FYI - note the implication of the supposed "humanitarian" Clinton and his administration in what happened - helping access the riches of the DRC. My recommendation to most of you is to delete this email - the truth hurts! Also the article by SNOW and comments in the Ford article implicate some prominent Black Americans!
Ford Black Agenda Report Sept 2010 Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 06:18 — Glen Ford
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/rwanda-crisis-could-expose-us-role-congo-genocide
· Rwanda |
· Paul Kagame |
· Congo genocide |
· Congo
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Left writers have been reporting for years that U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda bear primary responsibility for the deaths of as many as six million Congolese. Now a leaked United Nations report has confirmed that Rwanda's crimes in Congo may rise to the level of genocide, since President Paul Kagame's forces killed Hutu elderly, children and women without regard to nationality. Rwandan President Paul Kagame's "mentors and funders in the U.S. government…must be held equally accountable."
Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Millions died while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo."
A leaked United Nations report documenting Rwandan atrocities that "could be classified as crimes of genocide" in the eastern Congo has created a political crisis that threatens to disrupt Washington's plans to dominate the continent. Rwanda's minority Tutsi regime – a close American client that acts as a mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa, along with Uganda – threatens to withdraw its soldiers from United Nations "peace-keeping" missions if the report is not suppressed. The UN missions in Chad, Haiti, Liberia and Sudan are actually extensions of United States foreign policy, just as Ugandan and Burundian troops prop up the U.S.-backed "government" in Somalia under the guise of "African Union" forces.
The Rwanda crisis threatens to reveal the United States' role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. At stake is not only the reputation of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, an alumnus of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but the larger American strategy for militarization of Africa and exploitation of her riches.
The 545-page report details crimes committed in Congo by the Rwandan military and its allies between March, 1993, and June, 2003, and reinforces long-standing charges that Kagame's forces were also aggressors and mass murderers during the Rwandan mass killings of 1994. When Kagame's Tutsi rebels – previously based in Uganda – gained control of Rwanda after 100 days of fighting and ethnic cleansing, they pursued more than a million Hutu refugees into neighboring Congo. There, they hunted down and killed untold thousands of old men, women and children in 600 documented incidents that are, at the least, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report's authors clearly believe the Tutsis engaged in outright genocide – the purposeful eradication of a people – since Kagame's men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all. Congolese Tutsis and kinsmen from Burundi joined Kagame's Rwandan Tutsis in the mass murder – confirming the racial or ethnic nature of the slaughter.
"Kagame's men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all."
The Tutsi Rwandan military stayed in eastern Congo to exploit the rare minerals of the region, employing slave labor and selling the booty to multinational corporations. They were joined by the Ugandan military, who also set themselves up as soldier/entrepreneurs on Congolese soil. The Rwandans and Ugandans remain in the region, uniformed African gangsters in league with Euro-American corporations in a killing ground that has swallowed up possibly six million Congolese. Some estimate Congolese "excess deaths" in areas controlled by Rwanda, alone, at three and a half million. Their blood and stolen heritage has made Kigali, the Rwandan capital, a bustling beacon of capitalist enterprise – a "free market" success story.
Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture. After training him for major operational command, the U.S. funded Kagame's rebels through its Ugandan client, President Yoweri Museveni. When Kagame's rebels invaded Rwanda, some of them still dressed in Ugandan uniforms, the Americans dismissed the Hutu president's complaints. When the plane carrying the Hutu president and his Burundian counterpart was shot down by a missile – almost certainly by Kagame's men – and mass killing broke out, the US. forced the United Nations to withdraw from the country – a move that could only have been of advantage to Kagame's well-trained and armed forces, which quickly conquered all of Rwanda. When United Nations reports showed Kagame was killing 10,000 Hutus a month inside Rwanda, even after the opposition had collapsed or fled, the United States halted an investigation. Then Kagame's men swarmed into Congo, and the larger genocide began.
"Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture."
The leaked UN report cannot be put back in the bottle. Kagame, who labels all critics "genocidaires" or apologists for genocide, is exposed as "the greatest mass killer on the face of the earth, today," as described by Edward S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide. Kagame's mentors and funders in the U.S. government, who aided and abetted his genocide in Congo, must be held equally accountable – if not more so, since United States corporations derive the greatest benefit from Congo's blood minerals, and the U.S. military gains the most advantage from Rwandan and Ugandan services as mercenaries at America's beck and call in Africa.
It would be great if Kagame pitched a pathological fit and made good on his threat to withdraw his soldiers from Haiti, Chad, Liberia and Sudan. But that would seriously inconvenience the United States, whose interests the UN "peacekeeping" missions serve. Kagame has no problem killing Hutus by the millions in Congo, but he will not dare upset the superpower to which he owes his bloody career.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Comments
THERE ARE AFRICAN AMERICA ON KAGAME AND MUSEVENI'S SIDE
akechlo - 09/03/2010 - 21:54
I am not shocked to find Andrew Young and Quincy Jones among those who are loyal to both Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni
quote
Andrew Young is reportedly building a mansion on Lake Muhazi in Rwanda, where Kagame also
owns a mansion, and next to exclusive multi-million dollar lakeside resorts and golf courses.
Quincy Jones has bought an island on Lake Muhazi.
unquote
This information is found on page 23 of this document: http://allthingspass.com/uploads/pdf-261AMERICAS_WAR_IN_CENTRAL_AFRICA.pdf
Please, find time and read the file. You will understand how black elites operate behind the scenes. When they said Clinton was a black president, they must have meant that he knows how to use black elites to enrich his people. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey played very major roles on behalf on Bill Clinton during the events leading to turmoil in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Donald Payne was at the time a personal friend of Charles Taylor who is on trial at ICT at the Hague; this is the court created for dealing with Black Africans who have exhausted their usefulness to the western governments and corporations. This also reminded me of role played by Ray Nagin of New Orleans during Huricane Katrina. Orders were given to shoot and kill. Many African males were shot in the back!
Like poor people in Africa who are being slaughtered by Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, the African Americans in this country has no one watching their backs. African elites everywhere are collaborating with the multinational corporations to take care of themselves and their families!
THE TRUTH IS SAD AND DEPRESSING
Enlightened Cynic - 09/04/2010 - 12:38
You are so right. Without the aiding and abetting of the Black US elites, a lot of this shit wouldn't be going down. It pains me to no end that people will sell their soul and the souls of millions of "invisibles" for their own creature comforts. (when they already loaded with cash moreover)
There is indeed no one watching common Black folks back, that's turning into the theme of this past generation, isn't it? If these rank, sell out, bitch-ass, m***er f****ers had half a heart, and brain, there would be a genuine "back to Africa movement" in the sense of cooperative and fruitful partnerships and economic relations benefiting all sons and daughters of Mother Africa.
Another reason I can't stand "racial,tribal" politics. If someone is going to fuck me and mine, why does it have to be someone who looks like me? Why do Black folks BLINDLY assume every nigga in "power" is looking out for them? When in reality every "street smart," astute common Black person knows the niggas who running for elected office or preening in front of white folks is a selfish traitor.
Has racism over the centuries really fucked us up that bad? Or are we fucked up enough on our own?
U.S. POLICY ON SOMALIA SOWED SEEDS FOR CHAOS
Enlightened Cynic - 09/03/2010 - 10:17
by Gwynne Dyer,
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20100901gd.html
"NORTHERN EXPOSURE" US STYLE
Enlightened Cynic - 09/03/2010 - 10:07
The warlords, mercenaries and kleptocrats of the United States are suffering schizophrenia. And that schizophrenia ( well established over centuries) is "exposing" the corrupt nature of America. Scott Horton lays out the details in this article appropriately titled:
America's Corruption Racket in Central Asia
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007549
Excerpt:
"American policy towards corruption in Central Asia is thus exposed as schizophrenic. On the one hand the United States purports to be resolutely opposed to corruption and prepared to spend enormous sums to expose and prosecute it in the interest of transparency, good government, and saving the taxpayers the expense of corrupt contracts. FBI agents and prosecutors are being moved into the field and are pursuing an unprecedented number of prosecutions in U.S. courts. But on the other hand, it is increasingly apparent that the United States is itself one of the most staggeringly corrupt actors in the region, willing to slide hundreds of millions of dollars under the carpet to foreign government officials to induce them to do Washington's bidding, on occasion doing this so crudely that it undermines the credibility of the government it has picked as an ally. Indeed, twice now American bribery operations targeting a foreign head of state helped provoke revolutions that toppled a government."
Sound familiar? You can be sure that if the masses rise up and topple the puppet Kagame he'll be whisked away to the Hague for prosecution. They'll imprison and muzzle him so he can't "EXPOSE" American complicity in his crimes. Ask Noriega if you don't believe me? When's the last time we heard "boo" from Noriega who was also a CIA asset?
Has "60 Minutes" interviewed Manuel or Milosevic for that matter to hear their side of the story?
This is what drives me crazy about American Exceptionalism, destroying countries through sanctions and illegal invasions, running assassination squads, ripping of the country's "aid," and bribing it's officials in such significant ways there is the occasional toppling of their government. All in the name of peace and stability, right? Right??? Because we ain't doing nothing if we ain't spreading "democracy."
Meanwhile the corrupt and money hungry Anglos working "sub rosa" with the CIA walk away with their blood money scotfree. It's a wonderful world, isn't it?
DARFUR!
chasm - 09/02/2010 - 14:14
Darfur! Darfur! Darfur!
Why is it that the U.S. media, "liberal" leaders, and the government are so concerned about the "genocide" in Darfur while millions dead in the Congo doesn't rate a peep?
When the people who have proven over and over and over again to be sociopaths who care for nothing but wealth and power -- not even the lives of "fellow" Americans -- start talking about humanitarian crises, you should immediately look more closely, or look somewhere else.
Is it not possible that the powerful are honestly concerned for moral reasons? No. It is not remotely possible. These people have no moral scruples. When they appear to have them, they are faking because it enables them to preserve or enlarge their wealth and power.
So when they start bleating about Darfur, it pays to take a closer look. It doesn't take much research to learn that there is nothing remotely like a genocide going on in Darfur. There is a civil war, yes. A genocide, not hardly.
If one of the magician's hands is tugging at your sleeve, pay attention to the other hand. It is probably stealing your watch. So what is the other hand up to here? Among other things, slaughtering Hutu in the Congo.
The original "genocide" in Rwanda was probably more of a civil war than an attempt at genocide. But the victims, despite all the publicity, were the Hutu. Yes, Hutu hacked Tutsi to pieces, but the reverse also occurred, and by some accounts more Hutu died than Tutsi.
And how did the government end up firmly in the hands of the Tutsi if the Hutu were busy committing genocide? The original genocide was actually a coup perpetrated by Kagame's forces with the help of Uganda. As a result, millions of Hutu refugees were driven into the Congo, and that is were the real genocide began, with the blessings and cooperation of the Western powers and the obedient silence of the Western mainstream media.
It is a bit late for this information to surface, but better late than never. Good article. I hope that BAR will continue to pursue this story until it becomes too big to ignore. The fate of millions more hangs in the balance.
BOOKS: TOP 10 READING ON RWANDA
Enlightened Cynic - 09/01/2010 - 18:12
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/10824563964.htm
Let me throw in this one on Eritrea for good measure. It so aptly describe the Western attitude towards Africa. Title, I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
Sound familiar??? WTF do they "do for others?"
http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Do-You-Betrayed-African/dp/0060780932
Cynical Negro: Check out the bitches er... Susan Rice's review at the amazon link. Dr. Susan Rice, such a waste of humanity, bitch is smart and half-ass fine.
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/9JQG14t4HnV/Glamour+Magazine+Honors+2009+...
How can these people look at themselves in the mirror. The Rice's and Kagame's of the world, doing the White man's bidding?? Goddamn. Couldn't these people make gravy money without being butchers and ghouls?
SAMANTHA POWERS, SUSAN RICE - WHERE U AT?!
Cynical Negro - 09/01/2010 - 15:59
It's time to bring in the "green" environmental quackademics, "population bomb" quackademics, house negroes, and liberal neo-cons...
Bomb bomb bomb Rwanda and bomb bomb bomb Sudan under the guise of human rights violations (that the U.S. played a roll in). Kagame is starting to feel guilty about slavishly implementing the Wall st./London cabals exploitation, genocide, and eugenics agenda (Agenda 21) for Africa. He's veering off from the goal of genocide and starting to think about things like Africa growth/development/infrastructure - and the Bilderberg Group, IMF, club of Rome, Bill&Melinda Gates/Rockefeller foundations, the London/Wall st. banking cabal etc., etc., etc. don't like it.
Here, look:
Tensions emerge between Rwanda and Western backers
By Linda Slattery and Ann Talbot
26 August 2010
Kagame has received extraordinarily high levels of aid from the West since he came to power in 1994 and has previously been virtually immune from criticism in the press. The shift in attitude can best be traced to the welcome that Kagame has extended to China's growing investment in Africa. A warning is being delivered to Kagame's regime that the tolerance he has enjoyed to date will not continue if he aligns himself with interests hostile to those of the United States and other Western powers.
Writing in the Financial Times on August 19, Kagame acknowledged the changing attitude that emerged in the course of the election and defended his brand of politics, claiming that it was essential if Rwanda was to be stable:
"Some in the media and the international community seem uninterested in fact-checking, and simply invented stories that play to damaging historic prejudices. It is a shame that some so casually disregard the views of the majority of Rwandans and prefer to elevate the dangerous opinions of fly-by-night individuals, which in turn threaten to reverse our hard-earned stability".
"Democracy is about more than holding elections", said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the NSC. "A democracy reflects the will of the people, where minority voices are heard and respected, where opposition candidates run on the issues without threat or intimidation, where freedom of expression and freedom of the press are protected".
Kagame's response came in the Financial Times. He rejected the US criticism of his election and insisted that he was pursuing a form of government suited to Rwandan cultural traditions.
"For decades, one-size-fits-all development and democratic prescriptions have been imposed on Africa, with unsatisfactory, sometimes tragic, results", he wrote. "Yet to break from the cycle of underdevelopment we must seek innovative, home-grown solutions. Rwanda is one of the countries that have chosen to apply unconventional mechanisms to solve daunting challenges. And it is working".
Hinting at Rwanda's importance for the export of minerals, Kagame said that those who accepted his methods would reap the economic benefits. He knows that he has the support of the major mining companies and can look to China as an alternative source of aid. In January 2009 Kagame signed a new trade deal with China, and a new Chinese embassy was opened in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
Speaking to the German business paper Handelsblatt, Kagame praised the role of China in bringing investment in infrastructure to Africa. He recognised the potential for playing off one potential investor or donor against another. "There are new players, developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia", he said. "That opens new possibilities for new relationships. Suddenly, the Americans and Europeans discover that they don't want to be left out".
At the China-Africa summit Kagame pointed out that trade between Rwanda and China had quadrupled over the previous four years.
Kagame has been sharply critical of the new US Dodd-Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act, which contains a clause obliging companies to demonstrate that their minerals have not come from the DRC. Major electronics companies such as IBM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Apple will be hit by this provision. Kagame may hope to bypass this legislation by turning to the Asian market and Asian electronic companies.
Kagame supposedly won 93 percent of the votes in the election on August 9. International observers reported no overt sign of violence or voter intimidation, but all the opposition candidates were former allies of Kagame. Three potential candidates were barred from standing. Leading oppositionist Andre Kagwa Rwisereka of the Democratic Green Party was found dead shortly before the election. The party is linked to Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who is in intensive care in South Africa after being shot. Nyamwasa fled to South Africa earlier this year after accusing Kagame of using an anti-corruption campaign to frame his political opponents.
Reporters have been subject to intimidation. Jean Leonard Rugambage was gunned down in Kigali after his paper Umuvugizi was closed by the government. Its editor Jean Bosco Gasasira had already fled to Uganda.
In June, American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who is representing defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on trial for their alleged part in the genocide, was arrested. He was accused of denying the 1994 genocide on the basis of remarks he made at the tribunal, although the defence lawyers are supposed to be protected by diplomatic immunity. Other lawyers at the ICTR responded to Erlinder's arrest by asking for postponements until their safety could be guaranteed.
These are the "disturbing events" that have caused concern in Washington. But they are hardly new.
In 1995 the journalist Manesse Mugabo disappeared in Kigali, followed in 1996 by the first post-genocide Minister of the Interior Seth Sendashshonga and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura, who was shot dead in Nairobi. In 1998 journalist Emmanuel Munyemanzi disappeared from Kigali, and Theoneste Lizinde, MP and government intelligence chief before the genocide, was assassinated in Nairobi. In the year 2000, first post-genocide President Pasteur Bizimungu's adviser, Asiel Kabera, was shot dead in Kigali. In 2003 top judge Augustin Cyiza and magistrate Eliezar Runyaruka disappeared from Kigali, as did opposition MP Leonard Hitiman.
The US has been prepared to turn a blind eye to Kagame's record of repression until now because it has been useful to American interests. The Financial Times Africa editor William Wallis acknowledged the impact that the presence of China has had on Western influence in Rwanda. But he also blamed the West for the lack of democracy in Rwanda.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/rwan-a26.shtml
PRETTY DAMNING STUFF HERE...
Cynical Negro - 09/01/2010 - 14:35
The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa
By Michel Chossudovsky
(This text is in part based on the results of a study conducted by the author together with Belgian economist Pierre Galand on the use of Rwanda's 1990-94 external debt to finance the military and paramilitary.)
Concluding Remarks
The civil war in Rwanda was a brutal struggle for political power between the Hutu-led Habyarimana government supported by France and the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) backed financially and militarily by Washington. Ethnic rivalries were used deliberately in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Both the CIA and French intelligence were involved.
In the words of former Cooperation Minister Bernard Debré in the government of Prime Minister Henri Balladur:
"What one forgets to say is that, if France was on one side, the Americans were on the other, arming the Tutsis who armed the Ugandans. I don't want to portray a showdown between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, but the truth must be told." 43
In addition to military aid to the warring factions, the influx of development loans played an important role in "financing the conflict." In other words, both the Ugandan and Rwanda external debts were diverted into supporting the military and paramilitary. Uganda's external debt increased by more than 2 billion dollars, --i.e. at a significantly faster pace than that of Rwanda (an increase of approximately 250 million dollars from 1990 to 1994). In retrospect, the RPA -- financed by US military aid and Uganda's external debt-- was much better equipped and trained than the Forces Armées du Rwanda (FAR) loyal to President Habyarimana. From the outset, the RPA had a definite military advantage over the FAR.
The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Despite the good diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington and the apparent unity of the Western military alliance, it was an undeclared war between France and America. By supporting the build up of Ugandan and Rwandan forces and by directly intervening in the Congolese civil war, Washington also bears a direct responsibility for the ethnic massacres committed in the Eastern Congo including several hundred thousand people who died in refugee camps.
US policy-makers were fully aware that a catastrophe was imminent. In fact four months before the genocide, the CIA had warned the US State Department in a confidential brief that the Arusha Accords would fail and "that if hostilities resumed, then upward of half a million people would die". 45 This information was withheld from the United Nations: "it was not until the genocide was over that information was passed to Maj.-Gen. Dallaire [who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda]." 46
Washington's objective was to displace France, discredit the French government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under Major General Paul Kagame. Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres.
When a UN force was put forth, Major General Paul Kagame sought to delay its implementation stating that he would only accept a peacekeeping force once the RPA was in control of Kigali. Kagame "feared [that] the proposed United Nations force of more than 5,000 troops... [might] intervene to deprive them [the RPA] of victory".47 Meanwhile the Security Council after deliberation and a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali decided to postpone its intervention.
The 1994 Rwandan "genocide" served strictly strategic and geopolitical objectives. The ethnic massacres were a stumbling blow to France's credibility which enabled the US to establish a neocolonial foothold in Central Africa. From a distinctly Franco-Belgian colonial setting, the Rwandan capital Kigali has become --under the expatriate Tutsi led RPF government-- distinctly Anglo-American. English has become the dominant language in government and the private sector. Many private businesses owned by Hutus were taken over in 1994 by returning Tutsi expatriates. The latter had been exiled in Anglophone Africa, the US and Britain.
The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) functions in English and Kinyarwanda, the University previously linked to France and Belgium functions in English. While English had become an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda, French political and cultural influence will eventually be erased. Washington has become the new colonial master of a francophone country.
Several other francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have entered into military cooperation agreements with the US. These countries are slated by Washington to follow suit on the pattern set in Rwanda. Meanwhile in francophone West Africa, the US dollar is rapidly displacing the CFA Franc -- which is linked in a currency board arrangement to the French Treasury.
Read full article here:
HTTP://WWW.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18540
KAGAME IS HUMAN EXCREMENT
Enlightened Cynic - 09/01/2010 - 11:48
(His eyes even look like floating turds).
When he is finally passed throw the bowels of the Imperial venture he'll be flushed down the toilet like the rest of the expendable lackeys, heartless ghouls who've carried out American atrocities for their own materialistic and egotistical aims.
He'll likely discover what Africa Americans have known a long time, "justice," means "just us."
Since WWII, I have yet to see an Anglo from a western country be prosecuted in the Hague. Hague prosecutions are generally reserved from brown, and black persons with the occasional Eastern European thrown in.
As we all know, in Exceptional American we don't commit war crimes, we're too good and noble and busy "spreading democracy," and "winning hearts and minds."
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/int_war_crime_tribunals/
"Possibly the most powerful argument against war crimes tribunals is that they offer only the victors justice. What was most obviously missing following World War II was not Hitler at Nuremberg, but a trial for Americans, French, British, and Russian individuals who committed acts that would have been considered war crimes had the Allies lost the war. The fire bombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are clear examples of acts for which Allied leaders would have been tried had the war ended in favor of the Germans and Japanese. While it is easy and satisfying to put the enemy in prison for what he or she has done, it does not seem entirely fair if all those who participate in a war are not held to the same standards. In fact, one of the reasons that the United States has so far failed to support an international war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, is fear that U.S. officers would be found guilty by the court."
The Rwanda crisis WOULD expose the US role in Congo genocide if we had something other than a propaganda machine orchestrating as the "media." The organ grinders will keep on churning out their muted tones. Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan would be facing charges of war crimes for the genocide in Rwanda were the full story told.
Smith Lond Review Mar 2011 Rwanda in Six Scenes
Stephen W. Smith
Vol. 33 No. 6 · 17 March 2011
pages 3-8 | 5765 words
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n06/stephen-w-smith/rwanda-in-six-scenes
A number of memories connected with Rwanda play in my mind like scenes from a movie, although I don't pretend they add up to a film. In 1994 a genocide was committed against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda. All else about this small East African country, 'the land of a thousand hills', is open to question and, indeed, bears re-examination. 'Freedom of opinion is a farce,' Hannah Arendt wrote in 1966 in 'Truth and Politics', 'unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute.' The problem with Rwanda is not only that opinions and facts have parted company but that opinion takes precedence.
The first scene: I'm walking beside Paul Kagame, the current president of Rwanda and then a rebel leader, past low picket fences and small prefabricated houses in a residential suburb of Brussels. It's cold and our breath mingles in the air as we speak. Kagame is swaddled in a thick coat. Even so, he remains a spindly figure with a birdlike face. I can't warm to him, but I know him well enough by now to hazard the question that has been preying on my mind for a while: 'Why is it always you, the vice-president, whom I meet when I have dealings with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and not Alexis Kanyarengwe?' Kanyarengwe was the movement's president. 'Don't worry,' he chuckles. 'You're seeing the boss. Kanyarengwe is only our front man. You'd be wasting your time.'
This was in 1992. The RPF had been set up in 1987 in Uganda by Tutsi exiles. Kagame's parents had fled with him to Uganda when he was four. At the time of our meeting in Brussels, Kagame was avoiding the French. A few months earlier, in 1991, he'd just returned to his hotel near the Eiffel Tower from a meeting with officials at the Elysée when the French police called him in for interrogation. They were inquiring into a murky incident that was never entirely elucidated. Police sources claimed that members of Kagame's delegation were 'roaming around town with bags full of cash to buy weapons'; Kagame claimed the police were trying to discredit him. Tensions were running high between the rebel movement and France. The French were providing military support – 150 soldiers, later increased to 300, plus significant arms shipments – to the Hutu-dominated Habyarimana regime in Kigali, which the RPF was fighting to overthrow. Rwanda was a former Belgian colony, with eight million subsistence farmers jostling for a livelihood in a territory smaller than Haiti, and with little in the way of mineral wealth. It was a place where France felt obliged to assert itself as a tutelary power in Africa, if only to maintain its credibility as a guarantor of its local 'friends' and protégés and to defend 'la Francophonie' in Rwanda against the RPF, which operated from English-speaking Uganda. As for Kanyarengwe, the RPF figurehead, events would soon show that Kagame was telling the truth: he, Kagame, was the main man of the insurgency. Kanyarengwe, the nominal leader, was a Hutu defector: as head of the Rwandan secret services, he had helped Habyarimana to power in a coup d'état in 1973, but they later fell out and in 1980 he fled Rwanda. Ten years later – and two months after the RPF's military campaign was launched from Uganda – Kagame offered Kanyarengwe the helm of the rebel movement to deflect the charge that the RPF was a Tutsi organisation. Kanyarengwe accepted in order to spite Habyarimana.
In the 1990s I was the Africa editor of the French daily newspaper Libération. The combination of the paper's independence from the notorious Franco-African networks and my US passport represented Kagame's best chance of an unbiased hearing in France, where government officials routinely referred to his rebel forces as the 'Khmers noirs'. At the time, French public opinion made short shrift of small-scale military interventions in Africa. In June 1992 I alerted readers to what the Libérationheadline called 'The Elysée's Secret War' in Rwanda – a deployment which had not been debated in parliament and had received almost no attention. In May 1993, 11 months before the extermination of the Tutsis began, I warned that 'genocide' was looming. But I also fell victim to the RPF's manipulation of the press: I wrote about the supposed activities of the so-called Zero Network – presidential death squads – as well as the akazu, literally the 'small house', said to be the command structure responsible for pre-genocidal killings of Tutsis. Habyarimana's in-laws were said to run the akazu and while I didn't accuse President Habyarimana himself, I did point an incriminating finger at his wife, Agathe, and her brothers, accusing them of organising massacres of the 'Tutsis of the interior', as the oppressed minority inside the country was known. It was their way of retaliating against the Tutsis of the diaspora who had invaded the country from Uganda.
There were indeed massacres of Tutsis before the genocide – but they were organised by other people and at different levels of the state apparatus. Today, with hindsight, I know that the Zero Network didn't exist and I've come to refer to the akazu, which continues to be used as a default category in journalistic and academic writing, as au cas où – French for 'in case' – as in 'in case we find no master plan for the genocide in Rwanda'. I can't say whether there was or wasn't a master plan for the extermination of the Tutsis, some Rwandan equivalent of the Wannsee Conference. Historians must lay that question to rest'; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the special UN court based in Arusha and charged with trying genocidal planners and killers, has found no one guilty of 'conspiracy to commit genocide' since it started its proceedings 16 years ago.
The Zero Network was first mentioned in an open letter published in 1992 by another defector from the Habyarimana regime, Christophe Mfizi, who had been the head of the government's propaganda office in Kigali. As he later explained, he was anxious to avoid a libel suit. So he used 'Zero' as a way of fingering Agathe Habyarimana's brother, Protais Zigiranyirazo, the prefect of Ruhengeri, the presidential family's home province. Without giving his full name, Mfizi accused 'Mister Z' of running a network of hit squads, a charge a Rwandan journalist called Janvier Afrika wrote up in elaborate detail the following year.
Afrika has since recanted his testimony, explaining in similarly abundant detail how it was suggested to him by the RPF. Whether or not this is true, it's perhaps significant that he recanted only after the RPF had taken power in Kigali, in November 1994, by which time he had fallen foul of the new regime. He fled to Cameroon, where I lost his trail in 1998. The ICTR has never summoned him as a witness. For his part, Mfizi obtained political asylum in France in September 1996, having resigned as the RPF's first ambassador to Paris. Ten years later he submitted an exhaustive report on the Zero Network – nearly 50,000 words – at the request of the ICTR's Office of the Prosecution. He repudiated the term akazu, which, he wrote, could not take the measure of 'the political reality, and even less so the criminal reality … of the period between 1980 and 1994'. However, he reiterated his accusations against Zigiranyirazo, whom he now named, although his evidence did not bring a conviction: in November 2009, 'Mister Z' was acquitted on appeal by the ICTR.
*
The second scene etched on my memory is set in a sombre living-room with a low ceiling 40 kilometres south of Paris. It is 1998; I'm sitting on a couch opposite Agathe Habyarimana, now the widow of the former Rwandan president, whose plane was shot down on 6 April 1994, triggering the genocide. Photographs of the slain general cover the walls. Next to Mrs Habyarimana, now in her mid-fifties, sit four of her eight children: Jeanne and Marie-Merci; Léon and Bernard. I've been seeing Bernard for some time and he has persuaded his mother to meet me on her return to France after two years in Gabon. There are many grandchildren underfoot; eventually they're banished from the room.
What do you ask 'the Lady Macbeth of the Rwandan genocide', as Philip Gourevitch called her? How do you approach a conversation with someone who's been portrayed as the latter-day incarnation of a legendary sorceress in Rwandan dynastic history? Or as the ultimate 'Hutu power' extremist, who some believed was behind the assassination of her own husband for accepting a power-sharing agreement – the Arusha Peace Agreement signed in August 1993 – with the Tutsi rebel movement? What can you say to someone who's generally presented by journalists, human rights activists and academics as the engineer of the 1994 extermination campaign? I ask myself a simpler question: would her grown-up children huddle around her if there were grounds for suspicion that she conspired to murder their father?
Agathe Habyarimana recounts what she saw in Rwanda during the genocide, from the moment she and her family heard the explosion of the presidential jet, which was hit by a missile right above their heads at 8.25 p.m., with debris raining into their garden, until her evacuation by the French army three days later. 'We collected the body parts and gathered them on plastic sheeting or carpets. We were able to identify my husband, Elie' – she's referring to one of her half-brothers – 'and several other members of the delegation. But our efforts were hampered as we were under constant gunfire. I didn't speak to any civilian or military authority, still less issue orders.' In addition to her only brother, 'Mister Z', Agathe Habyarimana had two half-brothers. Elie Sagatwa was one of them; he was also her husband's private secretary. If the akazureally was the nerve centre of the genocidal project kick-started by the president's assassination, would Sagatwa and his sister have hatched a plot that involved Sagatwa's own death, in order to kill a man they were both intimate with, and could easily have eliminated in some other, simpler way?
A few months and several meetings later, I published an interview with Agathe Habyarimana in Libération. The interview was a scoop, but the prospect of providing a platform for a notorious génocidaire had prompted a ruckus in the newsroom. One of my colleagues had described my piece as 'revisionism'. I told the editor-in-chief that I was always eager to revise what I or others had got wrong and suggested my colleague should write a profile of Agathe Habyarimana containing all the incriminating facts he could muster, which could be printed alongside my interview. After ten days, the face-off ended with a bad compromise. There wouldn't be a profile but my interview had to be kept short. So in fewer than a hundred words, headlined 'I'm not afraid of the truth,' Mrs Habyarimana said that she was ready to appear before the ICTR at any time, that the akazu was a portmanteau word, a term of convenience, and that her son Jean-Pierre had never been a 'pal' of Mitterrand's son, Jean-Christophe, who was his father's Africa hand at the Elysée in the 1980s and early 1990s. 'So much has been invented without ever giving me a fair chance to reply.' That was the only sentence I felt uncomfortable about publishing.
In the same year, 1998, the French judiciary opened an investigation into the downing of Habyarimana's plane at the request of relatives of the French crew members who had died in the crash. This marked the beginning of a long legal tug-of-war between Paris and Kagame's RPF regime in Kigali. Relations between the two reached their nadir in November 2006, when a French judge issued international arrest warrants for nine key members of Kagame's entourage. Rwanda severed diplomatic ties with France. Much was written about the self-aggrandising investigative magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, and about France's hostility to the RPF regime. The Spanish judiciary, widening an investigation into the murder of some Spanish missionaries, reached even more grievous conclusions. In 2008, a judge in Madrid, Fernando Andreu Merelles, issued international arrest warrants for 40 RPF leaders on counts of 'acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of terrorism'. The Rwandan leaders, first among them Paul Kagame, were held responsible for 'the attack on the life of President Juvénal Habyarimana … with a view to preparing the final offensive to seize power and to create a situation of civil war'.
The Kagame regime fought back. In August 2008 it accused France of having played an active role in the 'preparation and execution of the 1994 genocide', and threatened to issue 33 arrest warrants targeting French politicians, including three former prime ministers – Balladur, Juppé and Villepin – and the army top brass. Since then relations have improved; France and Rwanda restored diplomatic ties towards the end of 2009. In February 2010, President Sarkozy spent four hours in the Rwandan capital to seal the reconciliation. He admitted to France's 'errors' and, more specifically, 'a form of blindness when we failed to discern the genocidal dimension' of the Habyarimana regime. Speaking about the génocidaires still at large on French soil, he mentioned the government's decision to refuse asylum to 'one of the persons concerned' – a transparent reference to Agathe Habyarimana, whose request had been definitively rejected by the Conseil d'Etat four months earlier. Only days after Sarkozy's return to Paris in March, she was briefly taken into custody as a result of an international arrest warrant issued against her by Kagame's government in October 2009. It was an event staged for the media. She was released the same day on condition that she report regularly to the police. Nine months later, in December 2010, a formal request for extradition had still not been submitted by the Rwandan judiciary.
The rejection of Agathe Habyarimana's asylum request in France was largely based on akazu-linked charges brought against her brother before the ICTR. The ruling was made a month before the ICTR acquitted Protais Zigiranyirazo. As for Mrs Habyarimana's surviving half-brother, Séraphin Rwabukumba, both the UN tribunal and the courts in Belgium, where he lives, have abandoned proceedings against him. It's just possible that the akazu was a women-only conspiracy, or that Agathe Habyarimana acted on her own. But if so, why hasn't the ICTR indicted her? And why did the RPF regime wait 15 years before issuing an international arrest warrant in 2009? It could be that there are simply no legal grounds for prosecution, or that Rwanda's tardy arrest warrant was just a way of intensifying the pressure on France. It could also be that no one – least of all the RPF leadership in Kigali – is interested in a trial in which the downing of Habyarimana's jet in 1994 would inevitably come under scrutiny.
*
A third scene, May 1994: I reach Butare, the biggest town in southern Rwanda, by car from neighbouring Burundi. On the way, I'm stopped at numerous Hutu roadblocks. The barriers are manned mostly by young people with clubs, hammers or machetes. At one, a small boy is holding a nail-studded cudgel with tufts of bloody hair. The smell of putrefying bodies by the roadside is sickening. The starter of my dilapidated car is defective and the militiamen lay down their weapons to give me a push. Being French – or French enough – I'm regarded as a friend. 'Vive la France!' They wave their hands, which I'd just shook, as I make for the next roadblock.
In Butare, the Catholic bishopric is a safe haven. The priests allow me in and provide me with a room for the night. From my window, I can see the imposing red brick cathedral built by the Belgians just across the street. I walk over there, knock at the presbytery door, stay for a while and then return to my room. The last surviving Tutsis in Butare hiding out in these two buildings, the cathedral and the bishopric. Whichever of the two they're in, they believe the one across the street is 'safer'. A young woman in tears begs me to hide her in the boot of my car and drive her out of the country. 'I really can't. We wouldn't even reach the edge of town.' 'You want me to die.' Throughout the night, I hear noises in the streets – drunken militiamen – and also above my head, when from time to time the Tutsis hiding in the double ceiling drag their numb bodies across the floor in an attempt to stretch or get a breath of fresh air. Twice in the night, furious fists batter at the wooden entrance door and coarse voices vow to return in search of 'cockroaches'. When they finally go away, the ceiling weeps.
In the morning, over breakfast, I talk to the priests. They're prepared to die with their 'guests' at the hands of the militia; they describe the militia as 'God's children who've lost their way'. I don't like to leave without a modest offer of hope. 'The RPF is advancing rapidly. Soon they'll reach Butare, and it'll all be over. Just hold out for a few more days!' I stare into bitter smiles. 'That's no solution,' someone says. 'Why not?' 'Because they'll kill us.' 'But why on earth would they want to kill you? You've stuck together, Hutus and Tutsis!' 'Precisely for that reason.' I drive away dispirited and bewildered. It'll take me a long time to grasp that, for many of the exiled Tutsis who are now returning, especially the generation raised or born abroad, the genocide is not only what happened over the hundred days between April and July 1994, but an entire history of violence, discrimination and hardship that began with the so-called Social Revolution of the Hutus in 1959. In their eyes, Hutus and Tutsis can't live together on equal terms because, unless the minority keeps the majority in check, Tutsis will always be humiliated or killed. To pretend otherwise, as the 'Tutsis of the interior' did when they stayed in the country after 1959, is to betray the dead among your kith and kin.
*
A change of location: Nairobi, February 1996, two years into the new RPF dispensation in Rwanda. As I speak to Seth Sendashonga, his vivid eyes are glazed with sadness. I have just spent several weeks in Rwanda, and have returned bearing notepads full of crimes. It isn't as if he doesn't know what happened: on the contrary, I'd leaned heavily on Sendashonga's contacts in Rwanda. In 1991, when he joined the RPF, Sendashonga was the only eminent Hutu-turned-rebel who was not a defector from the Habyarimana regime. He undertook to rewrite the rebels' political platform, to explain to the children of exile what the land of their fathers was like and, more important, to build bridges with opposition parties in Rwanda. 'Our agenda is not revenge but true democracy,' he assured them. Under the new regime, Sendashonga became Kagame's minister of the interior. But he could not accept the RPF's reprisals for the genocide, including planned massacres and systematic killings. Kagame failed to respond to any of the 700 letters documenting abuses which Sendashonga sent him. Eventually, Sendashonga had to face the fact that he was only another front man. Six months before we met in Nairobi, he resigned and went into exile.
Poring over a table strewn with papers, Sendashonga and I compare two independent lists of people killed in Gitarama province, central Rwanda, during the first 11 months after the RPF took power. We move forward line by line, name by name, address by address, cross-checking dates. One list has been compiled by parish priests throughout the prefecture; the other established at neighbourhood level for 11 of the 17 communes in Gitarama. The two lists largely tally. The first comprises about 25,000 dead, the second 17,000. Assuming RPF reprisals were equally severe everywhere in Rwanda this leads to an extrapolated figure of 150,000 people killed between July 1994 and April 1995 in the entire country. Based on research completed in August 1994 in 41 of the 145 Rwandan communes, Robert Gersony, a UNHCR consultant, estimated that 'between 25,000 and 40,000 persons' were killed during the first 100 days of RPF rule. The Gersony report – in fact just briefing notes – was leaked to the press. Under intense pressure from Kigali and its allies, the UNHCR went on the record denying its existence. No Gersony report, no dead.
In February 1996, Libération published my investigation into the killings allegedly committed by the post-genocide regime. I estimated that 'more than 100,000' Hutus had been murdered during the RPF's first year in power. Libération also published an interview with Gérard Prunier, a specialist on the Great Lakes region, and the eyewitness account of a Rwandan nurse who had described to me two sites where he claimed he had been forced to work: one near Kigali where, he said, prisoners were put to death (their skulls were crushed), and another in a game reserve, the Akagera National Park, where scores of Hutus were cremated. There wasn't much of a reaction to the dossier, though the Rwandan embassy in Paris issued a strongly worded denial. The wire services picked up the story but it disappeared very quickly. It was just a sour note in a concert.
Seven months later, in October 1996, the Rwandan army dispersed the Hutu camps in eastern Zaire, today's Democratic Republic of the Congo. More than a million Hutus streamed back into Rwanda, while 300,000 fled deeper into Zaire. Of that 300,000 nearly two-thirds died over the next six months, according to a field study by Médecins sans frontières. They were killed or died of disease, exhaustion and hunger as they made their way across the African interior. The UNHCR spoke of 'crimes against humanity', but, again, there was hardly any response. Twelve years later, in August 2010, a fresh investigation by the UN put the number killed at 'probably in the several tens of thousands':
The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the apparently systematic nature of the massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken suggests that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick … the apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterised as crimes of genocide.
The new regime in Kigali went after Sendashonga in exile. In 1996, the day before Libération published the dossier on the RPF killings, he was ambushed and sustained two bullet wounds. He identified one of the two attackers as his former ministry bodyguard in Kigali. The other was Francis Mgabo, an official from the Rwandan embassy in Nairobi, who attempted to dispose of his firearm in the toilet of a nearby petrol station. The Kenyan authorities asked Rwanda to lift Mgabo's diplomatic immunity, so that he could go on trial, but Kigali refused and for a time the two countries broke off diplomatic relations. On 16 May 1998 in Nairobi, during the evening rush hour, gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles opened fire on Sendashonga's car, killing him and his driver. As his wife later revealed, he had been scheduled to testify before the ICTR. He had also set up an armed opposition group (Forces de résistance pour la démocratie), which attracted both Hutus and Tutsis. His wife claimed that the acting Rwandan ambassador in Kenya at the time, Alphonse Mbayire, had organised Sendashonga's assassination. Mbayire was recalled by his government, only to be shot dead by unidentified gunmen in a bar in Kigali a month later.
*
The fifth scene: Kigali, January 2002. For six years, I've been persona non grata in Rwanda. Finally, I managed to persuade the foreign ministers of France and Britain, Hubert Védrine and Jack Straw, to take me on their plane as they make a joint tour of four African countries – the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda – and to drop me off in Kigali. Though it means they have to give up a seat for a reporter covering their entente cordiale, they agree. For the Rwandan authorities, it is tricky to deny me a visa as part of a Franco-British delegation. Védrine is the first French minister to visit Kigali after the genocide. The UK accounts for half of Rwanda's foreign aid. So here I am, an unwelcome visitor, on sufferance and under surveillance after the ministers' departure. To meet ordinary people means putting them at risk while RPF officials, many of whom I knew when they were still rebels, won't return my calls. Finally, Charles Murigande, who is in charge of foreign affairs, comes to my hotel. I launch into a lengthy profession of good faith. He replies with a Rwandan proverb: 'There's no use drinking milk on a stomach full of hatred. It'll throw up blood.' With this, he draws his chair back and leaves.
In a town you know, there's sure to be someone who wants to see you. Not that Pasteur Bizimungu and I are especially close, but the former head of state badly needs a friend. Before joining the RPF in 1990, he was the director of Electrogaz, a coveted post in Habyarimana's dispensation. He gave up the position to become the rebels' spokesman and then a member of their negotiation team in Arusha. Finally, the RPF picked him as the Hutu figurehead for the post-genocide government of national unity. He became president while Kagame effectively ran the country. The pretence came to an end in 2000, when Kagame took the top job for himself. Bizimungu created his own political party, Ubuyanja ('Renewal'). It was a more ambitious idea than the RPF could allow: he was accused of rekindling ethnic hatred and placed under house arrest. So I am sure to find him at home.
The soldiers at the gate are taken by surprise: a white man, tailed by security agents in a car – probably from the Directorate of Military Intelligence – nervously fingering their cell phones. 'M. Bizimungu doesn't want to see anybody!' But I'd already rung the bell. Pasteur Bizimungu shoots out and welcomes me. 'Yes, I want to see him, absolutely!' he tells the soldiers and whisks me inside. He locks the door and leans against it, breathing heavily. A volley of accusations about Kagame follow; I remember the expression 'the dark side of power'. When it is clear that no one will order me out, Bizimungu leads me into his library. We talk until we are both exhausted. 'You know, they were right,' he says finally. 'The explorers, the missionaries, the colonisers, about the Tutsis being liars. They are liars.' I am thrown clean off balance. Bizimungu climbs a stepladder to reach down a book from a high shelf. In no time, he finds the passage he's looking for, about the 'Tutsi culture of duplicity', which he reads out, stressing key words. I make my excuses and leave. Bizimungu has been driven mad.
After my visit, he was entirely cut off from the outside world. Two years of solitary confinement at home preceded his sentence, in 2004, to 15 years in jail. In 2007, the former president was pardoned by Kagame, who had by then won his first election with 95 per cent of the vote. No one could have mistaken the poll in 2003 for an exercise in democracy. After the legislative elections of 2008 even the RPF found the machine score – 98.39 per cent – embarrassing and lowered it to 78.76 per cent. The EU electoral observers duly documented this self-restraint, but the head of their mission, Michael Cashman, agreed with the EU delegate in Kigali, David MacRae, not to go public about it – it might have raised uncomfortable questions. For his re-election in August 2010, Kagame approved a slight erosion of his Soviet-style popularity, allowing his vote to drop to 93 per cent. Rwanda's burgeoning Democratic Green Party had lobbied against the country's admission to the Commonwealth, citing the regime's gross human rights violations. Its vice-president was found decapitated but that didn't stop Rwanda joining the postcolonial club, the 18th African Commonwealth state and – after Mozambique – only the second member that is not a former British possession. In 2008 Kigali had made English – instead of French – the official teaching language at all levels of the Rwandan educational system.
Rwanda, as a recent document has it, is a one-party authoritarian state, controlled by President Kagame through a small clique of Tutsi military officers and civilian cadres of the RPF from behind the scenes. The majority Hutu community remains excluded from a meaningful share of political power. State institutions are as effective as they are repressive. The government relies on severe repression to maintain its hold on power … Rwanda is less free today than it was prior to the genocide. There is less room for political participation than there was in 1994. Civil society is less free and effective. The media is less free. The Rwanda government is more repressive than the one that it overthrew.
This is not the preamble to a new Hutu manifesto but an excerpt from the 'Rwanda Briefing' published last year by four senior figures in the Kagame regime who've now fled abroad: the former secretary general of the RPF Theogene Rudasingwa; his brother Gerald Gahima, one-time prosecutor general and vice-president of the Rwandan Supreme Court; the erstwhile chief of external security services Colonel Patrick Karegeya; and General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, the ex-chief of staff of the Rwandan army. Nyamwasa survived an attempt on his life last June, when a commando opened fire on him in Johannesburg, where he now lives in exile. The South African authorities laid the blame with the government in Kigali.
The authors of the 'Rwanda Briefing' may not be trustworthy advocates of freedom and democracy, or paragons of ethnic inclusiveness, but they describe a system they're familiar with and a leader they know well. To his many Western admirers they have this to say: 'President Kagame is a very polarising figure. His policies continue to divide Rwandan society along the lines of ethnicity and to fuel conflict. The likelihood of a recurrence of violent conflict, including even the possibility of genocide, is very high.'
*
A final scene: on 21 September 2006, President Kagame lectures on 'Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development in Africa: The Rwandan Experience' at Princeton. The country he describes – 'different from the old system which plunged Rwanda into mayhem', with 'checks and balances' in place after a 'decisive break with exclusivist practices' – is not one I recognise. Even in a packed auditorium, I have the same unsettled feeling in Kagame's presence as I've had in the past. He seems unchanged: taking questions from the audience, he refers to 'the genocide in the 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s', as if 'the one in 1994' were merely one in a series – a hair-raising denial of the singularity of events between April and July 1994. But Goethe was right: 'Everyone hears only what he understands.' The students ask questions about gender equality in Rwandan politics, the fight against corruption and atrocity – a genocide? – in Darfur. How many of them have been moved by Hotel Rwanda, and how many know that Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero played in the film by Don Cheadle, is now a thorn in Kagame's side? Rusesabagina continues to speak out for the ideals that led him to save more than 1200 lives during the genocide in Kigali. For Kagame, however, he is a 'fabricated hero' and a collaborator of the die-hard Hutu génocidaires exiled in Congo.
I am not arguing that we should all know everything there is to know about Rwanda. My point is that we don't seem to want to know what happened in 1994, or what's happening now. We've learned the wrong lesson from the organised massacre of 800,000 people, which we failed to prevent. Eager to pay off our moral debt, we're blinded by guilt. The near total lack of media coverage of the ICTR trials and findings suggests that we're happy to waive our best chance of grasping the inner workings of the genocide. We clamour for international justice but the detailed proceedings of the tribunal don't interest us. At the same time, the denial of freedom and rights under the previous regime in Rwanda impels us to shower Kagame with leadership awards and aid money even as he denies them again. We are hypnotised by the 1994 genocide, and oblivious to the atrocities of a regime we regard as exemplary. Aid, we say, must be conditional on good governance – but post-genocide government is an exception. La Francophonie is at best ridiculous and at worst a vector of France's influence, but the Commonwealth is honourable as it embraces a dictator who favours English over French. Democracy is a precondition of peace – but not in a post-genocidal state. Justice, truth and reconciliation heal – but not the wounds of exterminatory hatred. The invasion and plunder of eastern Congo are criminal – but not when they're carried out by genocide survivors. Hutu power is bad, but Tutsi chauvinism is acceptable. We hold these opinions not because they're right but because they put us on the right side. This makes Rwanda a more tragic place than it needs to be.
Letters
From George Roussopoulos
It is a pity that Stephen Smith, in his excellent article on Rwanda, does not include a few words about Paul Kagame's background, which explains a great deal about the roots of the past massacres and the present position (LRB, 17 March). Kagame, after fighting for Museveni's National Resistance Movement to oust Milton Obote from Uganda, became head of military intelligence for the NRA in 1986. In 1990, he went to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for military training. Well before the massacre of the Tutsis in 1994, the US and UK gave active military support to the Tutsi Rwanda Patriotic Front, which Kagame had created and which took power soon afterwards. The US was looking to create a dependable base in Central Africa from which to influence developments in an important area that included the Democratic Republic of the Congo; later US Special Forces assisted in the overthrow of the Mobutu government. Part of the plan was the transformation of Rwanda from a French-speaking country into an English-speaking one, which culminated, as Smith says, in 2009 when it was admitted to the Commonwealth, leaving the Francophone Hutus stranded and powerless.
George Roussopoulos
Hindhead, Surrey
Ford Black Agenda Report Sept 2010 Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 06:18 — Glen Ford
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/rwanda-crisis-could-expose-us-role-congo-genocide
· Rwanda |
· Paul Kagame |
· Congo genocide |
· Congo
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Left writers have been reporting for years that U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda bear primary responsibility for the deaths of as many as six million Congolese. Now a leaked United Nations report has confirmed that Rwanda's crimes in Congo may rise to the level of genocide, since President Paul Kagame's forces killed Hutu elderly, children and women without regard to nationality. Rwandan President Paul Kagame's "mentors and funders in the U.S. government…must be held equally accountable."
Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Millions died while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo."
A leaked United Nations report documenting Rwandan atrocities that "could be classified as crimes of genocide" in the eastern Congo has created a political crisis that threatens to disrupt Washington's plans to dominate the continent. Rwanda's minority Tutsi regime – a close American client that acts as a mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa, along with Uganda – threatens to withdraw its soldiers from United Nations "peace-keeping" missions if the report is not suppressed. The UN missions in Chad, Haiti, Liberia and Sudan are actually extensions of United States foreign policy, just as Ugandan and Burundian troops prop up the U.S.-backed "government" in Somalia under the guise of "African Union" forces.
The Rwanda crisis threatens to reveal the United States' role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. At stake is not only the reputation of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, an alumnus of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but the larger American strategy for militarization of Africa and exploitation of her riches.
The 545-page report details crimes committed in Congo by the Rwandan military and its allies between March, 1993, and June, 2003, and reinforces long-standing charges that Kagame's forces were also aggressors and mass murderers during the Rwandan mass killings of 1994. When Kagame's Tutsi rebels – previously based in Uganda – gained control of Rwanda after 100 days of fighting and ethnic cleansing, they pursued more than a million Hutu refugees into neighboring Congo. There, they hunted down and killed untold thousands of old men, women and children in 600 documented incidents that are, at the least, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report's authors clearly believe the Tutsis engaged in outright genocide – the purposeful eradication of a people – since Kagame's men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all. Congolese Tutsis and kinsmen from Burundi joined Kagame's Rwandan Tutsis in the mass murder – confirming the racial or ethnic nature of the slaughter.
"Kagame's men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all."
The Tutsi Rwandan military stayed in eastern Congo to exploit the rare minerals of the region, employing slave labor and selling the booty to multinational corporations. They were joined by the Ugandan military, who also set themselves up as soldier/entrepreneurs on Congolese soil. The Rwandans and Ugandans remain in the region, uniformed African gangsters in league with Euro-American corporations in a killing ground that has swallowed up possibly six million Congolese. Some estimate Congolese "excess deaths" in areas controlled by Rwanda, alone, at three and a half million. Their blood and stolen heritage has made Kigali, the Rwandan capital, a bustling beacon of capitalist enterprise – a "free market" success story.
Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture. After training him for major operational command, the U.S. funded Kagame's rebels through its Ugandan client, President Yoweri Museveni. When Kagame's rebels invaded Rwanda, some of them still dressed in Ugandan uniforms, the Americans dismissed the Hutu president's complaints. When the plane carrying the Hutu president and his Burundian counterpart was shot down by a missile – almost certainly by Kagame's men – and mass killing broke out, the US. forced the United Nations to withdraw from the country – a move that could only have been of advantage to Kagame's well-trained and armed forces, which quickly conquered all of Rwanda. When United Nations reports showed Kagame was killing 10,000 Hutus a month inside Rwanda, even after the opposition had collapsed or fled, the United States halted an investigation. Then Kagame's men swarmed into Congo, and the larger genocide began.
"Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture."
The leaked UN report cannot be put back in the bottle. Kagame, who labels all critics "genocidaires" or apologists for genocide, is exposed as "the greatest mass killer on the face of the earth, today," as described by Edward S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide. Kagame's mentors and funders in the U.S. government, who aided and abetted his genocide in Congo, must be held equally accountable – if not more so, since United States corporations derive the greatest benefit from Congo's blood minerals, and the U.S. military gains the most advantage from Rwandan and Ugandan services as mercenaries at America's beck and call in Africa.
It would be great if Kagame pitched a pathological fit and made good on his threat to withdraw his soldiers from Haiti, Chad, Liberia and Sudan. But that would seriously inconvenience the United States, whose interests the UN "peacekeeping" missions serve. Kagame has no problem killing Hutus by the millions in Congo, but he will not dare upset the superpower to which he owes his bloody career.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Comments
THERE ARE AFRICAN AMERICA ON KAGAME AND MUSEVENI'S SIDE
akechlo - 09/03/2010 - 21:54
I am not shocked to find Andrew Young and Quincy Jones among those who are loyal to both Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni
quote
Andrew Young is reportedly building a mansion on Lake Muhazi in Rwanda, where Kagame also
owns a mansion, and next to exclusive multi-million dollar lakeside resorts and golf courses.
Quincy Jones has bought an island on Lake Muhazi.
unquote
This information is found on page 23 of this document: http://allthingspass.com/uploads/pdf-261AMERICAS_WAR_IN_CENTRAL_AFRICA.pdf
Please, find time and read the file. You will understand how black elites operate behind the scenes. When they said Clinton was a black president, they must have meant that he knows how to use black elites to enrich his people. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey played very major roles on behalf on Bill Clinton during the events leading to turmoil in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Donald Payne was at the time a personal friend of Charles Taylor who is on trial at ICT at the Hague; this is the court created for dealing with Black Africans who have exhausted their usefulness to the western governments and corporations. This also reminded me of role played by Ray Nagin of New Orleans during Huricane Katrina. Orders were given to shoot and kill. Many African males were shot in the back!
Like poor people in Africa who are being slaughtered by Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, the African Americans in this country has no one watching their backs. African elites everywhere are collaborating with the multinational corporations to take care of themselves and their families!
THE TRUTH IS SAD AND DEPRESSING
Enlightened Cynic - 09/04/2010 - 12:38
You are so right. Without the aiding and abetting of the Black US elites, a lot of this shit wouldn't be going down. It pains me to no end that people will sell their soul and the souls of millions of "invisibles" for their own creature comforts. (when they already loaded with cash moreover)
There is indeed no one watching common Black folks back, that's turning into the theme of this past generation, isn't it? If these rank, sell out, bitch-ass, m***er f****ers had half a heart, and brain, there would be a genuine "back to Africa movement" in the sense of cooperative and fruitful partnerships and economic relations benefiting all sons and daughters of Mother Africa.
Another reason I can't stand "racial,tribal" politics. If someone is going to fuck me and mine, why does it have to be someone who looks like me? Why do Black folks BLINDLY assume every nigga in "power" is looking out for them? When in reality every "street smart," astute common Black person knows the niggas who running for elected office or preening in front of white folks is a selfish traitor.
Has racism over the centuries really fucked us up that bad? Or are we fucked up enough on our own?
U.S. POLICY ON SOMALIA SOWED SEEDS FOR CHAOS
Enlightened Cynic - 09/03/2010 - 10:17
by Gwynne Dyer,
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20100901gd.html
"NORTHERN EXPOSURE" US STYLE
Enlightened Cynic - 09/03/2010 - 10:07
The warlords, mercenaries and kleptocrats of the United States are suffering schizophrenia. And that schizophrenia ( well established over centuries) is "exposing" the corrupt nature of America. Scott Horton lays out the details in this article appropriately titled:
America's Corruption Racket in Central Asia
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007549
Excerpt:
"American policy towards corruption in Central Asia is thus exposed as schizophrenic. On the one hand the United States purports to be resolutely opposed to corruption and prepared to spend enormous sums to expose and prosecute it in the interest of transparency, good government, and saving the taxpayers the expense of corrupt contracts. FBI agents and prosecutors are being moved into the field and are pursuing an unprecedented number of prosecutions in U.S. courts. But on the other hand, it is increasingly apparent that the United States is itself one of the most staggeringly corrupt actors in the region, willing to slide hundreds of millions of dollars under the carpet to foreign government officials to induce them to do Washington's bidding, on occasion doing this so crudely that it undermines the credibility of the government it has picked as an ally. Indeed, twice now American bribery operations targeting a foreign head of state helped provoke revolutions that toppled a government."
Sound familiar? You can be sure that if the masses rise up and topple the puppet Kagame he'll be whisked away to the Hague for prosecution. They'll imprison and muzzle him so he can't "EXPOSE" American complicity in his crimes. Ask Noriega if you don't believe me? When's the last time we heard "boo" from Noriega who was also a CIA asset?
Has "60 Minutes" interviewed Manuel or Milosevic for that matter to hear their side of the story?
This is what drives me crazy about American Exceptionalism, destroying countries through sanctions and illegal invasions, running assassination squads, ripping of the country's "aid," and bribing it's officials in such significant ways there is the occasional toppling of their government. All in the name of peace and stability, right? Right??? Because we ain't doing nothing if we ain't spreading "democracy."
Meanwhile the corrupt and money hungry Anglos working "sub rosa" with the CIA walk away with their blood money scotfree. It's a wonderful world, isn't it?
DARFUR!
chasm - 09/02/2010 - 14:14
Darfur! Darfur! Darfur!
Why is it that the U.S. media, "liberal" leaders, and the government are so concerned about the "genocide" in Darfur while millions dead in the Congo doesn't rate a peep?
When the people who have proven over and over and over again to be sociopaths who care for nothing but wealth and power -- not even the lives of "fellow" Americans -- start talking about humanitarian crises, you should immediately look more closely, or look somewhere else.
Is it not possible that the powerful are honestly concerned for moral reasons? No. It is not remotely possible. These people have no moral scruples. When they appear to have them, they are faking because it enables them to preserve or enlarge their wealth and power.
So when they start bleating about Darfur, it pays to take a closer look. It doesn't take much research to learn that there is nothing remotely like a genocide going on in Darfur. There is a civil war, yes. A genocide, not hardly.
If one of the magician's hands is tugging at your sleeve, pay attention to the other hand. It is probably stealing your watch. So what is the other hand up to here? Among other things, slaughtering Hutu in the Congo.
The original "genocide" in Rwanda was probably more of a civil war than an attempt at genocide. But the victims, despite all the publicity, were the Hutu. Yes, Hutu hacked Tutsi to pieces, but the reverse also occurred, and by some accounts more Hutu died than Tutsi.
And how did the government end up firmly in the hands of the Tutsi if the Hutu were busy committing genocide? The original genocide was actually a coup perpetrated by Kagame's forces with the help of Uganda. As a result, millions of Hutu refugees were driven into the Congo, and that is were the real genocide began, with the blessings and cooperation of the Western powers and the obedient silence of the Western mainstream media.
It is a bit late for this information to surface, but better late than never. Good article. I hope that BAR will continue to pursue this story until it becomes too big to ignore. The fate of millions more hangs in the balance.
BOOKS: TOP 10 READING ON RWANDA
Enlightened Cynic - 09/01/2010 - 18:12
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/10824563964.htm
Let me throw in this one on Eritrea for good measure. It so aptly describe the Western attitude towards Africa. Title, I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
Sound familiar??? WTF do they "do for others?"
http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Do-You-Betrayed-African/dp/0060780932
Cynical Negro: Check out the bitches er... Susan Rice's review at the amazon link. Dr. Susan Rice, such a waste of humanity, bitch is smart and half-ass fine.
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/9JQG14t4HnV/Glamour+Magazine+Honors+2009+...
How can these people look at themselves in the mirror. The Rice's and Kagame's of the world, doing the White man's bidding?? Goddamn. Couldn't these people make gravy money without being butchers and ghouls?
SAMANTHA POWERS, SUSAN RICE - WHERE U AT?!
Cynical Negro - 09/01/2010 - 15:59
It's time to bring in the "green" environmental quackademics, "population bomb" quackademics, house negroes, and liberal neo-cons...
Bomb bomb bomb Rwanda and bomb bomb bomb Sudan under the guise of human rights violations (that the U.S. played a roll in). Kagame is starting to feel guilty about slavishly implementing the Wall st./London cabals exploitation, genocide, and eugenics agenda (Agenda 21) for Africa. He's veering off from the goal of genocide and starting to think about things like Africa growth/development/infrastructure - and the Bilderberg Group, IMF, club of Rome, Bill&Melinda Gates/Rockefeller foundations, the London/Wall st. banking cabal etc., etc., etc. don't like it.
Here, look:
Tensions emerge between Rwanda and Western backers
By Linda Slattery and Ann Talbot
26 August 2010
Kagame has received extraordinarily high levels of aid from the West since he came to power in 1994 and has previously been virtually immune from criticism in the press. The shift in attitude can best be traced to the welcome that Kagame has extended to China's growing investment in Africa. A warning is being delivered to Kagame's regime that the tolerance he has enjoyed to date will not continue if he aligns himself with interests hostile to those of the United States and other Western powers.
Writing in the Financial Times on August 19, Kagame acknowledged the changing attitude that emerged in the course of the election and defended his brand of politics, claiming that it was essential if Rwanda was to be stable:
"Some in the media and the international community seem uninterested in fact-checking, and simply invented stories that play to damaging historic prejudices. It is a shame that some so casually disregard the views of the majority of Rwandans and prefer to elevate the dangerous opinions of fly-by-night individuals, which in turn threaten to reverse our hard-earned stability".
"Democracy is about more than holding elections", said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the NSC. "A democracy reflects the will of the people, where minority voices are heard and respected, where opposition candidates run on the issues without threat or intimidation, where freedom of expression and freedom of the press are protected".
Kagame's response came in the Financial Times. He rejected the US criticism of his election and insisted that he was pursuing a form of government suited to Rwandan cultural traditions.
"For decades, one-size-fits-all development and democratic prescriptions have been imposed on Africa, with unsatisfactory, sometimes tragic, results", he wrote. "Yet to break from the cycle of underdevelopment we must seek innovative, home-grown solutions. Rwanda is one of the countries that have chosen to apply unconventional mechanisms to solve daunting challenges. And it is working".
Hinting at Rwanda's importance for the export of minerals, Kagame said that those who accepted his methods would reap the economic benefits. He knows that he has the support of the major mining companies and can look to China as an alternative source of aid. In January 2009 Kagame signed a new trade deal with China, and a new Chinese embassy was opened in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
Speaking to the German business paper Handelsblatt, Kagame praised the role of China in bringing investment in infrastructure to Africa. He recognised the potential for playing off one potential investor or donor against another. "There are new players, developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia", he said. "That opens new possibilities for new relationships. Suddenly, the Americans and Europeans discover that they don't want to be left out".
At the China-Africa summit Kagame pointed out that trade between Rwanda and China had quadrupled over the previous four years.
Kagame has been sharply critical of the new US Dodd-Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act, which contains a clause obliging companies to demonstrate that their minerals have not come from the DRC. Major electronics companies such as IBM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Apple will be hit by this provision. Kagame may hope to bypass this legislation by turning to the Asian market and Asian electronic companies.
Kagame supposedly won 93 percent of the votes in the election on August 9. International observers reported no overt sign of violence or voter intimidation, but all the opposition candidates were former allies of Kagame. Three potential candidates were barred from standing. Leading oppositionist Andre Kagwa Rwisereka of the Democratic Green Party was found dead shortly before the election. The party is linked to Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who is in intensive care in South Africa after being shot. Nyamwasa fled to South Africa earlier this year after accusing Kagame of using an anti-corruption campaign to frame his political opponents.
Reporters have been subject to intimidation. Jean Leonard Rugambage was gunned down in Kigali after his paper Umuvugizi was closed by the government. Its editor Jean Bosco Gasasira had already fled to Uganda.
In June, American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who is representing defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on trial for their alleged part in the genocide, was arrested. He was accused of denying the 1994 genocide on the basis of remarks he made at the tribunal, although the defence lawyers are supposed to be protected by diplomatic immunity. Other lawyers at the ICTR responded to Erlinder's arrest by asking for postponements until their safety could be guaranteed.
These are the "disturbing events" that have caused concern in Washington. But they are hardly new.
In 1995 the journalist Manesse Mugabo disappeared in Kigali, followed in 1996 by the first post-genocide Minister of the Interior Seth Sendashshonga and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura, who was shot dead in Nairobi. In 1998 journalist Emmanuel Munyemanzi disappeared from Kigali, and Theoneste Lizinde, MP and government intelligence chief before the genocide, was assassinated in Nairobi. In the year 2000, first post-genocide President Pasteur Bizimungu's adviser, Asiel Kabera, was shot dead in Kigali. In 2003 top judge Augustin Cyiza and magistrate Eliezar Runyaruka disappeared from Kigali, as did opposition MP Leonard Hitiman.
The US has been prepared to turn a blind eye to Kagame's record of repression until now because it has been useful to American interests. The Financial Times Africa editor William Wallis acknowledged the impact that the presence of China has had on Western influence in Rwanda. But he also blamed the West for the lack of democracy in Rwanda.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/rwan-a26.shtml
PRETTY DAMNING STUFF HERE...
Cynical Negro - 09/01/2010 - 14:35
The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa
By Michel Chossudovsky
(This text is in part based on the results of a study conducted by the author together with Belgian economist Pierre Galand on the use of Rwanda's 1990-94 external debt to finance the military and paramilitary.)
Concluding Remarks
The civil war in Rwanda was a brutal struggle for political power between the Hutu-led Habyarimana government supported by France and the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) backed financially and militarily by Washington. Ethnic rivalries were used deliberately in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Both the CIA and French intelligence were involved.
In the words of former Cooperation Minister Bernard Debré in the government of Prime Minister Henri Balladur:
"What one forgets to say is that, if France was on one side, the Americans were on the other, arming the Tutsis who armed the Ugandans. I don't want to portray a showdown between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, but the truth must be told." 43
In addition to military aid to the warring factions, the influx of development loans played an important role in "financing the conflict." In other words, both the Ugandan and Rwanda external debts were diverted into supporting the military and paramilitary. Uganda's external debt increased by more than 2 billion dollars, --i.e. at a significantly faster pace than that of Rwanda (an increase of approximately 250 million dollars from 1990 to 1994). In retrospect, the RPA -- financed by US military aid and Uganda's external debt-- was much better equipped and trained than the Forces Armées du Rwanda (FAR) loyal to President Habyarimana. From the outset, the RPA had a definite military advantage over the FAR.
The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Despite the good diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington and the apparent unity of the Western military alliance, it was an undeclared war between France and America. By supporting the build up of Ugandan and Rwandan forces and by directly intervening in the Congolese civil war, Washington also bears a direct responsibility for the ethnic massacres committed in the Eastern Congo including several hundred thousand people who died in refugee camps.
US policy-makers were fully aware that a catastrophe was imminent. In fact four months before the genocide, the CIA had warned the US State Department in a confidential brief that the Arusha Accords would fail and "that if hostilities resumed, then upward of half a million people would die". 45 This information was withheld from the United Nations: "it was not until the genocide was over that information was passed to Maj.-Gen. Dallaire [who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda]." 46
Washington's objective was to displace France, discredit the French government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under Major General Paul Kagame. Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres.
When a UN force was put forth, Major General Paul Kagame sought to delay its implementation stating that he would only accept a peacekeeping force once the RPA was in control of Kigali. Kagame "feared [that] the proposed United Nations force of more than 5,000 troops... [might] intervene to deprive them [the RPA] of victory".47 Meanwhile the Security Council after deliberation and a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali decided to postpone its intervention.
The 1994 Rwandan "genocide" served strictly strategic and geopolitical objectives. The ethnic massacres were a stumbling blow to France's credibility which enabled the US to establish a neocolonial foothold in Central Africa. From a distinctly Franco-Belgian colonial setting, the Rwandan capital Kigali has become --under the expatriate Tutsi led RPF government-- distinctly Anglo-American. English has become the dominant language in government and the private sector. Many private businesses owned by Hutus were taken over in 1994 by returning Tutsi expatriates. The latter had been exiled in Anglophone Africa, the US and Britain.
The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) functions in English and Kinyarwanda, the University previously linked to France and Belgium functions in English. While English had become an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda, French political and cultural influence will eventually be erased. Washington has become the new colonial master of a francophone country.
Several other francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have entered into military cooperation agreements with the US. These countries are slated by Washington to follow suit on the pattern set in Rwanda. Meanwhile in francophone West Africa, the US dollar is rapidly displacing the CFA Franc -- which is linked in a currency board arrangement to the French Treasury.
Read full article here:
HTTP://WWW.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18540
KAGAME IS HUMAN EXCREMENT
Enlightened Cynic - 09/01/2010 - 11:48
(His eyes even look like floating turds).
When he is finally passed throw the bowels of the Imperial venture he'll be flushed down the toilet like the rest of the expendable lackeys, heartless ghouls who've carried out American atrocities for their own materialistic and egotistical aims.
He'll likely discover what Africa Americans have known a long time, "justice," means "just us."
Since WWII, I have yet to see an Anglo from a western country be prosecuted in the Hague. Hague prosecutions are generally reserved from brown, and black persons with the occasional Eastern European thrown in.
As we all know, in Exceptional American we don't commit war crimes, we're too good and noble and busy "spreading democracy," and "winning hearts and minds."
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/int_war_crime_tribunals/
"Possibly the most powerful argument against war crimes tribunals is that they offer only the victors justice. What was most obviously missing following World War II was not Hitler at Nuremberg, but a trial for Americans, French, British, and Russian individuals who committed acts that would have been considered war crimes had the Allies lost the war. The fire bombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are clear examples of acts for which Allied leaders would have been tried had the war ended in favor of the Germans and Japanese. While it is easy and satisfying to put the enemy in prison for what he or she has done, it does not seem entirely fair if all those who participate in a war are not held to the same standards. In fact, one of the reasons that the United States has so far failed to support an international war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, is fear that U.S. officers would be found guilty by the court."
The Rwanda crisis WOULD expose the US role in Congo genocide if we had something other than a propaganda machine orchestrating as the "media." The organ grinders will keep on churning out their muted tones. Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan would be facing charges of war crimes for the genocide in Rwanda were the full story told.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY
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