The 100 days of slaughter that changed Rwanda completely, 30 years on

On April 7, 1994, 30 years ago, Rwanda exploded into frenzied killings as the United Nations and its peacekeepers watched.

Never was the UN, with its 1945 ‘never again’ slogan, tested on its ability to stop genocidal killings. Rwanda, a tiny spot on the world map, became the victim of UN bureaucracy.

For 100 days, the world watched as over 1 million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were being exterminated.

General Romeo Dallaire was the man on the ground. In the months leading up to the genocide, the Canadian soldier warned the UN Security Council that Rwanda was about to explode. But, as he said later, the world leaders were too concerned about peacekeeper casualties and would not let him act. Dallaire returned to Canada devastated and angry, haunted by his inability to prevent the genocide or convince the international community to do more to stop it.

On January 11, 1994, Dallaire received information that some militias were preparing for a genocidal killing. Dallaire then sent what the media calls the “Genocide Fax” to the UN and said that he was preparing to act outside the mandate of Chapter 6, which did not allow peacekeepers to take on suspected combatants. Under that clause, the soldiers could only intervene purely for self-protection. Dallaire had arrived in Rwanda to lead a small contingent of UN troops to oversee the Tutsi and Hutus truce under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter.

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The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ response was brief: “You will not intervene. You will not put troops at risk.” Kofi Annan, who later became the United Nations secretary general, oversaw peacekeeping operations. As shame engulfed all those who refused to act continued, Annan said: “All of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it.”

According to Boutros Ghali, Annan was one of the UN administrators used by the Americans to frustrate him. That is why the UN Secretary-General was unaware of Gen Dallaire’s genocide cable.

“Not until three years later did I learn that a cable had been sent by General Dallaire to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) reporting an informant’s claim that Hutu forces were stockpiling weapons in preparation for mass killings of Tutsis,” he later wrote in his autobiography, Unvanquished.

When the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, known as UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda), was established, many thought it would stabilise Rwanda. Instead, it not only lacked sufficient troops but had no mandate to protect civilians. The United States, then under Bill Clinton, played a major role in preventing the deployment of additional troops, which restricted UNAMIR’s mandate.

As per the Arusha accord, parties to the agreement were supposed to install a transitional government. However, President Juvenal Habyarimana failed to establish the transitional government after being sworn in on January 5, 1994. This failure created animosity – and that is the period that informants told Gen Dallaire that Hutu forces were stockpiling weapons in preparation for mass killings of Tutsis.

A week after the UN turned him down, Dallaire passed the same information to Belgium, France, and the United States ambassadors. He knew they had powers to stop the threat but was wrong on political goodwill. Time was running out. On February 10, Boutros-Ghali’s senior political adviser, Chinmaya Gharekhan, informed the Security Council about the increasingly tense situation in Rwanda. In another report, Boutros Ghali expressed his concern over the resurgence of violence in Kigali and the increase in ethnically motivated crimes and murders.

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On the day that the UN passed Resolution 909, extending the mandate of the UN force through July, a plane carrying the Rwandan president exploded as it flew past Camp Kanombe, a post for Rwandese government troops. The crash killed both President Habyarimana and his Burudi counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira. Both were of Hutu ancestry.

The notorious Interahamwe militia, along with the Rwandan security forces and ordinary Hutu civilians, relentlessly pursued and slaughtered Tutsi men, women, and children throughout Rwanda. In recent international history, it was one of the most efficient and terrifying instances of targeted ethnic violence.

It is now claimed that Hutu extremists, opposed to the talks and concessions that the two had made with the Tutsis, shot down the plane. Another theory points to external forces, while other fingers point to RPF soldiers. What is not in doubt is that soon after, Gen Dallaire and the world watched as elements of the presidential guard took violent action against political opponents of the president and launched a campaign of terror and violence against suspected supporters of the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front. In an organised frenzy, youths of the Hutu militia poured into the streets of Kigali, killing, raping, and setting buildings on fire. By this time, the RPF soldiers were rushing to Kigali to restore order as the country was engulfed in crisis.

So inept was the UN mandate that on April 7, when Rwanda’s interim president, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, sought refuge in the UN Development Program compound – the UN troops were unable to protect her, for they could not shoot their way through a roadblock. The armoured personnel carriers sent to protect her were held by militia armed with pangas – for the soldiers were not supposed to shoot unless it was in self-defence. Thus, the UN was reduced to watching the genocidal killings pick tempo as long as the peacekeepers were safe.

Rather than stop the war, both France and Belgium sent troops to rescue their citizens and evacuate the expatriates. At one point, Belgium asked Boutros Ghali to work with the UN troops from Rwanda after ten Belgian soldiers were killed. “Very excited, the foreign minister asked me to withdraw all UN forces from Rwanda because Belgium had decided to withdraw the entire Belgian contingent. Belgium was afflicted with “the American syndrome”: pull out at the first encounter with serious trouble,” the former UN Secretary-General revealed in his autobiography.

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The killings were not only shameful but left a scar on the face of the most powerful institutions. “I don’t think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it,” said Bill Clinton many years after.

It was not the international community that stopped the killings but the arrival of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a rebel group previously based in Uganda. The RPF, made up of former National Resistance Movement soldiers, launched a broad attack to take the capital, Kigali. By then, the Hutus, fearing for their lives – and under the command of their leaders - started an exodus out of Rwanda. It was the most significant departure of citizens out of a country. Behind them were rotting corpses and traumatised men, women, and children. Human Rights Watch also claimed that RPF, from mid-July 1994, also killed thousands of predominantly Hutu civilians, “though the scale and nature of these killings were not equivalent or comparable to the genocide.”

With victory attained and the genocide put to an end, the RPF now confronted the formidable challenge of rebuilding a country that lay in ruins. By then, the UN was still debating whether Dallaire had the mandate to intervene. But it was too late. The country was not awash with mass graves. Rwanda continues to discover more graves that have been concealed.

While an international tribunal was set up to prosecute the perpetrators, it took many years before they were brought to book. The latest capture was that of the elusive Felicien Kabuga, who had escaped to Europe and owned several properties in Kenya. Last year, one of the fugitives, Aloys Ndimbati, was confirmed dead – having been on the run for years.

The genocide opened doors to reconciliation in Rwanda as it experimented with traditional courts to empty the prisons that were overflowing with suspected killers. The Gacaca courts finished their work in 2012. The ICTR has continued to prosecute those who planned, ordered, and carried out these horrific crimes.

With the trauma of genocide behind it, Rwanda entered into a phase of reconciliation and reconstruction. The RPF leader, Paul Kagame, has retained his place as the glue that holds the country together. Those who dislike him think he is a dictator. His critics say that he does not easily take lectures from Western countries – the same that watched Rwanda burn.

The Rwanda crisis also destabilised eastern Congo, where elements of Hutu soldiers had escaped. The legacy of the Rwanda genocide informs the events in the east of Congo, which has been unstable for years. Thirty years later, lest we forget, tribal hatred reared its ugly head in Rwanda. It was a lesson to Africans.

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