Zaire

KIGALI, Rwanda -- For decades, the Western world's attention has been drawn to Africa by images of sick and starving people in places such as Biafra, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia where innocent victims are dying.But the Zairian crisis is different.The environment into which President Clinton proposes to inject U.S. forces involves not only Zaire, but also Rwanda and Burundi, where the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups live in murderous hatred of each other.The people who will be served in Zaire are mostly Rwandan Hutu refugees.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has agreed "in principle" to send a military force of up to 5,000 Americans to Central Africa as part of an international relief effort in eastern Zaire, a White House spokesman announced yesterday.Along with Britain's announcement that it was willing to join a rescue force, relief for hundreds of thou- sands of starving refugees in Zaire seems to draw closer.A final decision on a U.S. deployment, which would include about 1,000 ground troops, could be made within a matter of days.

CYANGUGU, Rwanda -- In the still of a rainy season afternoon, as storm clouds loom, the refugees appear, their clothes dirty and tattered, their faces tired and worn, a few possessions in bundles on their heads, babies strapped to the backs of young mothers.A ragtag group of about 50 leads the way down the steep paved road to the bridge over the Rusizi River that is the border between Zaire and Rwanda, two countries edging perilously close to an African apocalypse.These are but a handful of more than a million hungry, thirsty and disease-threatened refugees hiding far beyond the reach of aid agencies that fed many of them while hoping they would return home to Rwanda despite their fear of being slaughtered there.

GOMA, Zaire -- On a lakeshore outside this once pleasant resort town lies a ruined palace, testimony to the opulent lifestyle of President Mobutu Sese Seko and the violence that is pushing his country into the annals of African suffering.Soldiers for one of several rebel armies now guard the sprawling mansion where Mobutu used to sit on ornate chairs with lions thrusting their gilded heads from the armrests. Above him was his own portrait, hammered out of local copper. In one of the bathrooms, there is still a gallon-size jar of French cologne with the label "Je Reviens" -- "I am coming back."

IN KINSHASA, the capital, what passes for the government of Zaire told international agencies to stop distributing aid to Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire, but rather to feed them in Rwanda and Burundi.In Kenya, eight African heads of government called for a U.N. military force to open corridors in Zaire for humanitarian aid to the refugees, and then for their safe return to Rwanda.In Marseille, French and Spanish heads of government called for 5,000 soldiers to secure humanitarian corridors.

THREE GREAT DANGERS from the warfare in eastern Zaire compel the attention of the world. The first is humanitarian. More than 1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees are being driven from camps to face disease, starvation and execution. That would amount to revenge for the genocidal fury they vented on Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda, killing some half-million, in 1994.The second danger is disintegration of Zaire, the former Belgian Congo, a vast country of 40 million people and untold wealth. Its U.S.-backed dictator of three decades, President Mobutu Sese Seku, is a sick old man in Switzerland.

GISENYI, Rwanda -- Refugees from eastern Zaire say Hutu supremacists who were pushed out of Rwanda in 1994 have been sowing hatred among Zairian Hutu, encouraging them to attack their Tutsi neighbors.People fleeing Zaire say Hutu gangs trained by Hutu Rwandan militia members have attacked thousands of Zairian Tutsi over the last six months.The attacks have prompted at least 24,000 people to flee into Rwanda and pushed another 65,000 out of their homes and farms inside Zaire.The attacks on Tutsi in Zaire are one of several signs that the Hutu militias have used United Nations refugee camps in eastern Zaire as bases for rebuilding their strength since they were forced to flee Rwanda two years ago, just ahead of a rebel army under Tutsi command.

A new round of tragedy began in Africa as Zairian troops uprooted at least 85,000 refugees from camps near Goma in recent days and pushed them toward borders, most to Rwanda and some to Burundi. Thugs with guns rob, pillage and rape to prod the exodus and to profit from it.The refugees are mostly Hutu civilians who never harmed anyone. Some are families of soldiers. Whether from Rwanda or Burundi, they fled Tutsi armies fearing retaliation for atrocities or genocide perpetrated by other Hutu against other Tutsi, in both countries in the recent and distant past.

London -- AND NOW, from remote Africa, more bad news. In Zaire, there is an outbreak of Ebola, a killer virus without an antidote. But our world is wracked with disasters: Must we care about this one?One reason why we must is that Zaire is a very big country -- about one-third the size of the United States. Another reason is that Zaire borders on other big countries. Its rivers flow into many neighboring lands. Though World Health Organization spokesmen say transmission of the virus has been greatly reduced, if not completely halted, it will be difficult to isolate Zaire or its epidemics.

The Ebola virus, named for a river by which the first identification of it was made, is bad enough. Based on (admittedly slight) experience, 90 percent of people who get it die a horrible death from uncontrollable bleeding. It is not (based on that same experience) easy to catch. Contact with blood or bodily fluids is needed. That includes shared needles. It makes underfunded Third World hospitals reusing hypodermic needles dangerous.The first identified outbreak of Ebola virus hemorrhagic fever occurred in Zaire in 1976, and the next two in Zaire and southern Sudan three years later.