French claim early success in Rwanda

COLONEL Didier Thibaut, the commander of the French intervention forces in the Cyangugu region of south-western Rwanda, sat yesterday on a verdant hillside, bursting with pride. Playing with a stalk of grass, he surveyed the neat rows of hundreds of blue-green tents and the to-ings and fro-ings of nearly 8,000 displaced Tutsis at the Nyarushishi refugee camp below him with a sense of achievement.

'The first phase of this operation has been a success,' Colonel Thibaut announced with a big smile. 'The province of Cyangugu is calmer. Tension is diminishing. The civilian population is protected.' As if his word alone were not good enough, he added: 'The population, the priest and the prefect of the area have told me so.'

Hutus, persecuted Tutsi refugees, the local authorities, almost everyone touched by France's humanitarian operation was, according to Colonel Thibaut, 'enchanted' by the French soldiers. The situation, he said, was 'tres positive'.

It is less than one week since the first 50 French troops drove across the Zaire border into government-controlled western Rwanda to try to put a stop to the ethnic slaughter of minority Tutsis, but already Paris is claiming victory. French officials here and in Paris say that a threatened region has been reassured and protected and that stability has returned. They say that critics of the operation, especially the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), fighting government forces and their extremist Hutu militia allies, can plainly see that the French mission is purely humanitarian.

Along the roads and the hills around the border town of Cyangugu, new military recruits run in formation carrying wooden rifles. Military training is taking place throughout government-held areas in western Rwanda, according to government soldiers. And, possibly most important, army morale, which just two weeks ago was on the verge of collapse, is now soaring, soldiers say.

Colonel Thibaut called the military training 'normal' for a country at war and rejected RPF accusations that the French intervention was aimed at bolstering the Hutu government. 'Since the beginning we have constantly explained our mission to the people and the authorities. We are not here to combat the RPF. We are not here to help the government forces fight the RPF. We are here to protect the civilian population. For war is an affair between the Rwandan forces and the RPF. We are not involved in those affairs,' he said.

Relief organisations, human rights groups and many Tutsis are less concerned by the military training than they are by the continuing presence of the militias on the roads. Checkpoints under banners welcoming the French forces and condemning the RPF are in place along roads throughout the south-west. Many are manned by youths carrying clubs and, in at least one case, a hand grenade. 'We don't have orders to disarm militias,' Colonel Thibaut said. 'What we have done is to demand that the authorities send a message to the militias that we won't tolerate excesses against the population. The authorities have committed themselves to dismantling barriers by armed civilians.'

While not explicitly pro-government, Colonel Thibaut put a positive gloss on government efforts to control the situation. When asked whether he thought that the French presence in government-held areas, in some cases alongside Rwandan government-held forces, is legitimising the Hutu extremist government, he replied: 'The legitimacy of this government is not my problem. Of course we co-operate with the authorities. We have not come here as conquerors.'

But at a Catholic church a few miles from Nyarushishi refugee camp, Father Jacques, a priest and an ethnic Tutsi too frightened to give his real name, shook his head when he was asked if he felt safe.

'We cannot leave this parish. If we were to go out and get stopped at a road-block, when they asked for an identity card and saw that we were Tutsi, whack,' the priest said, making a short chopping motion with his hand. 'We would be killed.'

'The French may want to bring peace here and protect us but they arrived late,' Father Jacques said. Of the 55,000 Tutsis in south western Rwanda before the outbreak of violence on 6 April, only about 10,000 remain, the 8,000 refugees at Nyarushishi and a few thousand hiding elsewhere. The rest, about 80 per cent, are believed to be dead. Father Jacques said he believed the Hutus were still searching out and killing any Tutsis they could find away from French eyes.

(Photograph omitted)