US INTERVENTION IN RWANDA EXPOSED
Documents published this week by the US National Security Archives Freedom of Information Project are purported to show that the United States blocked United Nations intervention in Rwanda in 1994, allowing the government to commit genocide against the minority Tutsi population (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/press.html). The case argued by the FOIP Director William Ferroggiaro and by Samantha Power in an article in the Atlantic Monthly based on the same documents, is that it was the refusal of the United States to intervene that caused the slaughter ("Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen", September 2001).
What the critics of the policy fail to register is that the US did intervene, decisively, through its proxy, the exile Tutsi army raised by US-trained General Paul Kagame, 'the mastermind of RPF policy' (Defense Intelligence Report 9 May 1994, p2). The policy is stated clearly in the State Department's Rwanda Discussion Document of 1 May 1994: 'sanction the ongoing aid to the RPF'.
To persuade their masters to continue backing Kagame the US military analysts talked up his Rwandan Patriotic Army: 'The RPA is a highly disciplined and cohesive fighting force with reasonably good leadership' (Defense Intelligence Report, p4). The Defence strategists had to forestall objections to Kagame from the US Ambassador, who pointed out that 'RPF-controlled areas were devoid of civilians because of Hutu distrust and fear' (p5). 'The RPF is making an effort to expand its power base among the Hutu and has taken steps to change the Hutu perception that it will massacre them,' promised Defence Intelligence (p5).
In fact the RPF did massacre Hutus in refugee camps that were organised by the United Nations on American instruction at the borders. The RPF did make attempts to secure support from some Hutu leaders, Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu and President Pasteur Bizimungu - though both quickly resigned, denouncing the RPF as a Tutsi-supremacist organisation. In May 1994 the Defence Intelligence Report argued that 'being a minority party makes the RPF dependent on coalition politics it is wants to adhere to its stated policy of support for democracy in Rwanda' (p7). Instead the RPF regime adopted a policy of dictatorial rule over the Hutu majority.
Though the US had decisively intervened in Rwanda through its RPF-proxy, all criticism of US policy has assumed that it had resisted intervention. In particular critics pointed to the reluctance of the US to describe the government led slaughter of Tutsis as an act of genocide. The importance of the word is not just moral. In international law, the crime of genocide justifies direct military intervention. The US was unwilling to commit its own forces to overthrowing the regime in Rwanda, preferring to act through the RPF. The critics, though, fail to register that Warren Christopher did indeed call the slaughter a 'genocide' on 21 May 1994. That was too late to make the case for direct US military intervention, but it did serve as the ruling ideology of the RPF regime established by Kagame afterwards.
In the name of fighting genocide the RPF has: 1. Resisted free elections in Rwanda, on the grounds that the population has not been sufficiently re-educated; 2. Detained hundreds of thousands of Hutus in barbaric conditions - many had gangrenous limbs amputated because they were so tightly packed - without proper judicial procedure; 3. Slaughtered fleeing refugees; 4. Invaded neighbouring Congo installing what even RPF apologists call a deeply unpopular rule there; 5. forced tens of thousands of people to abandon their homes in rural areas and move to makeshift dwellings in government-designated sites (Human Rights Watch, Uprooting The Rural Poor In Rwanda June 2001)
Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered in May 1994, an atrocity organised by the regime. But it is also true that the invading RPF committed atrocities against Hutus. Indeed the RPF set out to destabilise the regime, organising the assassination of President Habyarimana. To impose the framework of 'genocide' onto the slaughter has the effect of covering up the atrocities committed by the RPF as at very worst a justifiable reaction.
But the Freedom of Information Project performs a special service for US militarism as well. On the face of things, the US is being criticised, and individuals in the Clinton administration severely so. However, while individuals are attacked the underlying principle that the US has an obligation of military intervention in other nations is defended. And the actual intervention that the US did undertake, through its proxy the RPF, disguised.
DUNCAN AGONISTES
In the contest for the leadership of the British Conservative Party the press have had a field day exposing the party-faithful's choice, former Guardsman Ian Duncan Smith's links with the far-right British National Party. 'IDS', as he is known, is trying to present two faces. To the press he is moderate, but to the rank and file of the party he is the right-wing Eurosceptic who will indulge their intense alienation from the 'New Britain' being forged by the ruling Labour Party. For the press it is child's play to expose the differences between IDS's soothing public words on race to his scarcely disguised xenophobic comments to the party membership. In the past, race was an election-winning issue for the Conservative Party, but today the attempts to stir up anti- immigrant feeling are widely seen as an embarrassing throwback to the past.
Though the left revel in the humiliation of IDS, few have noticed that the pressure on the Tories is being sustained entirely by the press. In the 1980s the media played the same role except that they punished the left for being out of step with contemporary realities. Then the left denounced the 'capitalist press' for its inordinate influence. Today the press is celebrated for its courageous attacks on a Tory party that no one will vote for anyway. But vilifying the Tories is a safe way of avoiding criticism of the ruling party, whose direct attacks on immigrants put the Tories into the shade.
-- James Heartfield