Joe K. wrote:
> The war in Rwanda was over politcs [...] I object to the idea that there
>is a "killer culture" or a "culture of impunity" in Rwanda. Compare this
>discussion to the one which has been going on on a "culture of poverty".
I agree, and that was precisely my point: the genocide was calculated, systematic, and in its own way, "rational," in contrast to media images of spontaneous, anarchic "tribal hatred" or "killer culture." And that's precisely why the genocide could have been thwarted or at least mitigated with minimal international presence. But more on that below.
>The discussion here started off with a discussion of war crime trials. The
>Tribunal for Rwanda is putting on trial ordainary soldiers or the mayors of
>small villages. These people, not the politicians, generals or bankers in
>the west or their stooges who ran the Rwandan government or the RPF are
>getting the blame.
Yes I did usurp your discussion somewhat, given that your Rwanda reference was mainly about the ICTR. But since you were using Rwanda in an argument against international institutions and interventions generally, and since the Rwandan genocide is such a horrific example of the consequences of blanket anti-interventionism, I brought it into the discussion.
And let me reiterate that I'm not arguing for blanket-intervention but for the time-consuming work of actually informing oneself of what is going on in a particular situation before pronouncing on it. Anti-interventionism *in this case*, however grounded in a healthy cyncism towards western imperialism, had ineffably tragic consequences.
And because I infer from your response that you were/are against UN intervention during the genocide, I'm staying with that theme here (and will post reactions your provocative ICTR article tomorrow when I'm back at my computer).
As I mentioned, when the administration put out public feelers to in effect ask, "Will you allow us to do nothing more than send in troops to evacuate all the white people in Rwanda?", the public answer, including much of the left's, was "yes."
A few points then on why the US government sought and so easily got that "yes." Then some background on the genocide and why minimal international involvement *in this case* would almost certainly have saved untold hundreds of thousands of lives.
It appears the Clinton administration got that "yes" in large part because of ignorance fueled by implicit racism. As Rakesh cogently put it a couple days ago, racist assumptions set the narrow limits of what was presumed to be possible action. Months after the genocide had begun, for example, Clinton was still talking about "tribal resentments" as the source Rwanda's troubles, and the "confusing" and "chaotic" nature of the situation, while Mitterrand's advisors spoke of how brutal slaughter was a usual practice among Africans which couldn't be easily eradicated.
Of course it wasn't just racist ignorance that shaped the administration's (in-)actions before and during the genocide. They and other powers were actually furnished with quite a bit of information on the planned, systematic nature of the killings. But since they had neither pressing interest in Rwanda, nor any consitituency at home pressuring them (attention: left), they weren't concerned enough to act. So they got away with playing the fatalistic tribal/anarchy card.
Oh, and the "failed state" trope, too: For most western analysts SubSaharan Africa is a vast, homogenous space. Ergo if "Rwanda" is "Africa," then "Africa," in 1994, meant "Somalia." Never mind that Rwanda has nothing at all in common with Somalia (save that they can both be found on a map of Africa). The "failed state" interpretation fit into a preformed frame, and served as another easy-explanation/justification for inaction. This in utter obliviousness to the Rwandan state's notoriously tight-knit administration and infrastructure, which was all too efficient in carrying out the wishes of the genocidal interim gov't.
The Western public bought all those tropes paraded before them, in part because the media reporting on Africa that is informed by even basic historical depth is next to nil. I suppose one reason the left was so silent was that a healthy anti-US-intervention instinct met up with sincere ignorance on what was happening in Rwanda.
Yet it's more complicated than that, because those with extensive familiarity with the region and its history tried urgently to get more informed accounts published in both progressive and mainstream forums, and were ignored by both.
A propos, for a superb account of press coverage on Rwanda, see "The Inscription of Difference: News Coverage of the Conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia," Political Geography 15(1):21-46, 1996, by Garth Myers, et. al. (It can be also read online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298, just click on the appropriate issue).
The article examines the six "quality" and opinion-leading newspapers in the US, and their comparative coverage of the contemporaneous crises in Bosnia and Rwanda, showing how Rwanda was consistently portrayed as a timeless and placeless realm of tribal conflict, primitive and irrational chaos. ...Great article, but again it's significant that you have to go to an obscure scholarly journal to find such published analysis. As with the Rwanda-scholars mentioned above, these authors tried to get versions of of the article published in more widely circulated, left-leaning publications at the time, but were continually if politely put off. Africa just isn't a priority.
But on to some basic background on what could have been done had it been acknowledged that the genocide was part of a calculated internal coup (by a government clique with a tight, centralized chain of command through army, police, administration, militias, and radio broadcasts, etc.).
The immediate context, product of an immensely complex precolonial, colonial and and post-colonial history, was this: the interim government's aim to mobilize mass participation in the genocide (by a combination of ethnic exhortation, threat, and material enticements) was a concerted attempt to mobilize "ethnicity"; to make ethnicity transcend the class and regional differences which had been main axes of conflict in recent history. Concretely, they hoped to eliminate all basis for compromise with the RPF.
In short, the organized killing of both Tutsi civilians and any Hutu seen as opposed to the Habyarimana gov't was seen as the quickest and most "rational" way to hold on to their power and privilege.
Strengthened by their apparent acceptance as a legitimate government by the international community (they had tested this out with some trial massacres beforehand), they quickly squashed any significant open descent, and efficiently, with unabashed publicly, orchestrated the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in just the first two weeks of their campaign.
During those first weeks, it's probable that mere condemnation of the genocide and the branding the leaders as illegitimate in the eyes of a world community probably could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. And a concerted UN presence would have clearly signaled to Rwandans on the chain of command that the interim government was illegitimate in the eyes of the international community and unlikely to receive the support necessary to its survival.
As for the UN troops: commanders of UN contingents already in Rwanda calculated that their 2500 troops, together with the evacuation troops which swiftly arrived, would have been enough to halt the violence. But instead, the evacuation troops simply swooped in to rescue all the white people then swooped out. Meanwhile the UN troops were instructed to all but pull out, leaving behind a couple hundred soldiers. Even those few remaining troops demonstrated how effective their presence could have abeen at saving lives (e.g., for 5 months over a thousand people were "protected" in the National Stadium by a tiny UN contingent).
Finally, when assessing what could have been done it's useful to bear in mind that (given that this wasn't an instantaneous "orgy" of ethnic violence) there were many phases to the killing: In the first days, the violence was largely contained in the capital. This despite the hate-mongering and exhortations and directives (broadcast by radios--the main source of national communication in Rwanda--massly distributed by the government directly before the genocide).
The next phase saw it spread to those regions already mobilized by the ongoing war. Then, what many see as the turning point in the killings came weeks later with the spread of the genocide to places like Butare, the country's second largest city, located in a region where social relations between Tutsis and Hutus had long been close.
In Butare the three city officials, the Tutsi prefet, the Hutu mayor and the Hutu army commander had joined together to make the town a gun-free zone. It was a safe-haven supported by town leaders of both ethnicites and by the general population. With even a modicum of outside help, such safe-havens could have been established in many similar areas. But of course Butare got no outside help: while it held out for a few weeks, the government-faction eventually entered Butare with its militias, and brought the scale of slaughter to new heights.
After Butare, the killings spread into what had previously been non-war zones. And on it went. Three months, 800,000 people sytematically slaughtered, while the outside stood watching the spectacle.
Enough basic background for one post. And just to reiterate a point I brought up last time: that during the genocide it was the less-hegemonic countries that were exerting the most pressure for intervention, while the west did everything it could to contrive excuses and flagrant denials.
I find it hard not to see it as anything but salutary that the more disinterested parties around the globe deemed this flagrant, massive genocide intolerable. And I am still waiting for someone to tell me how, in April of '94, it would have weighed in as a bad thing for the left to have added momentum to those voices, by having demanded that their (yes--consummately hegemonic, imperialist, hypocritical) governments fund UN peace-keeping presence in Rwanda.
And I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how this collosal Western-led inaction somehow now makes it easier, not harder, to hold the US in any way accountable to their legion double-standards and hypocrisies; or somehow makes it easier, not harder, to build momentum in this globalized milieu towards some basic international consensus on minimal human standards by which the rogue-US itself could ever be held accountable.
--Maureen