Let us start with the easiest issue: Jim seizes upon my recommendation of Philip Gourevitch's magnificent book, _We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda_, to suggest that this was the source of all my information on the subject, and that the weight of available evidence suggests a different conclusion. I hold to my original proposition, that if one is to read one book on the subject, Gourevitch's text is surely the best. But unfortunately for Jim, in the age of the Internet all manner of information is readily available for anyone who wished to seek it out, and even a most cursory search engine inquiry will rapidly show that virtually every credible body which has investigated the Rwandan genocide has come to the conclusions I originally put forward here: that it was a genocide, organized and pursued by a state and party of extremist racist Hutus, and conducted against Tutsis and non-racist Hutus, and that the major world powers either did nothing to stop it (the US) or even intervened to protect its perpetrators (France).
This is the conclusion of two reports of the United Nations, one commissioned by UN Secretary General Annan and the other authored by the Canadian social democrat Steven Lewis, and of the report of the Organization of African Unity; it has been supported by a report of an International Panel of Eminent Personalities [former Presidents of African states and leaders of UN bodies], and the results of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. It is the findings of reports by Amnesty International, by the Human Rights Watch [the encyclopedic _Leave None To Tell The Story_], and by the London based African Rights. It is the message of the American Physicians for Human Rights and of the French Medecins San Fontiers; it has been substantiated by the reports of the International Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda and the US Committee for Refugees. It is found in scholarly studies such as Gerard Prunier's _The Rwandan Crisis: History of a Genocide_ and Christopher Taylor's _Sacrifice As Terror_, as well as journalistic book-length accounts such as Fergal Keane's _Season of Blood._
Against this, Jim proposes... an article from the _Covert Action Quarterly_, in its current incarnation as a publisher of the likes of Michel Chossudovsky, the author of many an anti-Moslem racist diatribe in defense of the Milosevic regime and its 'ethnic cleansing' in the former Yugoslavia. He doesn't point out that before the current group forced out the prior editors, _CAQ_ published articles on the Rwandan situation which put forward an analysis entirely in line with the analysis universally accepted among legitimate human rights organizations and credible students of Rwanda. [The interesting irony here is that having accused me of having only one source for my analysis on Rwanda, all of the points Jim makes are derivative of the one Ellen Ray article in _CAQ_.]
To the particular claims: • No one, least of all Kagame himself, has ever suggested anything but that he was a colonel in the Ugandan armed forces, and as such, undergoing military training in the US when the original leader of the RPF was killed in battle. It was then that Kagame resigned from the Ugandan military and left the US to assume battlefield command of the Rwandan forces. Only in the overactive imagination of conspiracy theorists does this rather thin reed translate into a case for American sponsorship of the RPF. • We are supposed to believe, on the basis of an unnamed Zimbabwean friend [Of Jim? Of the author of the _CAQ_ article?] that American troops intervened in the fighting in the Congo to rescue Rwandan military forces. This little tidbit of news managed to miss every mass media outlet in North America, Europe and Africa, as well as the attention of Republican politicians in Washington DC which would have loved such an opportunity to attack Clinton and Gore on the issue (Remember the streets of Somalia!), but according to Jim, it took place. I won't even go into the fictional account of how the Kabila forces were conducting a successful military campaign against the combined forces of the Rwandans, the Ugandans and various ethnic groups, including Congo Tutsi, from the eastern Congo: this is sheer fantasy. • BTW, if there ever was a "puppet" of US imperialism in Central Africa, surely is was Mobutu of the Congo/Zaire, going back to the days of the overthrow and assassination of Lumumba. Isn't it interesting how this account manages to completely evade the question of why "American imperialism" would direct its one "puppet" [the Rwandan RPF] to remove its greatest regional asset, Mobutu? • The Rwandan genocide was conducted against Tutsis and against Hutus who would not be a party to the genocide. The current Rwandan government includes both Tutsis and the non-racist Hutus. These are basic facts, easily checked. Without suggesting that the current Rwandan government is incapable of error -- after all, it faces a most daunting set of circumstances in the wake of the genocide and the continued threat of militias connected to it, Jim's account of it is very misleading, part of his "even-handed" approach which directs its fire at those who ended and survived the genocide. • Every one of the accounts noted above look at the question of the shooting down of the plane carrying Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, a Hutu, and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, a Tutsi. They all note that Habyrimana and Ntaryamira had reached a tentative accord with the RPF that would have ended the fighting in Rwanda, and that the extreme racist Hutus were opposed to it. They also note that the Hutu forces which conducted the genocide were organized and on the go shortly after the shooting down of the plane. The universal verdict: circumstantial evidence points heavily toward the Hutu forces which conducted the genocide.
Sadly, it must be concluded that the position Jim takes here is one of rank historical revisionism. And it has the incredible effect of excusing the American and French governments, as well as other world powers, of a moral failing up there with the failure to take practical steps to end the Holocaust. African lives, it appears, are still cheap fodder for conspiratorial ideology.
<< Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 08:34:10 +0100
From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Rwandan Genocide
In message <3f.afd51fc.270a5686 at aol.com>, LeoCasey at aol.com writes that my aside on Rwanda is
> one which has no currency whatsoever outside of the horizons of what
> was _Living Marxism_ . The notion that
> "American imperialists" gave even the slightest thought to what happened in
> Rwanda, much less trained the RPF forces which finally put a stop to the
> genocide, ventures into the realm of some pretty creative historical
fiction.
> One U.S. official interviewed by the Washington Post contended that "the
United States is focusing disproportionate military assistance on Rwanda as
part of the creation of a 'zone of influence' in East Africa...."
"U.S. officials ... discussed options with Kagame, including air strikes to
hit at extremist bases.... Information about the camps was exchanged...."
(Lynne Duke, "U.S. Military Role in Rwanda Greater Than Disclosed,"
Washington Post, Aug. 16, 1997.)
Leo writes
> I have made it a minor interest of mine to read up on the Rwandan situation,
But his reading does not extend far beyond the popular account by
journalist Philip Gourevitch. How about this, from Covert Action
Quarterly?
"the U.S. was deeply involved in both Uganda and Rwanda, and very close to Paul Kagame. In 1990, Kagame, a Rwandan exile serving as a colonel in the Ugandan army,10 was training at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, when he dropped out of the program and rushed back to Uganda to take command of the rebel army that invaded Rwanda." (U.S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo by Ellen Ray)
(A Zimbabwean friend tells me the following story of US involvement in the Rwandan-Congolese war. After Kabila's forces broke with their Rwandan backers, they turned on the overextended Rwandan army occupying the Congo, forcing them to retreat. The Congolese, with Zimbabwean backing had pinned down the Rwandans to a valley, where they expected to make short work of their foe. To their surprise, just as they closed in US military troop carriers turned up in force to evacuate the entire Rwandan force before they could attack.)
Leo continues
> the Rwandan genocide shows just how incredibly
> irrational and even fantastical 'racial' categories can be.
Yes, indeed. But ought one then ignore the fact that Paul Kagame's government is entirely drawn from one racial group, Tutsis, who make up a minority of the country (around 15 per cent), and its security forces are overwhelmingly Tutsi, whilst the vast majority of the disenfranchised population is Hutu. Furthermore, only Hutus are tried for ethnic killings, but the many massacres perpetrated by the RPF are not investigated or tried. It seems very convenient to develop a blindness over racial categories when the country has become an ethnic dictatorship.
>And yes, it is one of the greatest failings of the Clinton presidency that
the US did nothing in face of this genocide.
But this is not so. Fort Leavenworth trained US agent Paul Kagame played a key role in the genocide:
"when an airplane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down, with all aboard, including President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, killed. A still secret 1997 U.N. investigation implicates Kagame in the assassinations." (U.S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo by Ellen Ray)
The U.N. investigation revealed "that Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, had ordered the shooting down of the ... plane" Barbara Crossette, ("Rwanda: Kagame Implicated," New York Times, World Briefing, Mar. 24, 2000)
Does Leo's extensive reading on the subject not include this vital fact? The assassination of Habyarimana was the event that triggered the slaughter in Rwanda, just as panic rose over the invasion by the RPF.
- -- James Heartfield >>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --