Can The Strongman Make Peace?

The tall, pencil-thin general looks like a man in total control. Though Vice President and Defense Minister Paul Kagame is trading his uniform for suit and tie, no one doubts that the 37-year-old commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front wields the real power in his homeland. "This country needs to move," he says. "Someone must give it direction."

Westerners have found the Tutsi leader's proud, reserved manner hard to penetrate. But Shawn McCormick, deputy director of African studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thinks the former rebel has peaceful purposes now. "He is a closed, private man who is committed to certain democratic principles," says McCormick. "He is against % authoritarianism and mass killings. He knows the importance of maintaining discipline and order."

From his earliest days, Kagame has been caught up in the country's turmoil. Born in southern Rwanda, he was taken to Uganda at the age of two when his parents fled anti-Tutsi pogroms. He grew up in a refugee camp. After high school, he became a guerrilla fighter in the Ugandan rebel army, where he rose to chief of military intelligence. When the R.P.F. invaded Rwanda in 1990, Kagame was taking an officers' course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The assault foundered when Major General Fred Rwigyema was killed. Kagame flew back to take charge. "Hundreds had died or deserted," recalls Aloysia Inyumba, now Minister for Women. "Kagame asked us, 'Who is going on with me? Fighting is not about guns. It's not about territory. It's in the mind. We can fight with sticks. We can fight with stones.' He talked and talked, and we all went on with him."

As the new R.P.F. leader, Kagame was a brilliant guerrilla tactitian and a strict disciplinarian, banning alcohol and discouraging sex. Tolerant and inclusive, he broadened the movement to include members of all factions, provided they shared his democratic sentiments. Conflicts between Tutsi and Hutu, he told TIME's Marguerite Michaels last week, "are not a problem. We will work it out."

Yet he knows the frightened refugees are not so sure. "We've had months of genocide," he says. "People are grabbing property. There have been reprisal killings. We need time for the wounds to heal, and that will take a long period." In the meantime, he urges his people to trust him: "There is nothing to fear from this government. Come back and see who Kagame really is."