Much has been written about what happened in Rwanda in 1994
Vol 10 No 3, 2001
African Security Review
up to one million people were killed in an orchestrated campaign that exceeds the Jewish holocaust in its speed, brutality and extent. Linda Melvern, an investigative journalist and writer, has written extensively about the genocide in Rwanda since 1996. Her research spans some six years and her book is perhaps the most detailed to have appeared in the public domain on events leading up and including the genocide in Rwanda.
Melvern starts her narrative by recounting events in Kigali during April 1994 at a time when the Belgian forces, the backbone of the small peace mission in Rwanda, were about to be withdrawn. Despite overwhelming evidence that a genocide was in progress, the international community was about to turn its back finally on the people of Rwanda. Ten Belgian peacekeepers had been killed and against logic, humanity and in contravention of international law, the UN Security Council, led in this decision by France, the United States and Britain, pulled the plug on the mission. Melvern is scathing about the international community. "What happened in Rwanda showed that, despite the creation of an organisation set up to prevent a repetition of genocide - for the UN is central to this task - it failed to do so, even when the evidence was indisputable. The combination of revelations about the scale and intensity of the genocide, the complicity of western nations, the failure to intervene, and the suppression of information about what was actually happening, is a shocking indictment, not only of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening, but chose not to do so. It is a terrible story, made worse because its true nature has been deliberately distorted and confused" (pp 5-6).
There is little doubt that the Rwandan genocide could have been prevented or, at least, that the extent of mass murder could have been contained had the Security Council reinforced rather than depleted the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (UNAMIR). Unfortunately for the Tutsi people of Rwanda, the genocide commenced in the aftermath of the US peacekeeping disaster in Somalia that saw 18 Rangers killed in an abortive mission to apprehend a Somali warlord. The newly appointed Clinton administration recoiled in confusion, their well-meaning intent to resolve international crises through the UN system in defence of international norms suffering a near fatal setback. Elsewhere, the impending elections in South Africa drew attention away from the heart of the continent, while the UN system was overwhelmed by large missions elsewhere, those in Cambodia and Bosnia, in particular. Melvern recounts how UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, absent from New York throughout the Rwandan crisis and ever docile in providing leadership that would upset his main sponsor, France, did so little to the extent that the Security Council could subsequently defend its own inaction on the basis of a lack of options and information.
Several chapters in Melvern’s book retraces the policies of the colonial power, first Germany, but more importantly, Belgium, and the practise of the Rwandan people, that made the 1994 genocide the worst, but not the only, in a series of campaigns of mass murder that started in 1959. For Melvern the root of competition between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority is to be found in the colonial policies of Belgium that classified every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa since 1933. The northern Hutu in Rwanda had remained independent until 1910-12 when they were militarily defeated by Germany and Tutsi-led southern Rwandan troops. No wonder that "[i]t was in the north that Hutu Power, the racist anti-Tutsi ideology underpinning the genocide, was conceived" (p 13). Belgium systematically favoured the Tutsi minority over the Hutu majority, a practice reversed in December 1959 following extensive mass violence and leading to an exodus of some 135 000, mostly Tutsi, refugees.
Rwanda became independent on 1 July 1962 with the UN already convinced that the prospects for peace were bleak without national reconciliation. Within 18 months, the Tutsis who fled the first campaigns of mayhem and murder invaded Rwanda from Uganda, were defeated, and the second organised slaughter of Tutsi followed. Events in neighbouring Burundi also impacted on Rwanda, not least because the two neighbours shared a similar population composition. When an attempted coup against the Tutsi minority government in Burundi failed in 1972, the slaughter of some 200 000 Hutus followed - an event that Melvern tends to underplay. A similar number, mostly Hutus, fled into Rwanda.
In the years leading up to the 1994 genocide, France replaced Belgium as the foremost ally of Rwanda, supplying military training, equipment and diplomatic and political support despite the Hutu military government and one-party system in control of the country since 1973. Tutsis played a crucial role in the military victory of Yoweri Museveni in Uganda during 1986 and it was from here that Paul Kagame would eventually launch his guerrilla campaign against General Juvénal Habyarimana, president of Rwanda. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded that country from the north, but were defeated, serving only to fuel Hutu hatred of the Tutsi scourge.
Events would now gather pace, the author recounts, with Rwanda becoming the third largest arms importer in Africa by 1994, with significant military support, training and equipment from France. International pressure, in the meanwhile, had forced the start of negotiations in Arusha between the government of Habyarimana and the RPF in mid-1992. A peace deal, contained in the Arusha accords, was signed after 13 months, with the active engagement and support of the Organisation of African Unity. It did not manage to stop the ongoing killings. Nor did it prevent a second RPF invasion in February 1993 in clear breach of the accords. Habyarimana’s forces halted the invasion, but the die was cast. "From now on all Tutsis inside the country were labelled RPF accomplices and Hutu members of the opposition were branded traitors" (p 58). Habyarimana’s Hutu government started to create a civilian self-defence network, the Interahamwe.
What followed has been reported widely. Lists of all Tutsis were compiled, and in one purchase alone, one machete was bought for every third adult Hutu male. A local radio station was set up, Radio-télévision libre des mille collines (RTLMC), broadcasting mainly in Kinyarwanda. The purpose of the station was to serve as command and control network for the Interahamwe and the military. The UN dispatched a token peacekeeping mission, the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), under command of a Canadian officer, Major-General Roméo Dallaire - a man who was subsequently discharged from the military as a result of the trauma he was about to experience. The mission of UNAMIR was to monitor the security of Kigali, and the cease-fire, and to help with the formation of a new, integrated army.
The day before Dallaire arrived in Kigali, the first ever elected Hutu president in neighbouring Burundi was put to death by officers in the Tutsi-dominated army. Some 40 000 people were killed in the subsequent violence. The knock-on effect in Rwanda was instantaneous with 300 000 refugees fleeing Burundi in its aftermath. On 6 April 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was either shot down or bombed above Kigali airport. The wreckage had hardly fallen onto the presidential palace when the killings began. Dallaire sent his first detailed report of the organised slaughter to New York two days later. The reaction of the Security Council was first to do nothing, presenting the events as an uncontrolled civil war instead of a systematic campaign, and then to reduce UNAMIR as the RPF raced towards Kigali.
Melvern devotes a large portion of the book to details of the massacres that occurred during the period, the heroism of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the attempts to awaken the world to the catastrophe. By 21 April it was too late. The genocide had spread across the entire country and the Security Council voted to start evacuating UNAMIR. Perhaps only Ghana would emerge from Rwanda with honour, retaining more troops in Rwanda than the 270-strong residual force that the Security Council had authorised. It was to be slightly more than three weeks before the Council would confront events in Rwanda, finally authorising 5 500 troops for UNAMIR in a resolution intended to signify action while at the same time doing nothing. The US, and therefore Britain, insisted that troops would be deployed once the killing stopped - a self-defeating condition. Various African states offered troops, but had no airlift. All wanted the UN to underwrite the costs. Nothing happened. Eventually, France would launch Operation Turquoise on 23 June, crossing from the then Zaïre into Rwanda, largely to establish a safe haven in the remaining areas still controlled by the retreating Hutus. According to Melvern, "[t]he immediate effect of the French humanitarian zone was to provide a secure retreat for the Rwandan government army and the perpetrators of genocide" (p 214).
On 14 July, the Rwandan exodus began. In two days, about a million people crossed into Zaïre, fleeing the advancing RFP. "Sixty per cent of the [sic] Rwanda’s population was now either dead or displaced" (p 218). The flight of the Hutus into Zaïre, into camps at Goma and Bukava, remains the fastest and largest exodus of people ever recorded. To Melvern, the supreme irony was now to follow: "[t]he American administration decided on a major response costing US $300-400 million, with up to 4 000 military to reinforce hundreds of US civilians. It took just three days, once the orders had been issued by the White House to the Pentagon, for the first American troops to be on the ground" (p 219).
The final chapter in Melvern’s book carries the title ‘The Genocide Convention’. She starts by stating: "The failure of the international community to act while one million people in Rwanda were slaughtered was one of the greatest scandals of the twentieth century. But there was nothing secret about it" (p 227).
This is an extremely uncomfortable book, particularly for those who believe in the UN system, despite the unfortunate set of international circumstances that conspired to make Rwanda the tragedy that it became. Melvern writes with dispassion and restraint, but her anger is clear.
Jakkie Cilliers
Institute for Security Studies
