Rwanda France relations: What does the future hold?

Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Monday, May 17, joined Heads of State and Government from across Africa and heads of Financial institutions at the International Conference on Sudan, in Paris. Kagame also met with President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the conference. Macron is also expected in the Rwandan capital next week.

President Paul Kagame is among the participants in person when a dozen African leaders, several European leaders and some heads of international organizations on Tuesday, May 18, attend the International Conference on Sudan and the Summit on Financing African Economies, in Paris, France, on the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Rwandan leader arrived in the French capital over the weekend. On the sidelines of the Summit at the Grand Palais Éphémère, in Paris, Kagame is holding bilaterals with his host and other French leaders, bearing on the seemingly revived Rwanda-France rapprochement.

Macron is also expected in the Rwandan capital next week.

Kagame's visit comes after the recent publication of two revealing reports both highlighting the role of France in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. First, there was the Duclert Commission's report, commissioned by the French government, that was published in March 2021. It, among others, concluded that France bears heavy and overwhelming responsibilities over the 1994 Genocide but - as has been charecteristic of France's denial - made no mention of any evidence of French complicity.

Then there was the report of the Muse investigation submitted to the Government of Rwanda on April 19, 2021, detailing, among others, France's prior knowledge of plans to exterminate the Tutsi and complicity despite the French government avoiding the truth and failing to fully acknowledge its role and responsibility in the genocide.

The Muse report concluded that the Genocide was foreseeable. From its knowledge of massacres of civilians conducted by the government and its allies, to the daily dehumanization of the Tutsi, to the cables and other data arriving from Rwanda, the French government could see that a genocide was coming, reads the report.

Adopting a more pragmatic stance, Kigali said the Muse report was not a criminal investigation, but a fact-finding report meant to clarify historical facts, especially the Elysée's role in the genocide. Macron and his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, have shown signs of wanting to right the wrongs. But they have not openly admitted the bitter fact that France was complicit in the 1994 genocide, and apologised.

In March, Sarkozy, a one-term president from 2007-12, was found guilty of corruption and handed a three-year prison sentence, dealing a blow to his political ambitions. But, at least, now, 27 years later, a government in France accepts bearing heavy and overwhelming responsibilities over the 1994 Genocide. That is something. And, maybe, in future, Paris will be courageous enough to take an extra step.

While in Paris, Kagame is scheduled to meet former French senior army officers who served in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 while he was the commander of then rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which was fighting the genocidal regime that was backed by France.

Among those he is set to meet is Gen Jean Varret, 86, who oversaw military cooperation between France and Rwanda between 1990 and 1993. In May 1993, French officials sidelined Varret, a leading critic of France’s Rwanda policy. On May 20, 1993, French officials sidelined and ousted Varret as head of the Military Cooperation Mission (MCM), replacing him with Gen Jean-Pierre Huchon, then Mitterrand’s deputy military advisor, at the rank of a Colonel. Huchon was promoted to head the MCM. The MCM’s portfolio included military cooperation with about 26 countries, but according to Varret, it was his dissenting views on France’s Rwanda policy, specifically, that cost him the position.

Varret had taken on the MCM position in the Ministry of Cooperation in October 1990, just as the war was starting. His concerns with French policy took root soon afterward, when the chief of staff of Rwanda’s national Gendarmerie, Col Pierre-Célestin Rwagafilita, a bloodthirsty brute who dreamt only of exterminating the Tutsi, pulled him aside to ask that France supply the FAR with weapons so that it could “liquidate” the Tutsi. Varret has said that, after that, he issued a series of “unambiguous” diplomatic reports and telegrams emphasizing “the risks of a massacre of the Tutsi. The messages were not well received. When, in July 1991, France sent several officials to Rwanda, but excluded him, it was clear to him that his point of view was not welcome.

Besides Varret, Kagame will also meet Brig Gen Éric de Stabenrath, who was  commandant of Opération Turquoise in Gikongoro in 1994. The ailing Gen Patrice Sartre, who was part of the Turquoise Operation between June and July 1994, may not make the meeting but others such as Rene Galinie, 81, who was a military attaché at the French Embassy during the genocide, and Amb. Yannick Gerard, former French envoy to Uganda and now the Quai d'Orsay director for African affairs, among others, will.

These men, and several others, know the truth and have continuously refused to be silenced but told the world what they heard and saw, first hand, about France's direct involvement in the genocide.

Galinié of the French Gendarmerie had been on the ground in Rwanda since August 1988, serving as the Defense Attaché and Head of the Military Assistance Mission in Rwanda (August 1988-July 1991) and as Commanding Officer, Operation Noroît (October 1990-July 1991, except November 1990), the military operation under which Paris sent troops to Rwanda, under the cover of protecting French citizens yet the mission was to provide military assistance to the ill-trained genocidal government army, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR).

Among others, on October 24, 1990, Galinié, warned of “the physical elimination of the Tutsi within the country, 500,000 to 700,000 people.” Guillaume Ancel, a former French military officer and author published books on foreign military operations in Rwanda questioning the actions of the French state in Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. He recalls that Operation Turquoise - which he participated in - was not a "strictly humanitarian" operation but a cover to try to put the Genocide masterminds back to power.

Therefore, Galinié, Varret, and all others, are not sellouts. Nor are they crazy. They are human beings with a conscience, and courage. It is people like them and others such as CPCR President Alain Gauthier, in France's civil society, and a new generation in France that wants no links with the dark sad past that light the candle of hope for the future.

The recent developments present a new opportunity to open a new page in the relations between Rwanda and France. Kigali has emphasised that this will require political will between the two parties, especially Paris.

Paris will have to, among others, have the political will to bring to book all genocide fugitives and other criminal former Rwandan political leaders and civil society who were exfiltrated into France in the aftermath of the genocide. In May 2020, Felicien Kabuga, 84, the chief financier of the genocide was arrested in Paris where he had been holed up for many years. But there are still many more masterminds of the genocide living freely in France.

It remains to be seen how the new rapprochement will deal with these top masterminds of the genocide against the Tutsi including Agathe Kanziga, wife of former President of the genocidal regime Juvenal Habyarimana, or unrepentant diehards in France's old guard such as former French prime minister Edouard Balladur who rejected the findings of the Duclert Commission and also denies the 1994 genocide committed against the Tutsi.

Besides, so much regarding the direction of the current rapprochement will also be determined by who succeeds Macron mid next year after the upcoming French presidential election.