Humanitarian Intervention in Rwanda - Case Study Example

 Justification of Humanitarian Intervention in Rwanda Introduction In theory, governments exist to protect the interests of their people. They have a duty, legal and moral, to see that certain basic rights are respected for all of their citizens. Some governments, however, fail to live up to this obligation. The Rwandan genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans during the 1990’ are but two examples of this (Kuperman, 2004; Newman, 2009). Scholars have long debated the role that other states ought to play in situations such as these. Some theorists support humanitarian intervention, others argue against it because they believe that adding more violence to the situation will not solve anything, and still others argue against it because they believe it is not in their state’s interest and it will interfere with international order. Theories that both support humanitarian intervention and non-humanitarian intervention have been around for centuries. Those that support non-humanitarian intervention believe that sovereignty is sacred and the only way to maintain an international order (Welsh, 2004). They believe that the most powerful states would be in control of any formal recognition of humanitarian intervention, and this would further that imbalance. Many also believe that it is up to that state to work out its own problems. Supporters of humanitarian intervention draw on natural law and Just War theories that show that people have certain universal duties that are common to everyone (Welsh, 2004). In the seventeenth century, the famous theorist Hollander Hugo Grotius' suggested that states had the right to intervene to stop atrocities. Theorists who support humanitarian intervention agree that states have the right to intervene, but disagree over whether states have the obligation to do so (Welsh, 2004). This paper analyzes the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. for three reasons: it highlights the consequences - both moral and political - of not intervening to stop the atrocities, it would have taken relatively little manpower and cost to put a stop to it, and it is an example of a worst-case scenario, with so many deaths in such a short time. Studying the Case of Rwanda Between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu died within just over a hundred days while the international community stood by and watched. Instead of increasing the number of UN troops in Rwanda, three weeks after the genocide began, it withdrew all but 270 (although 503 remained, some unofficially). It is hard to picture another genocide surpassing this tragedy (Power, 2002). The moral and political costs of allowing this tragedy to happen were high. U.S. foreign service personnel, usually low-ranking or African specialists (which was considered much the same), voiced their protests while the international community stood by, the slaughter continuing. The lack of a humanitarian intervention severely affected the reputation of the United Nations and the United States, with Rwandans as well as others around the world. A debate over whether or not to intervene never happened. Instead, not intervening seemed a foregone conclusion. That also impacted the morale within various U.S. political offices. Many working in the political arena - National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, State Department employee Prudence Bushnell, who was at the time acting deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs and John Shattuck, who was U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, all expressed disgust that nothing was done. Even former President Bill Clinton later admitted that not intervening was a terrible mistake (Power, 2002). The moral implications were so deep that they helped change the way humanitarian interventions are perceived. Lake (2004) said in a Frontline interview that the chances are better than before the Rwanda genocide that the United States would intervene next time. "The context has shifted, and maybe all the people who died didn't die absolutely in vain if their deaths had enough of an impact on the collective conscience that maybe we'll do better in the future." (Lake, 2004: p. 1). Lake said that the best thing to do with the bad feelings was to "learn from them, and you apply them to the next go-round, whether you're in government or simply writing or talking to people like you. Otherwise what's the point?" (Lake, 2004: p. 1). The Clinton administration will be remembered for having failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda, a legacy that future political leaders want to avoid. However, later in his term, there was a change in Clinton's way of thinking about intervention. This case is also important because in analyzing what it would have taken to stop the genocide it is possible the deployment of a limited number of troops within the first few weeks of the genocide could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the long run. Dallaire stated that with an estimated 5,000 more troops he could have prevented many of the deaths (Power, 2002). In April 1998, the Carnegie Commission published a joint report that collaborated with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and the United States Army to determine whether Dallaire's hypothesis had merit. Conclusions supported by participants of the report state 5,000 troops could have "significantly altered the outcome of the conflict" (Feil, 2004: p. 1) These troops would have had to have been deployed before the end of April when the genocide starting spreading to the countryside and could not have been contained (Feil, 2004). Some dispute centers on how quickly the genocide spread and how much an additional 5,000 troops would have helped. Scholar Alan Kuperman, however, disagrees that the 5,000 troops would have made a great difference. He argues that it would have taken over a week for a force to be organized, equipment secured and transportation arranged. By the time the force had been approved and executed most of the victims would have already been killed (Kuperman, 2000). Kuperman (2000) also argues that only 5,000 troops could not have secured the capital, as well as the whole of the countryside. However, the international community received a multitude of warnings of the genocide far before it began in April and could have been ready with an even larger force if it was deemed necessary. Background: Factors Leading Up To the Genocide The "100-day" killing spree in Rwanda in 1994 began on April 6, but the making of the genocide began long before that - as far back as the politicizing of the Hutu and the Tutsi identity during the Belgian occupation (1916-1959). While there were wars before the Europeans invaded, the wars were not based on Tutsi versus Hutu but instead on "geographical location" where the Tutsis and Hutu fought together against a foreign tribe. The Germans came first, but given the duration of their stay (1897-1916) and their "light administrative implantation," they did not have much influence on Rwandan society. The Belgians, on the other hand, put the Tutsi, the favored European group because of their alleged similarity to Europeans - tall, thin and lighter skinned - in control (Prunier, 1995). This marked the beginning of the formalization of the difference between Hutu and Tutsi that would ultimately allow the government to stir up the hatred and fear that led to the 1994 genocide. Rwanda gained official independence in 1962, but not without a great deal of violence between the Hutu and the Tutsi in the previous three years (). In 1960 massive numbers of Tutsi left for neighboring countries, many not to return until after the 1994 genocide, which was effectively the end of the Hutu regime. In 1973, Juvenal Habyarimana, whose murder would end up playing an important role in the lead up to the genocide, became president. For a number of years he brought stability to Rwanda. However, tensions between the Tutsi and the Hutu were still very much alive (Prunier, 1995). By 1990 the political situation was in chaos; Habyarimana had been forced to open a multi-party system if he wanted to continue to receive aid money from France. The RPF - a Tutsi-led army based in Uganda - also took advantage of this time to prepare for attack. But by November 1990, the RPF was "almost finished." Many well- respected soldiers in their unit had been killed. However, the RPF managed to regroup, recruit more and acquire more ammunition. In early 1991, the RPF attacked a prison, freed the prisoners and captured the "town for a day." The RPF had finally caused "a psychological and political shock throughout Rwanda" (Prunier, 1995: p. 89-91). It was time to take them seriously. In 1992, the international community became involved in trying to negotiate a peace agreement with the Arusha accords. With the announcement of a ceasefire and the subsequent talks, the Hutu hardliners within Habyarimana's government felt that he was ceding too much power (Prunier, 1995). Under the terms set forth in the accords, "the Rwandan government agreed to govern with Hutu opposition parties and the Tutsi minority" (Power, 2002: p. 336). The final document was signed in August 1993. Habyarimana had signed the agreement, not because he deeply believed in carrying out its mission, but to "buy time, shore up the contradictions of the various segments of the opposition and look good in the eyes of the foreign donors" (Prunier, 1995: p. 195). Taking away so much power from the Hutus in an already volatile situation should have alerted the international community that it might not work and that it might be best to be ready to intervene if disaster should follow. Scholar and journalist Gerard Prunier calls the accords "unworkable in practice, without goodwill, an element in short supply" (Prunier, 1995: p. 192). After all, "guns, grenades, and machetes began arriving by the planeload" (Power, 2002: p. 337). It was obvious the Hutu extremists were not going to support the unstable Arusha accords. It was just a matter of time before they struck back. Instead of recognizing this instability as a possible threat, the U.S. government warned Habyarimana that if he wasn't able to implement the accords, the United States might demand the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers, something the Hutu militias would have loved and most likely would have been aware of (Power, 2002: p. 347). The failures apparent in the Arusha accords and its contribution as a factor in the genocide should have driven the international community to accept the moral obligation of intervening. The genocide followed less than a year after the agreement and was coordinated by the hardliners in the Hutu-led government. While many in the United States saw the fighting at the time as an ethnic conflict, the militia had to check identity cards to find out who their victims were (Feil, 2004). All Tutsi, as well as moderate Hutus, were targets. Contrary to how it was being displayed in the media, it was not a traditional ethnic conflict, but one in which the Hutu extremists used the fear that had been instilled in the civilians that the approaching Tutsi RPF soldiers were devils and the Hutu had to kill them in "preemptive self-defense" (Power, 2002: p. 340). They also played on the fear that if Hutu civilians did not join in, they would be considered a Tutsi sympathizer and suffer the same fate as the Tutsis. The Hutu extremists also used the Hutu's obedient nature, as well as propaganda, to gamer support for the genocide (Prunier, 1995). Another reason the Hutus became murderers was to take revenge on the Tutsis, who were, many times, better off "socially and economically." The orders to kill Tutsi were coming from "the regime's political, military and economic elite who had decided through a mixture of ideological and material motivation radically to resist political change which they perceived as threatening" (Prunier, 1995: p. 232). The Hutu extremists had for a long time been spreading propaganda among the Hutu population about the Tutsi Inyenzi (or cockroaches) (Power, 2002). Now they began using this brainwashing to their advantage by organizing teams of Hutu genocidaires - the Interahamwe. Hours after Habyarimana's plane was shot down, the slaughter began. It is still unknown who shot down the plane, but the genocidaires used his death to their benefit and began going house to house in search of their "enemies" (Wittman, 2008). Moral and Legal Reasons to Intervene There were many factors that led up to the genocide; only the main ones have been mentioned above: the European division of the Hutus and the Tutsis, the failure of the Arusha accords, the death of President Habyarimana, the government-orchestrated plan of instilling fear and hatred in people and the approaching RPF. Analyzing the factors together, the international community should have foreseen the genocide, except the horror that genocide can happen always comes as a surprise. Two factors that the world specifically had a hand in - the Belgian colonization and the Arusha accords - indirectly played an important role in leading up to the genocide. The colonization period caused the politicization of the Tutsi and the Hutu, and the Arusha accords were implemented without enough support. For this the international community should have carried some moral responsibility to stop the atrocities that were happening. However, through most of May Rwanda and its citizens remained basically alone, with only 503 remaining peacekeepers (Power, 2002). It is hard to calculate exactly how many Rwandans actually died in the genocide. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 75 and 77 percent of the Tutsi population were killed. But there is difficulty with deriving any calculations. The only available data on the actual number of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 is the 1991 census, and that number is most likely lower than the real number due to Tutsi underreporting out of fear or government tampering because it wanted to minimize the Tutsi population. But there is no evidence to prove any of this, only speculations (Gourevitch, 1998). Other sources place the number of Tutsi deaths higher. According to calculations derived from figures obtained from Prunier about 83 percent of the Tutsi population was exterminated (Prunier, 1995). Different official sources also estimate the number of Tutsis and moderate Hutu that died between 500,000 and 800,000 (Gourevitch, 1998; Prunier, 1995). The United States should have had a force ready to intervene after being aware of the many warnings. However, the situation changes if UN peacekeepers were already deployed in Rwanda. U.S. soldiers, operating independently of UN peacekeepers, would have confused the situation a great deal and that option was therefore out of the question. The next best solution would be to deploy additional large number of peacekeepers, at least the 5,000 troops that Dallaire asked for, and arm them with a strong UN mandate to prevent the genocide. That the international community stood by and watched while the numbers of dead continued to escalate is reprehensible and questions the moral foundations of society. It is unforgivable to allow nearly a million innocent people to be slaughtered. It is for this reason that the moral argument for intervention must be given more weight than any other argument. Not only is it inexcusable morally, it is also against international/legal principles. The signatories of the Genocide Convention, which include the United States and 136 nations, had a legal obligation to intervene to stop the atrocities begin committed. This was an obligation they had all agreed was in their best interests when they signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948 (Edward, 2000). The United Nations passed the Convention not only to protect innocent civilians but for reasons of international security. By not intervening they were risking this threat. The word genocide had been coined in 1945 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish man who had fled the Holocaust, and later spent years arguing in support of a legal genocide convention. The significance of this was lost in the failure again to halt another genocide (Power, 2002). In order to circumvent these international legal obligations, the United States refrained from using the word genocide when talking about Rwanda. U.S. officials thought it would hurt the United States' reputation if they called what has happening genocide and then did nothing to stop it. Christine Shelly, State Department spokeswoman, even went as far as to say acts of genocide had been committed. Pressed further on how many acts it takes to make a genocide, she said, "That's just not a question that I'm in the position to answer" (Power, 2002: p. 363-364). International Political and Moral Ramifications of Not Intervening The UN's reputation, as well as that of the United States, was damaged in many ways when they failed to intervene to halt the genocide. The betrayal that Rwandan victims felt at being left alone has caused irreparable harm. In some cases increased hatred against the developed Western world ensued. What is particularly striking is that a day before the genocide began the Security Council met to decide whether or not to renew UNAMIR's mission. The final decision reached was that unless the new transitional government had been created within six weeks, support for UNAMIR would end. The Council did not even discuss "the role that UNAMIR could play in protecting civilians in Rwanda in the event that the warning [Dallaire's] proved correct" (Power, 2002: p. 364). Even before this mission, the plan of genocide was not a secret. In January of that year, Dallaire heard from an informant who told him of the beginnings of the death lists. Dallaire passed the information along to the UN office in New York, but his superiors forbade him from doing anything over his vehement protests (Power, 2002). What furthered the feelings of betrayal was that the Europeans sent more than 1,000 troops to Kigali airport on April 9, three days after the genocide began, to help evacuate expatriates of France, Belgium and Italy. "If the major powers had reconfigured the 1000-man European evacuation force and the 300 U.S. Marines on standby in Burundi and contributed them to Dallaire's mission, he would finally have had the numbers to stage rescue operations and to confront the killers" (Power, 2002: p. 353). But this realization was not as devastating as the fact that soldiers who were already stationed in Rwanda were ordered to leave their posts where they were protecting innocent Rwandan civilians to go to the airport and help with the expatriate evacuation. Specifically, "in the three days during which some 4,000 foreigners were evacuated, about 20,000 Rwandans were killed…. Bill and Hillary Clinton visited the U.S. officials who had manned the emergency-operations room at the State Department and offered congratulations on a 'job well done’" (Power, 2002: p. 353). Following the evacuation was the withdrawal of UN troops. The withdrawal of UN troops already on the ground resulted in the civilians they were protecting being immediately slaughtered. Conclusion That the international community did not intervene in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide is inexcusable. The deaths of many innocent civilians could have been prevented with relatively little cost, had the international community been willing to risk the lives of peacekeepers. Instead the world is left grappling with the moral and political ramifications of standing by while yet another genocide take place. Still the spillover effects felt across the region, and the moral and economic cleanup of the country will continue for decades. Perhaps this time the international community has learned its lesson about not intervening in genocide. At least administrations in the future will be well aware of the consequences of not halting genocide. References Edward A. (2000). The Great Powers and Genocide: Lessons from Rwanda, ACDIS 12(2): 121-145. Feil, S. R., (2004). Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might Have Succeeded in Rwanda. Wilson Center. Information Retrieved from http://www.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/rwanda/frame.htm Gourevitch, P. (1998). We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. New York: Picador USA. Kuperman, A. J. (2000). Rwanda in Retrospect, Foreign Affairs 79(l ): 94-118. Kuperman, A. J. (2004). Humanitarian Hazard: Revisiting Doctrines of Intervention. Harvard International Review 26(1): 64-68. Lake, A., (2004). Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda: Interviews: Anthony Lake, Public Broadcasting System (home page on-line]; available from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/lake.html Nardin, T. , & Williams, M. (2006). Humanitarian intervention (NOMOS XLVII: Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy). New York: New York University Press. Newman, L S. (2009) Genocide. Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Sage Publications. Power, S. (2002). A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Perennial. Prunier, G. (1995). The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press. Welsh, J. M., (2004). Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press. Wittmann, F. (2008). Rwanda Genocide, Role of Media. Encyclopedia of Political Communication. Sage Publications. Read More