Great Lakes Refugee Crisis - Outbreak of War

Outbreak of War

The crisis became increasingly unstable as it continued into 1996. The Hutu militants in the camps, now well organized, began to expand their activities from raids into Rwanda to attacks on the Banyamulenge ethnic group in eastern Zaire. The Banyamulenge were ethnic kinspeople to the Tutsi, having migrated from Rwanda over a century earlier. Rwanda began to secretly ship weapons across the border to arm the Banyamulenge in their fight against the exiled Rwandan Hutus, resulting in a low level conflict in the Zairean provinces of North and South Kivu. While details are unclear, sometime during this period Rwanda, with the support of Uganda, began to plan the creation of a rebellion led by Laurent Kabila.

In October 1996, a Zairean government official based in Bukavu declared that the Banyamulenge would be forced to leave the country, apparently as an attempt to end the conflict between them and the Hutu militants. This led to an uprising of the Banyamulenge in the Kivus, who were now well-armed by the RPF, and an exchange of mortar fire between the armies of Zaire and Rwanda across Lake Kivu. With a speed that many observers found suspicious, Kabila found himself head of the well-supplied rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (AFDL), which included the Banyamulenge militias. This new conflict came to be known as the First Congo War. At the time, Rwanda officially denied any military connection to the new rebel group, although it openly expressed support for its goal of overthrowing Mobutu.

The first objective of the AFDL was the clearing of the string of rebel camps along the Rwandan border, setting the stage for what has been called one of the most bizarre and macabre situations of modern times. As the AFDL captured a series of Kivutian border towns in November 1996, the Hutu militants herded the refugees into Mugungu, creating a teeming mass of around half a million people who were prohibited from returning across the border by Hutu forces arrayed facing the border. The Hutu resistance was broken after the RPF swung southwest and flanked the Hutu force. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled back into Rwanda as the aid organizations and foreign countries stood impotent to affect the course of events.

Tens of thousands of refugees also moved further into Zaire. Some of these were officials and soldiers associated with the genocide and their families, but most were simply swept along in the giant waves of people. The AFDL and Rwandan RPF forces pursued the militants westward and tens of thousands of refugees died of violence, exposure to the elements, and starvation in the jungles of eastern Zaire.

In December 1996, the government of Tanzania announced that the 550,000 Rwandan refugees it was hosting must return and forcibly emptied the camps over the next few months. By the beginning of 1997, the vast majority of refugees who had fled in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide has returned. The refugee crisis precipitated by an internal genocide had been ended by a new war.