Some 850,000 refugees from Rwanda's 1994 genocide, trapped in camps in eastern Zaire, are prime targets of a new and overlooked campaign of ethnic warfare. PNS correspondent John Fleming reports from Goma. Fleming is an American journalist based in Johannesburg.

GOMA, ZAIRE -- All night this town in the mountains of eastern Zaire reverberates with the sound of automatic gunfire. Quiet returns at daybreak when word arrives that the firefight was between two regiments of the Zairian Army over stolen medicines from an international aid group. Amazingly, casualties were few.

The fighting is a measure of the madness here where enemies of all kinds practically ooze from the volcanic landscape. Two years ago, Goma captured global media attention as almost a million refugees fled here to escape Rwanda's genocide. Today media attention is riveted on neighboring Burundi which threatens daily to erupt in ethnic killings. But a smaller and no less intense campaign of ethnic cleansing is being carried out here by an array of groups, each engaged in complex and shifting alliances aimed at stamping out the others. Relief workers warn that the conflict could incite unrest among the 850,000 refugees trapped in the camps scattered around Goma.

The refugees are already growing increasingly frustrated with their dilemma, says Scott Campbell, the director of the International Human Rights Law Group in Goma. Zaire has refused to grant them citizenship and most of them feel it is unsafe to return to the new Tutsi-dominated Rwanda. "A lot of sparks are flying around this place, and one of these days a spark is going to land in the camps and the whole place is going to blow up."

Since the late 1950's, Tutsis and Hutus, themselves refugees from earlier conflicts in Rwanda, and several Zairian ethnic groups have lived in uneasy peace with each other in the districts north of Goma. In 1994, the dynamics of the area changed dramatically with the arrival of the Hutu refugees. Anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 people were displaced by the sudden influx, and thousands have died, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees.

The current trouble began when extremist Hutus from the camps, including a militia known as the "interahamwe," started encouraging Hutus north of Goma to carve out a larger enclave or "Hutuland" for themselves, according to aid officials.

The idea of a Hutuland provoked local Zairian ethnic groups, including the Hunde, to start fighting against the Hutu. One group of mainly Hunde radicals, called the Ngilima, have formed themselves into a militia with the stated goal of pushing the Hutu back into Rwanda. They are often reinforced by a mysterious group called the Maimai, who call themselves a spiritual army and whose warriors claim to be inoculated against bullets and thus immune from death.

"The Ngilima, especially, are very nationalistic," says Bushoki Batabiha, of the Goma-based Group for Action and Development. "They are dedicated to fighting any kind of Hutuland. They have only one plan -- to get rid of the Hutus."

The situation is further complicated by the presence of the Zairian Army, which is viewed more as part of the problem than any solution. "The Army sells out to whoever can pay them the most," says Hugo Gisler, a field delegate in Masisi district for the International Red Cross. "Right now, they seem to be working for the Hutus, and now the Maimai and Ngilima have started attacking the Army."

Presiding over the confusion is Zaire's dictator for the past 30 years, Mobutu Sese Seko. Many here insist Mobutu could stop or at least slow the slaughter if he wanted to, but the current carnage is to his advantage.

"Last year Mobutu used the unrest here as an excuse to cancel presidential elections," points out Pascal Kambale, vice president of the Zairian Human Rights Association (AZADHO) in Kinshasa. "Now again he has the perfect excuse. On the eve of elections next July, he'll either cancel them or launch a serious military campaign into the region as a way to have himself proclaimed the country's savior. Either way, it's to his advantage."

In the meantime, violence around Goma is worsening. "This is a terribly confusing situation," says Gisler. "Half the time people don't even know who their enemy is. What we need is a meeting of all the ethnic and group leaders to make a plan. But who are these leaders? I don't think anyone knows."