The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has endured a brutal reality for over three decades: a relentless cycle of violence, instability, and humanitarian crises. While numerous factors contribute to this ongoing conflict, several exposés shed light to a crucial but under-examined root cause: the presence of unaddressed perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The DRC's decision to harbor these genocidaires, has fueled the flames of violence in the region for decades.

As the military campaign by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to stop the 1994 Genocide intensified, the Genocidal forces herded the civilian population to exile as human shields. Denis McNamara, former Director, Division of International Protection, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has testified that by August 1994, the organisation had approximately 1.3 million refugees in Zaire (now DRC), 200,000 in Burundi, and 530,000 in Tanzania, and these numbers grew over the next 2 years.

By January 1, 1997, however, more than 2 million Rwandans had returned from those countries. Despite McNamara’s testimony, the majority of these returnees had not spent that period living as refugees, but more like quasi-hostages of the planners and perpetrators of Genocide Against the Tutsi.

Tanzania’s positive approach

Those who crossed to Tanzania were settled in different camps, several not too close to the border with Rwanda. Among them were infamous genocidaires Jean Baptiste Gatete and Sylvestre Gacumbitsi. The two were later convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Tanzanian government was aware it was hosting an unusual population which was under protection of international law as refugees. Tanzanian policemen, paid by the government but supported by the UNHCR, policed the camps to combat crimes, which were commonplace.

The Tanzanians arrested a few of the leaders like Gatete, locked them up and seized their weapons. This genocidaire was released after demonstration organised by Interahamwe militia. Tanzania leaders released him on one condition: "We are going to let you go, but you’re not to enter the camp.” Gatete thus left Tanzania to DRC, where he was eventually arrested and handed to ICTR.

Beginning mid-December 1996, the Tanzanian Government began repatriating Rwandan refugees: "All Rwandan Hutu remaining in the country are to be out by December 31.” In an operation which had the blessings of UNHCR, Tanzania then deployed approximately 10,000 troops, many being sent into the forests to round up refugees who had fled due to their connections to extremist leaders.

The Tanzanian ultimatum had to be enforced by a military force because, for two years, Tanzania was aware, that efforts to persuade the refugees to go back to their country had been "frustrated by militant Hutu ideologues in the camps.”

DRC and conflict foretold

Two months after the eastward flight to Tanzania and a few to Burundi in the South, the massive exodus of refugees started moving to the west, by then Zaire.

This time, it included almost the whole leadership of the genocidal machinery—from the President, the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Banks were emptied, the central and commercial banks respectively.

The defeated army ex-FAR entered Zaire in formation, and continued to wear their uniforms in public. In Bukavu, they had a camp at Panzi, close to the Rwandan border, which was exclusively military. The Army, weaponry and their militia moved with everything they could into their new settlement, where they were welcomed by the host government. In broad daylight, a foreign army crossed to another country with "tons of machine guns, grenades, mortars, and other light weapons, armoured cars, field artillery, four operational helicopters and a light fixed wing attack aircraft.”

The first sign of the future problems in Zaire / DRC started with the camp locations, which according to McNamara, were "unsuitable locations, too close to the borders, designated and insisted upon by the Government of Zaire.” A camp like Kibumba was less than a kilometre from the Rwandan border, making it easy for genocidaires to attack survivors inside Rwanda. He said there were appeals "from an early stage for separation of the ex-military, the militia, the Interahamwe, the genocidaire and the political leadership from the refugee civilian population.” But by and large the pleas were "ignored by the international community.”

In August 1994, a British paper reported the genocidaire militia and army had total control of the camps, which led to a UNHCR spokesperson describing them as being in a "Virtual state of war.” Militia would attack any humanitarian convoy that carried Rwandans trying to be voluntarily repatriated. According to the report, "Hutu militiamen and members of Rwanda's ousted Hutu government who are determined that the RPF, which set up a new broad-based government, will be left with only an empty wasteland to rule.”

In the DRC camps, the ex-FAR and interahamwe militia were responsible for the distribution of food and relief supplies. They purposely inflated the reported number of refugees, as a means of obtaining greater amounts of relief aid. They also diverted food stocks meant for refugees, and sold them in Zairian markets.Plainly, this tendency emboldened the genocidal forces like FDLR to create a state within the DRC, because of the support they got from President Mobutu Sese Seko to Felix Tshisekedi. This couldn’t have happened in Tanzania, under the policies of that country.

In October 1994, the UNHCR High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, publicly declared the dangers in the camps "by the control and the intimidation of the militia and the control of the assistance in the camps through the political-military leadership of those camps.” One observer said, it was in the provinces of North and South Kivu, where the genocidaire leadership "fattened on international aid, preened in front of foreign journalists."

The genocidaires living in DRC dispersed their genocide ideology in the region, and armed Rwandan genocidaire forces started using their power against Congolese Tutsi as early as 1995. After many reports alerting the world about the persecution and killing of Zairean Tutsis, in July 1996 the Human Rights Watch published a report entitled "Violence Against the Tutsis in Zaire.”

One of the earlier reports titled: Masisi, Down the Road from Goma: Ethnic Cleansing and Displacement in Eastern Zaire was published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees in June 1996. Its Executive summary is available. The same year African Rights published a report Rwanda: Killing the Evidence: Murder, Attacks, Arrests and Intimidation of Survivors and Witnesses which documented killings of survivors by some elements from the DRC.

Mobutu used these human shields in the camps, as a political card, which led to his refusal for their involuntary repatriation. At a news conference, following the Great Lakes Summit in Cairo, he argued that forced repatriation of refugees would be against international law.

In 1995, the Human Rights Watch which is currently silent to the predicament of Hema, Tutsi and the Banyamulenge in the DRC, reported: "The ex-FAR received arms shipments in the camps, conducted military training exercises, recruited combatants and planned a ‘final victory’ and a definitive solution to Hutu-Tutsi antagonisms.” And that "the genocidaires "openly declared their intent to return to Rwanda and ...kill all Tutsi ... and to "wage a war that will be long and full of dead people until the minority Tutsi are finished and completely out of the country."

This is confirmed by an American scholar and activist Kathi Lynn Austin, who interviewed the genocidaires’ Prime Minister Jean Kambanda and Colonel Theoneste Bagosora.

In her statement to the abovementioned Congressional hearing, Austin said both Kambanda and Bagosora "spoke openly of their plans to finish their ’job’ in Rwanda,” adding that "the international community shunned its role in Zaire where many of these perpetrators were based...a successfully rejuvenated ex-FAR and its militias forged alliances with the local Zairian military and political authorities as well as Burundi insurgents in order to attack Rwanda, Burundi, and certain ethnic groups within eastern Zaire, mainly the Banyarwanda of the Masisi region and the Banyamulenge of South Kivu. Continuously these kinds of attacks and the ethnic massacres that went on were ignored.”

Austin foretold the consequences of allowing the international community’s indifference and the principal culprits: "The immediate impact of this refugee crisis was to extend Rwanda's political strife throughout the region and lay the groundwork for continued regional warfare. France and Zaire both facilitated the safe exit of the defeated Rwandan Army and its militias along with their weapons, and this is one of the reasons why the refugee camps quickly became militarized.”

These concerns were shared by the former boss of USAID, Richard McCall, who blamed the international community which "initiated its long-term engagement with Rwanda by accommodating violence,” and by allowing "the genocidaires to set up shop in the camps...contributed to the institutionalization of violence”, rather than "break the cycle of impunity” which gave rise to the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994

The solution to that problem, McCall suggested, is "to be unequivocally clear about the genocide and its perpetrators” because "the nature of the evil continuing to plague the region cannot be underestimated.”

Conclusion

As French philosopher Albert Camus poignantly observed: "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding..."

This quote underscores the dangers of short-sighted policies. The DRC government's decision to accommodate the genocidaires, perhaps out of ignorance of the long-term consequences, ultimately fueled instability and violence.

The presence of genocidaires in the region not only powered prevailing ethnic tensions but also provided a catalyst for the emergence of various armed groups vying for power and resources. These groups, principally FDLR, have wreaked havoc on civilian populations, committing atrocities ranging from mass killings to widespread sexual violence, which has led to the displacement of millions of people, creating a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions.

Compounding this tragedy, the international community, represented by the UN Security Council, has repeatedly fallen short in its duty to protect the vulnerable populations. Despite mounting evidence of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities committed by armed groups, especially the Rwandan genocidaires, the Security Council's response has been tepid and ineffectual. Political gridlock, competing geopolitical interests, and a lack of consensus among member states have hindered meaningful action, allowing the crisis to fester and escalate unchecked.

The failure of the UN Security Council to address the root causes of the conflict in eastern DRC represents a betrayal of humanity and a dereliction of duty to uphold the principles of peace, security, and human rights. The people of the region, continue to suffer the consequences of this inaction, trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of conflict and despair.