JIM LEHRER: Now a conversation with Philip Gourevitch, staff writer at the New Yorker, author of a book due out next year on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Gourevitch has spent much of the past two years in Rwanda and Zaire. His most recent article in the August 4th New Yorker described important changes on the African continent set in motion by the Rwandan killings. Elizabeth Farnsworth talked to him last week.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Gourevitch, thanks very much for being with us.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH, The New Yorker: Thank you.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let’s start with the genocide, itself. You wrote in the New Yorker that "Rwanda had presented the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler’s war against the Jews and the West sent blankets and beans and medical care to camps controlled by the killers." Elaborate on that.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, I think that really one has to understand all that has happened in the last few years: The Congolese war and many of the shifts that have been taking place in Africa--as an African response to what was just an extraordinary crime, the decision by an African government to exterminate one of its population, the Tutsi minority that was exterminated by a Hutu majority-led government in Rwanda, almost successfully, 800,000 people in a hundred days were killed in 1994. The international response was to treat this not as a political situation and not really in any active engaged way as a crime but as a humanitarian crisis.

When a rebel Rwandan Tutsi army took control of Rwanda and established a new government, the perpetrators fled with much of the civilian population to camps, where they were catered by the UN and the international aid agencies, and sustained as a political movement, as a military movement that was continuing to sow death and destruction throughout the region. And I think really all that has happened since must be understood in terms of the monstrosity of the crime, the fact that in the wake of such a crime things aren’t going to be cleaned up quickly.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, from this much flows, and that’s really what your article in this August--the August 4th New Yorker was about. First of all, in those camps, in what was then called Zaire and is now called Congo, they began--Hutus from those camps began to purge Tutsis that were in those areas. But things had changed, and part of that change was that Paul Kagame was vice president and minister of defense in Rwanda. Tell us about Paul Kagame.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, General Kagame was the leader of the Rwandese Patriotic Front, which was this rebel movement I was describing which had come down and which basically took over the country militarily in the wake of the genocide and became the backbone of the new government. And he had actually an interesting background. He had started out in Uganda--he had grown up in Uganda, himself, as a refugee from past Hutu persecutions of Tutsis, and he was a refugee there. He had served in the armies that overthrew Idi Amin and Milton Abote, the famous dictators in that area under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni, who’s now the president of Uganda. He then came, leading his own rebel army into Rwanda.

He’s a man who clearly recognized, from the moment that he had taken over Rwanda, that his challenge now--the war was not over. The country had been conquered but the enemy remained in exile, undefeated, and that until they were defeated, there was a war--essentially a low-level war ongoing, and a major war yet to be had. And this was an understood analysis really throughout the world. There was a fear of a tremendous cataclysm recurring in that region.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So when the Hutus that in those camps and Zairian troops start killing Tutsis again, it’s a real different--it’s a very different situation, with tremendous significance. Explain that.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, I would say that, in fact, they never stopped. The people who were--what--using the French word genocidaires--genociders, committers of genocide, the leaders of these camps were the genocideres and the genocideres never stopped being genocidaires. They suddenly turned these camps into havens for their cause and from the very start began infiltrating Rwanda to kill survivors of the genocide, specifically targeted to hit semi-military and civilian targets, and then branching out into this region of Eastern Zaire that lined the border with Rwanda to kill indigenous Tutsi populations there, as well as a number of other groups.

There was the impression that a Rwandan Hutuland was being carved out. President Mobutu, the dictator of Zaire for the preceding 35 years, seized this opportunity to create instability. He actually often ruled by creating pockets of instability and then trying to surf the chaos to his own advantage. And in this case what, of course, his advantage was that he had been isolated as a diplomatic pariah. And now he had a refugee crisis on his territory. And being Mobutu, this was something to exploit. This was an opportunity. It wasn’t a disaster. It was an opportunity. It backfired because from Kagame’s point of view there was going to be a fight.

There were two choices. The fight could happen in Rwanda, as the genocideres would have liked. They would have liked to re-invade Rwanda. Or, it could happen outside of Rwanda. And very early after the genocide, in early ‘95, Gen. Kagame began telling reporters, diplomats, basically anybody who would listen--he certainly told me on a number of occasions--we’re not going to let this go on indefinitely. If the international community cannot distinguish between war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity and refugees and is creating this danger on our borders by sustaining these camps, we’ll have to sort it out.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Now, give us the big picture. So you have a new alliance in Africa basically, which in dealing with that, also got rid of--also helped get rid of Mobutu. And this is a very significant change. Explain that.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, what was really perceived is that here was Zaire. Zaire was run by Mobutu. Mobutu was put in place by the Americans, the French, and the Belgians as a sort of high Cold War, broken dagger scenario, and he was the ultimate puppet of western interests. He had at many times faced rebellions in the past and had never defended himself, except by calling in foreign mercenaries or his patrons from Europe would send in troops.

And the feeling was this country, this regime is a virus from which cross-border problems have been occurring in Angola, in Uganda, in Sudan, in Burundi, in Rwanda. These were--this was nothing new. What was new was the feeling that we could not wait for the international community to sort it out. On the contrary, those who rely on others to defend them will be undefended, I think is really what one sees emerging as a thinking.

And so the military mind behind all of this was Kagame, was Rwanda, but Angola had interests and Angola had an air force. Uganda had tremendous political power and diplomatic power. Uganda had interests and Uganda was interested, and there was this feeling let us unite, move the international community out of the way, prevent any kind of intervention, and not just oust these genocideres from the border but actually conquer this country and remove the real problem, who is Mobutu.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how does Laurent Kabila, who now rules Congo and is thought of as the head of the rebellion against Mobutu, how does he fit into all this?

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, the way he fits it into it is that he had been the head--he had been seeking to rebel against Mobutu since Mobutu came to power in the early 60's. And as Kagame, the Ugandans, and the others began to look around in ‘94, ‘95, ‘96, saying, okay, so how will we start to deal with this, they looked for Zairian, Congolese, rebels, anti-Mobutuists, nationalists, who themselves were seeking to unite in armed struggle, and basically said, maybe we can work together.

And at a certain point people in Kigali, Rwanda, who are affiliated with Kagame, explained to me there was a certain point last year, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, where all sorts of Zairian and Congolese nationalists were coming out of the woodwork and coming to Rwanda, coming to these areas, meeting and organizing this rebellion. So it really was a Zairian rebellion that had the impetus and the tailwind, shall we say, from the countries along the border.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think the significance, the long-term significance of this new Pan African alliance, which is what you call this, what do you think it will be?

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Well, by the time that Mobutu was toppled at least 10 countries had either diplomatic, military, economic, some sort of direct assistance to this rebellion, which is a previously unheard of thing. One of the reasons I think that the Washington establishment and the western analysts didn’t really pick up on this as it was happening is there was a really general feeling that it’s never happened in Africa. Africans don’t do this sort of thing.

They don’t know how. They couldn’t. So there was always the assumption there, who was behind them, what western power? There wasn’t really a western power behind them at that point. I think that the significance is that you’re starting to see tremendous African cooperation at a time when we’ve really been looking at a lot of major shifts in world politics as large units breaking down into smaller and smaller fragments, and the fear of the turmoil that that causes.

One sees leaders in Africa emerging, her seeking strength through a kind of broader unity. You see people talking like President Museveni of Uganda speaks of trying to create very large regional, political, and economic federations. Some people talk of the United States, of Africa. I think that’s a very distant dream, but I think it’s the significant image for what is sought; that is, instead of always having these border rivalries and a lot of those along old colonial lines, along French-speaking versus English-speaking and other imported sort of barriers, to create trade zones and interests and one does see a fair amount of support continuing for Kabila from his neighbors.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Philip Gourevitch, thank you very much.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Thank you.