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Thank you Mr. Gilpin for your kind introduction.
And thank you for inviting me to talk today on the subject
of the Rwandan Crisis. This is a subject that is very dear
to my heart. I was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the
U.S. Embassy in Rwanda from 1991 to 1994, the three years
just before the breakdown that resulted in what the world
knows as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when an estimated
800,000 Rwandans, mostly minority Tutsi, were ruthlessly slaughtered.
During those three years, we at the Embassy, USAID, and USIS
were working very hard to promote peace and democracy in Rwanda.
It was an exciting time. Our work supported Rwandan leaders,
both in politics and in civil society, who wanted to see real
change in their country. These leaders were making real
progress toward developing a political system that could
accommodate both of the country's major ethnic groups,
the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. The elaboration of
this system was key to resolving the war that was going on
between the Government and a group of Tutsi who had invaded
the country from Uganda in October 1990.
What I want to do today is to try to describe to you what
was happening in Rwanda during the three years preceding the
genocide to show that it was not simply a response to the
downing of the President's airplane April 6, 1994. That was
merely a trigger. Instead, it was something that happened
in response to the efforts of well-intentioned Rwandans to
bring about profound political and social change in their country.
In my view, the scope and the intensity of the response --
namely genocide -- was a measure of how close these Rwandans
were to succeeding in their efforts. The extremists leaders
who did not want to see this revolution succeed chose an
extreme method to reverse the tide and stop the progress
toward a new society in which they would no longer hold a
monopoly on power. They postulated that if they could rid
the country of the Tutsi, whom they cast as "the enemy,"
they could then continue to call the shots and fashion a
"democracy" to their own liking.
During my three years in the country, Rwanda was undergoing three
profoundly revolutionary transitions. It was trying to change
from single-party to multi-party rule, from dictatorship to
democracy, and from war to peace. Let's look at each of these
transitions in turn.
The President, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, seized power in 1973.
He came to power on the heels of a pogrom by the Hutu against
the Tutsi, a problem some say he created and then resolved
to win support for his takeover. He created a single-party
state, with the MRND party ubiquitous throughout the country.
For about 15 years things went smoothly, except for an alleged
coup attempt in 1980 that resulted in imprisonment of several
persons who had been close to the President. In the late
1980's, the economic situation took a downturn. Commodity
prices fell for Rwanda's chief international currency earners,
namely, coffee and tea. In 1990, the French President Francois
Mitterand encouraged African countries to turn to democracy
in a speech at the annual Francophone Summit. Several months
later, in July 1990, President Habyarimana announced his intention
to reform Rwanda's political system and open up participation
to multiple parties. A year later, in July 1991, he presented
an amended constitution that made multiple parties legal.
Within months four opposition parties had registered.
In October 1991, the President named a member of his MRND
party to become Prime Minister and charged him with forming
a multiparty government. This was easier said than done.
The opposition parties were wary of a Prime Minister from
the President's party and did not want to enter a government
where it would be business as usual. They wanted to see
fundamental change in the process and called for a National Conference
at which decisions about a new system could be taken.
When the Prime Minister finally formed a government at
the end of December, just one other party was included,
the opposition party with the smallest following.
The other three opposition parties responded with a protest
march that galvanized 15,000 people, the largest demonstration
Kigali, the capital, had ever seen. By the middle of March,
this Government was thoroughly discredited. The President
was forced to dissolve it and appoint a new Prime Minister,
this time from the major opposition party, the MDR.
A new government was formed in April and took as its
mandate to make peace with the rebels, who had invaded
the country in 1990, and to take the country to elections
within one year. These two goals were, however, incompatible.
By April 1991, Rwanda had a multiparty government, headed by
an opposition party Prime Minister, but it did not have a
real democracy. Nearly all the power remained in the hands
of the President's party, the MRND. The new multiparty government
did manage to take some bold steps in the right direction.
The Education Minister abolished quotas for schools, which
had favored the majority Hutu over the Tutsi. She introduced
exams that were to allocate places on merit. The Government
also fired the head of the government media, who was using
the sole radio station as a propaganda tool for the President's
party. But the opposition did not have free reign to make
all the changes it might have wanted, as the President's
party controlled 10 of the 20 seats in the Government.
It also controlled the state security apparatus, namely
the military, the gendarmerie, and the intelligence services.
Also, the territorial administration throughout the country
was firmly in MRND hands.
Forming a backdrop to these efforts at multipartyism and
democratization was the war between the Tutsi rebel group
from Uganda, the RPF, and the Government army. For a long
time after the rebel group's October 1990 invasion, the war
remained a cross-border conflict. It seemed far away from
Kigali even though the radio reported regularly on the border
skirmishes. This changed a bit in June 1992, when, on the
eve of talks in Paris with the new multiparty Government,
the RPF pushed across the Ugandan border and, for the first
time, held territory within Rwanda. The RPF might have been
motivated in this attack by wanting to enhance its bargaining
position on the eve of the Paris talks, but it claimed it
was attacking in retaliation for the killing of some Tutsi
during army mutinies a few weeks earlier. In February 1993,
the RPF brought the war even closer to Kigali, within
20 miles to be exact. The RPF claimed this attack was in
retaliation for massacres of Tutsi that had occurred in
January, in the northwest of the country. This attack
brought the peace talks, underway for several months,
to an abrupt halt until a new cease-fire was worked
out in March 1993, in which the RPF agreed to withdraw
to its previous position as long as the territory it had
taken would become a demilitarized buffer zone.
The opposition-led multiparty government succeeded in engaging
the RPF in peace talks that began in July 1992 in the
Tanzanian town of Arusha. The first agreement, or Protocol,
was a cease-fire agreement that took effect August 1, 1992.
The second Protocol, signed in August 1992, was a statement
of democratic principles which the two sides agreed should
form the fundamental basis for organizing the Government
and society in Rwanda. From there the peace negotiations
became more difficult. In September, the two sides
tackled political power-sharing. By the end of October they
had agreed on the augmentation of the powers of the Government
at the expense of the Presidency, but they could not
agree on the composition of the Government or the distribution
of portfolios within it. The talks adjourned.
Throughout November and December the opposition parties
and the MRND tried to find a formula that all could agree
on for the composition of the Government and the
distribution of portfolios. The fundamental question
was how much power would be accorded to the President's
MRND party. To control decision-making in the Broad Based
Transitional Government or in the Transitional National
Assembly, the MRND would need one third plus one in
each body. But the opposition parties and the RPF did
not want to see the MRND have that much power. When
the talks resumed in Arusha in January, the Government
side, led by the opposition party Foreign Minister, and
the RPF agreed to a formula that gave the MRND just
five seats in a 20-seat government and just 11 seats in
a 70-seat national assembly. This agreement was an
anathema to the MRND stalwarts. Used to controlling all
power, they let it be known that they would never accept
being relegated to a "permanent minority" position in
the new institutions. Nevertheless, this agreement held
and was included in the Arusha Accords signed August 4, 1993.
The other two Protocols that made up the Arusha Accords
involved military power-sharing and the return of refugees.
In the Protocol on the integration of the armies,
the key agreement concerned the percentage of troops
from each side that would make up the army and the
gendarmerie, a kind of national police force. After much
difficult negotiating, and following the RPF's attack of
February 1993, the two sides agreed to a 60-40 split,
with 60 percent of the troops coming from the Government
side and 40 percent coming from the RPF, a much higher
percent than the 15 percent the Tutsi represented in
the society. Again, the MRND stalwarts considered this
agreement an anathema. They had wanted to accord the RPF
a maximum of one-third of the slots.
The refugee Protocol dealt with the conditions for return
of refugees from Uganda, Burundi, and elsewhere and with
the resettlement of displace persons - there were up to
one million displaced persons inside Rwanda at the time
this Protocol was signed in June 1993. The right of
refugees to return, always a problem for the President
because he maintained there was not enough land to
settle them on, had been established in the August 1992
Protocol on the Rule of Law.
So, when the President signed the Arusha Accords on
August 4, 1993, he was signing a comprehensive document
that constituted a blueprint for a new Rwandan political,
military and social order. In one document it brought
together Rwanda's three transitions - from dictatorship
to democracy, from single-party to multiparty government,
and from war to peace. Nevertheless, it was a document
that had several provisions that members of the President's
MRND party categorically rejected. It also called unrealistically
for an international peacekeeping force to be in place within
about a month so that the transitional institutions
could be established promptly.
The international force took three to four months to be put
in place. During this time the political parties, that had
each seemed so unified, fragmented. Places in the transitional
government and national assembly had been allocated during the
peace talks on the assumption that the parties would remain
unified. However, this was not to be. The attack of the
RPF in February 1993 and the assassination of the Hutu President
of Burundi by Tutsi soldiers in October 1993, had made many
Hutu members of the opposition political parties lose faith
in negotiations with the RPF. These Hutu broke with the factions
of the parties that still believed in collaborating with
the RPF to form a new political tendency known as Hutu Power.
As a result, the two key opposition parties, the MDR and
the PL, were unable to present unified lists of candidates
for the seats assigned their party by the peace accord in
the Government and the National Assembly. By December 1993,
when the international force was in place and able to support
the formation of the transitional institutions, the parties
were unable to agree on single slates of candidates for
the institutions. This led to delay after delay in
the establishment of the transitional institutions.
Despite great pressure from the local diplomatic
community and the UN Security Council, January, February,
and March passed without the formation of the transitional
institutions that would signal the beginning of
the implementation of the peace accord.
Let me pause a minute to pick up another thread of my story.
The human rights thread. Throughout this effort at
democratization, multipartyism, and peace, the human rights
situation in Rwanda was deplorable. It seemed that whenever
there was progress in the democratization or the peace
process, violence in the society increased. Massacres of
Tutsi took place in October 1990, January 1991, March 1992,
August 1992, January 1993, and February 1994. In the latter
three instances, Hutu opposition political party members were
targeted as well. In each case about 300 persons were killed
and thousands were displaced from their homes. The internal
Tutsi were periodically subjected to harassment for their
suspected support of the RPF. After the RPF invaded from
Uganda in 1990, up to 8,000 Tutsi were rounded up and jailed
as suspected "accomplices" of the RPF. Intra-party violence
on the part of party youth groups, such as the Interahamwe,
flared up around public meetings and demonstrations. Random
violence became a frightening tactic. Bombs exploded in
taxis. Land-mines were detonated by vehicles running over
them on roads. Grenades were used both by terrorists and bandits.
Assassinations by unknown assailants became almost commonplace.
A new private radio station came on the air in August 1993
that stirred up hatred between the two ethnic groups.
No one was ever convicted of these abuses. Seldom were
there ever even any arrests. There was no accountability
for this violence that exacerbated Hutu-Tutsi enmity.
Another thread of the story was the story of the displaced
Rwandans. When the RPF first attacked from Uganda, and as
the fighting at the border ensued, 150,000 persons were
displaced from their homes. Most were living in camps in
the north and northeast of the country in rudimentary
shelters made of branches with plastic sheeting over
them. They were dependent upon humanitarian organizations
for their food. After the RPF's June 1992 attack, when
it first held territory within Rwanda, another 150,000
persons were displaced, bringing the total to 300,000.
When the RPF broke the cease-fire and attacked again in
January 1993, pushing the war front toward Kigali, it
pushed 600,000 persons toward Kigali in front of it,
bringing the total displaced to about one million persons.
Thousands of persons ended up living on two hillsides just
outside Kigali. Only gradually did they return to their
homes in the demilitarized zone after the Arusha
Peace Accords were signed.
By the beginning of April 1994, Kigali was tense
because the Arusha Accords had yet to be implemented,
there had been a February assassination of two political
leaders followed by massacres in Kigali itself, and
it was common knowledge that weapons were being distributed by
the military to civilians. Also, the private radio had
stepped up its attacks on the international forces, particularly
the Belgian peacekeepers. It was in this atmosphere that
President Habyarimana's plane was shot down on its return from
a meeting in Tanzania at which he had pledged to push ahead
with the implementation of the Arusha Accords. Within
hours, militia members were going house to house killing
Tutsi and soldiers were seeking out and killing Hutu moderates,
including the Prime Minister, a woman who was my neighbor.
Within a day or two it was clear that the RPF was going
to bring its forces into the city to try to stop
the killing; the war would resume.
The United States Ambassador, in collaboration with
Department of State in Washington, decided that all
Americans should evacuate Rwanda. Four days later,
the last of our four convoys left by road south to
Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. We got out safely,
before the killing and fighting spread to the south of
the Kigali. Within three months, upwards of 800,000
Rwandans were brutally killed. By the beginning of July,
the RPF had captured the capital Kigali. By the end
of July, the RPF had routed the remnants of the Hutu Government.
Soldiers, militia members who had been key to the killing
of so many Tutsi and the Government fled to neighboring
Zaire or Tanzania. They took thousands upon thousands
of civilians with them.
Having routed the Hutu Government, the minority Tutsi
set up a Government that continues to rule the country
today. In 1996, most of the civilians returned from exile.
But the ex-Government troops and the Interahamwe militia
remained in Zaire from where they destabilized Rwanda
with attacks in the border areas of the northwest.
This presence of "genocidaire" on the border in Zaire,
now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been
the primary reason for Rwanda's two invasions of Zaire,
one that toppled long-term ruler Mobutu Sese Seko, and
one that continues today, which has half the Congo in rebel hands.
What was the United States policy during this difficult three-year
period prior to the genocide? The Embassy, USAID, and
the United States Information Service (USIS) were working
hard to promote democracy, foster peace, and respond to
the ever more serious humanitarian crisis in the country.
The Ambassador was deeply involved with the leaders of
the political parties, serving as a sounding board for
their ideas, making suggestions about how to progress when
obstacles blocked the way, and offering advice when asked.
I was working with civil society groups to encourage
the dissemination of information about political, civil
and human rights in a democracy. Our Public Affairs Officer
was engaged with the media, offering several seminars
to both government and independent journalists on
the concept of responsible journalism. USAID developed a
five-year, five million dollar democracy project that
was designed to support the legislature, the media, and decentralization.
To support the peace process, several high-level State
Department officials visited Rwanda. In May 1992, just
after the opposition-led multiparty government took over,
Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen visited Kigali to
talk with key political and military leaders. His talks
with the opposition political leaders convinced them
that rapprochement with the RPF might be possible and
resulted in the contact between the government and
the RPF that led directly to the peace talks.
During the peace talks, the United States had an Observer
on hand nearly all the time who was available for
consultations with the two sides and with the
Tanzanian facilitator of the talks. When the peace
process stalled in early 1994, several more visitors
arrived in Kigali from the State Department and the
Defense Department to urge the President, the Government,
and the RPF to resolve their differences and get on
with implementing the peace accord.
USAID was responsive to the growing humanitarian
situation in the country. We provided material assistance
to the displaced in the form of plastic sheeting through
the UN Development Program and food through the World Food Program.
Throughout this difficult period that was plagued with
violence and human rights violations, the United States
remained optimistic. We were convinced that if the
President accepted the Arusha Accords, doubters in his
party and the extremist CDR party would follow suit.
We believed that the extremism, which we knew existed,
would be contained within the democratic framework set
forth in the peace accord. Neither the U.S. nor any
other observers, including Rwandans themselves, anticipated
the lengths to which the doubters would go to impress
their will on the situation.
Additional Reading
Cohen, Herman J., "Rwanda: Could We have Prevented Genocide?"
in Intervening in Africa, New York: St. Martin's Press, LLC., 2000.
Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide
in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch: New York, March 1999.
Prunier, Gerard, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Web Sites
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
IRIN
OAU:
"International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate
the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events"
UN:
"Report of the Independent Inquiry into the
Actions of the United Nations During the 1994
Genocide in Rwanda, December 15m 1999"
Ambassador Joyce E. Leader is a Senior Fellow
of The Fund for Peace.
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