Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gerard Prunier

  51. Here I must offer my apologies to the readers of the Rwanda Crisis, where on pp. 94–96 I give a totally false account of Rwigyema’s death. My only excuse is that, in a book written in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, I still wanted to believe in the relative innocence of the RPF and therefore accepted the cooked version of the facts it provided me with, in spite of several warnings that I was wrong. For the problem of author’s subjectivity in the social sciences, see “Struggling for the Moral High Ground” in chapter 10.

  52. The following account is the result of several interviews in Kampala, Paris, Kigali, and Bujumbura conducted between 1992 and 2000 with former RPF members or members of the RPF support network.

  53. See G. Prunier, the Rwanda Crisis, 23–24, for a quick summary. For specialists a much more detailed version can be found in Jan Vansina, Le Rwanda ancien: Le Royaume Nyiginya (Paris: Karthala, 2001), chapter 7.

  54. For those familiar with Great Lakes contemporary history, the parallel with Prince Rwagasore in Burundi is very strong.

  55. See the open letter to the Rwandese government written by former RPF member Jean-Pierre Mugabe on http://www.strategicstudies.org (July 1999). Mugabe denounces by name Brig. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, Lt. Col. Jacson Rwahama, and Maj. Steven Balinda for ordering these killings. He accuses them all of belonging to the so-called Gahini mafia, a small group of “Ugandan” refugees bent upon totally controlling the RPF structure. These very serious accusations were repeated to me in a variety of interviews with former RPF supporters, including relatives of the dead boys, during 1996–2000.

  56. UNHCR Situation Report no. 12 for the Kagera region by Mark Prutsalis of Refugees International, May 20, 1994.

  57. Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, New York, 1999, particularly 705–712.

  58. See in particular the letter by Eric Gillet quoted in Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 700 note 28. Alan Kuperman, “Provoking Genocide: A Revised History of the Rwanda Patriotic Front,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 1 (2004): 61–84, goes further when he writes, “The Tutsi rebels expected their challenge to provoke genocidal retaliation but viewed this as an acceptable cost of achieving their goal of attaining power in Rwanda” (79). Whether or not the RPF actually expected a genocide to take place is impossible to know. But its indifference to the fate of the Tutsi civilians once it did happen is not in doubt. See Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004), especially 358 and 410–411. See also General Dallaires’s testimony to the Arusha tribunal, Fondation Hirondelle, Arusha, June 8, 2004.

  59. For the story of the Gersony Report as seen from the UNHCR perspective, see Sadako Ogata’s memoirs The Turbulent Decade (New York: Norton, 2005), 190–194.

  60. This treatment of the Gersony Report is based on direct discussions with Robert Gersony himself, whom I met in New York in 1998. Having been personally hoodwinked into disbelieving the very existence of his report (see Prunier, the Rwanda Crisis, 323–324), I was particularly interested in discussing the circumstances of his fieldwork.

  61. At one point in Butare prefecture Gersony and his team stumbled by mistake upon a detail of pink-uniformed prisoners burying freshly killed bodies. Since the genocide had ended two months before they began to ask questions. The armed escort arrived running and told them to move off. They were told that these were genocide victims. Interview with Robert Gersony, New York, 1998.

  62. One close participant-observer of this period later offered an interesting hypothesis for why the RPF killed Tutsi and Hutu indiscriminately in its area of control. According to this theory the rebel movement was not sure of acquiring power and, in case of failure, wanted to partition Rwanda and create a “Tutsi homeland” in the North (Byumba prefecture and Mutara); it conceived of such a zone as a “refugee area” to be populated purely by “old caseload refugees” over which it had complete political control, contrary to the Tutsi of the interior. See James Gasana, Rwanda: Du Parti-Etat à l’Etat-Garnison (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 263–264.

  63. Interview with Seth Sendashonga, Nairobi, April 1998.

  64. Thus Sixbert Musamgamfura, head of the Prime Minister’s Security Unit, tried to tell me that things were “basically all right in spite of some problems,” although he was better placed than anybody to know that this was not the case. After he had to run away in 1995, he changed his stance and denounced the massacres he had tried to deny. Both Seth Sendashonga and Prime Minister Twagiramungu also lied to me at the time, only to apologize later and explain that they had done so in the hope of helping national unity.

  65. Interview with Dr. Théogène Semanyenzi, Nairobi, February 1, 1995. Dr. Semanyenzi and his Tutsi wife themselves narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Interahamwe near Cyangugu before being evacuated by French soldiers in August 1994.

  66. See Monique Mujawamaliya, Rapport d’une visite effectuée au Rwanda du ler au 22 septembre 1994, mimeo, Montréal, October 1994.

  67. Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 713, 714, 719.

  68. Interview with Marianne Baziruwiha, Washington, DC, October 1997.

  69. A typical feature of the period, experienced by all foreigners who were in Rwanda in 1994–1995, was the travel restrictions enforced by the RPF under a variety of dubious pretexts. When a UN helicopter landed unexpectedly in Gabiro camp and hundreds of civilians rushed to try to talk to the UN personnel, the crowd was beaten back and prevented from making contact. This developed into a major diplomatic incident between the UN and the government. Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 722.

  70. Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 721–722; Stephen Smith, “Enquête sur la terreur Tutsie,” Libération, February 27, 1996; Nick Gordon, “Return to Hell,” Sunday Express, April 21, 1996.

  71. Seth Sendashonga, Nairobi, May 1997.

  72. See chapter 2.

  73. See African Rights, A Waste of Hope: the United Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda, London, March 1995.

  74. This gentleman was W. R. Urasa, the same person who had answered the UN special rapporteur on Rwanda that the Gersony report “did not exist” when he had had a summary in his hands. See Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 727–731.

  75. That is, Tutsi coming back from exile. They were unlikely to denounce RPF killings.

  76. UNHCR Archival Fund 19 Sub-Fund 7, Records of the Regional Bureaux/Great Lakes (henceforth referred to as UNHCR 19/7), Report of a Mission to Rwanda (23 October to 22 December 1995).

  77. Interview with a former RPF member, Paris, October 1999.

  78. Gen. Guy Tousignant, the new UNAMIR commander, had spoken quite sharply to the government after the Gersony report episode.

  79. This is what Sendashonga called “le syndrome de la funeste conférence” (the fateful conference syndrome). He had desperately wanted economic aid, only to discover that in the absence of any human rights conditionality the $598 million pledged in Geneva in January 1995 had a perverse effect. The RPF knew that the international community was aware of the killings since the Gersony Report and it took the money as a tacit nod of approval. Seth Sendashonga, Nairobi, May 1997.

  80. Parti pour l’Emancipation des Bahutu, the first anticolonial nationalist political party in Rwanda, created just before independence in 1958.

  81. General Rusatira alludes here to the fact that many of the former FAR officers and men who joined the RPA were later killed.

  82. Quoted in Le Monde, January 5, 1996, emphasis mine.

  83. For example, in spite of being present in Rwanda at the time I do not know to this day whether the Busanze camp incident of January 7, 1995, in which eleven IDPs were killed by RPA soldiers was an accident or a deliberate killing.

  84. Killed by his own bodyguards on March 4,1995.

  85. Kidnapped by “men in uniforms” on May 12, 1995; found dead nine days later.

  86. Arrested in April 1995 he “sudd
enly” died in jail on July 1, 1995, without apparent causes.

  87. Which makes his progressive transformation into a “business developmentalist” during 2004–2007 all the more fascinating (see chapter 9).

  88. Quoted in Nick Gowing, “Dispatches from Disaster Zones: The Reporting of Humanitarian Emergencies,” paper presented at ECHO Conference, London, May 27–28, 1998.

  89. The most notorious case was that of President Pasteur Bizimungu, who was removed from power, then arrested and finally condemned to fifteen years in jail on trumped up charges of “forming a militia group which threatened state security.” Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) Press dispatch, Kigali, June 8, 2004.

  90. I have been challenged on this problem of obedience to authority, particularly in relationship to obeying orders to commit genocide. See Barrie Collins, Obedience in Rwanda: A Critical Question (Sheffield, UK: Hallam University, 1998); C. Vidal, “Questions sur le rôle des paysans durant le genocide des Rwandais tutsi,” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 38, nos. 2–4 (1998): 331–346. Collins tends to attribute the genocide to a breakdown of the central authority, a theory that seems definitively disproved by the authoritative account of the genocide written by Alison DesForges in Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story. Vidal puts forth two rather disconnected arguments: Rwandese children are brought up sweetly, and my position is “essentialist,” that is, attributing obedience as a sui generis quality to Rwandese culture. Both points seem irrelevant. First, cultures socialize their young ones into broad patterns; behavior does not constitute a sui generis expression of preexisting essence. Second, Rwandese respect for (legitimate) authority does not stem from any inborn quality but from education. Whether or not this authority is evil is another point, quite distinct from the “sweetness” of childhood manners. I still stand by what I wrote in The Rwanda Crisis: that respect for authority is a fundamental trait of Rwandese culture, instilled in children from a very young age and periodically reinforced during maturity by a complex social code. On this, see the remarkable work of the Belgian anthropologist Danielle de Lame, A Hill among a Thousand: Transformations and Ruptures in Rural Rwanda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). See also the recent work by Scott Straus, particularly Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (New York: Zone Books, 2006).

  91. In April 1995, six thousand dead bodies were dug up and reburied in large ceremonies designed to commemorate the anniversary of the genocide.

  92. For an overview of this flight, see Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, chapter 8; Kazadi Bob Kabamba, “Une deuxième génération de réfugiés: La fuite des populations Hutu après le génocide d’ avril-mai 1994,” in A. Guichaoua, ed., Les crises politiques au Rwanda et au Burundi (1993–1994) (Villeneuve d’Ascq, France: Université des Sciences, 1995), 349–357. The refugee problem became almost immediately a politically sensitive subject, giving birth to ideologically conflicting reports. The most balanced general assessment can be found in Joël Bourroue, Missed Opportunities: The Role of the International Community in the Return of the Rwandan Refugees from Eastern Zaire (Boston: MIT Press, UNHCR, 1998).

  93. UNHCR figures.

  94. Florence Aubenas, “La longue marche vers Kigali,” Libération, August 2, 1994.

  95. For a good analysis of the leadership and sociology of the camps, see Johan Pottier, “Relief and Repatriation: Views by Rwandan Refugees and Lessons for Humanitarian Aid Workers,” African Affairs, no. 95 (1996): 403–429.

  96. Jean-Pierre Godding quoted in Dirk De Schrijver, “Les réfugiés rwandais dans la région des Grands Lacs,” in S. Marysse and F. Reyntjens, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 1996–1997 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 221–246.

  97. For example, in Kibumba camp, it was found that 40 percent of the refugees received less than 2,000 kcals/person, while 13 percent received over 10,000 kcals/person. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, John Borton et al., Humanitarian Aid and Effects, vol. 3 of International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience (Copenhagen, 1996), 96.

  98. Raymond Bonner, “Aid Is Taken Hostage in Rwandan Camps,” International Herald Tribune, November 1, 1994; Laurent Bijard, “Les tueurs Hutus se porrenr bien,” Le Nouvel Observateur, November 3–9, 1994.

  99. “Armored vehicles” in French. This was the ironic term used by the refugees to talk about their round, smooth, and windowless plastic shelters.

  100. UNHCR field notes, October 1995.

  101. See interview of UN Special Representative Shaharyar Khan, Radio France Internationale, in BBC/SWB, September 8, 1994.

  102. See Chris MacGreal, “Hutu Exiles Are in Training,” Guardian, December 19, 1994; “Crime and Nourishment,” Economist, April 1, 1995. In this latter article there is a picture of fully armed ex-FAR soldiers in a camp, with the caption “These are refugees.”

  103. Not only did they sell part of the stolen international food aid and tax “their” population, but they even made money through various kinds of local commercial activities, including trade and transport, using the vehicles taken with them at gunpoint during their retreat.

  104. In January 1995 I met in Bukavu a former army officer working for UNHCR who had seen South African–manufactured 155mm artillery pieces in a refugee camp. These weapons and others were transported by road from South Africa to Zambia, taken apart at Mpulungu harbor, and then shipped by lake freight to Kalemie or Uvira. Zairian custom officers were bought on a routine basis.

  105. Interview with an operative from a European secret service, Geneva, October 1994. The occasion is reported in a slightly different form in Human Rights Watch, Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming with Impunity. International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide, Washington, DC, May 1995, 16.

  106. Mark Hubbard, “UN Alert Urged as Arms Pour into New Rwanda War,” Observer, March 26, 1995.

  107. An Israeli company was mentioned, and when the RPA smashed the camps in November 1996 it found invoices from an Isle of Man–registered and British-based military supplies company run by two Kenyan Asians. Deliveries seem to have totaled around $6 million.

  108. See Amnesty International, Rwanda: Arming the Perpetrators of the Genocide, London, June 1995.

  109. See Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 278. Previous support had been extended by every and all possible means, the French going as far as bringing in weapons and ammunition in the planes used for the humanitarian Operation Amaryllis on April 8, 1994. See testimony by Belgian colonel Luc Marchal, an eyewitness to the events, in Le Monde, August 23, 1995; I was later able to confirm the story from Rwandese sources.

  110. From that point of view, the “facts” concerning France in Human Rights Watch Africa, Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming with Impunity, do not really stand up to serious examination. See Stephen Smith, “Livraisons d’armes au Rwanda: Retour sur un rapport contestable,” Libération, July 31, 1995.

  111. See chapter 2.

  112. François Misser and Alan Rake, “Mobutu Exploits the Rwanda Crisis,” the New African, November 1994. Mobutu knew that the French were behind him in his effort at an international comeback. For firsthand testimony to this, see Prunier, the Rwanda Crisis, 279 note 139.

  113. Haur Conseil de la République/Parlement Transitoire (HCR/PT), the transitional Zairian national assembly, demanded immediate refugee repatriation in April 1995 because it feared vote rigging.

  114. When Robin Cook, British shadow minister for foreign affairs, accused Zaire of complicity in rearming the ex-FAR after a visit to Goma, Mobutu created a Commission of Inquiry, which promptly denied everything (April 1995).

  115. For perhaps too sympathetic a view of that predicament, see J. P. Godding, Réfugies rwandais au Zaire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).

  116. For a good study of the RDR, see Tom Ndahiro, “Genocide Laundering: Historical Revisionism, Genocide Denial and the Role of the RDR,” in Phil Clark and Zachary Kaufman, eds., After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflic
t Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond (London: Hurst, 2008).

  117. The East African, May 15–21, 1995.

  118. Radio Rwanda in BBC/SWB, May 15, 1995.

  119. The failure of the international intervention in Somalia has spawned a massive literature of criticism and self-examination, at times short on analysis. J. G. Sommer, Hope Restored? Humanitarian Aid to Somalia (1990–1994) (Washington, DC: Refugee Policy Group, 1994) gives an honest global presentation; W. Clarke and J. Herbst, eds., Learning from Somalia: The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997) has clarity of analysis; and M. Marren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (New York: Free Press, 1997) is to be commended for its politically incorrect frankness.

  120. The case about the tragic lack of proper grasp of the political situation was repeatedly made by the best evaluation studies on the genocide, such as Human Rights Watch Africa, Leave None to Tell the Story, 141–179, 595–634; Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, International Response to Conflict and Genocide, 1:46.