d up abandoning. "We would pursue them very closely," said Mulisa, the Rwandan commander. "That's the secret. We don't give them any time."Panic and DestructionBy Dec. 1, the Rwandan forces had Pweto nearly in sight, approaching the lakeside plain around the town of perhaps 50,000 on an abandoned road along an encircling ridge. By the evening of Dec. 3, when the Rwandans entered the town, the civilian population had pushed en masse down a muddy road into Zambia, and Kabila's forces were betraying something like panic.The Mi-17 helicopter that had carried Joseph Kabila to Pweto was burned on the soccer field that doubled as a landing pad, apparently too unreliable to use but too valuable to leave to the Rwandans. The president's son escaped by water, taking a ferry named the Alliance with senior Zimbabwean commanders and Burundian Hutus to the far side of the Luvua River.When the boat returned, a 40-ton, Soviet-made T-62 tank was loaded onto the port side. Dozens of soldiers scrambled to starboard. "It was imbalanced," said Mulisa, "and the ferry got drowned."With the Rwandans' gunfire audible across town, the stranded troops splashed diesel fuel onto the line of 33 waiting vehicles and set them afire. Then they split up, some setting off along the riverbank deeper into Congo, others joining the throng of refugees fording the small stream that marks the Zambian border.On the other side, Zambian soldiers collected arms and counted heads. At least 3,000 Congolese regulars were assembled in primary schools about 75 miles south of the border in Nchelenge, where last week they were still waiting for a lift back to Congo.Zimbabwe sent a plane for several hundred of its troops, a return load lightened considerably by the sheer tonnage of armor left behind in Pweto. Two howitzers, two T-62 tanks and at least a half-dozen armored personnel carriers were left intact for the Rwandans, as well as three ammunition dumps and a weapons cache with 1,000...
