>In 1990, Rwandan exiles in neighboring Uganda formed the Rwandese Patriotic
>Front (RPF) and invaded, plunging the country into civil war and a vicious
>cycle of human rights abuse.
On which score, of course the authors are correct.
The rest - that there was no US Rwandan policy - is curiously obtuse.
The point is that there was an American Africa policy - to de-legitimise the former allies in Africa and replace them.
There was an extensive network of training, advisors and military support for the Ugandan military high command, who were substantially exile Tutsis from Rwanda: the RPF, in fact.
The Museveni regime had been substantially backed by the US and her allies, to the point where 60 per cent of the country's income was aid, much of it military aid.
Omaar, De Waal and O'Casey seem oblivious to the obvious: why were there negotiations in Arusha? The RPF had been all but obliterated in 1990. The pressure to negotiate with the RPF came from outside. IMF loan conditions, French demands for pluralism and US demands for recognition of the invaders as a legitimate part of the settlement all were made forcefully to Habyarimana who would never otherwise have granted these concessions.
Further, the demand that the government should concede the interior ministry and half of the officer class to an invading army was whatever the intention, bound to destabilise the country. Without the succour of the political endorsement of the US, the RPF would have been unlikely to recover from its 1990 defeat. But the Arusha accords, imposed on Rwanda from outside, both undermined the government forces and reinvigorated the RPF, recommencing the
>Rwandese Patriotic
>Front (RPF) inva
[sion]
>, plunging the country into civil war and a vicious
>cycle of human rights abuse.
-- James Heartfield