THE last thing Rwanda and eastern Zaire need is an international force of the type now being sent to the region.
The force is not wanted by the Rwandan government or by the rebels in eastern Zaire. The aid agencies currently meeting the humanitarian needs of the refugees say the idea is pointless.
Valuable resources which could be spent on feeding, clothing and giving shelter to the refugees or on the rebuilding of Rwanda will now be spent on fancy military hardware. It costs 10 times as much to provide military assistance to refugees as it does to pay the aid agencies to do the same work.
The arrival of the force in the area without a clear sense of purpose, transparent command structures or a mandate to take effective action, is likely to be a recipe for disaster.
Backers of the force claim it can play an essential role in ferreting out the remaining refugees hiding in the hills of eastern Zaire. But if this is the case, why didn't the international community move more quickly, and send in the force a month ago?
At that time, remember, it was widely believed that 1.2 million Hutu refugees were starving to death. Now we have seen that the 600,000 returned refugees are in relatively good health most of those who crossed the border with Rwanda were exhausted, but free of serious illness or hunger.
It is clear, too, that the UNHCR seriously overestimated the number of refugees. Instead of the 700,000 it thought were unaccounted for, the overall number is probably closer to 200,000. But it has not yet been established whether these people are actually refugees or Zaireans displaced by the fighting (who also need help).
Nor is it clear that all the remaining refugees want to go home.
Even those who called for international intervention a month ago now acknowledge that events have turned out better than they could have imagined.
True, the Tutsi rebels and their masters in the Rwandan govern used force to repatriate the refugees. But once freed from the yoke of control by the Hutu Interahamwe fighters, most said they were happy to return to Rwanda.
An international force would only have shored up the status quo, leaving thousands of hostile Interahamwe on Rwanda's borders to perpetuate the conflict. At least now Rwanda is free to get on with solving its problems.
And it is here that help is needed, rather than in giving the Western armies an outing in eastern Zaire. Rwanda's population has jumped by almost one million in a month, placing enormous pressure on land, housing, food stocks and the justice system.
There is an urgent need for more human rights monitors to ensure that the returning Hutus are treated fairly in their local communities. The justice system needs to be kick started to deal with the perpetrators of the genocide and to relieve overcrowding in the prisons. And the Tutsi controlled regime needs to be encouraged to introduce genuine democracy and power sharing with the 85 per cent of the population who are Hutus.
The international force was conceived as an intervention between the Tutsi rebels in eastern Zaire and the Interahamwe fighters based in the camps. But that conflict is nearly over now the Interahamwe have been routed, their numbers reduced and the control over the camps gone forever.
In its place, there is now a civil war in progress in Zaire. The commander of the Tutsi rebel forces, Laurent Kabila, aims is to lead his troops to Kinshasa and to oust President Mobutu. Every ethnic group in South Kivu and beyond seems to have its own agenda in the spreading anarchy in Zaire.
What plans has the international community to deal with this scenario? Will it once again end up mired in a bloody, unresolvable conflict, as happened in Somalia?
If countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Italy are serious about peace in the region, they should rein in their arms dealers. All these countries have exported weapons to the Interahamwe, authors of the genocide of 800,000 people only two years ago, in defiance of international sanctions and all codes of morality.
