Liberal imperialism and the mythology of "Rwanda"

[JackRiddler]

Western powers intervened in Rwanda years before the genocide in 1994. France and the US armed and dispatched the sides in the eventual civil war. Rwanda was a French client state. The USG set up the Museveni regime in Uganda, where it then armed and trained the Rwandan Patriotic Front under the leadership of Paul Kagame. He received military training at Ft. Leavenworth.

The RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda with the intent to take power. They have been accused of committing their own serious atrocities during the invasion. This was the context as the Hutu Power militias whipped up their genocidal campaign against Tutsi civilians. The mass murder was set off in earnest following the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, who were trying to negotiate a peace, in a shootdown of their plane. Subsequent UN and ICC investigations of the events officially left out the mysterious circumstances of the assassination and begin after it.

The war went to the RPF's favor. During the genocide, France invaded Rwanda to secure the retreat of the Hutu Power killers. Repeat: France intervened militarily in Rwanda during the genocide so as to protect the genocidaires and allow them to escape to Congo, where they set up new bases at Hutu refugee camps. (This then set off the events that led to the Congo war and fall of the Mobuto dictatorship thre, after the new RPF-led Rwandan government invaded Congo.)

This example of a Western military intervention in Rwanda, one of several by France and the U.S. that did not stop but actually contributed to the genocide, was a big story at the time in Europe. It has been erased from the U.S. mythology of "Rwanda," however. The baseless confabulation that the Rwandan genocide occurred because of a lack of Western intervention, rather than partly as the result of a Western intervention, is wholly counterfactual. It is found only in the United States, and internationally within a very select class of humanitarian imperialists in the mode of Samantha Power (who are outside the "reality based" community).

Repeat: Rwandan civil war unfolded with the support of dual Western interventions, in part as a proxy war between French and U.S. imperialist interests. France intervened to support the side committing the genocide.

So how is it possible that anyone ever cites the Rwandan genocide as an example of a case when the West "should have" intervened? How is it that Clinton, under whose administration the U.S. armed and trained the RPF army, is taken seriously when he regrets "not having" intervened? How is it that liberal imperialists, now looking for their latest humanitarian intervention in Syria, are not laughed out of the room when they abuse "Rwanda" as an example?

[Democracyinkind]

1. Very pertinent...

Anyone that wants to get to the bottom of this can follow the trail of the machetes into Rwanda. The whole "the west just watched" schtick is IMO a product of the fact that most people base their opinions on "Hotel Rwanda", a narrative driven mainly by the guilt of Romeo Dallaire which is very narrow and apologetic (but probably motivated by true feelings of guilt).

[JackRiddler]

2. Hm, most don't seem to think so...

You'd think this would provoke a response, given the revival of "Rwanda" as a trope to support the prospective Syrian campaign.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

3. I thank you for all of the facts,inks and documentation supporting your we opinion

Oh wait. That was just a couple of blocks of text proving nothing.

[JackRiddler]

4. As if "links" "prove" anything.

I paid attention and remember much reporting on these events at the time. The text refers to specific events, names and places. Looking it up is no trouble. (The New York Times also lacks for "links" and citations.) You don't seem to consider it worth your time to research the subject yourself, so I don't care what you think. Thanks for the kick, though. Feel free to do it again.

[PETRUS]

5. K&R ya damn hippie peacenick

[TorchTheWitch]

6. Rwanda was a Belgian colony, not French

From the start of the first World War in the early 1900's Belgium left the governing of Rwanda (then Ruanda-Urundi) to the aristocratic Tutsis, and in 1962 Ruanda-Urundi became independent. However, long before the first European entered Rwanda in the late 1800's there was already a Hutu/Tutsi divide though animosity between the two didn't develop until much later but also long before the 1994 genocide which was not the first.

For a history of Rwanda going back to the late 1800's and including the 1994 genocide (which was not the first but certainly the worst) and its aftermath read here:

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad24
<snip>
"Habyarimana remains in power for twenty-one years, running a conventional self-serving military dictatorship (with enthusiastic support from several western countries, in particular France). But his Hutu ethnic policy creates an increasing problem on Rwanda's frontiers. Over the borders there are a vast number of mainly Tutsi refugees. As time passes they are increasingly unwelcome in their host countries. Efforts are made to send them home. But Rwanda rejects them.

In 1986 Habyarimana states as a matter of policy that there will be no right of return for Rwandan refugees. In the following year Rwandan exiles form the group which soon transforms the situation - the RPF or Rwandan Patriotic Front, committed to armed struggle against Habyarimana's regime.

The nucleus of the RPF is Tutsi officers serving in the Ugandan army. On a prearranged date, 1 October 1990, they desert from the army with their equipment and move south over the border into Rwanda. It is a minor invasion which eventually, against all the odds, puts an end to Habyarimana's regime. But it also provokes one of the century's most appalling acts of genocide.

The prelude to genocide: 1990-1994

President Habyarimina is able to repel the initial RPF invasion of northeastern Rwanda, in October 1990, largely thanks to French paratroops sent for the purpose by President Mitterand. But the event provides the pretext for a new wave of Tutsi persecution within Rwanda."

More interesting info here on the international involvement (or really the non-involvement) in the 1994 genocide with a lot of documentation:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html

"As the killing intensified, the international community deserted Rwanda. Western nations landed troops in Rwanda or Burundi in the first week to evacuate their citizens, did so, and left. The UN mission (UNAMIR), created in October 1993 to keep the peace and assist the governmental transition in Rwanda, sought to intervene between the killers and civilians. It also tried to mediate between the RPF and the Rwandan army after the RPF struck from Rwanda to protect Tutsi and rescue their battalion encamped in Kigali as part of the Accord. On April 21, 1994, the United Nations Security Council, at the behest of the United States—which had no troops in Rwanda—Belgium, and others, voted to withdraw all but a remnant of UNAMIR. The Security Council took this vote and others concerning Rwanda even as the representative of the genocidal regime sat amongst them as a non-permanent member. After human rights, media, and diplomatic reports of the carnage mounted, the UN met and debated and finally arrived at a compromise response on May 16. UNAMIR II, as it was to be known, would be a more robust force of 5,500 troops. Again, however, the world failed to deliver, as the full complement of troops and materiel would not arrive in Rwanda until months after the genocide ended. Faced with the UN’s delay, *but also concerned about its image as a former patron and arms supplier of the Habyarimana regime, France announced on June 15 that it would intervene to stop the killing. In a June 22 vote, the UN Security Council gave its blessing to this intervention; that same day, French troops entered Rwanda from Zaire. While intending a wider intervention, confronted with the RPF’s rapid advance across Rwanda, the French set up a “humanitarian zone” in the southwest corner of Rwanda. Their intervention succeeded in saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives; it also facilitated the safe exit of many of the genocide’s plotters, who were allies of the French.

On July 4, the RPF took the capital, Kigali; two weeks later, it announced a new government comprised of RPF leaders and ministers previously selected for the transition government called for in the Arusha Accord. With the RPF’s takeover, and with the encouragement of extremist radio, Rwandans implicated in the slaughter, their relatives and those who feared the arrival of the RPF, fled to neighboring countries. In the end, the extremists killed nearly one million Rwandans, approximately one-tenth of the population. Were it not for the RPF’s military prowess, the genocide would have continued.

Despite overwhelming evidence of genocide and knowledge as to its perpetrators, United States officials decided against taking a leading role in confronting the slaughter in Rwanda. Rather, US officials confined themselves to public statements, diplomatic demarches, initiatives for a ceasefire, and attempts to contact both the interim government perpetrating the killing and the RPF. The US did use its influence, however, at the United Nations, but did so to discourage a robust UN response (Document 4 and Document 13). In late July, however, with the evidence of genocide littering the ground in Rwanda, the US did launch substantial operations—again, in a supporting role—to assist humanitarian relief efforts for those displaced by the genocide."

* - French troops left weeks later in mid-July.

[JackRiddler]

7. That's right, Belgium and before that Germany

I certainly didn't say otherwise. So I don't know why your title line should imply I did.

Germans were the first European imperialists to colonize Rwanda, in the late 19th C., and the Belgians took over after World War I. The racially obsessed, controlling, census-taking European administrations forced a solidification of the previously porous and flexible categories of "Hutu" and "Tutsi"; another way in which the eventual genocide was the product of direct European intervention (rather than indifference or failure to intervene, as the modern-day liberal imperialists would have it).

In the post-colonial era Rwanda was mainly a French client state, as I wrote, and as your long quoted text confirms.

Thank you for posting that, it's very interesting. You bolded a passage about the French military invasion. Their intervention indeed set up a zone in which civilians were relatively protected, though there is no way to confirm the self-serving French claims of how many lives therefore were saved. What is certain, however, is that the French military invasion allowed the retreat from the advances of the RPF of the actual genocidaires, the Hutu Power forces -- the French allies! What is also certain is that as a result, the Interahamwe remnants were able to set up new bases in the Congo, from which they continued to attack Rwanda, setting off a very bloody series of consequences. So I have to call bullshit on the claim that there was any noble intent behind the French military intervention, and assess its purpose (as we should generally judge these things) by its actual effect, which was to support the genocidaires.

In Germany at the time, a broad spectrum of political opinion viewed the French intervention as an unacceptable imperial adventure, leading to an break of consensus in the usual German-French unity on foreign affairs. It was German influence that may have prevented the French plans for an expansion of their intervention.

I was in Germany in 1994 and their mainstream press covered the French military intervention in Rwanda on behalf of the Hutu Power forces, very thoroughly.

Here's an expose on the French role from an implicitly pro-US position, found on an anarcholibertarian site. It is an excellent and yet totally one-sided history of how France intervened in Rwanda to assist the genocide:

"1990-1994: The genocide and war in Rwanda"
http://libcom.org/history/1990-1994-the-genocide-and-wa...

It's one-sided because the RPF is presented as the good guys who happened to wander in from Uganda. The U.S. role in creating the RPF in the first place is cut out altogether.

For a one-sided version of the U.S. role, deemphasizing the (greater) French role in the crime, see here:

"The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide:
Rwanda: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa"
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO305A.html

I do not agree with that headline.

The truth is, the two powers are both responsible for aspects of what happened in Rwanda -- both France and U.S. intervened, both exacerbating the situation, and neither cared for stopping the genocide. Both acted only on behalf of imperial interests. This is as one might expect, given the prior history of the Great Powers.

I shall quote from the first account, because it already suffices to demolish the myth of "Western indifference" at what happened in Rwanda.

France intervened in 1994 to help the Interhamwe militias, after already doing much to prop up the Habyarimana government in its former colony:

France arms and trains the killers

Habyarimana would soon have fallen to the the well armed and trained RPF but for French military intervention. In October 1990 French forces seized Rwanda's international airport and turned the tide against the rebels. The battle with the RPF was used as a pretext to arrest up to 8,000 people in the capital Kigali, mostly Tutsis, and to launch pogroms in the countryside.

“There were beatings, rapes and murders. Rwandan intelligence distributed Kalashnikovs to municipal authorities in selected villages. They gathered with ruling party militants, most of whom carried staves, clubs and machetes... they went from field to field in search of Tutsis, killing thousands... "Civilians were killed, as in any war" said Colonel Bernard Cussac, France's ranking military commander in Kigali.” (Frank Smyth, The Australian 10.6.94)

French arms and military advisors poured into the country. In the following two years the Rwandan army grew from 5,000 to 30,000. The BBC's Panorama program said that the Rwandan Government 'thanked France for help which was "invaluable in combat situations" and recommended 15 French soldiers for medals after one engagement in 1991.' (Reuters World Service 21.8.95)

Then, in 1994:

In 1994 the Rwandan regime was rapidly crumbling before a rebel army – the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) - which, as it advanced, was putting a stop to the genocide in one region of the country after another. The speed of the rebels' advance meant life or death for tens of thousands of Tutsis. France intervened to create 'safe havens', supposedly to protect the lives of civilians from the majority Hutu group from Tutsi revenge. In reality they were attempting to slow the rebels' advance and protecting the remains of the Rwandan regime from them.

As it turned out the French could not save the regime but did save the organisers of the genocide from capture. The 'safe havens' became a base from which these people engineered the flight of almost two million Hutus into neighbouring countries, where they have since languished in disease-ridden squalor under the control of the soldiers and militias of the fallen Government.

In Germany at the time, I remember it was specifically the German uproar within the EU at what France was doing not to stop but to *extend* the genocide in Rwanda that led to the withdrawal of the French force, albeit too late to prevent the next chapter of the tragedy, in Congo.

The Hutu Power militias continued to raid Rwanda from the Congo, until Rwanda invaded and backed the Kagame overthrow of one of the worst of all dictators, Mobuto (who had been put in power by the US, Belgium and France in the early 1960s after the overthrow and assassination of Lumumba, and who had been plundering ever since).

This set off the Congo wars that have killed so many since.

In short, portions of the U.S. imperial apparatus had a war by proxy in the 1990s against France and French interests, all over Africa, continuing to this day in the Congo.

I'm sure in 1994 Mitterand knew all about what French imperialism was up to - small-time powers like France need to keep a tighter and more centralized control over their operations. And it's not like French Socialists had not already been part of coalitions that supported genocide as a response to the aspirations for independence of the Vietnamese and Algerian peoples. So the decades of merely propping up the old regime in Rwanda may have seemed minor by comparison.

Of course, Mitterand as the C-in-C would have had to give direct approval on the order to INTERVENE in 1994 with actual French troops on BEHALF of the Hutu Power forces that are accused of COMMITTING the genocide. (Sorry, this stuff requires caps, because although it was all over the European press at the time, for some reason a different history has been written about "how the West stood by.&quot

Kagame's official site reads:

"He served as a senior officer in the Ugandan army between 1986 and 1990 during which time he attended a staff and command course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA. In October 1990, Paul Kagame returned to Rwanda after thirty years in exile to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in the struggle for the liberation of Rwanda."

http://www.gov.rw/government/president/personal.html

His opposition agrees:

http://paulkagame.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-is-paul-kaga...
* Link now dead *

Quote:

"In October 1990, while Kagame was participating in a military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the RPF invaded Rwanda. Only two days into the invasion, Rwigema was killed, making Kagame the military commander of the RPF. Despite initial successes, a force of French, Belgian, Rwandan, and Zairan soldiers forced the RPF to retreat. A renewed invasion was attempted in late 1991, but also had limited success."

Um, hm, Kansas? Does this sound like the U.S. was supporting the RPF? Of course. In 1990 and until 1994, is the U.S.-backed RPF fighting the French-backed Rwandan government? Why, yes.

So what do you call that? A proxy war.

Was the incoming Clinton aware of this small portion of U.S. worldwide operations? Dunno. It's not like presidents have actually been responsible for most of foreign "policy" (operations of war and plunder) since, oh, I'll be charitable and say Nixon. Clinton's a smart guy and I'm sure by the time of the genocide he figured what a few of the heads on the far-reaching U.S. octopus had been doing in Africa.

.

[JackRiddler]

8. bump

[JackRiddler]

9. bump

[Alamuti Lotus]

10. bump

also bookmarked and printed. I have read numerous bits and pieces on the conflict before (at the time I was studying the rise of Musaveni next door, but Kagame and Rwanda of course came up often enough), but you have provided not only a thorough short course in the recent history, but a number of directions to pursue later. Thank you, this idiotic meme always annoys me--but then, most of the ravings from the LIs sound almost as indistinguishably crazymaking as their RW counterparts.

[JackRiddler]

13. Thank you!

[Alamuti Lotus]

14. bump again

we've briefly crossed paths before, but I should take this chance to mention how much I appreciate your writing here in general.

I thought of this thread again after some other doofus was trying to use "Rowanda" (with the obligatory Hitler reference a couple paragraphs down) as an excuse for attacking Syria. teh stoopid..

[JackRiddler]

16. Thank you! Very kind! Best to you!

[xchrom]

11. indeed. nt

[LWolf]

12. K&R

[leftstreet]

15. The 'humanitarian hawk,' Samantha (Mrs. Cass Sunstein) Power

Samantha Power Goes to War

With the Arab world's pro-democracy uprisings comes a resurgence for the "humanitarian hawks."
March 30, 2011

Barack Obama’s war in Libya bears the intellectual imprint of Samantha Power, the Dublin-born human rights author who has risen to visible prominence in the White House hierarchy.

Over a long conversation with Power in December 2003, I was struck by the generational factor in her thinking. If she had experienced Vietnam in her early 20s, I felt, she would have joined the radical left, suspicious always of American power. But as an Irish internationalist witnessing death and destruction in the former Yugoslavia, she wondered how the United States could be neutral. She strongly favored the American intervention and air war that followed. I asked whether she would have favored the Clinton administration sending combat troops to battle the Serbs, a scenario which was in the works when Russia pulled its support from Belgrade, effectively ending that war. I didn’t get an answer, only the promise of “a long conversation” in the future.

Power generalized from her Balkans experience to become an advocate of American and NATO military intervention in humanitarian crises, a position which became known as being a “humanitarian hawk.” She began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values. “The United States must also be prepared to risk the lives of its soldiers” to stop the threat of genocide, she wrote. She condemned Western “appeasement” of dictators. She believed that “the battle to stop genocide has been repeatedly lost in the realm of domestic politics.” In her mind, domestic concerns like discrimination and unemployment were secondary to foreign policy crises, a common attitude in the national security circles she was entering.

DURec

[JackRiddler]

17. Yes, soon as she was appointed after all...

it signalled a willingness for the usual little wars for "legacy" in the second term (because god forbid anything progressive gets done instead). Even more so than neocon lite Clinton, who is a relatively multidimensional politician. Powers is all bomb'em for humanity.

[Bluenorthwest]

18. Power was also the person who told the press in Scotland that Hillary was a monster and

war monger.
Excellent and factual post by the way, and far too reality based for most here.

[JackRiddler]

19. Long NY Times profile today of Kagame...

Almost an admitted apologia in which we learn he may be a bastard, but he's a good bastard, etc. Whitewash liberally applied to the 1990-94 period and since, the U.S. involvement and support, the triggering of the Congo war, and much else. No mention of the French at all. But very interesting headline.

The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwanda.html

[Blue_Tires]

20. "Humanitarian intervention" in Syria is a hoax

......"Humanitarian intervention" is the notion that national sovereignty is limited, and the more powerful countries have a responsibility to intervene with military force in internal situations in less powerful countries, in order to prevent genocide or crimes against humanity. Samantha Power and others developed the idea based on shocking events such as the Rwanda genocide of 1994. The idea was further developed into United Nations policy guidelines as "Responsibility to Protect" or R2P at the UN World Summit in 2005, after the overthrow of the legally elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. Note these are guidelines, not yet part of international law.

"Responsibility to Protect" requires nations to protect their own peoples against "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity," and suggests that if a nation can't or won't do that, other nations can and should intervene. It does say that armed intervention should be the "last resort" and should not do more harm than good. But how can one tell in advance?

In the Haiti situation, the United States, France and Canada had been looking for a legalistic mechanism to justify their overthrow of Aristide, and to place Haiti under outside control so as to prevent him or his Lavalas Party from returning to power.

But this intervention did not bring either peace or security to Haiti, which has continued to be wracked by severe problems that the wealthy capitalist countries merely exploit and do nothing to solve. It came just after Aristide had annoyed France and frightened the U.S. by reviving demands that France pay reparations to Haiti for economic damage caused by France in the 19th century. (France had insisted that Haiti reimburse the losses entailed by French citizens whose "property," including slaves, was lost with Haiti's independence.).......

http://peoplesworld.org/humanitarian-intervention-in-syria-is-a-hoax/

[Cal3bg]

21. Excellent point.

As much as I enjoyed the movie "Hotel Rwanda", there is no doubt that it has served as a bit of propaganda of sorts. That the U.S. and U.K. were actively supporting the RPF in the run-up to 1994 is usually glossed over or left out entirely, and for what purpose if not for imperialism? The Hutu reaction was one of genocidal extremism no doubt, but that should have tolerated RPF extremism is also unconscionable, after the Belgians had so ruthlessly ruled with them as their partners during the colonial years.

[JackRiddler]

22. Thanks.

[JackRiddler]

23. More about the French intervention in favor of the genocidaires...

is coming out now in France.

While this is not news -- repeat, everyone knew about the French intervention in favor of the genocidaires while it was happening, it was front-page news in Europe -- the coming trial is a welcome development, in part because at least France may finally be declared responsible for its actions in the imperialist proxy war with the United States.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/05/paris-trial-elysee-rwanda-genocide

We may soon learn France's real role in the Rwanda genocide

In a milestone court case in Paris, unprecedented testimony could reveal the Elysée's links to the 1994 génocidaires

Linda Melvern
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 February 2014


‘The policy was devised in secret … within the confines of the Africa Unit. At its heart was François Mitterrand.' Photograph: Brian Harris/The Independent/REX

The trial this week of a Rwandan genocide suspect in a Paris courtroom is a well-earned victory for the French human rights groups who lobbied so hard and so long for justice. The milestone trial signals the end of France as a safe haven for génocidaries. But more than this, the trial is likely to see intense public scrutiny of one of the great scandals of the past century – the role of France in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda, which for 20 years journalists and activists have tried so hard to expose.

Pascal Simbikangwa, the defendant in Paris, is said to have been a member of an inner circle of power in Rwanda that devised genocide as a planned political campaign. Developed by Hutu ideologues, it was intended to prevent a power-sharing system of government that was to include the minority Tutsi. The genocide claimed up to a million lives.....

(SNIP)

Until now there has been a complete absence of will in Paris to bring to justice any of the estimated 27 Rwandan genocide fugitives who live on French soil. The country was a staunch ally of the Rwandan government which planned and perpetrated the genocide. The trial may well show the French electorate just how appalling its secret policy towards the central African state really was.

The policy was devised in secret, with no accountability from press or parliament and largely determined within the confines of a special office in the president's Elysée Palace known as the Africa Unit. It operated through a network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen and senior intelligence operatives. At its heart was President François Mitterrand, who had operated through senior army officers: General Christian Quesnot, Admiral Jacques Lanxade and General Jean-Pierre Huchon.....

(SNIP)

[JackRiddler]

24. Obviously timely.

The genocide in Rwanda is once again being presented in the West as a one-dimensional story of how "the West failed to intervene," even though this is exactly opposite to the truth. The genocide was partly the result of Western intervention. "Rwanda" has become the liberal imperialist equivalent to the neocon myth of "Munich." It's disgusting seeing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people once again being turned into nothing more than a propaganda vehicle on behalf of "humanitarian" interventionism. Especially disgusting is the self-aggrandizement of Clinton, whose administration directly armed and dispatched the RPF and participated in a cover-up of all events prior to the presidential assassinations. It's no surprise that the West failed to designate the events a genocide once they were underway, not because "western governments didn't care" but because Western governments had helped set up the genocide in the first place!