Legacy of an African Genocide Kagame has clung to power, knowing the world won’t protect Rwanda’s Tutsis. By Walter Russell Mead see note please
https://www.wsj.com/articles/legacy-of-an-african-genocide-11554160620
This poor country once brutally occupied by Belgium has had no surcease in conflict-ignored by the so called African-American legislators in Congress who have shown no interest in the turmoil in Africa but choose rather to spend their days criticizing Israel…..rsk
April marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, in which almost 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were indiscriminately set upon and murdered—in their homes, in schools, in churches and in the open air. Victims were often killed by machete, sometimes by neighbors they’d known for years.
Foreign governments, including the U.S., dithered while Rwandans died. The end of the genocide came only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame and supported by Uganda, marched into Rwanda, defeated the genocidal government forces, and drove the remaining loyalists into the bush.
Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, neither the ethnic conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa nor the problems that made the world’s response so tepid and slow have been resolved. Commendable and even heroic measures by both Hutu and Tutsi survivors in Rwanda have restored order, enabling victims and perpetrators to live side by side without further violence. The economy is growing at a rapid clip, but political life in Rwanda is constrained. Opposition politicians risk arrest; some of the regime’s critics have mysteriously died; and well into President Kagame’s third term, there is no alternative to his rule in sight.
Meanwhile, the prospect of an effective, consistent international system that could act swiftly to prevent new genocides is even more remote now than in the 1990s. The “international community” is better at wringing its hands than at stopping crimes against humanity. The U.S.-led response to ISIS demonstrates that multinational intervention against outrageous behavior is possible. But the world’s indifference to the wider slaughter in Syria is a sobering reminder of the limited political will to enforce even the most basic humanitarian standards.
Meanwhile, the Western world does not know what to think of Mr. Kagame, who became president in April 2000. He was originally hailed as a human-rights hero for his roles as both commander of the forces that brought an end to the genocide and leader of a reconciliation process once lauded as a new way of managing the human consequences of genocide. When he went on to embrace economic reform and fight corruption, many in the West hailed him as the kind of leader who could transform Africa for the better.
But over time the enthusiasm waned. Although Mr. Kagame continued to advance a good-government agenda, Rwanda’s participation in Congo’s civil wars—sometimes in support of predominantly Tutsi militias accused of serious war crimes—along with what some see as dictatorial tendencies at home, cost him the support of many erstwhile allies among human-rights groups.
The truth is there is not a “good Kagame,” who promotes economic growth, effective governance and reconciliation, and a “bad Kagame,” who limits political freedom and intervenes in neighboring countries. There is one Paul Kagame, who seeks the survival of the Tutsi people in a dangerous region.
The 1994 genocide was one incident in a long and persistent history of Hutu-Tutsi violence. Rwanda today does not recognize tribal differences and no official post-genocide statistics are available, but Tutsis make up an estimated 10% to 15% of Rwanda’s population; about 85% is Hutu. Most Hutus did not participate in the genocide, but given the history, Mr. Kagame is unlikely to let control over security slip from his hands. At the same time, he knows that, all things being equal, delivering growth and good governance brings his people more safety than any other course. And he knows that it would be a species of criminal insanity to entrust the future of his people to an “international community” that is likely to be most absent when it’s most needed.
Maintain political control, sustain rapid economic growth, and support a strong military capable of acting beyond Rwandan frontiers—these are ambitious goals for the ruler of a small, landlocked African state. But it is hard to see how any Tutsi leader in Rwanda could safely abandon any of them. It is also difficult to see what incentives Western diplomats and aid workers could offer that would materially change the security calculations that Mr. Kagame and his associates must make.
Mr. Kagame has not so much solved Rwanda’s problems as put them on hold. The demographic imbalance, the ethnic tensions, and the explosive conditions in the wider neighborhood will all remain when Mr. Kagame steps aside or dies.
Western observers looking for the arc of history in Rwanda have to squint. It is not clear whether the arc will have to bend for or against Mr. Kagame for justice to prevail.
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