Rwanda and France, or Le Grand Backfire

One of the more interesting things going on in this part of the world right now is the dispute between Rwanda and France over France's involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Well, it's interesting to me. But looking over this post, it's long and depressing and doesn't have any good jokes or photos. Probably you shouldn't read it.

Still with me? OK, you were warned. So France's concerns have their modern origins in an episode in 1898, at the height of the scramble for Africa. France was basically trying to form a contiguous east-west line of territory that connected French West Africa (Ghana, Senegal, etc.) with French territories in the Horn of Africa (French Somaliland, now Djibouti), giving them control of the Sahel (the fertile region just south of the Sahara). Meanwhile, the British were trying to form a contiguous strip of land running north-south, connecting their territories in Southern Africa (like, er, South Africa) with their territories in Northern Africa (Egypt). Clearly these aims are mutually exclusive.

They collided in Fashoda (now Kodok), a city on the Nile River south of Khartoum in Sudan. British gunships arrived at the city in September as part of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan. They encountered a small French expeditionary force that was securing the region. When news of the conflict reached Europe, nationalist sentiment flared in both countries and they began to mobilize for war.

The British navy was clearly superior to that of the French (the eyes of French tars do not flash with an inborn fire), and without naval superiority, France had little hope of winning a conflict so far from Europe. As months passed, France retreated from its war rhetoric and pressed for a diplomatic solution (and the Dreyfus Affair apparently drew public attention in France away from the incident). Finally, six months after the incident began, France backed off and let Britain have Sudan.

OK, so this matters to Rwanda how? When Charles de Gaulle listed the incidents that damaged French pride and led him on a quest to restore French “grandeur”, Fashoda was number one. It became a basic part of France's African policy to prevent any further encroachment of Anglophone Africa into Francophone Africa.

Fast-forward to 1990. In August of 1990, rebels invaded Rwanda, a Francophone colony, to overthrow its Hutu majority government. The rebel army was made up largely of Tutsis who had fled mass killings in earlier decades. It was supported by Anglophone Uganda (da-dummm).

President Habyarimana of Rwanda, head of a Hutu-majority government, was friends with President Mitterrand of France. The day after the rebels invaded, Habyarimana called Paris and spoke with Mitterrand's son, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the head of Mitterrand's African office. France immediately sent soldiers. Habyarimana immediately staged a fake attack on the capital, Kigali, prompting the French to send more soldiers.

With the assistance of French, Belgian, and Congolese troops (Francophone Congo was also a close ally of France), the rebels were quickly pushed back. But while Congolese and Belgian troops returned home, France stuck around as Habyarimana began retributive killings of Tutsis.

Something important about the Rwandan genocide is that it wasn't a spontaneous reaction to anything. It was meticulously planned over the period from 1990 to 1994. As the French were arming and training the Rwandan government, the government was compiling lists of Tutsis and of Hutu moderates, concealing caches of weapons, training militias in secret, and fomenting racial hatred. Of course, a plan that big didn't go unnoticed. Various NGOs were sounding the alarm about the planning throughout the period, but no one paid attention.

And while that was happening, France was providing Habyarimana's army with counterinsurgency training (which included how to dismember a body) and with weapons. Some witnesses say that France even helped indoctrinate the militias with anti-Tutsi propaganda. There were so many French weapons in Rwanda that by 1993, hand grenades were available at street markets for about $1.50 each.

In 1994, in the face of bankruptcy and a refugee crisis, Habyarimana agreed to form a coalition government with the rebels and to allow a UN peacekeeping force to supervise (most, but not all, French troops left Rwanda when the UN arrived). Meanwhile, plans for the genocide were accelerated. Five hundred thousand machetes were imported, one for every third Hutu. A militia commander who wanted to defect told the UN that the Rwandan government had trained the militias in various murder tactics and then scattered them in groups of forty throughout the countryside and offered to lead the UN to some of the weapons caches. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali, who had close ties with Rwanda and whose representative in Rwanda was openly pro-Hutu, told the UN force not to get involved.

On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana was assassinated, almost certainly by Hutu extremists who had been threatening him for months. Immediately the genocide plan was put into action. The first victims were politically powerful Hutu moderates -- lawyers, politicians, journalists, human rights activists -- who might try to stop the genocide. Then the killing of Tutsis began.

When the rebels heard of the genocide, they declared war and again invaded Rwanda from Uganda. Recently released documents show that France believed the rebel incursion was an “Anglophone plot” by Uganda to create an English-speaking “Tutsiland”. Allowing a French-speaking nation to switch to English would be unacceptable. French policy was to stop the rebels at any cost -- apparently even at the cost of aiding genocide.

France landed troops in Kigali the next day to rescue people at their embassy, which was holding not only French citizens but also Habyarimana's inner circle, the Rwandan government officials who had planned the genocide. Some were flown to France. The troops also evacuated the embassy's dog. Tutsis who had worked at the embassy for decades were abandoned to the death squads.

The genocide proceeded for months while the rebels advanced on the capital (and while various Rwandan officials took trips to Paris to meet with Mitterrand). The UN sat on its hands. The United States refused to use the word “genocide” because it would oblige the world to get involved (good thinking, Madeline Albright, U.S. ambassador to the UN, who adamantly opposed sending troops to the capital). France maintained that there was no genocide, only a civil war. “Africans are not that organized,” Mitterrand's son explained.

France continued shipping weapons to the Rwandan government throughout the genocide (as Mitterrand allegedly stated, “in such countries, genocide is not too important”). But when the rebels began to make progress on the capital, France sent in combat troops. Allegedly for a “humanitarian” mission, the soldiers were heavily armed and brought tanks and attack helicopters. They were greeted by the Rwandan militias (that is, the guys doing the killing) as heroes. “Vive la France” banners and French flags were on display everywhere. Local radio called for “you Hutu girls to wash yourselves and put on a good dress to welcome our French allies. The Tutsi girls are all dead, so you have your chance.”

France decided it was too risky to advance on Kigali, so they set up a “humanitarian zone” outside of the capital. Despite the French intervention, the rebels took the capital and ended the genocide (well, it continued in the French “humanitarian zone” for a while longer). As those responsible for the genocide fled, France gave them safe passage into Congo. At some point in all this, the French ambassador apparently destroyed a room full of documents at the embassy that linked France and Habyarimana's government.

So the rebels took over Rwanda. Instead of massacring the Hutus, as many expected, they formed a coalition government, cooperated with UN war crimes trials for the most responsible, turned others over to community courts (the gacaca), and began the task of rebuilding the government.

In November of 2006, clearly not knowing when to quit, France accused the current Rwandan government (the former rebels) of killing Habyarimana (we're pretty sure it was Hutu extremists, not the rebels). Rwanda responded by expelling the French ambassador, closing the French cultural center, and shutting down the French radio station.

And this past August, Rwanda formally accused France of aiding the genocide and called for the arrest and trial of those who are most responsible. Rwanda named thirty-three individuals who it says knew that genocide was being planned and provided aid to the planners. The list includes then-President Mitterrand; the Prime Minister; France's Foreign Minister; and his chief aide, Dominique de Villepin. Rwanda also says that French soldiers not only aided the Hutu militias, but were directly involved in the killings.

A Rwandan official explained: "France wants to blame us, the ones whose families were murdered, the ones who put a stop to the murderers; they want to blame us for the genocide because they cannot face their own guilt. The French armed the killers and they trained them even when they were saying they were going to kill the Tutsis, and France supported the genocide regime right up until the end, even helping the killers to escape. . . . Because they have this obsession with Anglo-Saxons."

One of the ironies of all this is that many in Rwanda now associate the French language with the genocide. English language dictionaries are everywhere. All government officials are required to speak fluent English. There have been anti-France protests on the streets of Kigali. Rwanda has asked to join the British commonwealth. The government established a cricket board. And the Rwandan genocide led to the downfall of Mobutu and his replacement by an English-speaking president.

And the kicker: A few weeks ago, Rwanda announced that all schools would henceforth operate in English, not French. Maybe it was all an Anglophone plot after all.

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