Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  After the establishment of UNAMIR II, it took months for sufficient U.N. forces to arrive. In the meantime, the killing raged on, and hundreds of thousands of refugees spilled into Rwanda’s neighboring states. Frustrated by the lack of international response, and keen to protect their Rwandan government Hutu allies from Tutsi rebels led by Paul Kagame, the French government decided to send its own troops to Rwanda. France’s defense minister, François Léotard, in seeking U.N. support for what they dubbed “Opération Turquoise,” maintained that their mission would be to “protect threatened civilians, not for war operations or military assistance.”

  I, among others, doubted that claim. France had long armed and supported the Rwandan army, which included the Hutu extremists who orchestrated and conducted the genocide. Therefore, the French government’s impartiality was dubious, and its objectives in this instance were highly suspect. Secretary Christopher argued strenuously however that we should vote at the U.N. to endorse the French mission, in part out of loyalty to an ally.

  As an NSC director, my status was equivalent to that of a State Department deputy assistant secretary, four ranks below the secretary of state. Nonetheless, convinced that supporting the French mission would compound our strategic mistakes, I argued passionately to Sandy Berger that we should oppose the French force. Given France’s ignoble history in Central Africa of propping up friendly, if unsavory governments and picking sides in ethnic conflicts, I smelled a rat in their motives. Still, for all my opposition, I had no viable alternative to offer. Indeed, it would have been very difficult politically and diplomatically for us to block the French deployment without ourselves being willing to intervene. In the end, we went along with the French.

  Over the next two months, French forces not only set up a safe haven in southern Rwanda to protect civilians but also gave military cover and tacit support to enable the Hutu ringleaders of the genocide to escape unscathed into neighboring Zaire, disappearing amidst the hundreds of thousands of refugees. For years to come, long after Kagame’s rebels ended the genocide by routing the Rwandan government forces in July 1994, and took power, those refugee camps and ringleaders continued to threaten Rwanda.

  The final consequential decision U.S. policymakers faced came as the genocide was ending and hundreds of thousands of mainly Hutu refugees poured into Zaire, creating massive cholera colonies and the greatest humanitarian relief requirement in decades. What would the U.S. and international community do to address this mass suffering? Having failed even to consider trying to halt the genocide, feeling guilty for the human costs of that failure, and facing on average well over one thousand additional refugee deaths a day, the Clinton administration finally decided to deploy the U.S. military.

  At its peak, Operation Support Hope involved over 2,350 U.S. military personnel spread across Central Africa to airlift and supply enormous quantities of food, medical supplies, tents, and water purification equipment to assist the roughly two million refugees who flooded Goma, Zaire. The U.S. military has extraordinary capacities and talents, including its lesser known ability to mobilize massive resources quickly to respond to disasters, however remote, whether natural or man-made. Operation Support Hope saved thousands of lives. It also enabled policymakers to feel like we had at least done something. However, that post-facto humanitarian relief operation, while appropriate, hardly mitigated my enduring anguish over the U.S.’s and international community’s collective failure to respond to the Rwandan genocide.

  How could humans do that to one another? How can you hate any group that much? How can one live with such culpability? How can a nation recover from such insanity?

  These questions endure. Rwanda has recovered remarkably, if imperfectly. No one there speaks anymore of ethnic groups. There are no Hutus and Tutsis, out loud. In public, there are only Rwandans. Paul Kagame, whose rebel forces ended the genocide, still rules Rwanda today, having taken effective power shortly after the violence ended. Kagame governs both with laudable vision and an iron fist. In Rwanda, political opponents often disappear or die. The press is muted. Political parties are stifled. Rwanda invaded neighboring Congo (as Zaire was renamed) multiple times, ostensibly to free refugees and combat the perpetrators of genocide. But its forces slaughtered thousands of innocent Congolese, especially ethnic Hutu, toppled the government, and exploited Congo’s considerable mineral wealth. Kagame has extended his term repeatedly under the theory that he is uniquely capable of leading his fragile country.

  By contrast, Kagame has also kept the country together, substantially healed its wounds, grown its economy rapidly, and made Rwanda a leader in Africa. He has brought health care, internet connectivity, and agricultural innovation to every corner of the country. Women comprise over 60 percent of the legislature. Rwanda pioneered local reconciliation and forgiveness courts, known as gacaca. Kagame banned plastic bags, and you will hardly find garbage anywhere. Rwanda is now akin to the Singapore of Africa, a far cry from that churchyard and the hundreds like it across the country.

  It’s hard to convey the myriad ways in which the Rwandan genocide affected me. It was a personal trauma, a source of nightmares and deep regret. Though I was not a senior decision maker, I was still a working-level participant in a massive policy failure. I carry the guilt with me to this day. It made me perhaps overly sympathetic to Rwanda, its people and leaders. It also rendered me hyper-vigilant in our efforts to try to prevent and resolve recurrent conflict and ethnic violence in Central Africa, not just in Rwanda, but also Burundi and Congo.

  The Rwandan genocide left me hungry for mechanisms that could help prevent or mitigate the consequences of such a policy failure again. Later, as assistant secretary of state for African affairs, I championed the creation of the African Crisis Response Initiative, through which the U.S. trained and equipped six thousand African peacekeepers to be ready to respond more quickly when a future need arose. I strongly supported the Great Lakes Justice Initiative, a Clinton second-term effort to build regional capacity for the rule of law and reconciliation, which could help torn societies prevent conflict and heal their differences. At the same time, the administration fully backed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and similar justice mechanisms in West Africa.

  Several months after I left the Clinton administration, I picked up my home phone and was surprised to receive a cold call from a young journalist I had never heard of before: Samantha Power. She was writing a book on genocide, including Rwanda, and wanted my reaction to what she was planning to report. She said she was told that I had worried aloud in an interagency meeting about the domestic political implications of using the term “genocide.” I told Samantha emphatically that what she heard was not true. Samantha insisted she had it from two separate sources. I reiterated that I did not (and would not) inject political considerations into a policy decision, particularly as a junior NSC staffer.

  Nonetheless, in her 2002 book, A Problem from Hell, Samantha wrote: “Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few officials present when she asked, ‘If we use the word “genocide” and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?’ ” To my dismay, Samantha had completely ignored my protestations.

  The words she attributed to me did not reflect how I thought or how I spoke in interagency meetings. The question she alleged I posed would have been wildly out of left field and fundamentally off-topic. Moreover, it would have been ridiculous for a working-level staffer entirely disconnected from the White House’s political operation to ask midlevel, career civil servants and military officers to offer a complex political judgment well outside their realm of competence.

  Despite telling Samantha that I had no recollection of any such discussion and was confident I had never said such a thing, I decided not to deny it on the record, fearing my denial would not be deemed credible. Rather, I chose to dismiss (and try to defuse) the accusation by commenting for attribution: “If I said i
t, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant.” That was my mistake. In subsequent years, this urban legend gained traction, becoming an enduring stain on my public record and my first real taste of being grossly mis-portrayed in the press. Despite my lasting frustration and outrage, this dispute did not ultimately impede my ability later to work well with Samantha and become friends.

  Of course, it was the human cost of the Rwandan genocide that has haunted me ever since. It left me determined to go down fighting, if ever I saw an instance where I believed U.S. military intervention could be at once feasible, effective, and make a critical difference in saving large numbers of human lives at an acceptable risk to U.S. interests. However, as I rose to more senior roles, I came to realize that such conditions are rarely fulfilled.

  During the Obama administration, I assessed they pertained in Libya, but not in Syria, despite the extreme human toll. In both instances, I may have been wrong. Such calls are never black and white; in actuality, they are fraught with uncertainty and prone to miscalculation. Failure, as I discovered early, is an inevitable result of policymaking. We did fail; we will fail. Our aim must be to minimize the frequency and the price of failure, while learning from our mistakes—and hopefully not the wrong lessons.

  8 Always Africa

  One day in February 1995, I was riding in an official vehicle to the White House from Capitol Hill with National Security Advisor Tony Lake. As the NSC’s U.N. director, I had accompanied Tony to meetings with senators we were trying to persuade to fully fund the administration’s budget request for U.N. peacekeeping and to agree that the parameters we had placed on U.S. support for U.N. peacekeeping were wise and sufficient. Even the Democratic-led Senate was highly skeptical of the U.N. in the wake of Somalia and Rwanda. Tony, nonetheless, felt these Hill meetings had gone well, and he was in a relaxed mood.

  He turned to me and said, “What is the capital of Tanzania?”

  “Dar es Salaam,” I replied.

  “What is the capital of Botswana?” he continued.

  “Gaborone,” I shot back. Tony validated my answer but dutifully corrected my pronunciation.

  “Burkina Faso?”

  “Ouagadougou,” I countered, feeling pretty good about my answers but bewildered as to the purpose of this pop quiz.

  “Good,” Tony said. “How would you like to be the NSC senior director for African affairs?”

  I was flummoxed. Knowing he was playing with me, I still marveled that the national security advisor was promoting me to the NSC’s top job on Africa on the basis of a capitals quiz. I asked for a night to consult with Ian and think about it, which he granted.

  This time, though still a bit hesitant to get pigeonholed in Africa, I felt I could accept an Africa job with less risk. I had demonstrated my chops in a global portfolio, performed well enough to be selected for promotion at an early stage, and relished the opportunity to run my own office. In accepting this post, I would be Dick Clarke’s peer, just two years after being christened his baby director. I would have a regional portfolio, making me the coordinator of U.S. policy for the forty-eight countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. This was preferable to having a “functional,” or geographically cross-cutting portfolio, like the U.N. or nonproliferation or intelligence, because I had line responsibility for a defined portion of the planet. And, after two years under Dick’s rigorous tutelage, I felt ready for whatever might come next.

  I also had to admit to myself that, on some level, I began in Africa and never left. Conceived in Nigeria, raised amidst the wooden sculpture of the Yoruba and Igbo, student of the complex history of Africa and its diaspora, activist against apartheid, scholar of Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence, intrepid backpacker, and bush taxi vagabond, I am ever steeped in Africa. Always. It remains an inextricable part of me.

  The next morning, I told Tony that I would be honored to accept, and for the duration of the Clinton administration my work centered on Africa.

  As I started in this new role, I felt proud to focus on Africa and come back to the region of my graduate studies. Believing deeply in Africa’s importance and potential, I resented the prejudice and shortsightedness that historically had relegated the continent to the bottom of America’s national security priorities. The U.S., I had come to appreciate, has a profound national interest in expanding prosperity in this important emerging market, improving livelihoods, resolving conflicts, bolstering security, and advancing democracy and respect for human rights. Now it was my job to insist that the people and countries of Africa be deemed as worthy and deserving of America’s attention and resources as any other region.

  Several issues dominated my tenure from 1995 to 1997 as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs. Among them were: Burundi, which remained an ethnic tinderbox after Rwanda; South Africa, whose brand-new democratic government led by Nelson Mandela we had a deep interest in supporting; Angola, where the lengthy civil war had resumed; Liberia, the war-wracked West African nation with the closest historical ties to the U.S.; and Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, which was suffering under a brutal military dictator.

  Africa was gaining prominence on President Clinton’s foreign policy agenda, as a region to which he was becoming increasingly drawn. Moreover, Tony Lake, his national security advisor, was himself originally an Africa hand. In addition to preventing and responding to conflicts and crises, President Clinton sought a positive partnership with countries in Africa, based on mutual respect and enhanced engagement. He was especially committed to promoting economic growth and opportunity and confronting Africa’s security challenges, including the burgeoning threats of disease, notably HIV/AIDS, and terrorism.

  It was terrorism that elevated Sudan to a place of unusual prominence on the Clinton administration’s agenda, making it a consistent focus of my attention throughout my tenure at the NSC and State Department. In February 1993, shortly after President Clinton took office, terrorists led by Omar Abdel Rahman, known as “the Blind Sheikh,” detonated a truck bomb under the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and wounding over one thousand. I was barely three weeks into my first job at the NSC, and my boss Dick Clarke had lead responsibility for counterterrorism at the White House. I observed closely as he tracked events and worked through the FBI and Justice Department to bring the perpetrators to justice and foil additional attacks.

  Not long after the World Trade Center was bombed, an FBI informant revealed another plot orchestrated by Abdel Rahman to assassinate public figures and attack multiple landmarks in New York, including U.N. Headquarters, hotels, office buildings, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. As the bombers were mixing their explosives, federal and local officers busted in and arrested them on June 24, 1993. Five of the eight perpetrators entered the U.S. on Sudanese passports, and there was compelling evidence that two officers at the Sudanese Mission to the U.N. had offered to assist the plotters, including by providing diplomatic license plates and vehicles to enable the perpetrators to access the garage at U.N. Headquarters. As a result, in 1993 the U.S. designated Sudan a State Sponsor of Terrorism and imposed sanctions for its role in supporting terrorism both abroad and on U.S. soil, for its close ties to Iran, and for its continued provision of a safe haven inside Sudan to various Palestinian and other terror organizations, as well as their financiers and leaders, including Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, and Osama bin Laden.

  The Clinton administration’s concern about Sudan’s support for terrorism only heightened in 1995 when Sudan was involved in a failed attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian gunmen shot up Mubarak’s armored car as his convoy was driving from the airport to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was alerted promptly by the White House Situation Room and informed that Mubarak escaped unharmed. His motorcade diverted immediately to the airport, enabling Mubarak to return safely to Egypt. We later learned that the gunmen had tr
aveled to Ethiopia on Sudanese passports and used weapons shipped into Ethiopia on Sudan Airways. Two of the perpetrators fled on Sudan Airways back to Sudan, where they conveniently disappeared. When Sudan refused to hand over the suspects, the U.S. led moves at the U.N. Security Council to impose diplomatic and airline sanctions on Sudan.

  Sudan’s sustained support for terrorism, combined with the dangerous environment in its capital, where U.S. officials had been threatened, subjected to harassing surveillance, and twice attacked, led the administration to consider closing the U.S. embassy in Khartoum in February 1996 and relocating the reduced embassy staff to Nairobi in neighboring Kenya. The final straw was an attack by Sudanese agents on a U.S. embassy vehicle that seriously wounded the official inside.

  I favored closing the embassy for security reasons, as did the CIA and my bosses at the NSC. The secretary of state, however, ultimately makes such decisions, and the ever-cautious Warren Christopher faced significant pressure from the Africa Bureau and, in particular, the new American ambassador, Tim Carney, to keep the embassy open. Carney, a mustachioed, bespectacled, professorial diplomat who had just secured his first ambassadorship, quickly revealed himself to be more sympathetic to the government of Sudan than most U.S. decision makers. In the Principals Committee meeting where the issue was debated, Carney argued strenuously to keep the embassy open; he saw merit in maintaining close communication with Khartoum. Secretary Christopher ultimately decided to close the embassy, necessitating that Carney vacate his post in Khartoum and perform his ambassadorial duties from a rump office in Nairobi. I believe that Carney always blamed me for that decision.