CHAPTER 3: DURING THE GENOCIDE
3.5. By-narratives during genocide
3.5.6. The role of the RPF
Prunier describes the RPF, under the leadership of General Paul Kagame, as probably the best educated guerilla force in the world, being made up of a worldwide Tutsi diaspora who took with them the education and experience they had gained in Europe, the US and elsewhere (1995, 116). This well-trained, well- organized, disciplined military force has become the centre of much controversy.
On the one hand, researchers laud its high discipline and its heroic ending of the genocide in the face of international indifference. On the other, it has been
accused of committing crimes against humanity, large scale massacres, and even delaying stopping the genocide for strategic purposes.
Dallaire, military leader of the United Nations intervention in Rwanda, is one who both praises and criticizes the RPF. He makes mention of the high level of discipline: “So far [Kagame’s] troops had handled themselves quite well. There had been a case of rape that was dealt with summarily – the guilty soldier was shot. We had witnessed no looting per se” (2001, 344). However, throughout his account of his dealings with Kagame, Dallaire describes an uneasiness, an uncertainty about what was really going on behind the scenes.
This was especially apparent as the RPF gained more ground and life started to return to normal in Kigali. Dallaire writes that the UN could not “ignore the reports we received of revenge murders, looting and raping, as undisciplined rear
elements of the RPF and returnees sought their own retribution. Rumours of secret interrogations at checkpoints for returnees were making people nervous.
We investigated and publicly denounced these atrocities just as we had
condemned the genocide” (2001, 479). Dallaire was also uncomfortable with the coldness of Kagame and other high RPF leaders to the suffering and death of so many people. Dallaire records Kagame as saying, “There will be many sacrifices in this war. If the refugees have to be killed for this cause they will be considered as having been part of the sacrifice’” (2001, 358).
Des Forges describes how the RPF stopped the genocide by destroying the interim government and its armies. However, she and other researchers imply that the RPF’s priority was not to stop the genocide per se but to take absolute control of the country (1999, 258). Kagame insisted that where for the genocidal
government, the war was an ethnic one, for the RPF the war was about returning democracy to Rwanda (Dallaire, 2001, 357). The idea of genocide being used by the RPF as a military excuse to overrun Rwanda is hinted at even more strongly by Dallaire who says that ‘had he been a suspicious soul’ he would wonder whether there wasn’t a direct link between the United States’ constant delaying (through the UN) in reacting to the crises and the RPF’s refusal for UNAMIRII to be implemented, nearing the end of the genocide (2001, 364). Dallaire suggests the UN’s role was to play as scapegoat so that the world out there could seem concerned without doing anything.
As the genocide was coming to an end and the RPF was starting to bring order to the country, the international community began to want to play a part in the crises.
Kagame’s response to this, in terms of Dalaire’s suggestion of a United Nations intervention force was: “Those that were to die are already dead. If an intervention force is sent to Rwanda we will fight it. Let us solve the problems of Rwandans.
The international community cannot even condemn the massacres of poor, innocent people … All my soldiers that I command have individually lost family, starting with myself. My idea is not to divide the country but to hunt the criminals everywhere they might be” (2001, 342).
Pottier brings to attention what he calls a strategic ploy on the part of the RPF, to use the international community’s apathy during genocide as giving them no right to be critical of the RPF or of the new government under Kagame after genocide.
Because of international guilt, ignorance and moral sympathy with Tutsi survivors, the international community praised everything the RPF did and were prepared to accept whatever version of the Rwandan narrative the RPF wanted to sell to them (2002, 4). It was only some years later that the international community
(journalists, human rights organizations, humanitarians, diplomats) began to realize that the RPF had an almost dictatorial control over the country, and reports of human rights abuses and massacres began to filter through. Until today,
however, these are rarely acknowledged or spoken about in Rwanda.
Yet without the RPF’s intervention, the extermination of the Tutsi may well have become a reality. Kinzer emphasizes in his biography that the intention of the RPF was not to restore Tutsi power but rather to restore democracy and equality to Rwanda. With most of the RPF having relatives in Rwanda it is difficult to believe they would allow their family to be killed unnecessary. More likely would be that Kagame had a carefully laid out strategy that would ensure a complete overthrow of a regime that he saw as essentially harmful to the progress and development of a country that he loved. Kinzer records an anecdote in 1993, when the RPF attacked Rwanda and almost took Kigali until Kagame called his troops back.
Kagame’s officers were shocked and asked him why he didn’t allow them to then take Kigali. His response was,
“Why did the RPF start the war? Was it for ourselves or for Rwanda? If, as the French say, we are fighting for the Tutsi, we can fight, win and then say we won our right to take over. But our philosophy is that we were thrown out of the country and want every Rwandan to be able to live here peacefully” (2008, 105).