Genocide in Rwanda - Essay Example

Genocide in Rwanda Yvonne L. Academia Research In between 1992-1994, Rwanda saw the mass murder of its citizens as a by-product of political and economic domination over the entire African continent. New evidence has emerged of the deep knowledge and involvement of the major capitalists like France, Belgium and the United States. This paper intends to retrace the failures of these countries in preventing the bloody genocide that killed almost a million Rwandans in an effort to gain knowledge for future study on the catastrophic effects of supreme political greed. Introduction As we browse deeper into the annals of our history, we cannot simply dismiss the fact that man has taken the ultimate pride and joy in another one's downfall. Civilized society's insatiable avarice for power under a cloak of satiric sovereignty insists on the rights over another, consequently demeaning equal justice on hapless minorities. Conflicts escalating into full-blown wars allowed warring factions to employ every available resource to destabilize and eliminate its foe. Psychological warfare is nurtured to harden and manipulate warring tribes and minorities to fight the bloody battles against one another. Yet after the sound of the victory cry, the vestiges of war refused to settle and will forever haunt them throughout their lives. Pages of the history books will forever be smeared with the guileless victor without knowledge of his actual use as an ordinary dispensable pawn in the global economic struggle for race and power. The United Nation's dream of world governance as an approach to global bondage is permanently held in check by massive corruption and financial problems that have threaten to erase the organization into oblivion. Major capitalistic nations came out squeaky clean in the effort to portray an innocent face over their greedy interiors. The lowly patriotic nationals of the tribal nations in Africa seemingly submit to the manipulations of the sovereign powers aiding in their cultural battles and commit the vilest crimes of all, genocidal warfare. Men killing innocent women and children; well and sick; young and old Yet as we start to world start cleaning its mess, our fervent cries for equality calls for the investigation of these genocidal governments and prevent them from carrying out whatever future plans in mind. When the world saw the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus carried out by the Hutu militia in a period of 100 days, the Rwandan genocide stands out as historically significant in this modern world. We begin to see the involvement of Western countries which sent us an ambiguous signal that everybody was turning a blind eye on the Rwandans. The so called vigilance reflected the true nature of the violence unfolded where virtually all the first-world countries were quick in declining any offer of intervention that resulted to mass killings at the rate that exceeded the Jewish holocaust. Ample evidence revealed in Des Forges(1999,p.82)1, that the mass killing was well-organized as evidence presented at trials at the International Crime Tribunal for Rwanda supported such claim. According to Prunier(1997,P.3532), some militia members were able to acquire AK-47 assault rifles by completing requisition forms. Further Prunier (p.54) added that the leaders were able to exploit the highly-centralized nature of the Rwandan state. "The genocide happened not because the state was weak, but on the contrary because it was so totalitarian and strong that it had the capacity to make its subjects obey absolutely any order, including one of mass slaughter." Other weapons such as grenades required no paperwork and were widely distributed. According to Melvern (2000), Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda revealed3 that the genocide was openly discussed in cabinet meetings, and that one cabinet minister said she was "personally in favour of getting rid of all Tutsi without the Tutsi all of Rwanda's problems would be over." Belgium As the senate inquiry in Brussels progressed, the role of Belgium in the Rwandan events recently produced a report saying that the Belgian authorities knew as early as 1992 of the preparations for the genocide by the secret military unit in its former colony. Belgium had in effect informed France and other countries. A South African newspaper supported Belgium's allegations and reported in January 1994 that the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations was warned by its own military unit in Rwanda that the training and planning for killing Tutsis at the rate of 1,000 every 20 minutes was complete. Destexhe (p.51)4 presented in an investigation a telex from the then Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated February 25, 1994, mentioning the possibility of a genocide. The New Yorker according the Destexhe(p.51)5 set the 11th of January 1994, almost 3 months before the genocide started by General Dallaire, the commander of the U.N. forces in Rwanda to the U.N. headquarters in New York, based on information provided to him by a key informer. This cable revealed a fairly detailed plan explaining how the genocide was organized in Kigali. In fairness to Belgium, it did ask for a strong UNAMIR mandate. Yet, after the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers protecting the Prime Minister in early April, Belgium pulled out of the peacekeeping mission. Melvern(p.102)6 said that part of the Belgians' fault lay in the introduction of an identity card system in the 1930's which later on was used by the Hutu empire to identify the ethnicity of its bearer in 1991 that allowed the winnowing of Tutsi victims at the militia-manned roadblocks in 1994. This identification system apparently shared in the knowledge of the group and the Hutu-led Empire during the genocide had access to these records thereby making it easy for them to identify their prey. Destexhe(p.52)7 proceeded to present another evidence; a cable revealing the principal aim of the militia of the President's party to register all Tutsis living in Kigali. The informer says he suspected that this was for extermination. French For France, Rwanda represented a major setback in its geopolitical struggle with the United States in Africa which according to Melvern resulted to the maintenance and arming of the Juvnal Habyarimana regime from where the genocidal "Hutu Power movement sprang. A French publication also claimed that France's main motive for acting in the area was to head off perceived advances by the United States into African territories long considered as its area of influence. The French PM Balladur's admission before the parliamentary commission according to Prunier(1997)8 expressed the resentment felt at the United States role in France's Rwandan setback and accused the United States of training members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front that toppled the Hutu-led regime in the midst of the genocide and now forms Rwanda's government. France's justification of support for the Hutu regime facing an overthrow by a minority RPF army which was supported by the government of Uganda was summed up by Debre's statement in Pruniere (p.183)9. "What one forgets to say is that, if France was on one side, the Americans were on the other, arming the Tutsis who armed the Ugandans. To make matters worse and to protect the Hutu-led government in power, France protected the killers and supplied them with weapons while the massacres were in progress. Melvern (p.107)10recounted General Dallaire's predicament after finding "in the early morning of January 22, 1994, a planeload of arms from France, including 90 boxes of 60 mm mortars made in Belgium, was confiscated by UNAMIR at Kigali International Airport". Regardless of the finger pointing tactics, the French "Zone Turquoise" was addressed to quell the genocide and stop the fighting there, but often arriving in areas only after the Tutsi had been forced out or killed. Recently the Operation Turquoise is charged with aiding the Hutu army and fighting against the RPF. When the French National Assembly's defense committee reluctantly opened an inquiry of its own into French involvement in Rwanda genocide, Pruniere(p.354)11 said that the scheduled hearings came out as a political disaster for the French government who clearly participated in the attempt to slow the advance of the Tutsi Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and providing a safe haven for the Hutu killers and helped them flee to safety abroad once the RPF came to power. The French "Operation Amaryllis," facilitated the evacuation of European civilians in Rwanda in 1994, also organized the removal to France of Hutu "extremists" who were centrally involved in the genocide. At the same time the French military refused to evacuate Tutsi employees of the French embassy in Kigali who faced extermination. The second evacuation, "Operation Turquoise," was mounted later, as the RPF offensive was on the brink of taking power, to bring Rwandan government and military leaders to safety in France while French officers managed the "transition" to RPF rule. The amazing revisionist passion and the decline in control over Africa fueled the French's desire to aid in the Hutu regime against the US backed Tutsi rebels who has vast influence in Uganda. It seems that the buck of responsibility eventually stops as the result of international force was allowed in the worst acts of genocide the world has ever witnessed. France's belated and highly questionable intervention, Operation Turquoise, occurred only after the Rwandan Patriotic Front had regained military ascendancy and ultimately, served to protect their favored Hutu extremists from Tutsi retribution. United Kingdom Even the United Kingdom was not spared from the knowledge after a UK company, Mil-Tec Corporation Ltd, was found to be involved in supplying arms to the Hutu regime at least from June 1993 to mid-July 1994. Mil-Tec had been paid $4.8 million by the regime in return for invoices of $6.5 million for the arms sent. The manager of Mil-Tec, Anoop Vidyarthi, was described as a Kenyan Asian who owned a travel company in North London and was in business with Rakeesh Kumar Gupta and both fled the UK shortly after the revelations. United States UNAMIR's Force Commander Lieutenant-General Dallaire sent a cable on January 1994 to the UN headquarters after being aware of plans for the genocide. He was asking for permission to confiscate weapons. Throughout January, February and March, he pleaded for reinforcements and logistical support. The UN Security Council refused and the United States refused to provide requested material aid after the failed US efforts in Mogadishu, Somalia. Clinton and Albright in the United States refused to take action allegedly along with France, China and Russia who opposed any involvement in what was seen as an "internal affair". Powers (p.84)12 claimed Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands. Finally when Clinton decided his mistake in ignoring Rwanda he supported the full investigation of the atrocities. The White House did eventually act, but only when the slaughter had finished. It sent aircraft, food aid and Tipper Gore. The United States, suddenly freed of the cost-consciousness it had displayed in an earlier negotiations with the U.N. and mounted "a major response that "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 [in Zaire] and distributing fresh water to the refugees" according to Melvern (p. 219)13. The US was never keen on averting any disaster that could have helped but instead acted in too late. Whatever their convictions would say about not interfering, yet allowing he genocide to happen examines that a weak leadership that is inclined to divert top-level attention elsewhere has an absent interest over the risks in the crisis. France's accusation that some RPF cadres received US military training as members of the Ugandan army and their leader Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, underwent training at bases in the United States. The United States' explanation that the trouble in Somalia shortly before the genocide was a crucial reason in President Clinton's decision not to get involved in the local conflict was misdirected after the United Nations in the absence of any serious military aid from the United States was forced to open its communication pathways wider than before and urge other countries to join the efforts. The United States agreed to support these efforts with finance and some equipment later on. In the relief process the American camps began to drop large food packages from the air in hopes of alleviating the suffering below. However, the opposite occurred as people were slaughtered once again by the mobs trying to reach the precious food. The United States refused to bring its aid closer to the ground, and as time went by disease set in exacerbating the deaths of the refugees. To recall, in 1991, the United States started its democratization projects in Rwanda with a team of consultants along with Rwanda politicians and the United States Ambassador agreeing grants of further economic assistance and the ethnic classification on the identity cards on the Rwandans according to Des Forges(p.84)14.Rwanda was a perfect example of cultural discrimination common to western practice of classification according to color and ethnic diversity. Critics would later claim in the presentation of evidence how the United States and France used the catastrophe to further their own interests and influence over the region at the expense of one another. The evidence brought to light in parliamentary investigations in Belgium and France, and concurrent exposures in the press, confirm that the late French President Franois Mitterrand, UN officials such as the current Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Clinton himself played important roles in the Rwandan events. Along with the United Nations, the US is to be blamed for the quibbling over costs and belatedly coming forwards than caring to stop the massacres. US could have urged their Belgian allies to stay as elite forces and make sure that Dallaire was reinforced. Uganda Uganda's participation was the staging ground for the RPF mission from the base of Laurent Kabila against the Mobutu Empire in Zaire. This started the minority RPF army which was supported by the government of Uganda. The Tutsi refugees in Uganda supported by some moderate Hutus forming the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) secretly carried out their plans and strategies. Their aim was to overthrow Habyarimana and secure their right to return to their homeland and in turn Habyarimana chose to exploit this threat as a way to bring dissident Hutus back to his side, and Tutsis inside Rwanda were accused of being RPF collaborators. Uganda was instrumental in helping the Tutsis who sided and fought with them for their own liberation from Britain, in a way Uganda fueled the long-standing grudge between Hutus and Tutsis. United Nations Assessment The fact that the problems in the UN missions in Somalia and Rwanda largely failed to alleviate the suffering of the people they were supposed to help, spelled disaster for UN peace operations in general reflected in the massive decline in operations in the mid-1990s according to Ramsbothan(2001).The experiences in Somalia were treated and perceived as a turning point in UN peace operations that undoubtedly had a massive impact on the Organization's response to Rwanda. Somalia was indeed pivotal factor in influencing the UN's actions in Rwanda, and provides the context for the future of UN peacekeeping for the purposes of this talk. Rwanda altogether reflected a broader reversal in the post-Cold War expansion of UN peacekeeping, towards an international policy of disengagement, exemplified in the massive decline in UN peacekeeping from 1993. According to Ramsbothan15, as lessons learned by the UN from Rwanda, on 15 December 1999, the Organization released the findings of an Independent Inquiry into its actions in the country in 1994. The Inquiry acknowledged that the response of the United Nations before and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda failed in a number of fundamental respects. This international responsibility is one which warrants "a clear apology by the Organization and by Member States concerned to the Rwandese people" 16as added by Ramsbothan in his speech. Conclusion In the Rwanda Genocide, the conflicts in Africa over colonialism and neo-colonialism has exacerbated the mad scramble for power led by power hungry locals whose greed was fueled by super power European and US nations as the perpetrators. The government that directed the bloodbath against the Tutsi minority was armed and supported by France. It was kept in power by the intervention of French advisers who freed the country's own military to prepare and execute the slaughter of their own countrymen. The United States over the past several years had harbored strong economic desires in Africa. The political and principal interest of the imperialists lies in utilizing the tragedy of Rwanda as a means of deploying their troops once again as reiterated by Powers (p.106)17. US political capital rallying troops from Somalia could have supplied strategic airlift and logistic support to a coalition that it had helped to create but America was quick to hide where hand-to-hand combat is seen which could have allowed itself to show the best example of its heartfelt humanitarian efforts to the world. Works Cited Ramsbotham, O.(2001) Rwanda Seven Years after the Genocide. A Panel discussion jointly organised with the Embassy of Rwanda http://www.africacentre.org.uk/archiverwanda.htm 12, May 2006. Power, Samantha (2001). Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen". The Atlantic Monthly Vol.288, No.2 (September 2001): 84-108. Linda Melvern. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide. London: Zed Books; New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Des Forges, Alison (1999). Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch; Paris: International Federation of Human Rights, 1999. Prunier, Gerard(1997). The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. 2nd Ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Des Forges, Alison (1998).Statement in the Rwanda: Genocide And The Continuing Cycle Of Violence. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives. Committee on international Relations. Destexhe, Alain.(1998) Rwanda: Genocide And The Continuing Cycle Of Violence. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives. Committee on International Relations. Read More