Regional
To be a force for good in DRC, the U.S must come clean about the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda
This week, on April 3,
President Joseph Biden announced that a U.S delegation will attend
the 30th Commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi. As the delegation
descends on Kigali, it is worth reflecting on the U.S legacy on genocide in our
region, especially as a civil war wreaks havoc in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC).
As was the case in Rwanda in 1994, the U.S government is deliberately choosing to dismiss warnings – including that of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu – about a genocidal threat hanging over the Congolese Tutsi community. Washington’s willful blindness to this genocidal threat and its diplomatic support for Kinshasa attest to its failure to depart from the very policies that enabled a foreseeable genocide in Rwanda 30 years ago.
Mimicking France,
supporting Habyarimana’s ideological heir
Those who are familiar
with politics in the Great Lakes region and its historical conflicts won’t fail
to notice the similarities between the US’s attitude in the DRC and the
attitude of France in Rwanda in 1994 on the one hand, and the Habyarimana
regime and the Tshisekedi regime on the other.
Like France, the U.S
is providing diplomatic support to a government whose discriminatory policies
and promotion of hate speech mirror what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s.
Indeed, just like the Habyarimana regime, the Tshisekedi government:
1.
has refused to
repatriate hundreds of thousands of its citizens who have been languishing in refugee camps in neighboring
countries for more than two decades,
2.
refuses to recognize
the rebels who say they are fighting for their rights as citizens of the
country,
3.
labels Tutsi citizens
inside the country as foreign infiltrators and de facto supporters of the
insurgents, thereby inciting persecution, murder and ethnic cleansing against
real or perceived members of this group.
4.
has integrated militias in the state’s
repression machinery and rallied them against an enemy defined along ethnic
lines.
As if these
similarities were not glaring enough, the DRC government has integrated into the Congolese army the
infamous FDLR genocidal outfit – which was formed by perpetrators of the 1994
genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Kinshasa has also adopted the FDLR’s
genocide ideology and the talking points of unrepentant genocide fugitives and
their supporters who continue to deny or justify the genocide and engage in
revisionism.
Echoing the words of
an FDLR commander who was interviewed by the Guardian’s Chris McGreal in 2008,
the common objective of this alliance is to “kill Tutsi wherever they are”.
Clearly, Kinshasa has
created the conditions for (the recurrence of) genocide in the Great Lakes
region, but Washington, like Paris 30 years ago, is unshaken.
Rather than heed
the warning of the UN special advisor on the
Prevention of Genocide, the U.S government has instead chosen to bury alive the
victims of this genocidal project and to antagonize one of their very few
potential allies in the region: first, by condemning the M23 rebels’ military
campaign without providing for any alternative protection for the victims of
the DRC government’s murderous coalition; and, second, by calling on Rwanda to
withdraw troops from the DRC territory without regard to why they would be
there, if indeed they are.
Unsurprisingly,
Washington’s declarations have emboldened extremists and warmongers in Congo.
They feel vindicated and justified in their past and present criminal actions,
be it the daily abuses and killings targeting Congolese Tutsi, the repeated
incursions into Rwanda and shelling of Rwandan territory by the FARDC and FDLR,
or Kinshasa’s publicly-aired threats to overthrow the government of Rwanda.
Essentially they agree
with Washington’s seeming view that their actions and threats should have no
repercussions and should remain unpunished.
It is therefore no
wonder that the U.S’s behavior has raised eyebrows in the region, particularly
in Rwanda.
A continuation of U.S
decades-long misguided and inhumane policies
For three decades
Rwandans have been contemplating the U.S audacity which allows it to claim
moral authority over those faced with an existential threat when it has never
given explanations for its
conduct before, during, and after the genocide in 1994. The U.S
chose to ignore the CIA warnings over an impending genocide, refused to call the killings genocide,
played a decisive role at the UN as the decision was made to withdraw
peacekeepers, and provided sanctuary to killers in the United States, among
other shocking decisions.
Today, Rwandans also
wonder if the U.S continues to consider the hate rhetoric and calls to kill in
Congo as part of protected speech like it did when the Clinton administration
refused to jam the RTLM radio in 1994 in the midst of genocide.
The RTLM was then an
integral part of the genocidal campaign, telling people who to kill and how, as
the then commander of the UNAMIR General Romeo Dallaire explained in his
pleas to Western governments to intervene. Instead of acting on
Dallaire’s pleas, the US not only invoked concerns about freedom of speech but also
argued that jamming RTLM airwaves would be financially too costly.
Now as then, Washington’s petty, pecuniary preoccupations, as
the U.S moves to secure mineral deals in Congo and
catch up with China’s green transition, leave simply no room for humanitarian
considerations and the principles of the responsibility to protect. By all
indications, if publicly denouncing Kinshasa’s conduct means that the U.S might
jeopardize these deals, then the victims be damned!
One could be cynical
and consider that the U.S owes nothing to these victims, but in that case
Washington should have at least the humility to not lay claim to the moral high
ground as it pretends to contribute to peace efforts when in fact U.S officials
have done everything to torpedo the Luanda and Nairobi processes, The U.S has
done this by issuing unwarranted statements, aimed at preempting,
influencing or invalidating decisions, before or after each important
African meeting that was meant to de-escalate tensions and end
the conflict.
These U.S statements,
which called for the complete withdrawal of the M23 rebels from territories
they occupy and the dismantling of Rwanda’s defensive mechanisms, have
encouraged Kinshasa to harden its position, either by setting unrealistic preconditions for peace talks
which are contrary to the decisions of African heads of state or by terminating
the mandate of EAC forces which had successfully imposed a ceasefire, thereby
providing a needed reprieve for traumatised civilian populations.
The latest instance of
persistent efforts by the U.S to undermine African-led attempts at mediations
came against the backdrop of meetings at the ministerial level between Rwanda’s
and Congo’s delegations in Luanda. The meeting determined that Congo will
provide a plan for the neutralization of the FDLR, following the implementation
of which, Rwanda will then review its defense mechanisms.
Surprisingly, the U.S,
through its representatives at the U.N, went out of its way to impose its
illogical, upside-down view of what order these agreed-upon de-escalating steps
must follow. Going by the U.S’s intervention at the UN Security Council,
Rwanda’s review of its defensive posture must precede the elaboration of the
DRC’s neutralization plans for dismantling the FDLR, which the Tshisekedi
government promised to provide.
In other words, the
U.S’s lobbying activities at the UN and its public statements are once again
inciting Kinshasa to renege on commitments it made before African mediators.
The U.S’s behavior
appears totally illogical considering that its silence (if it had the humility
not to interfere) would achieve the same results in Congo as far as its
economic interests are concerned. After all, it is not as if the DRC government
has any leverage to force Washington to provide cover for a genocidal project.
So, if the U.S
provides diplomatic support for a government attempting to execute genocide, it
is because it chooses to do so. To understand the U.S’s behavior, one has to
analyse it in connection with the U.S’s overall foreign policy in the Great
Lakes region since the period of independence and how it has informed its
relationship with Rwanda ever since.
Subcontracting Belgium
and France and embracing racist Hamitic theories
For much of the
post-independence period, the U.S has acted as the invisible hand moving chess
pieces on its African geostrategic board. The traditional approach was to let
former colonial powers (Britain, France, Belgium, etc.) take the lead in
managing former colonies so long as America’s interests were preserved.
In the Great Lakes
region for instance, the U.S could provide direct support if needed, as was the
case in the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in
January 1961. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Belgium had started the job
of thwarting nationalist independence movements in its former colonies when
Rwanda’s King Rudahigwa died in suspicious circumstances in July 1959 after a
meeting with Belgian colonial authorities who were based in Burundi’s capital
Bujumbura. Credible evidence of Belgium’s hand in the assassination of Burundi’s
independence hero, Prince Louis Rwagasore in October 1961, is also
starting to emerge.
At any rate, so long
as Belgium’s choke hold on its former colonies prevented these countries from
siding with the communist bloc in the context of the cold war, the U.S was
content with letting Belgium call the shots in pursuit of its own interests.
But something more sinister was taking place in Rwanda and Burundi.
A hate ideology promoted by Belgian colonial
agents and resting on the Hamitic teachings of colonial missionaries was
pitting Hutu against Tutsi in both countries. From that point until today,
Belgium’s re-engineering of Rwanda’s and Burundi’s politics along these virtual
ethnic identities – which were used to manipulate the post-independeance elites
– would inform Washington’s foreign policy in both countries and the Great
Lakes region at large.
This misguided
approach to Rwanda’s and Burundi’s histories and politics was evident in 1972,
following a failed incursion of Hutu rebels. The rebels slaughtered thousands
of Tutsi, mainly in the south of the country, thereby providing a pretext for
the government to carry out a planned, massive genocidal campaign targeting
Hutu populations.
Even then, in a U.S State Department memo to President Nixon,
Henry Kissinger argued that “Reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi seems
impossible, and it’s hard to imagine a stable situation before the majority
Hutu prevail, as they have in neighboring Rwanda.”
Kissinger was wrong,
of course. Rwanda was not stable at the time; it was an apartheid racist state
conducting Tutsi pogroms on a regular basis under various pretexts. It had
produced hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees who would go on to launch an
armed struggle for their right to exist as citizens in their own country in
October 1990.
Yet, the U.S’s impulse
to impose a Hutu majority rule in Burundi and Rwanda remained intact; it was
visible through Washington’s interference in Burundi’s peace negotiations in
the late 1990s.
This approach led to
the institution of ethnic quotas in the 2000 Arusha Accords and brought to
power the CNDD-FDD. Contrary to Kissinger’s belief, however, Burundi did not go
on to become a stable country. As the 2015 crisis proved, it is still bedeviled
by ethnic tensions and economic hardships.
This approach was also
France’s alibi in its self-righteous belief before and during the genocide
against the Tutsi in Rwanda, that it was defending an “inherent” right of the
Hutu to rule, while in fact it was enabling the proponents of a racist ideology
to plan, organize and execute genocide.
Despite all these
lessons of history, the U.S policy in the Great Lakes region continues to be
influenced by tribal politics. Currently, Washington is supporting a Congolese
government that is replicating the very policies that led to genocide in Rwanda
while supporting Hutu Power figures, such as Paul Rusesabagina, who
have made it their life mission to reinstitute ethnic politics under the guise
of promoting genuine democracy.
The U.S also remains
the leading voice in promoting genocide denial; it is indeed the only country
in the world that refuses to adopt the legal terminology of what happened in
1994 in Rwanda: the genocide against the Tutsi. If history is any indicator,
Washington is not driven by benevolence.
Attempts to turn
Rwanda into a U.S puppet
In a recent interview, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame
reflected on the possible reasons why the FDLR issue remains unaddressed
despite the fact that the international community, especially the U.S, has
spent billions of dollars on a UN peacekeeping mission which was ostensibly set
up to address this issue among others.
Kagame hinted at the
possibility that the FDLR was perceived by some as a tool for ultimately
bringing Rwanda under their control. Available facts tend to validate this
thesis.
There is no denying
that the FDLR’s creation was facilitated by France at a time when its main
objective was to reclaim its lost sphere of influence in Rwanda. The RPF’s
determination to exclude France’s allies, Hutu Power figures, from Rwanda’s
post-genocide political system was an obstacle to France’s ambition. To
overcome the RPF’s resistance, France organised the supply of arms and ammunitions to the
defeated genocidal forces that had retreated to former Zaire.
For years, the two countries remained on a collision course as French
politicians waged a military and judicial war against Rwanda’s new leaders.
Eventually, they lost.
That, throughout its presence in Congo, a UN peacekeeping mission funded mainly
by Western countries consistently refused to combat the FDLR while never
failing to show eagerness to fight only the M23, a group that is portrayed as
exclusively Tutsi, should not come as a surprise.
Meanwhile, while the
U.S seemed uninterested in the confrontation between France and Rwanda, it
failed short of condemning France’s obsessive and criminal pursuits. After all,
whatever France did, there was no immediate threat of Rwanda becoming a member
of a nonexistent bloc run by a peer competitor to the U.S. The Soviet Union had
collapsed.
Today, things are
different. In an emerging multipolar world, where the collective West worries
about its waning influence, the U.S is engaged in what Professor John Mearsheimer describes as a “security
competition” against China and Russia. In that zero-sum game,
“you are either with us or against us,” is the prevailing logic amongst the
elites of the warring parties.
The most coveted
prizes in that security competition for those who will prevail, are raw
materials (including Congolese minerals) and African militaries. This is where
Rwanda comes in.
Rwanda’s refusal to
take sides in that security competition comes at a price: the hostility of the
U.S government. At a time when Western armies are being shown the door in the
Sahel region, and possibly required to deploy on other fronts in Eastern Europe
and the Middle East, private security companies and African armies are expected
to protect the interests of Western powers on the continent.
For Western
governments, both private security companies and African militaries offer the
advantage of plausible deniability of involvement whenever things go wrong.
Some ECOWAS members (Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria) have already shown their
eagerness to meet this expectation in Niger, where France has just lost its
privileged access to uranium deposits.
Rwanda is different.
While its decision to partner with Mozambique to restore state authority in
Cabo Delgado may be viewed by some as primarily driven by the need to secure
French Total investments, its decision in 2020 to thwart a French-sponsored rebellion in the Central African Republic on
the other hand demonstrated that Rwanda was an African country that puts
African interests and intra-African collaboration first. Wise partners would
appreciate and respect that attitude, but not the U.S which demands total
subservience.
To secure control over
much-coveted resources and Rwanda’s highly professional army, the U.S is
prepared to go to great lengths, including rehabilitating France’s creation:
the FDLR.
U.S’s cognitive
dissonance
In a recent discussion,
an American University professor shared enlightening insights on the frenemic
Rwanda-US relationship. He explained that while most officials at the U.S
Department of Defense (DoD) admired the Rwandan army’s professionalism and
wanted the U.S to strengthen ties with the country, those running the U.S State
Department on the other hand were mostly liberal democracy crusaders who cannot
tolerate Rwanda’s determination to chart its own political path and define
democracy on its own terms.
These two competing
views within the U.S administration explain why Washington’s bipolar behavior
towards Rwanda is confusing for most observers.
Suffice it to say that
while both the DoD and the State Department seek the collaboration of Rwanda’s
army for various good or bad reasons, the means to achieve that objective
differ.
The realists want a
partnership that takes into account both countries’ interests and the liberal
crusaders intend to remove from power what they view as an unruly
commander-in-chief and replace him with a subservient leader ready to
compromise their country’s interests and prioritize those of the US.
The U.S strategy
follows the footprints of France’s strategy from 1990 to 2022. It has several
components to it.
One is delegitimizing
Rwanda’s leadership in the court of public opinion. This is no easy task since
Rwanda’s current trajectory, even on development indices alone, vindicates the
leadership’s political choices. It requires rewriting Rwanda’s history by engaging in
genocide denial, revisionism, justification, turning RPF heroes into villains,
and supporting Hutu Power figures such as Paul Rusesabagina.
It also requires
turning Congolese victims of genocide ideology into perpetrators by vilifying
the M23 and its alleged backers as well as ascribing to Rwanda the very greed
for minerals that informs the U.S response to Congo’s crisis.
The other is to attack
the army’s integrity and cohesion by threatening to review Rwanda’s participation in U.S
peacekeeping missions. The objective of this empty threat is
obvious: turning the army against the leadership. One may wonder why a strategy
that failed in Burundi in the heat of the 2015 crisis and with a polarized army
is given any consideration in the case of Rwanda. (Western powers threatened to
remove Burundi from peacekeeping operations, Nkurunziza called their bluff, and
they backed off ). But anyway, when did our friends in Western capitals value
lessons of history?
The third component of
the US’s strategy is to rehabilitate the FDLR as a rebel force with legitimate
grievances. Suddenly, the US has developed a sort of amnesia about
this genocidal outfit founded by genocide fugitives. Despite being a U.S-
sanctioned terrorist group since 2001 and after the 1999 Bwindi attack which
claimed the lives of nine tourists, including two Americans, U.S official
communications no longer refer to it as such.
On this note, it is
quite astonishing that Rwanda’s collaboration efforts which led to
the transfer of three individuals involved in the attack to the U.S were never
reciprocated. The U.S simply refused to share information on the trial and
whereabouts of these individuals.
At any rate, the FDLR
has become useful given that Rwandans are not fleeing their supposedly
dictatorial regime to join the ranks of those the U.S considers “opposition”
leaders. The U.S, like any government that is interested in destabilizing
Rwanda, is left with no choice but to try and rely on remnants of the genocidal
government that was defeated in 1994.
As noted before, the Americans, like the French
before them, are involved in blackmail to achieve geostrategic interests.
Perhaps Africans were too hopeful to expect the very governments that refused
to acknowledge that the tragic events of 1994 in Rwanda constituted genocide
would suddenly take a principled stance on the threat posed by genocide
ideology in Congo and genocide denial with regard to Rwanda.
More often than not,
threats that our countries face are leveraged to advance Western geopolitical
and economic interests, even if they are as serious as the resurgence of the
Hutu Power Movement targeting a country where Hutu extremism led to a cataclysm
only 30 years ago.
In their political
games, shaking hands with genocidaires is not off limits.
This article was first
published by panafricanreview.com