Note: This is the third of a three part series by the Washington Post
explaining how the US military has been circumventing Congressional
restrictions on military aid by training special forces teams in foreign
countries. Although this final segment is not as focused on drug control as
part two, this segment is important for documenting how this type of
military training can be transferred to any type of setting - even for the
massacre of civilians as in Rwanda.

AFRICANS USE TRAINING IN UNEXPECTED WAYS

KIGALI, Rwanda -- Last of three articles

When Rwandan troops invaded the former Zaire in October 1996, it was a rude
jolt for the U.S. officials managing relations with this small central
African nation.

Following the 1994 civil war here, during which more than a half-million
Rwandans were massacred, the United States had become increasingly close to
the Rwandan government and the army that backed it. Rwanda's de facto
leader, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, was regarded in Washington as a brilliant
military strategist. Hoping to build stability in strife-torn central
Africa, Washington pumped military aid into Kagame's army, and U.S. Army
Special Forces and other military personnel trained hundreds of Rwandan
troops.

But Kagame and his colleagues had designs of their own. While the Green
Berets trained the Rwandan Patriotic Army, that army was itself secretly
training Zairian rebels. Rwandan forces then crossed into Zaire and joined
with the rebels to attack refugee camps where exiled Rwandan extremists
were holed up. That touched off a war that eventually toppled Africa's
longest-reigning dictator, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko.

Although the United States shared the goals of dismantling the refugee
camps and replacing Mobutu, the invasion took Washington by surprise,
sources in both countries say. And when the Rwandan forces became involved
in massacres and other human rights abuses inside Zaire, now known as
Congo, the United States faced a dilemma over how to react that persists to
this day.

The story of the U.S. relationship with the Rwandan military illustrates
the complications that have occurred when military ties -- and, in
particular, hard-to-track training operations by the Pentagon's special
operations forces -- have become a prime instrument of American policy.
Since the early 1990s, deployments of special operations forces have been
rapidly expanding around Africa, part of a worldwide increase in contacts
that are not subject to the civilian and congressional oversight that
applies to other foreign military aid programs.

Many of the exercises are funded through a 1991 law that allows deployments
if the primary mission is to train U.S. troops. How U.S. troops benefit
from this training is not readily apparent. But in many cases special
operations troops, of which the Army's Special Forces are the largest
element, have instructed foreign armies in how to combat their own domestic
insurgencies, or pursued U.S. policy objectives ranging from stopping
narcotics traffic to preventing genocide.

In the last two years alone, U.S. special operations troops -- mainly Green
Berets from the 3rd Special Forces Group based at Fort Bragg, N.C. -- have
taught light infantry or other military tactics to troops in Benin,
Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory
Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda,
Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. An initial
exercise with South Africa is planned for the fourth quarter of this year.

U.S. special operations commanders say that among the purposes of the
training, called the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, is to
build contacts with foreign military leaders and encourage respect for
human rights by foreign armies.

But U.S. access to military officials has not necessarily meant U.S.
influence over their actions. In the case of Rwanda, U.S. officials
publicly portrayed their engagement with the army as almost entirely
devoted to human rights training. But the Special Forces exercises also
covered other areas, including combat skills. As a result, U.S. promotion
of human rights has been overshadowed by questions about whether Rwandan
units trained by Americans later participated in atrocities during the war
in Zaire.

A U.N. report released last month charged that elements of the Rwandan army
were involved in abuses during the war that "constitute crimes against
humanity," including the massacre of unarmed civilians and refugees. Rep.
Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the House subcommittee on
international operations and human rights, has questioned whether the
Pentagon even has tried to find out if Rwandan troops trained by Special
Forces were among those who committed the massacres.

In fact, according to Pentagon officials, no such review has been
conducted, because none is required by the 1991 legislation. At Smith's
request, the Pentagon will provide the names of Rwandan troops trained by
Americans since 1994 and after-action reports from their missions. But a
Pentagon spokeswoman, Col. Nancy Burt, said that "as a practical matter, it
would not be feasible" to vet the Rwandan forces for human rights
violations "due to the large number of persons with whom we conduct training."

Despite continued reports of human rights abuses by the Rwandan army, this
time inside Rwanda, a new round of Joint Combined Exchange Training between
Army Special Forces and Rwandan units is scheduled to begin July 15. It
will be the second this year. The Pentagon also plans to send an assessment
team to Rwanda in the coming weeks to see whether and how the military
training should be further enhanced.

U.S. officials defend the collaboration by arguing that it is wiser to
engage with Rwanda to help it develop a human rights culture than to step
aside and risk a new descent by the country into chaos.

The effort to support and strengthen the Rwandan military is "a matter of
practical policy interests and common sense," a Clinton administration
official said. "Assuming diplomacy fails and [ethnic conflict] grows,
somebody needs to be in a position to contain it."

Although Rwanda is an impoverished, shattered nation at the far fringes of
U.S. national security interests, it is not the prototypical weak client
state seeking military help from a powerful patron. Instead, its
relationship with Washington is built on a complex mix of history, personal
relationships, shared geopolitical objectives, and -- not least, some would
say -- guilt.

The origins of the relationship lie in the Rwandan civil war, which began
in 1990 when a rebel force led by minority Tutsi exiles invaded Rwanda from
Uganda in an attempt to overthrow the government, led by ethnic Hutus.
Kagame, a Tutsi who was then a colonel in Uganda's army, was in a training
course at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort
Leavenworth, Kan., when the war began. He dropped out of the course to take
command of the rebel army, then later participated in talks that led to a
1993 peace accord.

The peace collapsed in April 1994, when an airplane carrying Rwanda's Hutu
president was shot down near Kigali, killing all aboard. Extremist Hutus in
the government and army subsequently orchestrated massacres of Tutsis
around the country. At least 500,000 people were slaughtered while
indecisive Western governments and the United Nations debated what to do.

Finally, a revived rebel movement led by Kagame defeated the government
army and took power in Kigali in July. Hundreds of thousands of Hutus,
fearing retribution, fled to eastern Zaire, and many of the Hutu soldiers
and militiamen involved in the massacres took refuge in their midst.

U.S. officials were deeply relieved that the rebels had halted the
massacres, thus ending pressure for a U.S.-led intervention. They also said
they were greatly impressed by Kagame's leadership. By the end of the war,
some U.S. officials had concluded that Kagame was "a brilliant commander,
able to think outside the box," as one put it. "He was a fairly impressive
guy," added the official, who met Kagame in the early 1990s. "He was more
than a military man. He was politically attuned and knew what compromise was."

Immediately after the war, the United States helped mount a humanitarian
operation to assist the refugees in Zaire. Then-Secretary of Defense
William J. Perry visited the region, and he too was taken by the new
Rwandan leaders.

"When Secretary Perry visited the American troops in Kigali, Goma and
Entebbe, he was impressed by how, so close [after] the genocide, these
people [the new Rwandan army] could be talking about reconstruction and
reconciliation instead of revenge and retaliation," the defense official said.

Still, Rwanda's new civilian government was largely a facade. Kagame, who
took the posts of vice president and defense minister, remained in charge.
With democratic elections nowhere in sight, a diplomat said, the government
was, in essence, a "disguised military dictatorship."

U.S. officials nevertheless focused on the Kagame leadership as one with
which they could work to restore order in Rwanda, eastern Zaire and
neighboring areas of central Africa.

For its part, the new Rwandan government felt it held the upper hand in its
relations with Washington, because its army alone had put an end to the
massacres while the West dithered. Analysts here say the Rwandans have
played on Washington's sense of guilt about the genocide of 1994, and its
stated objective of preventing a recurrence. In deciding how to deal with
the lingering problem of the Rwandan refugees and militant exiles in Zaire,
for example, "we were [diplomatically] stronger because nobody could argue
against us," said Patrick Mazimhaka, a minister to Rwandan President
Pasteur Bizimungu.

Said a diplomat here, "I think the Americans were terribly manipulated by
this government and now are almost held hostage by it."

Lt. Col. Frank Rusagara, secretary general of the Rwandan Defense Ministry
and the top policymaker for military development, described the army as a
reflection of Rwandan society: in flux as it tries to establish a brand new
set of core social values. "Among us there are orphans of genocide
victims," Rusagara said. "Among us there are sons and daughters whose
parents actively were in the genocide."

"Over a period of time, we've got to establish democratic institutions and
values for the military to protect," said Rusagara, who returned in April
from three months of defense resource management training at the U.S. Naval
Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. "So I think in Rwanda, we're
evolving."

Rusagara presides over a military administration that started from scratch
in 1994 as a national entity. The army inherited little from the Hutu-led
armed forces that was worth saving. After all, much of the old army,
especially the presidential guard, perpetrated the genocide against the
Tutsis, or stood by.

The U.S. military engagement here began in 1995 as an effort to help the
Rwandan army with its task of reinvention, both of itself and of the
nation's power structure. U.S. officials said they wanted the former rebel
army to become a professional force that would support the principles of
the democracy that Rwandan officials say they aspire to create.

Hundreds of soldiers and officers were enrolled in U.S. training programs,
both in Rwanda and in the United States. Rwandan officers went to the
United States to study military justice, defense resource management and
law of war and human rights. Scores of Rwandans were trained for land-mine
detection and disposal under the U.S.-funded National De-mining Office,
which was up and running in early 1996.

When asked in a December 1996 congressional hearing about the kinds of
training the United States provided to Rwanda, Ambassador Richard Bogosian,
the Clinton administration's coordinator for Rwanda, said the training
dealt "almost exclusively with the human rights end of the spectrum as
distinct from purely military operations."

But some Rwandan units were getting U.S. combat training, as well. In a
JCET program conducted by U.S. Special Forces, Rwandans studied camouflage
techniques, small-unit movement, troop-leading procedures, soldier-team
development, rappelling, mountaineering, marksmanship, weapon maintenance
and day and night navigation.

And while the training went on, U.S. officials were meeting regularly with
Kagame and other senior Rwandan leaders to discuss the continuing military
threat faced by the government from inside Zaire.

Hutu militia forces driven into Zaire had regrouped and by late 1995 were
launching raids across the border into Rwanda from the camps in eastern
Zaire, where more than 1 million Rwandan refugees still languished. Efforts
by the United Nations to send the refugees back home were repeatedly
blocked by the Hutu militants, who depended on U.N.-supplied food and fuel.

U.S. officials agreed that the camps were a problem requiring a solution,
and had discussed several options with Kagame, including air strikes to hit
at the extremist bases, sources said. Information about the camps was
exchanged between the two countries, a Western military analyst said.

Kagame himself visited Washington in early August 1996 to discuss the
situation with senior Clinton administration officials. He later said that
he had been seeking solutions from Washington, but left disappointed. U.S.
officials said Kagame had warned that the camps in Zaire had to be
dismantled and had hinted that Rwanda might act if the United Nations did
not. They said they expected that Kagame might try something, but did not
know when he would do it and what form it would take.

Meanwhile, from July 17 to Aug. 30, a U.S. Army Special Forces team from
Fort Bragg instructed Rwandan army soldiers in small-unit leader training,
rifle marksmanship, first aid, land navigation and tactical skills, such as
patrolling. In September, dozens of other Rwandan soldiers received
training under the International Military Education program.

Clearly, the focus of Rwandan-U.S. military discussion had shifted from how
to build human rights to how to combat an insurgency. In 1995, a diplomatic
observer said, Kagame's attitude seemed to be, "I want [the army] to get
rid of that bush mentality. I want to teach them by sending them" for
training.

"But then," the diplomat said, "when the infiltration [from the Zaire
camps] started and you have the [Zaire] war, it got all out of hand."

Kagame's alliance with the Pentagon was not the only one he nurtured after
1994. He also remained in close touch with Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni,
a longtime comrade. With Museveni's support, Kagame conceived a plan to
back a rebel movement in eastern Zaire. He hoped to clear out the Rwandan
refugee camps, crush the exiled Hutu militias and deal a blow to Mobutu,
one of Africa's most corrupt rulers. Uganda contributed some troops and
materiel to the war effort, and Angola, Zambia and several other African
states later joined in. Laurent Kabila, an aging former Marxist
revolutionary, was recruited to head the rebels, who tried to keep their
connections to Rwanda and Uganda hidden.

The operation was launched in October 1996, just a few weeks after Kagame's
trip to Washington and the completion of the Special Forces training
mission. But according to sources in both governments, the Clinton
administration did not learn of the infiltration by Rwandan troops and
officers or the extent of their ambitions until the fighting was well
underway. Two sources in Kigali described the United States as angry and
embarrassed at being surprised.

"I wouldn't say they pulled the wool over our eyes," a U.S. defense
official said. "They acted in what they perceived to be their national
interest." He compared it to Israel's frequent incursions into neighboring
countries without advance U.S. knowledge.

Once the war started, the United States provided "political assistance" to
Rwanda, a Western diplomat said. An official of the U.S. Embassy in Kigali
traveled to eastern Zaire numerous times to liaise with Kabila. Soon, the
rebels had moved on. Brushing off the Zairian army with the help of the
Rwandan forces, they marched through Africa's third-largest nation in seven
months, with only a few significant military engagements. Mobutu fled the
capital, Kinshasa, in May 1997, and Kabila took power, changing the name of
the country to Congo.

U.S. officials deny that there were any U.S. military personnel with
Rwandan troops in Zaire during the war, although unconfirmed reports of a
U.S. advisory presence have circulated in the region since the war's
earliest days. Rwandan officials also bristle at the suggestion that they
would have needed any U.S. military support.

Still, U.S. military training continued inside Rwanda during the war. A
small contingent of Special Forces land-mine-removal trainers was in the
country even as Rwandan troops were moving into Zaire in early October.
Small Mobile Training Teams in military civil affairs and public
information were in Rwanda in early November 1996. Another contingent of
mine-removal trainers was in the country for much of December.

Another mobile training team and a mine-removal mission came to Rwanda in
early 1997 as well, although the mobile training mission was aborted
because no Rwandan troops were available. Rwandan army "operational
requirements precluded training," according to a Pentagon chronology. The
mission was to have begun on March 15 -- the day that Rwandan-led forces
captured Kisangani, Zaire's second-largest city, in one of the few actual
battles of the war.

The United States favored Mobutu's overthrow. But the Rwandan campaign
inside Zaire was often brutal. Although Rwandan and Congolese officials
have said their only targets were former Rwandan soldiers and gunmen, U.N.
investigators, private human rights groups and journalists have collected
considerable evidence, including first-hand accounts from witnesses and
soldiers, that Rwandan officers and troops participated in massacres of
civilians. For example, rebel soldiers and witnesses have said that two
Rwandan officers commanding Zairian rebels ordered the slaughter of
hundreds of unarmed Rwandan refugees who had gathered near Mbandaka, a town
in northwestern Zaire, on May 13, 1997, near the end of the war.

The U.N. commission later formed to investigate wartime abuses was thwarted
by Kabila's government and eventually abandoned its probe in frustration.
Nevertheless, its members did gather testimony about the Mbandaka
massacres. Its report concluded that "these killings violate international
humanitarian law and, to the extent that Rwandan officers were involved,
Rwanda's obligations under international human rights law."

of the Rwandan army's human rights record say its abuses did not end with
the war in Zaire. They cite periodic revenge killings in Rwanda, directed
against Hutus suspected of participating in the 1994 massacres. Other
observers cite evidence that the human rights record is improving,
including a recent slackening in violence against civilians and the
prosecution of military figures for abuses.

Now conflict appears to be rising again as the Hutu extremist militants who
have returned to Rwanda following the war in Zaire mount a low-grade
insurgency that has spread from Ruhengeri prefecture in the northwest --
the extremists' traditional heartland -- to areas close to Kigali.

The conflict is variously described as a low-grade civil war or a terrorist
threat. A diplomat here said the conflict has sent the Rwandan army back to
some of its harsh ways. In the northwest region where the insurgents had
been strongest, the army's strategy is to "systematically reduce the male
population," the diplomat said, speaking anonymously.

Despite the concerns, a Pentagon team will travel to Rwanda in the coming
weeks to assess how the army is coping with the insurgents and what kind of
assistance the military may need, a U.S. defense official said. The range
of possibilities being considered includes combat and counterinsurgency
training, conducted by U.S. Special Forces or by private contractors,
administration officials say.

U.S. officials clearly still see Kagame and his army as a partner, in spite
of all that has happened in the last two years. "In terms of determination,
you can't underestimate them," the diplomat said. "In terms of discipline,
they're very disciplined. In terms of human rights? It's a good-weather
project. They apply it in peacetime, but now they have a war."

Special Operations Forces in Africa

For fiscal years 1997 and 1998; some of this year's exercises are planned.

In an effort to increase the U.S. military engagement in Africa, special
operations forces, mainly Green Berets, have trained the militaries of 31
out of 54 African nations in such tasks as military tactics, light
infantry, de-mining and humanitarian relief. Some of the training takes
place under the hard-to-track Pentagon JCET program, which is supposed to
be a program to train U.S. troops abroad.

Countries that have received light infantry or other military training:

Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau,
Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda,
Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa (planned), Togo, Uganda, Zambia and
Zimbabwe.

Countries that have received training for demining:

Angola, Chad, Eritrea, Mozambique, Namibia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe.

Countries that have received training for a regional peacekeeping force:

Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Troops from these countries would join the State Department-led African
Crisis Response Initiative.

Evacuation operations:

Special operations forces have been called in to evacuate U.S. citizens
from Liberia, Central African Republic, Congo (the former Zaire) and Sierra
Leone.

Background

The Central African Conflict

Sparked by ethnic differences going back to the end of the colonial period,
bloody conflict erupted in the Central African nation of Rwanda in 1994 and
Zaire (now Congo) in 1996. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed
during the fighting.

RWANDA:

Population

6 million

85 % Hutu, 14 % Tutsis, 1% Twa (pygmies)

Early governments

Hutus, who had rebelled against the minority Tutsi monarchy in 1959, formed
the government when independence came in 1962 and held onto power until 1994.

The conflict

1994: In April, Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, is killed
when is plane is shot down near Kigali.

The Hutu majority immediately blames Tutsis for the death, and the Hutu-led
army and allied militias systematically massacre Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
More than 500,000 are killed in two months.

Tutsi exiles in Uganda lead an attack into Rwanda, and local Tutsis join in
the fight. In July, the Tutsi force captures the capital.

At least 1.1 million Hutus, fearing revenge from their Tutsi neighbors,
flee the country, mostly to Zaire, where they set up refugee camps around
Goma and farther south, around Bukavu. Former Hutu soldiers and militiamen
responsible for the 1994 massacre mix with the refugees and sometimes
terrorize them.

1995: Tutsi-dominated government in Kigali calls on the Hutu refugees to
come home and promises no revenge against those not involved in the 1994
massacres.

1996: In October, the Zairian government of Mobutu Sese Seko orders Tutsis,
whose ancestors had settled in the eastern part of the country near Rwanda
centuries ago, expelled.

Zairian Tutsis, led by Laurent Kabila, attack Hutus in refugee camps along
the Rwandan border. The Zairian Tutsi rebels, backed by Rwandan soldiers,
capture Goma.

Zairian and Rwandan troops clash across the border.

Tutsi rebel forces in Zaire bombard a refugee camp near Goma, prompting
about 700,000 Hutu refugees to stream back to Rwanda. Others, including the
radicals responsible for the 1994 massacres, move deeper into Zaire.

1997: Tutsi rebels move westward across Zaire, capturing town after town as
the ill-disciplined Zairian army retreats. In May, Kabila's forces capture
Kinshasa, and Mobutu flees to Morocco.

Kabila declares himself leader of the country, which he renames Congo.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon has forged new military
contacts with countries around the world, using special operations forces
such as the Green Berets and Navy SEALs without White House and
congressional oversight. This series of articles will examine how those
deployments have grown, how they have influenced U.S. policy and how they
have led to U.S. training of foreign armies accused of corruption and human
rights violations.

SUNDAY: A 1991 law has enabled special operations forces to establish
programs in more than 100 countries while avoiding many restrictions placed
on other U.S. military assistance. Although designed with the narrow
intention of training U.S. troops, the law has helped make America's
premier soldiers unofficial diplomats in remote corners of the world, often
bringing them into conflict with broader aims of U.S. policy.

MONDAY: Special operations forces are training every army in Latin America,
exempt from White House and congressional restrictions on aid. The forces
have prompted questions from U.S. and Latin American critics about whether
such unmonitored involvement with the region's militaries is appropriate
when fledgling democratic governments are struggling to consolidate
civilian rule.

TODAY: The story of the U.S. relationship with the Rwandan military
illustrates the complications that have occurred when training operations
by the Pentagon have become a prime instrument of American policy. A
program advertised as promoting human rights has been overshadowed by
questions about whether Rwandan units trained by Americans later committed
atrocities.

The articles will be available on The Post's Web site at
www.washingtonpost.com

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski