On April 6, 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda was assassinated as his plane descended to Rwanda’s Kigali airport. It remains unclear who was responsible for the attack but everyone knows what happened next.
Somewhat less well-known is France’s role in the training, arming, and supporting of the Hutu government and its violent paramilitary groups. In 1990, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) troops invaded Rwanda from the north but were repelled by rapidly deployed French forces. By 1991, then-military colonel Paul Kagame had taken control of the disorganized RPF, launched a guerrilla war against the government, and by 1993 had captured several major towns. France mobilized hundreds of troops to fight the Tutsi-majority RPF while shipments of arms continued to arrive for government forces. According to Human Rights Watch, Rwanda became so inundated with French weapons and materiel that hand grenades were being sold alongside mangoes and avocadoes at a fruit stand in Kigali.
French military advisers worked increasingly closely with the Rwandan government in the months preceding the genocide. Jean Paul Kimonyo, one of the authors of a 2007 report investigating the genocide, said, “France was directly involved in the preparation of the genocide. They were training the Interahamwe in a systematic manner. They were training them to kill, to kill as fast as possible as one witness said, using knives and machetes. What were they training them for? It is very disturbing.”
France helped the Rwandan government start the genocide. French military advisors contributed strategies involving small, trained units that have been accused of being the first to start the killings. They suggested programs to arm civilians and trained volunteers. Training and funding was given to government officials working on a database of tribal affiliations which were later used to create kill lists of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. After the genocide began, Paris continued sending arms to support government forces. Witnesses allege that a Boeing 707 landed at a Zairean airport near the border with Rwanda at least five times in April and May 1994, disgorging up to eighteen tons of weapons. Meanwhile, Rwandan officials flew to Paris to accelerate the transfer of weapons and ammunition.
The Rwandan massacre of 1994 was a massive failure of humanity. Rwandan ethnic groups organized a conflict that led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians with the active support of the French government. Unfortunately Rwanda’s problems did not stop there.
In the year following the end of the genocide, the Hutu architects of the violence reorganized themselves in neighboring Zaire in preparation for a return to Rwanda. France is one of the countries accused of assisting this process. When Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-led RPF defeated government forces, France escorted the perpetrators of the genocide to safety and continued to provide military training in the Central African Republic. The government of Zaire allowed the genocidaires to gain control over the sprawling Hutu refugee camps in the eastern part of the country. Zairean companies, under government contracts, facilitated the movement of weapons to Hutu militias. And the exiled leadership of the genocide continued to have access to cash deposited in European banks.
In response to this threat, Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, led an invasion of the Hutu refugee camps across the border in Zaire. In May 1997, hundreds of Hutu civilians were killed in the Zairean town of Mbandaka. The RPF joined forces with Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo and the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces. Civilians and refugees in eastern Zaire suffered tremendous atrocities.
The people in the region were not the only ones to suffer, however. Rwandan military and commercial organizations seized millions of dollars worth of Zairean gold, diamonds, ivory, timber, and coltan, among other natural resources. These commodities were transported to the international market via the Rwandan military and shadowy international organizations. Three American companies were accused in 2004 by the UK-based Rights and Accountability in Development of collaborating in this lucrative trade.
Paul Kagame remains at the helm of the Rwandan government today. He enjoys his profile as the leader of the army that ended the Rwandan massacre, and he is an important American ally in Central Africa. He has spoken at Harvard, is popular at the United Nations in New York, and extols the glory of his “peaceful autocracy.” He uses the memory of the genocide to rally support for his government in the West.
However, as Ruth Wedgwood wrote yesterday in The New Republic, “in truth, the Rwandan leader presides over nothing more than a hollow democracy.” The press is silenced and intimidated, political opponents assassinated, and alternate versions of the state-sponsored story of the 1994 genocide are suppressed. Jean-Léonard Rugambage, an outspoken newspaper editor and critic of Kagame’s government, was gunned down on June 24, and two independent newspapers, including Rugambage’s Umuvugizi, have been banned from reporting on this summer’s elections. Meanwhile, the vice president of the Democratic Green Party, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, was found dead last month, and Bernard Ntaganda, leader of another opposition political party, was arrested in June and faces charges of “endangering national security and inciting ethnic hatreds.”
The three main opposition political parties – the Democratic Green Party, Bernard Ntaganda’s PS-Imberakuri, and the FDU-Inkingi – have all been prevented from presenting candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Needless to say, Kagame looks set to be confirmed for another seven years as president.
President Obama’s White House needs to review its relationship with the Rwandan government. Central Africa is a volatile and often violent place; it does not need another dictator abusing his power to remain in government while enriching himself and his friends.
