Rwanda - Key Players

Political analysis at the domestic level examines ideological, societal and structural factors that contribute to actions taken by an individual nation-state within the international community. In this theory, the nation-state is viewed as a non-unitary actor whose internal factors solidify final foreign policy decisions. Using this view to expound upon the Rwandan genocide of 1994, facilitates the analysis of the actions of four countries.

Rwanda, the United States, France and Belgium each had decisive domestic level factors contributing to their policies of peremptory passivity toward the massacres in Rwanda. The question is, what was the individual reasoning behind each of these four countries that either drove them to adopt policies of “inaction”[1] (the United States and Belgium), to wait out the turmoil of the people in Rwanda and then take late unilateral action (France), or fall into a “power vacuum”[2] (Rwanda) which collectively permitted the genocide to take place? For Rwanda, cultural and political disunity dominated the decisions of their fledgling interim government, while the US was held back from action by past humanitarian failures in Africa and a lack of public and national interest in Rwanda itself. France and Belgium withheld their assistance as their desire to maintain political ties with the Rwandan government dominated policy decisions right up until public opinion was belatedly stirred by negative media coverage. At that point Belgium heeded cries to pullout and France took the main foreign responsibility for stopping the génocidaires.

Rwanda – The Perpetrator and the Victim

Though genocide is a familiar concept throughout Rwandan history, there are tangible reasons as to why the long-simmering pot of political and civil unrest exploded on a previously unprecedented scale in April 1994. Culturally, is it easy to observe the centuries of an oppressed Hutu majority growing bitter against the ruling Tutsi minority. The largest of these groups’ periodic genocides prior to1994, was the systematic murder of 200,000 Hutu by Tutsi in Rwanda’s neighboring country of Burundi.[3] Though it was this ongoing ethnic dispute that weighed most heavily on the decisions made by both sides in the time leading to the uprising of Hutu in 1994, it was actually the more specific domestic factors that triggered the onslaught of willing participants.

Structurally, the government of Rwanda was nearly non-existent due to the potent competition amid varying military and political groups scrambling for power. In August 1993, the Arusha Accords were signed between the Hutu led Rwandan government and the Tutsi led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) for the purpose of balancing the government between these two main competing political entities. The Arusha Accords established a twenty-two month time frame – intended to end in May of 1995 – by the end of which open elections were to have been held and a two-party system was to have been established. The United Nations Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) led by Major General Roméo Dallaire, was put into place in October of 1993 on a Chapter VI peacekeeping mission to assist the country in peaceably abiding by these guidelines. Unfortunately, the street violence and ethnicism continued to rage at an uncontrollable intensity.[4] With no single group steering the country toward peace, but many regimes willing to fight for power, Rwanda seemed never to have had a legitimate chance to follow the road toward peace as laid out by the Arusha Accords. A huge contributor to this multifaceted conflict between fledgling political parties, and a means by which it showed itself to society was the local media.

Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) broadcast incessant communiqués condemning to death the UN, Rwandan government, supporters of democracy and the Tutsi race as well as moderate government officials sympathetic to the Tutsi. In a country dependant upon radio programming as their sole source for informational dissemination, the Rwandan people had no means by which to counter such negative propaganda and misinformation. It was masterfully used to rally the chosen against the condemned. Public opinion was molded exclusively by these broadcasts. Though Dellaire pleaded with the UN and the UN in turn with the US to implement counter broadcasts for the education of Rwandans regarding human rights and the development of their own government, neither was willing to foot the bill for the operation.[5] Leaving the people with nothing to believe but “hate radio” broadcast by radical RTLM, government extremists prepared the Hutu commoners to take advantage of the ensuing “power vacuum.”[6]

On April 6, 1994 at 8:20pm, just prior to its scheduled landing at Kigali airport, President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by two ground-to-air missiles. The hours following this tragedy became internationally tumultuous as a meeting of the cabinet and the UN delegation concluded that “everyone responsible for the country’s security was dead.”[7] Rwanda’s president, its head of presidential security and its army chief perished in the plane crash. The minister of defense and the head of army intelligence were out of the country and the corrupt cabinet manipulatively deemed the prime minister “incapable of governing.”[8] Colonel Theoneste Bogosora vied to fill the power gap and is now known as an accomplice to (if not the conductor of) the ensuing genocide.
In addition to deep-seated cultural conflict, a complete lack of leadership, negative propaganda from the media, a molding of public opinion against Tutsi and the most powerful positions in government having been filled by those responsible for the organization of the genocide; the international community had a large role in passively allowing the chaos to unfold.

The United States and Belgium - The Bystanders

The United States adopted a policy of inaction towards the events in Rwanda. Specifically, they declined military intervention, blocked UN resolutions that could have raised the bar on the aggressive capacity available to the UNAMIR peacekeepers already in the place and encouraged all countries on the ground, including those involved with the UN peacekeeping force, to fully withdraw all resources until peace could be established.[9] As the death toll climbed to nearly one million Tutsi within 100 days, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, Prudence Bushnell continued to merely insist that Rwandan cabinet director and coordinator of the genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora return to the “peace process” begun in the Arusha Accords of 1993.[10] This failure to address the genocide itself, which was already well underway, suited the United States’ desire to remain out of the conflict.

Public opinion in the US was nearly untouched by the atrocities due to a lack of media coverage. On April 22, 1994 the White House released a one page statement by the Press Secretary imploring specific Rwandan military leaders to “end the violence.” This attention was granted only at the incessant urging of Human Rights Watch and is the sole example of high-level attention given to this foreign policy debacle.[11] The US was additionally already timid in the Rwanda situation due to past failures in aggressive multilateral peacekeeping efforts. Somalia and Haiti popped the balloon of the Clinton Administration’s hopes to focus on international humanitarian needs. As “The Clinton Administration’s Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations, May 1994” concludes, “the U.S. cannot be the world’s policemen.”[12] In this document, 25 points were established to determine whether the US ought to get involved in any peace operation. The main focus is on the fact that any action taken by the US ought to only be approved if it “advances U.S. interests, and there is an international community of interest for dealing with the problem on a multilateral basis.”[13] Though the international community of interest may have been present for multilateral intervention, the other countries with interest opted to follow the lead of the US in refraining from acting on such interests.

Having once been the ruling colonial power in Rwanda and having assisted in the election of a Hutu extremist as its first president in 1962, Belgium had a history with Rwanda but had since become greatly unpopular with its people.[14] Late in 1993, threats made on the lives of Belgian soldiers by the local media triggered a spiral of violent incidents. Belgian troops beat leaders of the rebel group Coalition pour la Defense de la Republique (CDR), who in turn surrounded a minibus of Belgian troops chanting “Tutsi, Tutsi” as well as CDR threw a grenade into the Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal’s headquarters in Kigali.[15] The hostility toward Belgium was growing worse by the day. On the evening of the President’s plane crash, 20 Belgian troops stationed at Kigali airport were taken into custody by the Rwandan Presidential Guard and some disarmed.[16] These incidents were relayed to Brussels and made public in Belgium where the population immediately cried for withdraw of their troops. The last straw came when ten Belgian peacekeepers were seized, disarmed, killed, striped and savagely mutilated: so much so that when Roméo Dellaire finally located the bodies in the backyard of a ravaged hospital, he was unable to determine the number of bodies in the stack of decaying flesh.[17] No longer was Belgian pubic opinion questionable: they wanted a full withdrawal and they wanted it immediately.[18]
France – The Cavalry?

France had been a longtime supporter and stronghold for President Habyarimana whose downed jet had been a gift from the French President Francois Mitterand.[19] In addition to such personalized gifts, France was largely responsible for organizing the purchase of nearly US$112 million worth of weapons stock piled by the Rwandan government between 1990 and 1994. The paper trail linking France to these purchases made on behalf of the poorest, most famin stricken country in the world, were destroyed as the intentions behind the mass weapons cache became glaringly obvious , even to the unsuspecting.[20] With such controversial ties to the wrong end of politics in the war torn country, the last action France wanted to take was to step into the spotlight to prevent a disaster they ultimately assisted in developing. As the country with which Rwanda felt it had the closest international bond, France was accused of abandoning them in their darkest hour. France, however, did end up intervening on June 23, 1994 as “Operation Turquoise” established humanitarian strongholds in the southwest by Cyngugu and Gikongoro where refugees and killers alike came under French protection.[21] The reasoning behind this unilateral military action was to counteract its previously misguided weapons purchases on behalf of the génocidaires. After literally watching the bodies pile up around them, France felt t their responsibility to intercede and finally attempted to end the slaughter in August 1994: 100 days after it began.

Though other countries could have chosen to involve themselves in the prevention of this disaster, as well as the US, Rwanda, Belgium and France could have chosen to take more forceful action to prevent the genocide; each country had their reasons for acting as they did. These domestic level factors, whether structural, societal or ideological, each present compelling arguments in explanation of how the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was allowed to occur.
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[1] Samantha Power. “Bystanders to Genocide.” The Atlantic Monthly. September 2001: 2.
[2] Linda Malvern Conspiracy to Commit Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. (London: Verso, 2004) 137.
[3] Bill Berkeley. The Graves are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa. (New York: Basic books, 2001) 238.
[4] Malvern 319.
[5] Malvern 103-107.
[6] Malvern 137.
[7] Malvern 136.
[8] Malvern 138.
[9] United States of America, The National Security Archive, The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994: Evidence of Inaction. (Washington D.C., National Security Archive: 2001) 1-12.
[10] USA 5.
[11] USA 4.
[12] USA, Document 9, 15.
[13] USA, Document 9, 4.
[14] Malvern 8.
[15] Malvern 102.
[16] Malvern 103.
[17]
[18] Power 9.
[19] Power 7.
[20] Malvern 57.
[21] Malvern 242.