NYAMATA, Rwanda -- In a land haunted by the 1994 genocide, where small boys bear machete scars across their skulls, where creeks wash up bones on shore, the civil war in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo is seen as a battle for Rwandan survival.
The dreams of Casius Niyonsaba, a 10-year-old Tutsi boy, tell him so. He stands in the Nyamata Catholic Church in southern Rwanda on an overcast morning and walks behind the altar. He points to the spot where his mother, father and three sisters were hacked to death in a raid by radical Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe.
More than 1,100 men, women and children were killed in the church in one of the worst raids of the genocide. Only a few people survived. Casius lived because his mother fell on top of him. The machete blow that ended her life cut a 6-inch gash above his left ear. The Interahamwe left him for dead.
"The Interahamwe is still around," Casius says quietly. "The killers are only in different places now. They want to come back for us soon."
For centuries, the Tutsi have dominated the military, politics and economy of the area. But it was not until the end of colonialism and the subsequent battle for control of the country that the Hutu-Tutsi rivalry turned genocidal.
The most recent flare-up between the groups started in 1994 in Rwanda after a Tutsi rebel army overthrew the Hutu-led government in response to the government's attempt to exterminate the Tutsis. The Interahamwe and radical army troops killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus that year. Tutsis live in fear here because, they say, the Interahamwe is alive and well and fighting in neighboring Congo.
Perhaps 10,000 strong, it is the most notorious group to become involved in the 5-month-old Congolese civil war. The Interahamwe has gained the support of Congo President Laurent Kabila for a renewed series of attacks on Rwandans, particularly ethnic Tutsis, such as Casius.
Rwanda, along with its northern neighbor Uganda, has sent several thousand troops across the border into Congo to fight alongside rebel forces. The rebels are known as the Congolese Rally for Democracy and are trying to oust Kabila, and thus expel the Interahamwe.
But Rwandan support for the rebels has enraged Kabila. He has vowed to "take this war back to where it started -- Rwanda." His state-run radio has urged listeners to pick up machetes, spears, panga knives, bows and arrows, garden hoes and axes, "in order, dear listeners, to kill the Rwandan Tutsis."
