All the Hatred in the World

By ANDREW PURVIS/NYARUBUYE

The miasma of death hangs over the village of Nyarubuye, overpowering the scent of the surrounding eucalyptus trees. Their leaves, rustling in the wind, are all that moves. In the cool of the parish church, a body lies between the rough wooden pews, its skull split from crown to forehead by a machete blade. Outside, a mother and child, caught from behind by screaming Hutu militia, lie face down in the flowers, locked in a pitiful final embrace. Farther away, in a low mission building, 400 more bodies are piled on one another, the rooms thick with the stench of rotting flesh. One woman and her baby tried to hide in a small pit toilet; they were discovered and hacked to death. "How can I come back here?" exclaims Consolata Mukatwagirimana, a young Tutsi woman of 27 who escaped the massacre six weeks ago that may have left 1,500 dead here and in the surrounding hills. "My family is gone; our neighbors are dead; there is nothing left."

For the predominately Tutsi rebel movement that now seems destined to form the next government of bloodstained Rwanda, that is a haunting lament. As they press their advantage against government troops and murderous Hutu militia, the rebels of the Rwandese Patriotic Front are beginning to realize how little of their tiny Central African homeland will be left for them if and when the R.P.F. takes control. Mile upon mile of terraced hillsides and thatch-roofed villages lies deserted. The reek of decomposing bodies and packs of well-fed dogs serve as the only reminders that this was once one of the most populous regions on earth.

After two months of bloodletting, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans have fled to neighboring countries -- some to escape the butchery; others, including Hutu who joined in the killing, fearing retribution from the rebels. Up to 2 million more have jammed into camps within Rwanda, seeking safety in numbers. Most are in government-held territory in the western and southwestern parts of the country, out of reach of aid agencies and at severe risk for epidemics and starvation. United Nations peacekeepers, deployed in the once picturesque capital of Kigali now being shelled into a sprawling ruin, concede they are powerless to intervene: last week the diminutive force was twice compelled to suspend humanitarian operations after its vehicles came under heavy fire.

By one estimate, more than half of Rwanda's 7.5 million population has been killed or displaced since April, and that number is growing daily as massacres continue in government-held territories. "Our people have been totally traumatized," says rebel Captain Richard Matsiko, a medical doctor treating massacre victims behind the front lines. "Children who could talk, laugh and entertain are just blank. They don't know what has happened to them."

For the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers of the R.P.F., it has been a bitter homecoming. Many were born or have lived most of their life in exile, their families driven from the former Belgian colony after the Hutu ousted the Tutsi elite from power in 1959. In neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Zaire and Uganda, they suffered the indignities of the stateless: scapegoats for the political crises of the day. Through it all, the exiles saw their homeland as a mythical country of verdant hillsides and crystal lakes, whose people and terrain they could glimpse only in textbooks. "I didn't know much about Rwanda," recalls rebel leader Paul Kagame, 37, in a rare quiet moment on the outskirts of Kigali last week. "But I knew it was my country."

Now, after nearly four years of marking their victories in inches -- in 1990 a single government soldier killed was cause for celebration -- Kagame's forces have taken well over half the country in just two months. Last week they pressed their offensive into Kigali and the southwest, relentlessly shelling Rwandan army positions and closing in on the seat of the interim government in Gitarama, 25 miles southwest of Kigali. Army troops, their morale plummeting, have yet to launch a single counterattack. Despite ongoing cease-fire talks in the capital, the rebels are unlikely to call a halt to the fighting before the government has been routed and the massacres stopped.

Yet with each advance, the true extent of the country's destruction comes more sharply into focus. Late last week rebels seized the town of Kabgayi, releasing up to 20,000 Tutsi who had been held captive by government soldiers. At one camp, a local priest reported that 50 Tutsi were dying each day, some taken out and killed under cover of darkness by Hutu militia, others dying from untreated bullet and machete wounds. "Our people have too much hatred," rebel soldier Patrick Kayilanga, 24, said last week in Kigali. When rebels took the city's main airport recently, Kayilanga discovered that both his parents and 10 brothers and sisters had been massacred. Now, he says, he is making plans to emigrate to Canada: "Rwanda is a tiny place. But we have all the hatred in the world."

The R.P.F. leadership is only too aware that a military victory alone will not bring lasting peace to their homeland. Despite a number of moderate Hutu in their ranks, theirs is still seen as a Tutsi movement, representing an ethnic minority that even before the latest massacres made up just 15% of the population. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu who have fled the rebel advance to neighboring countries must be convinced that they can return home without threat of retribution.

To persuade them, R.P.F. leaders talk of prosecuting only the ringleaders -- the "burgomasters" and government officials whose orders triggered the massacres. Many of the militia were acting only on threat of death and should be shown clemency, they say. "These people have been taught to hate, taught to kill," asserted Kagame. "They can be re-educated."

But that magnanimous message has been undercut by reports of rebels killing the Hutu as they flee the country. In the huge camps of northwestern Tanzania, a number of refugees are telling stories of massacres that they claim are committed by the R.P.F. Those tales are difficult to confirm -- and the rebels argue that they have been planted by militia in the camps as a way of deflecting blame from their own misdeeds -- but the effect is the same. The Tutsi have a long way to go before convincing all Hutu that their intentions are genuine and that the cycle of death will not continue.

More difficult still will be quelling the anger of the Tutsi, who have doubtless suffered most from Rwanda's carnage. Some, like Consolata Mukatwagirimana in the village of Nyarubuye, are resigned. "The Hutu are there," she said last week. "You can't do anything about them. You can't kill them all."

But others still harbor a fierce hostility toward their attackers. In the rebel-held town of Gahini, Rayontina Mukansonera, 19, describes being raped repeatedly by Hutu militia before escaping in the confusion following the rebel advance. "They showed no mercy," she says, matter-of-factly. "Someone who destroys your life deserves to die also." For the R.P.F., healing the ethnic wounds of this brutal war will take more than words alone.