With the world community horrified by the bloodshed in Rwanda but paralyzed by confusion, indecision or fear, many aid officials, human rights advocates and Africa watchers now are hoping for a victory by rebel forces to end the tumult.
Such a scenario now seems likely, with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels improving their positions in neighborhoods around the capital, Kigali, while advancing on the town of Gitarama, headquarters of the Rwanda's rump government. Reports said the rebels were moving this weekend on Gitarama from two fronts, while government soldiers and allied militiamen were fleeing westward toward Kibuya, on Lake Kivu.With the rebels occupying large parts of Kigali, including the international airport, the fall of Gitarama would make a complete victory for the rebels all but certain, leaving them in control of most of the country except the west and southwest. That would allow the rebels to dictate the terms of a cease-fire and would leave them in a position to try to form a government.
Many who have been watching Rwanda's horror say a rebel victory would relieve foreign governments of witnessing mass slaughter while failing to muster the political will to try to stop it.
"There is some thinking that if the rebels win, maybe that would take care of the problem for now," said Pauline Baker, a scholar on Africa with the Washington office of the Aspen Institute.
Baker said some African policy makers were harking back to the "Ethiopian scenario" of May 1991, when the Bush administration virtually invited an advancing guerrilla army to enter the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, as a way of ending that country's long civil war while providing for an orderly transition after the fall of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Another Rwanda scholar, interviewed in Brussels, said a rebel victory "is what everybody is hoping for." But this scholar, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that policy may in the long term prove "very unwise," since it was unclear how the rebels, representing Rwanda's Tutsi minority, would be able to form a broadly representative government.
The populations of both Rwanda and Burundi are about 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi.
Seven weeks ago, both countries were thrown into chaos when their two presidents died in a suspicious plane crash while returning from a regional peace meeting. Rwanda erupted in killings of mostly Tutsis by armed Hutu civilian militias.