France and Opération Turquoise
Main article: Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide
During President Habyarimana's years in power, France maintained very close relations with him, as part of its Françafrique policy.[200] When the RPF launched the Rwandan Civil War in 1990, Habyarimana was immediately granted military assistance from the President of France, François Mitterrand,[201] who considered the RPF part of an "Anglophone plot", also involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking "Tutsi-land" and increase Anglophone influence at the expense of French influence.[202] France sent 600 paratroopers, who effectively ran the government's response to the invasion and were instrumental in regaining almost all territory the RPF had gained in the first days of the war.[203] France maintained this military presence throughout the civil war, engaging Kagame's RPF forces again in February 1993 during the offensive that doubled RPF territory.[204]
During the first few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis, a military operation involving 190 paratroopers, assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate foreign expatriates from Rwanda.[205] The operation was later described by Gerard Prunier as a "disgrace," as the French and Belgians refused to allow any Tutsi to accompany them; those who boarded the evacuation trucks were forced off at Rwandan government checkpoints, where they were killed.[206] The French also separated several expatriates and children from their Tutsi spouses, rescuing the foreigners but leaving the Rwandans to likely death.[206] The French did, however, rescue several high profile members of Habyarimana's government, as well as his wife, Agathe;[206] in some instances, French troops used UNAMIR vehicles, without the permission of General Dallaire.[207] The French abandoned their embassy in Kigali, in the process shredding hundreds of documents containing details of their relationship with the old regime.[208]
In late June 1994, France launched Opération Turquoise, a United Nations mandated mission to create safe humanitarian areas for protection of displaced persons, refugees, and civilians in danger; from bases in the Zairian cities of Goma and Bukavu, the French entered southwestern Rwanda and established the zone Turquoise, within the Cyangugu-Kibuye-Gikongoro triangle, an area occupying approximately a fifth of Rwanda.[209] Radio France International estimates that Turquoise saved around 15,000 lives,[210] but the timing of the invasion, with the genocide coming to an end and the RPF's ascendancy, led many Rwandans to interpret Turquoise primarily as a mission to protect Hutu from the RPF, including some who had participated in the genocide.[211] The French remained hostile to the RPF, and their presence temporarily stalled the RPF's advance in southwestern Rwanda.[212]
A number of inquiries have been held into French involvement in Rwanda. In 1998, following pressure from French magazine Le Figaro,[213] and the former president of the organisation Survie, the French government launched the French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda.[213] The commission's report accused France of errors of judgement, including the development of "military cooperation against a background of ethnic tensions, massacres and violence,"[214] but it concluded that France did not bear direct responsibility for the genocide itself.[214] In 2006, following a report by a French judge accusing the RPF of killing President Habyarimana, and the severing of relations between Rwanda and France,[215] Rwanda launched its own inquiry into French involvement in the genocide.[216] This report, released in 2008, accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train the ethnic Hutu militia members; it accused 33 senior French military and political officials of involvement in the genocide, including then-President Francois Mitterrand, his Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and Foreign Minister Alain Juppé.[217][218][219] Relations between the countries were restored in late 2009,[220] but as of 2014, President Kagame continues to accuse France of a "direct role in the preparation of the genocide."[210]
United States
Prior to the war, the U.S. government had aligned itself with Tutsi interests, in turn raising Hutu concerns about potential U.S. support to the opposition. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi officer in exile in Uganda who had co-founded the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1986 and was in open conflict with the incumbent Rwandan government, was invited to receive military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, home of the Command and General Staff College. In October 1990, while Kagame was at Fort Leavenworth, the RPF started an invasion of Rwanda. Only two days into the invasion, Kagame's close friend and RPF co-founder Fred Rwigyema was killed, upon which the U.S. arranged the return of Kagame to Uganda from where he became the military commander of the RPF.[221] An article in the Washington Post of August 16, 1997, written by its Southern African bureau chief Lynne Duke, indicates that the connection continued as RPF elements received counterinsurgency and combat training from U.S. Special Forces.[222][223]
In January 1994 NSC member Richard Clarke developed a formal US peacekeeping doctrine, Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25).
There were no U.S. troops officially in Rwanda at the onset of the genocide. A National Security Archive report points out five ways in which decisions made by the U.S. government contributed to the slow U.S. and worldwide response to the genocide:
- The U.S. lobbied the U.N. for a total withdrawal of U.N. (UNAMIR) forces in Rwanda in April 1994;
- Secretary of State Warren Christopher did not authorize officials to use the term "genocide" until May 21, and even then, U.S. officials waited another three weeks before using the term in public;
- Bureaucratic infighting slowed the U.S. response to the genocide in general;
- The U.S. refused to jam extremist radio broadcasts inciting the killing, citing costs and concern with international law;
- U.S. officials knew exactly who was leading the genocide, and actually spoke with those leaders to urge an end to the violence but did not follow up with concrete action.[224]
Intelligence reports indicate that President Clinton and his cabinet were aware before the height of the massacre that a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" was planned.[225]
Fear of a repeat of the events in Somalia shaped US policy in subsequent years, with many commentators identifying the graphic consequences of the Battle of Mogadishu as the key reason behind the US's failure to intervene in later conflicts such as the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. After the battle, the bodies of several US casualties of the conflict were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by crowds of local civilians and members of Aidid's Somali National Alliance. According to the US's former deputy special envoy to Somalia, Walter Clarke: "The ghosts of Somalia continue to haunt US policy. Our lack of response in Rwanda was a fear of getting involved in something like a Somalia all over again."[226] President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings, saying "I don't think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it."[227]
Vatican
The Roman Catholic Church affirms that genocide took place but states that those who took part in it did so without the permission of the Church.[228] Though religious factors were not prominent (the event was ethnically motivated), in its 1999 report Human Rights Watch faulted a number of religious authorities in Rwanda, including Roman Catholic, Anglican, and other Protestants for failing to condemn the genocide directly – though that accusation was belied over time.[229] Some in its religious hierarchy have been brought to trial for their participation by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and convicted.[228] Bishop Misago was accused of corruption and complicity in the genocide, but he was cleared of all charges in 2000.[230] Many other Catholic and Protestant clergy, however, gave their lives to protect Tutsis from slaughter.[229] Some members of the clergy participated in the massacres. In 2006, Father Athanase Seromba was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for his role in the massacre of 2,000 Tutsis. The court heard that Seromba lured the Tutsis to the church, where they believed they would find refuge. When they arrived, he ordered bulldozers to crush the refugees within and Hutu militias to kill any survivors.[231][232]
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