Reply #41: Yep- everyone should be up on this [View All]

[slaveplanet]

//the French deployed 500 troops (actually a huge force in this context) to secure the retreat of the Hutu Power forces into western Rwanda and Zaire. In other words, the French had backed the regime and helped it escape AFTER the genocide.//

"Operation Turquoise"-But within a week of their arrival, French troops occupied nearly a quarter of the country, sweeping across southwestern Rwanda to stand face to face with the RPF. At that point, France suddenly reinterpreted its "humanitarian" venture and declared its intention to turn the entire territory it had conquered into a "safe zone." The RPF was not alone in asking: safe for whom? France's own ex-President, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, accused the French command of "protecting some of those who had carried out the massacres."

and see how the French got their ASSes handed back to them by the rebels- caught red handed trying to protect the Genocidal maniacs.


more from the Frontline article:

"Something like that," Kagame told me. "It occurred during our approach to Butare. I received from General Dallaire of UNAMIR a message from the French general in Goma telling me that we should not enter Butare. They were trying to tell me there would be a fight." Kagame told Dallaire that he "could not tolerate such a provocation and such arrogance on the part of the French." Then, he recalled, "I told the troops to change course, to move to Butare now. They arrived in the evening. I told them just to surround the town and stay put. I didn't want them to get involved in a firefight at night. So they took positions and waited until morning. When our troops entered, they found that the French had secretly moved out to Gikongoro"--to the west. "But then, through Dallaire, they asked permission to return for some Catholic sisters and some orphans they wanted to take away. I cleared it. The French came back, but they didn't know that we had already secured the route from Gikongoro to Butare. We had set a long ambush, nearly two companies along the road."

The French convoy consisted of about twenty-five vehicles, and as it left Butare, Kagame's forces sprang their trap and ordered the French to submit each vehicle to inspection. "Our interest was to make sure none of these people they were taking were FAR (Hutu power army) or militias. The French refused. Their jeeps were mounted with machine guns, so they turned them on our troops as a sign of hostility. When the soldiers in the ambush realized there was going to be a confrontation, they came out, and a few fellows who had rocket-propelled grenade launchers targeted the jeeps. When the French soldiers saw that, they were all instructed to point their guns upward. And they did. They allowed our soldiers to carry out the inspection." In one of the last vehicles, Kagame said, two Hutu government soldiers were found. One ran away, and was shot dead, and Kagame added, "Maybe they killed the other one, too." At the sound of shooting, the French vehicles that had been cleared to go ahead turned on the road and began firing from afar, but the exchange lasted less than a minute.