ask questions about ethnic identity.
We are really here caught on the horns of a dilemma because how can we, after all that has happened in this country, talk about whether or not 95 percent of the trainees presented for a given program are Tutsi rather than Hutu. But yet this is a consideration of great importance in terms of the extent to which the population of the country sees themselves reflected in those people who hold the power in the country.
I do not have a solution for this. I simply indicate it as a point of great importance that we need to keep in mind. One way to approach this is to look at the percentage of people who have returned from abroad, that is what are described as the first generation of refugees or the old caseload refugees, who are now in positions of authority as opposed to people who were residents of the country before 1994.
The final point I would like to mention is your fourth question, Mr. Chairman, which has not been too much discussed. That is the provision for what we might call the legitimate refugees, those people who are not suspected of involvement in the genocide, who are not armed elements, former militia members and so on, but yet who feel a well-founded fear of persecution.
As we have heard this morning, Zaire agrees with Rwanda that all Rwandans should now go home, although there are differences of opinion on how you define Rwandans in this case. I think that if the hostility against Rwandans and people of Rwandan origin continues to build in Zaire, there may, in fact, be no solution for them within the Zaire boundaries, and it may, in fact, be necessary to think of resettling them in some other location. One thing is sure, we cannot address that problem until we know who these people are and how many of them there are. That brings us full circle once again to the problem of access. Thank you.
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[The prepared statement of Ms. Des Forges appears in the appendix.]
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much for your testimony and for your fine work.
Let me just ask the other members of the panel what their views are with regard to the Administration, UNHCR and generally the international community: are they identifying real refugees and trying to at least inform them that repatriation isn't the only option, that resettlement in another country and perhaps some kind of safe haven on the short term may be something that they ought to consider. Are they being apprised of any of this? Do you see any plans to make them aware?
Mr. WINTER. I do not believe so. I would be very cautious about the idea of sort of generally announcing that people who do not want to go to Rwanda might have a shot at coming to the United States, which is not to say that you don't have a real point to make here, because I think you do.
My sense of the way things are on the ground over there is that there really are not mechanisms in place to protect people like that. It is the kind of job that my organization would seek to see accomplished, Lionel's and Alison's, it is the kind of thing we work on. It is something that you have flagged for us that we will focus on.
In fact, however, I do generally believe that establishing the old camps along the border would be precisely the wrong way to accommodate them. If there are those people, you mention that need to be protected. They need to be allowed to have adequate asylum. It needs to be well away from the border with Rwanda. That was a fundamental mistake before. It needs to be in a situation where they are not dominated by killers.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. I would fully subscribe to that analysis there. The added factor is that as you define people who are afraid to go back, you will want to break away from their control those people who may wish to return but can't. And again, none of us are suggesting we reestablish the camps or that the humanitarian aid go to armed elements. Those are two basic caveats that will begin to define the core problem of those who feel they can't return more precisely.
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Mr. SMITH. Let me ask, for a returnee to Rwanda, what is his or her expectation in terms of what they will do? Do they expect to be on some kind of international assistance? And for how long? Are there any prospects for real employment? They are leaving a desperate situation, going to an uncertain situation which could quickly become desperate. How significant is the aid we need to be providing to Rwanda—I think that point was made earlier. I think Dr. Crocker may have mentioned that we can't think that we just solve the problem here. Rwanda needs a great deal of support as well, otherwise they will quickly go over the edge again or could go over the edge again. What can a returnee expect?
Mr. WINTER. Let me say that it is important to put it into perspective. First of all, the international community was spending a million dollars a day on the old camps before a couple of weeks ago. By and large, the Rwandans in those camps in terms of their physical needs were better off than were the local Zairean population. And you could see the impact of that as people were repatriating. Clearly, at the end of the repatriation line, as it were, there were the lame and the blind and the old and the enfeebled in a variety of ways, but the great bulk of the population was not suffering from malnutrition in any sense of the word. Obviously, and Lionel has made this case very eloquently on a number of occasions, the longer it goes, the more those people that are dispersed in hillsides are going to wind up in desperate situations.
I think basically people's expectations upon return are pretty low at this point. Even those who are very clear they want to return do not really fully understand what they are returning to. They don't exactly know what their security situation is. Most of these people, not all of them, are farmers. They know it is going to be months before they can provide for themselves. And so they do not fully have clear expectations. I think it is a very cloudy picture for them.
I think that is an important thing to focus on because both their expectations and the expectations of the communities that are receiving them need to be addressed in a way that promotes peace, that promotes reconciliation, that forestalls violence, because this is a huge group of people competing for very limited resources in one of the poorest countries of the world.
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So I say again, a substantial relief and development operation is needed inside Rwanda as well as in Eastern Zaire to address that kind of thing.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. I would add that our field representative there reminds us that the aid should go beyond a daily ration for the returnee; that the aid ought to go to communities based on impact of returnees; that we ought to be looking at community development projects again if we are able to take the resources that went at a million dollars a day for the refugees and divert them. We should have a substantial pool of resources, and we ought to be looking beyond simply helping only the refugees. If you go into a community and only help the refugees who have returned, you are going to build frictions from the start. So community-based local development assistance is what we ought to be about.
Mr. CROCKER. I think we have leverage on all these areas, and we should be using it. I do not see this part of central Africa as filled with people who have white hats or black hats. There are people who have committed human rights abuses in both communities. We have leverage because of who we are, and we should be telling the Government of Rwanda that its performance is being closely scrutinized. At the same time we are working with the Government of Rwanda on other aspects of this tragedy. So it is a two-way street.
Mr. SMITH. Do you believe that we are adequately conveying to the Government of Rwanda how serious we are about human rights atrocities, and regarding their friends in Zaire, that is to say the rebels, that there is an accountability there, that we see a linkage?
Mr. CROCKER. I see some improvement in that regard. I think it has a ways to go perhaps. Getting access in Zaire is one dimension of it. Getting the rule of law to begin to function, as Dr. Des Forges just talked about in Rwanda, is a piece of that. But clearly, this is a government which will listen to a clear coherent voice from the outside, if there is one.
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Ms. DES FORGES. Stress the clear, coherent if there is one, right? I just, again, on this question of access that we were talking about, one of the things which is of great concern, of course, is that the access, it is not just humanitarian organizations whose access is limited, it is also journalists and others who might potentially observe and report upon the human rights situation within rebel-held territory. As long as we have such a dearth of information, it is extremely difficult for us to assess the situation.
On the question of what do the returnees expect and what will they find when they return home, one question which everyone has identified as central is the question of housing; even more than housing, land. Houses are easily built. You can build a house in from 2 to 3 days. You get the neighbors together, you dig up the mud a bit, you build the framework, and you make the house. The big issue is the land to cultivate your crops.
There are some areas where this will not be such a serious concern because in the colder, hillier, wetter regions, the competition is less. But in areas which are sunnier, warmer, pleasanter, particularly areas which are also excellent pasturage for cattle—and one thing we have not mentioned among the returnees in terms of the original caseload returnees was hundreds of thousands have herds of cattle that need grass to live—they now occupy a considerable amount of the land in Eastern Rwanda which otherwise could be crop land.
I am not referring to the national park, which they are also beginning to encroach upon, but actually formerly cultivated land. That has not become a crisis point yet, but since we are talking about the return of people from Tanzania, that is when it will become a crisis point because those people are largely people who have come from Eastern Rwanda. The ones who come back from Zaire are more people who come from the north and the northwest, and those areas have not been as densely squatted upon by the returnees of 1994 and 1995, because they just do not regard this as a very desirable place to live.
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The Rwandan Government established very early, I believe it was already in July or August 1994, property commissions to examine conflicts over questions of property. These commissions have rarely functioned effectively, and here would be one point where there could be some concrete both assistance and pressure combined from the United States, that is, to make those property commissions work well, to provide them with the resources they need to process claims rather efficiently, and to encourage adequate enforcement powers so that their decisions can really be made effective.
In the Rwandan tradition, communities often did get together to settle exactly that kind of problem, the problems of the limits of fields, the problems of whose cow had eaten whose beans. These local property commissions would have the promise of functioning in that kind of setting, and if properly done could actually bring people together to sort of resolve the community-based issues of property rather than allowing them to fester and become a source of new bitterness.
Another aspect of the return which we have not discussed but which could in the end prove very important is the question of squatting on occupations and jobs rather than squatting on lands. A significant number of what you call the intellectuals, the people with education, the people who were the former government officials and so on and so forth were in those camps. Some of them have returned, and those who have returned will find their jobs already occupied. So here is a point of potential friction which is small in absolute numbers, but which, in terms of general and eventual impact, could be very large.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask two final questions. Generally speaking, has the NGO community been adequately listened to with regard to situation assessment from day to day? And then as well, and equally important, are you being heard at the levels where the decisions are being made both here in Washington and in other governments?
Mr. WINTER. For myself, I could say that once I returned, we gave an NGO briefing and a press conference. We were given good access at the National Security Council and the State Department. So, yes, we felt that the results of that field visit were adequately understood.
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Mr. ROSENBLATT. I think we felt similarly, particularly with the NSC, that they are engaged in the problem. I don't feel we are getting a sufficient priority in terms of the responses. I would like to see days not always be days, particularly in access, particularly with regard to the way we conduct our leverage in both Kigali and with the Zairean rebels. I think we could put a lot more top spin on results and break through some of the barriers that have been frustrating to us today as we have talked about them.
Mr. CROCKER. Mr. Chairman, I think that the Administration listens to NGO's. In my own view, maybe the Administration needs to decide what it thinks about a few of these things that we are talking about and decide if it wants to have a policy, which it would, of course, consult with everybody about.
But the issue of waiting for Canadians to push us, or waiting for the French to push us, or waiting for the U.N. Security Council to schedule a meeting, there has been a fair amount of that, and we are in a transitional mode now. A whole new policy team is to be appointed. And the situation on the ground is fast-moving and very, very complicated. We have to acknowledge that if America wishes to lead. It usually does.
Ms. DES FORGES. I believe that we are generally afforded very good access and that our opinions are taken very seriously. I would concur with Dr. Crocker in saying that at this point knowing is not the problem. Acting is the problem. This question of delaying until the action in effect becomes no longer necessary does seem to constitute a policy. I am not sure that what we have here is an absence of policy. We have perhaps a policy of deliberately adopting a passive posture and simply letting it all happen.
Mr. SMITH. Some of us who followed the crisis in Bosnia felt similarly when month after month very little was done to try to mitigate that process. It wasn't until the Croats mounted a very significant offensive, sending hundreds of thousands of Serbs into refugee status and into flight, that the backbone of the Serb offensive war-making capabilities seemed to at least be lessened, opening up an opportunity. But for month after month, many of us tried to get the Administration engaged, and perhaps we are experiencing deja vu to some extent.
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One final question on the 2 to 3 days as mentioned by Secretary Oakley. She left, I think, the hope that something might happen in terms of a breakthrough on the access question. What happens if 2 to 3 days becomes 2 to 3 weeks and, God forbid, 2 to 3 months? Are we looking at a catastrophe of monumental proportions? Is there something that we in the Congress ought to be doing, though obviously the lead has to be taken by the executive branch.
As you saw, we tried to have this hearing last week and even the week before, and it was put off simply because of the unavailability of Administration witnesses, and we are very grateful they were here today. But it seems to me when you get a crisis, everything stops. Who cares about Thanksgiving? Let us do whatever has to be done to try to mobilize to a positive outcome. What happens if this 2 to 3 days becomes much longer than that?
Mr. ROSENBLATT. I would hope that the momentum of this hearing needs to be preserved because this is one of the few things that has focused on the Eastern Zaire crisis, the Rwanda situation and central Africa in this town over this Thanksgiving period. I don't think we can let 2 or 3 days become 2 to 3 weeks.
I think you are asking specifics about how we are discussing the access and with whom, what we are offering, where our carrots and sticks are. Close collaboration with the UNHCR, which has the lead on this in terms of pushing to the outer edges of the search area inside Eastern Zaire, where do they feel the rubbing points are, what can be done to resolve their problems, when and if they need backup security. Then you do want to look again at the idea of how a force might assist.
Let us first look at what is being done on the ground both in terms of reach by the UNHCR and the relief organizations and by the United States as a powerful interlocutor with both the Government of Kigali and with the Zairean rebels.
Mr. WINTER. Keeping in mind, too, there are senior people, and here the situation is very cloudy, who are even beyond the reaches of the rebels themselves, people who have been fleeing west. We are assuming that many of these are bad folks themselves, or at least family of or political adherents of people who did the genocide, but we do not really know much about the people fleeing west, what they are all about, and it is sort of a group of people we need to understand better that are entirely outside the purview, at least right now as I understand it, of the rebel territory and the rebel control.
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Mr. CROCKER. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the spotlight that you have put on this problem will be sustained and will be sustained on the central Africa basis, not simply on the immediate situation.
One of the problems with this question of 2 days or 2 months is that if we start out our policy reviews by saying that anything we might do militarily will be subject to the veto of every party on the ground, what we are doing is handing out vetoes to everybody, and therefore we will never do anything in a nonconsensual environment. If that is our real policy in central Africa, let us say it up front. What we are doing is handing out clearance requirements, much like when you are doing a memo in the State Department from the fourth floor to the seventh floor. You need quite a few clearances. That is what we are doing in central Africa right now.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Crocker.
Ms. DES FORGES. I would agree in saying that if we have a conviction that the needs for basic life supplies and the needs for providing security for this group of people existed when there were 1 million of them, surely they still exist even if there are only 200,000 of them. The fact that there are 200,000 should simply make the whole operation easier, not make it unnecessary.
Mr. SMITH. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. I just would like Mr. Winter, could you once again concisely summarize your opposition to a military-type force in the situation?
Mr. WINTER. Twofold, first of all, in terms of the rebel perspective, which in this case and not necessarily in other cases but in this case I understand, that is, that it will freeze the military situation on the ground and therefore, by definition, preserve the remnants of Interhamwe. And since they are not prepared to separate Interhamwe and ex-FAR from civilians who want to be separated or would like to return or just simply get away, that is a mission that does not have a good definition and will not have a good outcome. In addition, the rebels would say it also stabilizes the Government in Kinshasa.
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However, at this point in time, so much has changed, I think that what the continued discussion of a 15,000-person combat-capable military force in Eastern Zaire does, or continued calls for that from some people or references to it, what it does is it places the people, the Zairean rebels, in a position of feeling like they are about to be invaded. They have a problem with that. And what it does is, in my view, it inhibits access by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, by NGO's and others, because the rebels are not a sophisticated crowd with a lot of experience. They do not see the outside humanitarians as free from a political agenda. They are coming from the same countries that are the countries who will be sending soldiers. They make a connection there that I think has become dysfunctional.
I think if you can set the multination force concept aside, because I don't think it is going to happen anyway at this point, I think if you just set that aside, I think the interests that are there, of seeing refugees repatriated or war-affected Zaireans assisted, will continue to be clarified and to therefore enhance access.
In fact, I think the awareness that the rebels have that the originally conceived military force really is something that has come and gone is one of the reasons why access is improving now. That is my perspective on it. I recognize other people have differing perspectives on it. My view is if you place a force in the area to participate along with a largely humanitarian civilian operation based from Rwanda or based from Entebbe, that you will therefore diffuse the concerns of the rebels and access will improve, which is really what we want to do. We want to assist those people that need the help. That is my view of it.
Mr. PAYNE. Does anyone else want to comment on that whole issue?
Mr. ROSENBLATT. I would add that, as Roger ended, what we are talking about is not a 15,000-man force. We are talking about a rescue force and one where the humanitarian agencies would take the lead, backed up by logistical muscle and security as necessary from the force. I think that rescue operation based in Rwanda and Uganda possibly would be a fine way to go. If the rebels have a problem with that, then I think we need to get them to configure with us how the rescue might work, but not to simply go on spinning our wheels as we are now.
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Mr. WINTER. And a rescue force, I think if they are prepared to separate killers from civilians, is very justified for the remaining civilian populations. But when the Americans and everybody else say that is not what we are going to do, that is where you start to question the point of the rescue force. I would love to see what Lionel has articulated actually become a model that everybody agrees on.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. That would be ideal. Let me say that I still would be for a rescue force even if it does not get involved in disarming. It could focus mostly on a group now further north and west of Goma, but particularly the group that is missing is in south Kivu and you could have a rescue launched there without having to bite that bullet.
At some point we have to have a force in the area that is willing to go in, even in nonpermissive situations, but to throw that to the force right now would probably throw such a monkey wrench into the force that they would back off completely.
I would like to go, as Roger would, full bore and separate intimidators and those controlling the refugees. We probably cannot do that. That still should not deter us from a rescue force that would move ahead quickly, and we ought to deal in the long run with the fact that somewhere, somebody has to be willing to take a shot in dealing with some of these issues.
Ms. DES FORGES. I would like to comment that I wonder if attempting to deliver humanitarian aid without separating out the armed elements, I wonder if that is not exactly what we have been doing for 2 1/2 years and is a policy that we now recognize is bankrupt. In other words, are we not back to square one where we are saying we cannot provide the force to separate the armed elements from the hungry civilians; therefore, we will feed the hungry civilians? We did that and it didn't work.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. In terms of the rescue, I would do it differently. We would not feed armed elements, and this would be emergency aid, no new camps created; people coming back on corridors for repatriation, as they did through Goma, but have not had a chance through the southern Kivu area.
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The group that is most difficult in this regard is the group that is basically still controlled by the former army of Rwanda, and that is far to the northwest, and obviously a different solution might have to be envisioned there such as permanent resettlement far away from the borders of Rwanda. But I don't think that problem ought to prevent us from moving ahead with a rescue effort, using the UNHCR initially if we can in the south Kivu area.
Mr. WINTER. Using an example, I know you know very well of Sudan, it is possible to mount a humanitarian operation, imperfectly but possible, that serves a wide area and a large number of people in a rebel area without a foreign military force being present. The area that the SPLA controls in south Sudan is as big as all of Uganda. There are millions of people there. There is an international relief effort operating in the rebel sector as well as in the government sector. There are no soldiers of any kind that are present there other than the rebels themselves, and it is possible to mount an operation that can begin to meet the needs of people more fully than are currently being met if you stage it correctly. And it does not necessarily require combat military force.
Mr. PAYNE. That is true. It is working in the Sudan. As complicated as the Sudan is, though, I think that this tight area around Rwanda and Burundi and Eastern Zaire is probably even more complicated because of the many decades of people coming in and going back.
As a matter of fact, I have a question regarding that. The reason I am dwelling on that question is because I have supported the intervention militarily of a force to go in to bring relief to the refugees there in Zaire. Of course, as we all know, the mission has changed. People came back because of situations changing. I am still inclined to feel that it is going to be impossible or very difficult for the situation to resolve itself just by NGO's trying to do it or by there being no force introduced in that area.
I have a question regarding, as you mentioned, Ms. Des Forges, that of the 80,000 returnees from Burundi, that up to 1,000 had been in prison, and that the people coming back from Zaire—being that you can't always anticipate those that are left anyway that may come back and that the same thing would occur—do you have opposition to people who may have been accused of participating in the genocide from being detained and incarcerated?
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Ms. DES FORGES. Absolutely not. In fact, I regard it as essential that those charges be examined and that the person be tried. That has always been the position of Human Rights Watch, that those people who are accused must stand trial. There is no way except by examining guilt on an individual basis that you can get rid of guilt on a group basis, and it is guilt on a group basis that feeds the cycle of reprisals and future violence.
Mr. PAYNE. Also, the question of returnees and the fact that many refugees, 500,000 estimated came back from Zaire. The fact that there were the original Tutsi, primarily persons who were in primarily Uganda and became a part of the force that took over control of the country; and do you know what the property commission is doing as it relates to people who originally had property before 1959, and their families, who have now returned in 1994 and are claiming their property pre-1960 that was taken at that time, what has happened with the complication of them coming back to try to reclaim land that was taken away then, and how does that fit in to now the returning Zaireans and Burundians and some from Tanzania?
Ms. DES FORGES. Legally, those people who returned from the first generation of refugees have no right to claim property that they lost in 1959 to 1963, 1964. The government took a decision when it was established in July 1994 that no property claims older than 10 years would be honored. So in theory those people coming back in the first generation do not have any claims to their land. In fact, I think there have been cases where they have been able to reassert their ownership of land simply because people have been so afraid of them and intimidated that they have yielded, but in fact this could not be followed up in the court system.
Mr. PAYNE. The question of forced returnees. It has been indicated UNHCR and Mrs. Ogato strongly opposed any prompting of people to return back to Rwanda. The fact that there was armed militia in Zaire somewhat preventing people from coming willingly back; do you think that our policy was sound to allow the military leadership to prevent the refugees from coming back, or do you think that if there had been some kind of an attempt to disarm or to have refugees feel they could somehow break out of the camps, would that have been a more sound policy than the policy that we had about actually not intruding in the whole question of returnees?
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Ms. DES FORGES. Indeed, we felt very strongly and we argued that position very strongly that there was a need to separate out the armed militia and former soldiers from the camps and to give refugees the opportunity to choose freely whether to stay or to go. That was debated at various times and in various shapes, and in the end no one was willing to pay for it.
Mr. ROSENBLATT. I might add that we did a series of reports from the camps interviewing refugees about the preposterous notion that you would get voluntary repatriation as long as you had militias in control of the camps and urging the Administration to work out a plan that would begin to remove the leadership, and this was never really joined. There was finally some discussion of this just a few weeks ago, and by then the rebels were taking matters into their own hands. I should say, on balance, they didn't do a bad job. If we had planned this, we might not have done much better. But I don't think that should allow us to sit back now and sift through the remains in Eastern Zaire and leave the initiative in their own hands.
The humanitarian organizations have to get in on this rescue basis. And I might point out also, had the camps been, when they were dispersed, surrounded a little more thoroughly so that people were directed in more complete fashion back toward Rwanda as an option, we might be seeing less scattering to the west because people were so scared they did run to the west and now it is going to be much harder to assist them in those areas.
Mr. WINTER. Had the force gone in a month ago with a mandate not to engage, not to separate people from those militias, those 500,000 or 600,000 people would still be under the control of those bad militias. If you are going to do an intervention, you have to do it right.
Mr. PAYNE. I was one that felt that the ex-FAR and the Interhamwe should have gone in early on when the camps were set up to separate. In some of these situations there is a lot of hindsight and we always say it is 20/20 vision. A lot of times suggestions are made and they are tough decisions to make at the time. But whether you allow 2 or 3 years to go by, if you think they were tough then, they are almost impossible or insurmountable after several years elapses.
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I think that sometime in the future historians will teach courses about the errors of this situation in the Great Lakes region, starting from the initial withdrawal of the small group of U.N. forces that were in Kigali at the time of the plane crash. It was a wrong decision to run out of Rwanda at that time. It should have been strengthened rather than to retreat, and our only mission was to simply get Western expatriates out of Rwanda, period. Let us be sure that we get this thousand or so Westerners out of Rwanda. And that was a successful venture. We talked about the success of getting everybody out without anyone getting hurt. That was great. And then you have a million people dead several months later.
So not only these suggestions were made, I mean they were at least just thrown out as suggestions, no one had a crystal ball, but just the serious lack of any kind of real initiative in this whole situation now has created a situation that we may have to live with for a decade if the crumbling down of Zaire and destabilization in Burundi occur. These were things that we talked about.
I have to commend Tony Lake, and Mr. Lake and Susan Rice and Howard Wolpe lately have been attempting, I think it was too late, too little, and that the Administration had not had a comprehensive policy on Central Africa. There has been a lack by the Clinton Administration of focusing on Africa in general, Central Africa in particular. This is a State Department, in my opinion, that has miserably failed. Our behavior in the United Nations has been disgraceful, and I just believe that much of this could have been prevented. I strongly, as Dr. Crocker notes, criticized the Reagan and Bush Administration on policies.
I also feel that when something in your opinion is wrong, you should criticize regardless of the Administration. This just transcends administration. I think that the whole moral leadership that could have been provided has failed and been failed miserably by the Clinton Administration. There has been no policy at all, no comprehensive policy on the part of the State Department. Hopefully we will be able to put some pieces together, but the way that we see people sitting around wondering who is going to make the next step, it is sort of like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning. There needs to be some kind of leadership and some action. I have not seen it in the last 4 years nor do I see it now.
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Mr. WINTER. I agree with that.
Mr. SMITH. I want to thank Dr. Des Forges, Dr. Crocker, Mr. Rosenblatt and Mr. Winter for your very, very incisive testimony. It is very helpful for the Congress to hear from experts who are just not only knowledgeable but are also doers and do so much on behalf of suffering humanity. I want to thank you for that.
Mr. PAYNE. If it is permissible, I would like to submit for the record a report that was written from a fact-finding group that I happened to cochair with C. Payne Lucas and Vivian Derrick and Mrs. Julia Taft, a number of us. Were you on that trip, Mr. Winter?
Mr. WINTER. No.
Mr. PAYNE. OK. Where we reported back to the President, and the Vice President actually had a meeting with them to give this report, and Tom Campbell, who was chief counsel to the Senate Committee on International Relations. As a matter of fact, I think he worked for Senator Helms, assisted us in writing the report. There were recommendations. He currently is head of the IRI in South Africa. We recently communicated about the recommendations made then. I would like to ask if it would be permissible to add that to the record.
Mr. SMITH. I am sure. How long is it?
Mr. PAYNE. It is not that long.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, that will be made a part of the record.
[The information referred to had not been submitted as hearing went to press.]
Mr. SMITH. I want to, again, thank you for your fine testimony. The Subcommittee is adjourned.
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[Whereupon, at 1:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]