Document(s) 8 of 37

BEFORE INDEPENDENCE

It is not difficult to isolate the key steps that led from the late pre-colonial period in Rwanda to the genocide a full century later. There was nothing inexorable about this process. At its heart was the deliberate choice of successive elites to deepen the cleavages between the country's two main ethnic groups, to dehumanize the group that was out of power and to legitimate the use of violence against that group. In hindsight, two almost competing historical evolutions can be seen: the series of building blocks that paved the way to the point where genocide became conceivable; and the numerous occasions when it was not yet too late to reverse this destructive pattern.

It was under Mwami (King) Rwabugiri, a Tutsi who ruled during the late 1800s, that the chief characteristics of modern Rwanda were fixed for the next 100 years. A powerful head of a centralized state, he provided firm direction to an elaborate series of subordinate structures. In the colonial era, under German and then Belgian rule, Roman Catholic missionaries, inspired by the overtly racist theories of nineteenth-century Europe, concocted a bizarre ideology of ethnic cleavage and racial rankings that attributed superior qualities to the country's Tutsi minority. This 15 per cent of the population, it was announced, were approaching, however gradually, the exalted level of white people, in contrast with the declared brutishness and innate inferiority of the 'Bantu' (Hutu) majority. Because the missionaries ran the colonial-era schools, these pernicious values were systematically transmitted to several generations of Rwandans along with more conventional Catholic teachings.

The alleged differences between ethnic groups were arbitrary and baseless, yet they soon took on a life of their own. The Belgians made the Mwami's complex structures more rigid and ethnically inflexible. They institutionalized the split between the two groups, culminating in the issuance to every Rwandan of an ethnic identity card. This card system was maintained for over 60 years until, with tragic irony, during the genocide it became the instrument that enabled Hutu killers in urban areas to identify the Tutsi who were its original beneficiaries.

While it served them, the Tutsi elite were only too pleased to believe in their own natural superiority and to run the country for their Belgian patrons. The majority Hutu were treated with harshness appropriate to a lower caste. Soon many Hutu came to agree that the two ethnic groups, distinguished mostly by vocation in prior centuries, were indeed fundamentally dissimilar in nature and irreconcilable in practice. The Tutsi came to be demonized as a foreign invading power with no entitlements in Rwanda.

As the colonial era drew to a close, democracy in the colonies became synonymous with majority rule. The tragedy of Rwanda is that the majority came to be defined by ethnicity alone. A national independence movement, an umbrella under which all citizens united to oppose colonial rule, failed to thrive in Rwanda. Voices of moderation and inclusiveness were drowned out by extremists advocating ethnic exclusivity.

Yet, there had been little open violence before independence. Hutu were unquestionably considered the 'serfs', but only some Tutsi benefited from colonialism; many led lives no better than the Hutu peasantry. Then, as always, the notion of ethnic homogeneity was contradicted by the actual divisions within both Hutu and Tutsi communities.

Although Hutu surely resented their status and treatment, considerable intermarriage took place between the two groups, which after all shared a common language, religion, geography and, often as not, appearance. Tutsi cattle herders and Hutu farmers complemented each other. Hatred between the two groups needed careful nurturing. Until political parties formed on the basis of ethnic origins, there were no massacres of either ethnic group by the other.

Instead of an independence struggle directed against their colonial masters, the Hutu party targeted their masters' Tutsi surrogates. Surprisingly enough, Hutu politicians now found themselves actively supported by the Belgians and the Catholic Church, both reversing their original stance once they realized that Hutu rule was inevitable. This support continued even when anti-Tutsi violence broke out. Between 1959 and 1967, 20,000 Tutsi were killed and 300,000 fled in terror to neighbouring countries. In the eyes of some Tutsi today, these attacks constitute either a prelude to genocide or genocide itself.

THE FIRST AFRICAN GOVERNMENTS

The newly independent government of Grégoire Kayibanda made its colours apparent from the start. As early as 1961, the United Nations reported that 'the developments of these last 18 months have brought about the racial dictatorship of one party ... An oppressive system has been replaced by another one.' The Hutu government pleased no one, not even the large majority of its fellow Hutu. Life for the peasantry remained precarious, while a small Hutu elite from the north and northwest grew increasingly dissatisfied with their marginal role in Kayibanda's southern-dominated government.

As pressure on Kayibanda grew, he unleashed ethnic terror once again, hoping to save his regime by uniting the Hutu against the common Tutsi enemy. At the same time, ethnic cleavages were reinforced, neither for the first nor last time, by events south of the border in Burundi. In 1972, after an appalling massacre of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi government there, terrorized Burundian Hutu flooded into Rwanda to inflame ethnic tensions and to join in anti-Tutsi attacks. Although relatively few Tutsi were killed, many thousands were driven out to join their ethnic kin in exile.

But Kayibanda's exploitation of ethnic fears failed to save his regime and, in 1973, he was replaced by Juvénal Habyarimana, head of the Rwandan army. For the next 15 years, Rwanda enjoyed relatively good times and little ethnic violence. Habyarimana opened the country to the world and efficient, stable little Rwanda soon became the darling of the West's burgeoning development industry. As for the Tutsi, they were now safe for the first time in almost 15 years. It is true they suffered significant institutional discrimination. They were allowed to play only a marginal role in politics, were shut out of the military and were limited by quota to 10 per cent of education placements. But they thrived in the private sector and were successful in the liberal professions as well as some public service institutions.

More than 60 per cent of Rwandans were Catholic, and the church remained a trusted ally and reliable bulwark of the regime, giving it legitimacy and comfort literally until the end. In common with the foreign governments and aid agencies that were involved with Rwanda, church leaders rarely challenged the ethnic basis of public life or Habyarimana's one-party military dictatorship; indeed, they embraced without reservation the notion of demographic democracy based on the Hutu's overwhelming majority.

By the late 1980s, however, economic progress stalled. Government revenues declined as coffee and tea prices dropped. International financial institutions, indifferent to the social and political consequences of their demands, imposed programmes that exacerbated inflation, land scarcity and unemployment. Young men were hit particularly hard. The mood of the country was raw.

It was at this vulnerable moment, on 1 October 1990, that the children of the Tutsi refugees who had earlier fled into English-speaking Uganda re-emerged as a rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Often made scapegoats and persecuted in exile, Rwandan Tutsi also remained unwelcome back in Rwanda. According to Habyarimana, the country was too poor, too crowded and had too little land to accommodate the exiled community – all plausible propositions.

The RPF invasion and the government's response constituted a giant step on the road to genocide. The RPF was not constrained by the knowledge that incursions by Tutsi exiles in the 1960s had led to great brutality against other Tutsi. As for Habyarimana, he had a choice in October 1990. Contrary to RPF expectations, few Rwandans of any background welcomed these unknown 'Ugandan' soldiers. A united front among all Rwandans against outside invaders was perfectly plausible. But an opportunistic and threatened government chose the opposite course; with great deliberation, to further their own self-interest, they reawakened the sleeping dogs of ethnic division. All Tutsi, both citizens and RPF soldiers, were portrayed as alien invaders, while divisions among Hutu had to be submerged in a common front against the intruders. All Tutsi were denounced as fifth columnists, secret supporters of the RPF. Anti-Tutsi propaganda, largely muted for the previous 17 years, was unleashed anew.

At the same time, Habyarimana called on his foreign friends for military help. The French responded most positively. Their forces prevented a swift RPF victory over the hapless Rwandan army, and French soldiers and advisors remained in the country counselling Habyarimana's people politically and militarily on keeping these 'anglo-saxon' interlopers at bay. The government learned that, whatever it did, it could always count on the unconditional public and private support of the French government.

Immediately after the RPF raid, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) threw itself into peacemaking and attempts to resolve the conflict. For the OAU in Rwanda and then the Great Lakes region, the 1990s were a time of well-meant initiatives, incessant meetings, commitments made and commitments broken. In the end, the OAU had only enough resources and power to bring adversaries together, hope they agreed and pray they did not violate their agreements.

The impact of the RPF raid was devastating in every way. Its advances, together with the government's anti-Tutsi propaganda, drove terrified Hutu into internal settlement camps. In a short time, close to 300,000 Rwandans had been driven from or fled their land to become 'internally displaced persons' (IDPs). In early 1993, another large-scale RPF attack led to a further million, mostly Hutu, IDPs. The country was in turmoil. The ailing economy had little chance to recover. Anti-Tutsi violence, organized by the government or its allies, spread like wildfire, while the RPF insurgents similarly showed little restraint in dealing brutally with Hutu civilians in the areas they 'liberated'.

Within the Habyarimana government, real power increasingly resided with a small faction of insiders from the northwest called the Akazu, 'the little house'; it was also widely known as 'le Clan de Madame', as its core was the president's wife, family and close associates, who were the chief beneficiaries of the corruption that characterized the regime. As the economic collapse significantly reduced the available spoils of power and called into question the very legitimacy of the regime, the Akazu began playing the ethnic card to divert attention away from serious divisions among the Hutu.

This should not be taken to mean that planning of the genocide was initiated at a precise moment. Both physical and rhetorical violence against the Tutsi continued to escalate from the RPF incursion until the genocide actually started in April 1994. There is no question that this campaign was organized and promoted and that at some point it turned into a strategy for genocide. But that exact point remains unknown. For Rwanda, the 'smoking gun' that nails the perpetrators and their fanatical plot is not a single meeting or a particular letter, but rather a cumulative series of events.

Rwanda endured three and a half years of violent anti-Tutsi incidents. In retrospect, most of these can be interpreted as deliberate steps in a vast conspiracy culminating in the shooting down of the president's plane on the evening of 6 April 1994 and the unleashing of the genocide. But this interpretation remains somewhat speculative. No one yet knows who shot down the plane, nor can it be demonstrated that every one of the countless manifestations of anti-Tutsi sentiment in these years was part of a diabolical master plan. The evidence most plausibly suggests that the idea of genocide emerged only gradually through 1991 and 1992, accelerating in determination through 1993 and into 1994.

Later, when it was finally over, a great international argument broke out over who knew what about the events unfolding in Rwanda. There can be no debate here; the facts speak for themselves. The world that mattered to Rwanda – its Great Lakes neighbours, the United Nations, all the major Western powers – knew exactly what was happening and that it was being masterminded at the highest levels of the state. They knew that this was no senseless case of 'Hutu killing Tutsi and Tutsi killing Hutu', as it was sometimes dismissively described. They knew that a terrible fate had befallen Rwanda. They even knew that some Hutu Power extremists were talking openly of eliminating all Tutsi, although few could then conceive that an actual genocide was being plotted.

Anti-Tutsi violence, it was widely known, was revived immediately after the RPF invasion when organized anti-Tutsi massacres began – and ended only when the genocide itself ended. Massacres of Tutsi were carried out in October 1990, January 1991, February 1991, March 1992, August 1992, January 1993, March 1993 and February 1994. On each occasion, scores of Tutsi were killed by mobs and militiamen associated with various political parties, sometimes with the involvement of the police and army, incited by the media, directed by local government officials and encouraged by some national politicians.

As the terror heightened, the organizers learned that they could not only massacre large numbers of people quickly and efficiently, they could get away with it. Wholehearted backing of the regime by the French government and general indifference to the escalating racism by the churches reinforced this feeling. A culture of impunity developed as the conspirators grew bolder. Extremist army officers colluded with the circles surrounding Habyarimana and the Akazu to form secret societies and Latin American-style death squads known as 'Amasasu' (bullets) and the 'Zero Network'. They did not long remain secret; in 1992, their existence and connections were publicly exposed.

But contrary forces were at work at the same time. Pressure for democratization from both within and outside the country forced Habyarimana to accept multiparty politics. The apparent advance toward democracy, however, had several unanticipated consequences, all of them unwelcome. A host of new parties emerged, most of them Hutu, wanting to participate in the process. One of these new parties, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic, represented Hutu radicals and had links to the death squads. What was worse, parties organized their own youth militias, the most notorious being the Interahamwe formed by Habyarimana's own Mouvement Républicain National pour la Democratie et le Développement (MRND). At the same time, new hate-propagating media sprang up, most infamously a private radio station calling itself Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM), which was financed and controlled by the Akazu faction. While his militia terrorized opponents and beat up Tutsi and his radio station incited ethnic hatred and violence, Habyarimana, with great reluctance, agreed to accept a coalition government.

Immediately, the new ministers joined with the OAU and Western powers to pressure Habyarimana to agree to negotiations with the RPF in Arusha, Tanzania. In August 1993, after long, drawn-out sessions, agreement was reached on a series of key issues. But these were never implemented. Ultimately, Arusha backfired. The more it appeared that power and the limited spoils of office would have to be shared not only with other Hutu parties but also with the RPF, the more determined the Akazu insiders grew to share nothing with anyone.

At the same moment, a deadly new weapon was unexpectedly delivered into the hands of the Rwandan Hutu. The assassination in October 1993 by Tutsi officers of Burundi's democratically elected Hutu president and the appalling massacres that followed were taken by many Hutu as final proof that power-sharing between Tutsi and Hutu was forever doomed; the Tutsi could never be trusted. The emergence of Hutu Power, an explicit and public organizing concept, was the immediate consequence of the Burundi upheaval. Large Hutu Power rallies attracted members of all parties, attesting to the new reality that ethnic solidarity trumped party allegiances. Political life, in these last turbulent months before the genocide, was reorganized strictly around the two ethnic poles.

As the conspiracy widened and deepened, so did knowledge of the conspirators' intentions. Virtually everyone in Rwanda associated with the United Nations, the diplomatic community or human rights groups knew about death lists, accelerating massacres, arms proliferation and threats to opposition politicians. The UN military mission uncovered a high-level Interahamwe informant, whose revelations led its commander, Major General Roméo Dallaire, to send his famous 11 January 1994 message – the so-called 'genocide fax' – to New York headquarters: 'Jean-Pierre,' Dallaire reported, 'has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1,000 Tutsi.' Dallaire's superiors at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations replied with the perverse instruction to inform the president and take no further action. Another opportunity to expose the conspiracy was lost.

When it was finally unleashed only three months later, hours after Habyarimana went down with his plane, the violence was organized and coordinated. Its goal was explicit: genocide. A clique of Rwandan Hutu planned to mobilize the Hutu people with the explicit intention of exterminating all Tutsi in the country, including women and children. The rest of the world knew that a great disaster loomed for Rwanda, but few envisaged the possibility that the radicals would resort to outright genocide. It was a prospect simply too appalling to contemplate. But for the extremist Hutu leadership, no other response to their situation any longer seemed adequate.

THE EXTERNAL ACTORS BEFORE THE GENOCIDE

Several outside actors carried a heavy responsibility for the events that were now unfolding. Some were guilty of crimes of commission, others crimes of omission. But one way or another, as they had for the entire century, outsiders had great influence on Rwanda's fate, much of it malevolent.

Within Rwanda itself, the chief culprits were the Catholic and Anglican hierarchies and the French government, all active supporters of the Habyarimana government. Church leaders failed to use their unique moral position among the overwhelmingly Christian population to denounce ethnic hatred and human rights abuse. The French government was guilty of the same failure at the elite level. Its public backing constituted a major disincentive for the radicals to make concessions or to think in terms of compromise. Although some French officials knew that many of their clients at the highest echelons of the Rwandan regime were guilty of human rights violations, they failed to use their influence to demand that such violations stop. At the same time, they continued to act as senior political and military advisors to the government. The radicals drew the obvious lesson: they could get away with anything.

At the United Nations, the Security Council, led unremittingly by the United States, simply did not care enough about Rwanda to intervene appropriately. There were no economic or strategic interests at play. What makes this betrayal of their responsibility even more intolerable is that the genocide was in no way inevitable. It could have been prevented entirely. Even once it was allowed to begin, the destruction could have been significantly mitigated. All that was required was a relatively modest international military force, perhaps 5000 properly trained troops, with a strong mandate to enforce the Arusha agreements. Nothing of the kind was authorized by the Security Council before the genocide, and the force that was approved during the genocide was not permitted to intervene until the slaughter was over.

The United States has formally apologized for its failure to prevent the genocide. President Clinton insisted that it was a function of ignorance. The evidence shows that the American government knew precisely what was happening, not least during the months of the genocide. Domestic politics took priority over the lives of helpless Africans. After losing 18 soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the US was unwilling to participate in further peacekeeping missions and was largely opposed to the Security Council authorizing any new serious missions at all, with or without American participation.

In October 1993, the first UN mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) was set up; it was notable mostly for its weak mandate and minimal capacity. No amount of credible early warnings could persuade the members of the Security Council to treat the mission seriously or the UN Secretariat to interpret its mandate flexibly. In fact, the single occasion on which UNAMIR was authorized to go beyond its passive observer mandate was at the very outbreak of the genocide. Several European nations flew planes in to evacuate their nationals, and UNAMIR was authorized not only to assist the evacuation, but also to go beyond its mandate, if required, to assure the safety of foreign nationals. Never was such permission granted for the protection of Rwandans. And none of the 2,500 European and American troops used in the evacuation or on standby in the region offered to work with UNAMIR to stop the genocide.

The significance of the Security Council's action should not be underestimated: its refusal to sanction a serious mission made the genocide more likely. The feeble UN effort helped persuade the Hutu radicals that they had nothing to fear from the outside world, regardless of their deeds. This assessment proved only too accurate. Once the genocide began, the US, backed most forcefully by Britain, repeatedly and deliberately undermined all attempts to strengthen the UN military presence in Rwanda.

Belgium became an unexpected ally in this goal. On day two of the crisis, ten Belgian soldiers were murdered by Rwandan soldiers. As the radicals had anticipated, Belgium swiftly decided to pull out all its troops, leaving the 2,500 Tutsi they were protecting at a school site to be slaughtered within hours. The Belgian government decided that its shameful retreat would be at least tempered if it were shared by others, and strenuously lobbied to disband UNAMIR entirely. Although the US supported the idea, it was too outrageous to pursue. Instead, with the genocide costing tens of thousands of lives daily, and ignoring the vigorous opposition of the OAU and African governments, the Security Council chose to cut the UN force by 90 per cent at the exact moment it needed massive reinforcement. For most of the 100 days of the genocide, General Dallaire commanded a force of only 400, many of them inadequately trained or equipped. As horror stories accelerated, the council authorized a stronger mission, UNAMIR II, but once again the US did all in its power to undermine its effectiveness. In the end, not a single new soldier or piece of military hardware reached the country before the genocide ended.

THE GENOCIDE

The two rockets that brought down President Habyarimana's plane became the catalysts for one of the great calamities of our age: a genocide and a civil war, separate but simultaneous. To this day, controversy reigns over the responsibility for this attack. Most students of the genocide believe the finger most plausibly points to Habyarimana's extremist allies, fed up with his attempts to placate outsiders. Deniers of the genocide – still active to this day – insist it was the RPF leadership. There has been no investigation and no one can say with certainty.

A certain chaos reigned for the few days following the crash, although the conspirators had control enough to begin systematic search-and-murder missions against their leading opponents, both Hutu and Tutsi. But soon enough, all sense of uncertainty ended. The government's military structure that had been built since 1990 was now swiftly mobilized to execute the genocide as well as to fight a civil war. It could now be seen clearly that its creators had an overall strategy that it implemented with scrupulous planning and organization, control of the levers of government, highly motivated soldiers and militia, the means to kill vast numbers of people, the capacity to identify and kill the victims and tight control of the media (specifically RTLM) to disseminate the right messages both inside and outside the country.

When the genocide ended little more than 100 days later, perhaps as many as a million women, children and men, the vast majority of them Tutsi, lay dead. Thousands more were raped, tortured and maimed for life. Victims were treated with sadistic cruelty and suffered unimaginable agony.

The attacks had many targets. A clear priority list for elimination included anti-Habyarimana government and opposition members; Hutu who opposed the extremists, thousands of whom were slaughtered without mercy in the first days; critics such as journalists and human rights activists; any Tutsi seen as community leaders, including professionals, political activists, lawyers and teachers; as well as priests, nuns and other clergy who were Tutsi or who sheltered intended victims.

Together, military leaders and the new interim government of Hutu Power supporters that was sworn in after the plane crash made the overall decisions, while Rwanda's elaborate governing structure implemented the genocide with remarkable efficiency. The Hutu leadership of the Catholic and Anglican churches, with a few notably courageous exceptions, played a conspicuously scandalous role in these months, often directly complicit in aiding the genocidaires, at best remaining silent or explicitly neutral. This stance was easily interpreted by ordinary Christians as an implicit endorsement of the killings, as was the close association of church leaders with the leaders of the genocide. Perhaps this helps explain the greatest mystery about the genocide: the terrible success of Hutu Power in turning so many ordinary people into accomplices in genocide. In no other way could so many have been killed so swiftly.

It has always been difficult to establish the numbers killed in the genocide. The highest persuasive figure for Tutsi killed seems to be near one million, the very lowest, 500,000. Government spokespeople have often used a figure of 'more than a million', while a new official figure is 937,000 dead. More research is needed to be certain. Even if the most conservative figure is used, it still means that over three-quarters of the entire population registered as Tutsi were systematically killed in just over 100 days. As well, millions of Rwandan Hutu became internally displaced within the country or fled to become refugees in neighbouring countries.

THE WORLD DURING THE GENOCIDE

Until the day it ended with the RPF's military victory, the UN, the governments of the US, France and Belgium, most African governments and the OAU all failed to define the events in Rwanda as full-blown genocide and all continued to recognize members of the genocidaire government as legitimate official representatives of their country. All except the French government remained publicly neutral between a government that was executing the genocide and their RPF adversaries, the only force fighting that government.

Throughout the genocide, France remained openly hostile to the RPF. After two months of conflict, the French government, in a so-called humanitarian mission known as Operation Turquoise, sent a force to create a safe zone in the southwest of the country. It probably saved the lives of 10–15,000 Tutsi, although it jeopardized other Tutsi by giving them a false sense of security. Far more consequentially, as the RPF advanced, many government and military leaders responsible for the genocide and many government soldiers and militia escaped to the safety and protection of this zone. They were then permitted by the French force to cross the border into eastern Zaire, joining fellow genocidaires who had escaped through other routes, all of them ready to resume their war against the new Kigali government. When the French troops pulled out in August 1994, not a single genocidaire had been arrested in their safe zone. The consequences for later conflict in the Great Lakes Region can hardly be exaggerated.

The facts are not in question: a small number of major actors could have prevented, halted or reduced the slaughter. They include France in Rwanda itself; the United States at the Security Council, loyally supported by Britain; Belgium, whose soldiers knew they could save countless lives if they were allowed to remain in the country; and Rwanda's church leaders. In the bitter words of the commander of the UN's military mission, the 'international community has blood on its hands'.

In the years since, the leaders of the UN, the United States, Belgium and the Anglican Church have all apologized for their failure to stop the genocide. Yet none has suggested that Rwanda is owed restitution for these failures, and in no single case has any responsible individual resigned in protest or been held to account for his or her actions. Neither the French government nor the Roman Catholic hierarchy (including the late Pope John Paul II) has apologized or accepted responsibility for its role.

RWANDA SINCE THE GENOCIDE

When the war and the genocide ended on 18 July 1994, the situation in Rwanda was almost indescribably grim. Rarely had a people anywhere had to face so many seemingly insuperable obstacles with so few resources. Their physical and psychological scars were likely to linger for decades.

The country was wrecked – a wasteland. Of seven million inhabitants before the genocide, as many as 15 per cent were dead, two million were internally displaced and another two million had become refugees. Many of those who remained had suffered horribly. Large numbers had been tortured and wounded. Many women had been raped, tortured and humiliated, some becoming infected with AIDS. Of the children who survived, 90 per cent had witnessed bloodshed or worse. An entire nation was brutalized and traumatized. They were, in their own phrase, 'the walking dead'. Yet killers and survivors had no alternative but to resume living side-by-side on Rwanda's hills.

This was the situation a new inexperienced government had to face. Its challenges were monumental and its strategies not always convincing. Although it has always called itself a government of national unity and included prominent Hutu in high-profile offices, most observers believe that real power in the land – political and military – has been exercised by a small group of the original 'RPF Tutsi', the English-speakers from Uganda. Paul Kagame, leader of the RFP forces during the civil war and genocide, and vice-president and minister of defence until he became president in 2000, has universally been seen as the government's indispensable man.

Some saw it as a government that was not trusted by its people and a people not trusted by its government. Under the circumstances, neither was surprising. A major insurgency by genocidaires based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into northwestern Rwanda caused havoc through the late 1990s. The government, suspicious of all Hutu, responded with brute force, frequently failing to distinguish between genocidaires and ordinary peasants. The latter, in turn, were reinforced in their belief that the RPF government was not theirs.

Nor, for very compelling reasons, did the new government trust the international community, although it immediately found itself overwhelmingly dependent on Western nations and international agencies and financial institutions to begin reconstruction. Given its past record, the world's response to Rwanda's needs ranged from modest to disappointing to downright scandalous. Although the government eventually began to find favour among various Western countries, notably the US and United Kingdom, which led to somewhat more generous aid packages, nothing like restitution or the cancellation of the odious debts incurred by the Habyarimana regime has ever been contemplated.

To make matters worse, only months after the genocide ended, many of the foreigners who had come to 'help' the country began to argue that Rwandans ought to get on with the task of rebuilding their society. 'Quit dwelling on the past and concentrate on rebuilding for the future,' they were advised. Within six months of the end of the genocide, relief workers were already telling a traumatized people, 'Yes, the genocide happened, but it's time to get over it and move on.' Rwandans believed, not without reason, that such insensitivity and lack of empathy could only be directed at Africans. In fact, as research from the Holocaust and Armenian genocides has shown, the traumas from a disaster of this order are multi-generational in their impact. Certainly today, for survivors and perpetrators alike, Rwanda remains very much a traumatized nation.

'Getting over it' is an enormously difficult task. As with all societies in transition from tyranny and terror, among an endless host of problems that continue to bedevil Rwanda are highly complex questions and dilemmas of justice, guilt and reconciliation. In the insightful words of scholar Mahmood Mamdani (2002),

The Tutsi want justice above all else and the Hutu want democracy above all else. The minority fears democracy. The majority fears justice. The minority fears that the demand for democracy is a mask for finishing an unfinished genocide. The majority fears the demand for justice is a minority ploy to usurp power forever.

As hundreds of thousands of ordinary Rwandans had picked up their machetes and actively participated in the genocide, Rwanda faced an unprecedented situation. The UN set up an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, aimed at trying 'the big fish', while Rwanda is now experimenting with two parallel judicial systems. In all of these, the process of trying accused genocidaires is long, laborious and frustrating. But if there are more effective ways to deal with this issue, they are not readily apparent.

The ICTR has been a source of controversy from its inception. Foes, not least the Rwandan government, must acknowledge its groundbreaking jurisprudence, while supporters have difficulty justifying its huge budget and enormous staff – in 2004–05, US$ 231 million and 1,042 authorized posts. Although 60 people have been detained, as of mid-2005, after almost a decade of work, the court has convicted only 22 people and acquitted 3 others. Nevertheless, even within this almost derisory number, the ICTR's achievements must be recorded:

• The court interpreted the definition of genocide as presented in the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
  
  
• It defined the crime of rape as a crime against humanity.
  
  
• It convicted, for the first time, a leader of a government for the crime of genocide.
  
  
• It ruled that the media can be a tool of genocide for which those in charge are responsible.

In Rwanda, a decimated judicial system had the responsibility for dealing with some 120,000 Hutu rotting in prisons in appalling circumstances, often without proper charges. The task defied capacity. As of 2004, some 6,500 had been tried. At this rate, it was estimated, it would take two to four centuries to clear the backlog. The government resorted to two dramatic steps. To the chagrin of the voluble survivors' umbrella organization, Ibuka, it released some 20,000 of those charged with lesser crimes or for whom no credible documentation existed. Beyond that, it embarked on one of the most remarkable social experiments of our time: local courts called gacaca, an attempt to blend traditional and contemporary mechanisms to expedite the justice process in a manner that is meant to promote reconciliation. To clear the enormous backlog of cases, 12,000 gacaca courts have been appointed, each made up of 19 locally elected judges. A staggering 250,000 Rwandans have been trained for their roles.

Some human rights advocates are concerned that these grass-roots courts will operate as a kind of mob justice, with no properly trained professionals and no capacity to adhere to international standards. However, most observers feel there was little practical alternative and are watching the gacaca panels with much interest. Already unexpected consequences are emerging. Ordinary Rwandans are accusing their neighbours of participating in the genocide, adding thousands of new names to the lists of those to be tried. Equally dramatic, Rwandans prominent in public life today have been accused of genocidal activities, most notably the minister of defence, and they too will be obligated to make their case before a gacaca panel. It will be some time before a balanced judgement about the effectiveness and fairness of this bold innovation can be made.

In the meantime, questions of justice and reconciliation, perplexing in any post-conflict situation let alone a genocide, will remain to bedevil official actions and popular expectations. The government has created a series of structures and institutions designed to foster reconciliation and unity, but on its own terms. Ethnicity can no longer be recognized except as a destructive aberration of the past – a radical proposition given the past century. There can be only one identity – Rwandan – and any attempt to resurrect old ethnic issues is pounced on as unacceptable 'divisionism'. Government argues this is the only way to forge a united people. To the government's opponents, it is merely a convenient excuse to suppress legitimate democratic opposition. What the vast majority of Rwandans in the hills think, what young Rwandans think, whether traditional stereotypes have evaporated because they are no longer legal is not easy to say.

THE REGIONAL CONSEQUENCES

While these questions absorbed Rwandans internally, beyond its borders the genocide had created another monumental crisis. By the end of the 100 days, two million citizens had fled the conflict in every direction – more than half a million east to Tanzania, more than a quarter million south to Burundi and, most dramatically, at least 1.2 million west to the eastern Kivu region of Zaire. As the fighting and genocide drew to a close, thanks to France's Operation Turquoise much of the leadership and many of the troops and militia of the genocide had escaped from Rwanda into eastern Zaire, where they had unlimited access to weapons. This was a sure-fire formula for disaster.

The international media had first ignored, then largely misinterpreted the genocide as nothing more than another example of African savagery; now they made the Kivu refugee camps a universal cause célèbre. Foreign aid and foreign aid workers flooded in, vastly more than went to Rwanda itself. Unfortunately, the genocidaire army (former Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR)) and the Interahamwe militia had almost completely taken over the camps and were benefiting enormously from the work of the humanitarian community; genuine refugee needs could be met only when the NGOs finished meeting the demands of the military controlling the camps.

The goals of Hutu Power were transparent and well known to everyone involved in dealing with the Kivu crisis: to overthrow the new government in Kigali and return to power. Almost immediately they began raids back into the country, providing yet another major emergency for the new Rwandan rulers to deal with. Widespread demands for the 'international community' to disarm the killers went nowhere. Once again, the leaders of the Security Council badly failed Rwanda. In some ways, they actually added to Rwanda's woes. The French government, with tacit American approval, supported Zaire's President Mobutu as the only person who could help with the refugee crisis in his country. In fact, Zairian groups associated with Mobutu's notoriously corrupt government became the primary suppliers of arms to the ex-FAR and militia in the Kivu camps, although many other countries and groups were involved in weapons trading as well.

The consequences of these international decisions for Africa were largely foreseeable and wholly disastrous. The post-genocide Rwandan government had long made it abundantly clear that it would not continue to tolerate the use of the camps in Zaire as launching pads for the genocidaires' return. By late 1996, they had had enough. Hostility toward the many former Rwandan Tutsi who lived in the Kivu region had increased ominously, and the Rwanda government had secretly begun training them. Under the flag of an alliance of anti-Mobutu Zairians headed by the dissolute Laurent Kabila, and with the active support of Uganda, the Rwandan army launched a vicious attack on the entire complex of Kivu camps in October and November. The cost in human life was enormous and a flood of refugees swarmed back into Rwanda. But substantial numbers of camp dwellers fled deeper into Zaire. Some of these were genuine refugees, some ex-FAR and Interahamwe. Led by the Rwandan army, the anti-Mobutu alliance pursued them ruthlessly, killing large numbers including women and children. In the process, they perpetrated atrocious human rights abuses whose actual magnitude is still not known.

But the military action soon spread far beyond eastern Zaire. The emboldened anti-Mobutu alliance, still led by the Rwandan army and bolstered by the forces of Uganda, Angola and Burundi, now set its sights on Mobutu himself. Within nine months, Mobutu fled and Kinshasa fell to the rebels. But there was to be no happy ending to the saga. The new head of the rechristened Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Laurent Kabila, soon clashed with his Rwandan advisors, and in July 1998, little more than a year after they had helped him become president, Kabila threw the Rwandan and Ugandan military out of the DRC.

Within days they returned as an enemy force. The second Congo war in two years now began, but almost immediately escalated to continental dimensions. It became Africa's first great war. Directly or indirectly, more than a fifth of all African governments or armies from across the continent have been involved, as well as perhaps a dozen or more armed groups; the alliances between and among these groups, with their varied and conflicting interests, have been bewildering. Kabila's major military allies were Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia; facing them were the Rwandans, Ugandans and Burundians. The situation is further endlessly complicated by the DRC's enormous mineral resources, an irresistible lure for governments, rogue gangs, warlords and powerful foreign corporations alike, and by the continuing problem of arms proliferation sponsored by governments throughout the world as well as a multitude of unscrupulous private hustlers.

One year after the new war began, the Lusaka agreement on a ceasefire and peace process was signed. Although the ceasefire was repeatedly violated, attempts to implement a genuine peace continued and in 2000 the Security Council sent a small peacekeeping mission (MONUC) to the Congo.

Violence continued, however. Although most of the DRC remained beyond the control of government, in eastern Congo full-scale anarchy and terror was unleashed. Rwanda and Uganda found the pursuit of mineral wealth at least as compelling as the destruction of the remaining Interahamwe fighters, and fought the DRC army and various armed gangs over these riches. Coltan, a metal ore used in cell phones and computers, previously unknown except to experts, became everyone's favourite plunder. Soon open warfare broke out between erstwhile allies – Ugandan and Rwandan troops – over control of territory and resources. While a truce was eventually reached, the bitterness between the rulers of the two countries has not entirely dissipated and remains a source of potentially serious instability.

Through these years ordinary Congolese died in huge numbers. Including those killed in conflict and those who died of the famine and disease spread by the conflict, they may now number close to four million (although all statistics are very rough approximations). Gang rape of girls and women on a mass level, often followed by further torture and violent death, has become commonplace. By all accounts, this constitutes the greatest human-inflicted disaster since World War II. Those directly responsible include the governments of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda and an assortment of proxy gangs and warlords all competing for mineral resources. Those indirectly responsible are the Western countries backing the various belligerent governments and the Western mining companies who have moved into the middle of the action. Many have been named in UN investigative reports. What all have in common is a refusal to acknowledge the slightest responsibility.

Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and replaced by his son, Joseph. The following year, peace negotiations led Uganda and Rwanda to promise to withdraw their armies and the DRC promised the demobilization and disarmament of Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Congo. By the end of 2002, Rwanda and Uganda claimed they had fully withdrawn from the DRC, although their proxies remained. At times it was difficult to tell which proxies were which. At all times, innocent Congolese paid the cost in suffering and death.

In Kinshasa, a power-sharing unity government was set up under Joseph Kabila in 2003, but it is now stalled and is at risk of failure. Meanwhile, a long-simmering conflict over land and mineral wealth in the northeastern Ituri region broke into widespread interethnic violence and massacres in 2002–03. Once again Rwandan and Ugandan proxies were said to be involved, although the two countries vehemently denied the charges. But recent history shows that today's denial has often enough become tomorrow's acknowledgement. Although a strengthened UN mission (MONUC II) has now been deployed in the Congo, various armed groups continue to threaten its stability.

The Congo's neighbours continue to perceive the situation as a threat to their interests and have taken interventionist actions that further destabilize the fragile process of transition. Some 8,000 to 10,000 anti-RPF Rwandan rebels, including the remaining Interahamwe, still operate in eastern DRC under the umbrella of the Forces Démocratique pour la Liberation du Rwanda. The Kigali government will never let its guard down as long as their threat continues. The events in Kivu in 2004, when Rwandan troops crossed into the DRC (an action formally denied and universally believed in Kigali), the current violence in Ituri, ongoing tensions in Kinshasa and other parts of the DRC are stark warnings that the conflict in the Congo could quickly spiral into another large-scale war.

Burundi too remains unpredictable. The civil war that effectively began in 1993 with the murder by Tutsi officers of the first democratically elected president, a Hutu, has now largely ended, although some rebels refuse to give up their arms. A great international effort has been invested in ending this murderous conflict and getting all factions to agree to multiparty elections with both Hutu and Tutsi guaranteed representation and influence. The late President Nyerere of Tanzania and Nelson Mandela were both immersed in the process for some time, and the government of South Africa continues to play a central role. Efforts at reconciliation and nation-building have been extensive and there is real reason for optimism. But given its bloody and violent history, the future of Burundi, ranked 173rd of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP's) human development index, remains very much an open question.

Although each of these Great Lakes nations has its own multiple challenges to meet, their interconnectedness can hardly be overestimated. Tensions between Rwanda and Uganda, which has its own intractable conflict in the north of the country, merely aggravate the situation. It hardly needs saying, but without peace the futures of Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the DRC are all jeopardized, with incalculable consequences not only for their own citizens, but also for the entire continent.

RWANDA TODAY AND TOMORROW

Predicting the future of Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region is not easy. Looking at Rwanda itself, it is possible to be either mildly optimistic or quite pessimistic.

In many ways, the progress the country has made since 1994 is remarkable. The ubiquitous devastation has completely vanished, manifested now only in the damaged walls of the National Assembly and the genocide memorial sites with their eerie skeletons throughout the country. Yet both the assembly and the sites have been left deliberately as memories of the genocide. Kigali now boasts a new expensive luxury hotel, high-rise office buildings, a large new estate of mansions and an elite that crowds the clubs and hotels on Saturday night. Economic growth has been relatively strong. To the superficial observer, Rwanda has returned to normality, even to a certain prosperity.

At best, however, that means it has returned to the status of being a desperately poor underdeveloped country, now ranked 159th of 177 countries on the UNDP's human development index. The gap between the small privileged elite and the vast majority is great and growing. Life expectancy at birth is 39 years and 60 per cent of the population lives on less than US$ 1 a day. Of the eight million population, close to 90 per cent live in rural areas, most of them very poor.

Yet Rwanda's challenges go well beyond the usual litany of deep-rooted social and economic problems faced by any poor country with scarce land and a swelling population. There is the onerous and 'odious' debt, meaning that it was incurred largely by the previous government for weapons that were used in the genocide. (Some debt relief has just been announced.) Then there are the enormous funding needs that spring directly from the genocide: for assistance to survivors, for orphans, traumatized children, street children, children-headed households, for widows, for violated women, for women with HIV/AIDS, for the great burdens of the two parallel justice systems, for programmes to inculcate national reconciliation and human rights, for resettling the millions of refugees and IDPs, for demobilizing and re-educating ex-FAR troops, for ex-child soldiers, for the army, for the battered education and health systems, for continuing research on the genocide – the list is limitless. This burden is the consequence of a tragedy that could have been prevented or mitigated. Yet Rwanda today is dependent on foreign sources for much of its meagre budget, while most initiatives crucial to rehabilitation, reconciliation and a culture of rights depend for their viability on outside funding sources.

Views on Rwanda today remain remarkably diverse. Hutu Power advocates, still thriving outside the country, continue perversely to deny the genocide with a series of self-contradictory propositions. It never happened. Or, Hutu were enraged that the RPF murdered Habyarimana and spontaneously lashed out. Or, people were killed in a civil war. Or, if there was a genocide at all, it was perpetrated by the RPF both in Rwanda and in the DRC. Or, there was a 'double genocide'. The ugly phenomenon of denial is particularly widespread in the French-speaking countries of Europe and Africa and in Quebec. It would be useful to expose the network of European politicians, priests and academics who continue to fund and support this malignant force and who actively foment hatred against the present government of Rwanda.

Hostility to Rwanda for its human rights abuses is also widespread. Some prominent former foreign friends of Rwanda have emerged as bitter critics, sometimes describing the country as virtually a totalitarian dictatorship. Instances of intimidated human rights activists, jailed reporters, threatened media and opponents of the government forced to flee the country are not hard to come by. The presidential election of 2003, the first since 1994, was won by Paul Kagame with an almost unbelievable 95 per cent of the vote. But there was criticism of the way the 'divisionist' card was played against Kagame's main opponent, and his opponents accused the RPF of beating up their campaign workers.

Yet, typical of Rwanda, others insist that such attacks are excessive. Some see an unfair double standard imposed on the RPF government. Corruption is a great deal less widespread than among its neighbours. Security obtains in most of the country. The election process appeared to be mostly fair. In the subsequent elections for the National Assembly, opposition parties won a credible 25 per cent of the vote. Beyond that, almost half the legislators are women, the largest proportion of any parliament in the world. This should have positive repercussions for all Rwandan women. Within certain boundaries, mostly understood, the media are cut a good deal of slack; in any event, the BBC and Voice of America are now easily available in the three national languages. Although some accuse Kagame and his government of exploiting the genocide for their own self-interest, others argue the opposite: considering that it has been only twelve years since the genocide, the number of Interahamwe still active in eastern Congo and the uncertain loyalty of the country's 85 per cent Hutu majority, it can just as convincingly be argued that the government allows a substantial amount of freedom and openness. But no one, on any side, doubts Kagame's steely determination and his readiness to take whatever steps are necessary, barring none, to keep his country secure and his government in power.

Eleven years after the genocide, Rwanda remains impenetrable, opaque, mysterious, a source of puzzlement and controversy to all who know it – a country that found itself making history that it never sought and is now attempting to forge a new path in the face of spectacular odds. Terribly poor, badly traumatized, deeply divided, a precarious entity in a fragile and explosive region, Rwanda is a country that is now bound to make history once again. It has only two paths to choose. It can once again succumb to its history and regress to yet another unspeakable conflict. Or it can transcend its past and attempt to defeat poverty and underdevelopment as a united, secure and stable country. As has been true for more than a century, both Rwandans and outsiders will play central roles in determining the future.

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