In addition to silencing the existence of precolonial problems, placing blame primarily on the West overlooks how the system of “dual colonial rule” meant colonialism’s negative effects were attributable not only to Europeans but also to Rwandan elites (C. Newbury 1988:53; Reyntjens 1985:161–170). While Belgian policies increased chiefs’ power and provided incentives and rationalizations, through entry into the world economy, for them to take advantage of the rural population, it was the Rwandan chiefs themselves who determined how to meet, resist, or further exacerbate these demands, how much to privilege their own advancement at the expense of others, and how colonialism influenced the transformation of clientship ties (C. Newbury 1988:117–150). Many Tutsi chiefs ruled exploitatively, wielding power arbitrarily (Lemarchand 1970:35–40; Reyntjens 1985). Rwandan leaders, including Tutsi chiefs, were complicit in accepting and propagating the racial model of human diversity that Europeans brought to Central Africa. Framing the Hutu Revolution at independence as the result of colonially introduced ethnicity and as the early expression of genocidal ideology overlooks the long-term evolution of rural grievances underlying the transformations of 1959–1962, and the fact that the revolution addressed the political exclusion of the Hutu peasants who composed 80 percent of the population (Lemarchand 2009:31; C. Newbury 1978, 1980, 1988:178–179, 207–208).
Placing blame on the West during the genocide also allows the RPF to claim the moral high ground and solidify its “genocide credit” (Lemarchand 2009; Reyntjens 2005; Vidal 2001). For example, Kagame emphasized the moral purity of the RPF in his 2004 speech, saying, “I also have to thank the soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. In the fight many gave their lives in the cause of freedom and liberation. I know that every soldier in the RPF knew that the cost was likely to be high but the cause of freedom and liberation was one worth fighting for. We were fighting a difficult and determined enemy who was supported by powerful forces. We were fighting two wars at once. Our soldiers fought by day and rescued victims by night until they halted the genocide. Thank you to all of you.” He continued later, “And I say it, from the lessons we have drawn from our pasts, we will be very eager, and we are committed, to fight for our rights and fight for the rights for others who are targeted like the people of Rwanda were targeted during the genocide.” This attention to the moral virtue of the RPF erases accusations against Kagame and his RPF soldiers of committing atrocities during the genocide, specifically human rights abuses and reprisal killings against innocent Hutu civilians as the RPF pushed through Rwanda to Kigali.18 High-ranking Rwandan and international military personnel have argued that Kagame’s goals as head of the RPF were first and foremost to gain political control of Rwanda, and only secondarily to halt the genocide, with full awareness of the cost this would bring to Tutsi (Dallaire 2003:515; Prunier 2009:15; Ruzibiza 2005:10). Scholars argue that the RPF (now the RPA) continued to perpetuate violence and human rights abuses in the years after the genocide. By 1995, RPA soldiers conducted reprisal killings and created domestic insecurity, while Hutu were imprisoned summarily on genocide accusations (Reyntjens 1995). While Kagame claimed that only three hundred people were killed during the closing of a refugee camp in Kibeho in southern Rwanda in 1995, other reports claim as many as five thousand innocent people were killed (Lemarchand 2009:73; Prunier 2009:37–42). Some reports claim that in 1997 at least sixteen thousand innocent Hutu civilians in the north were killed when the RPA responded to incursions by Hutu rebels into Rwanda (Reyntjens 2009:175–176). Drawing attention to these RPF/RPA abuses should not be confused with supporting the double genocide theory or its implication that the RPF/RPA counterattacks exonerate genocide perpetrators; rather, it is recognition of the multiple forms and sources of violence during the 1990s (Prunier 2009:12–13).
Emphasizing National over Regional Dynamics
Kagame’s ten-year commemoration speech, consistent with the dominant narrative, emphasized the national dynamics of the genocide rather than situating it within a broader set of regional ethnopolitical struggles. Even as he gestured towards regional African cooperation, it was in the context of reiterating the right of a national leader to resolve internal issues. Kagame orated, “It is very important that the African countries get together, we sort out our national problems, our internal situations to do with good governance, to do with democracy, to do with socio-economic development and work together and protect each other and defend each other for nobody owes us anything as was shown in the case of Rwanda.” Kagame’s national focus sidelined how regional dynamics helped explain and legitimize (though not justify) some of the anti-Tutsi sentiment and the ease with which people could be mobilized by fear to violence. By extension, the national focus ignored how postgenocide governmental actions within and outside Rwanda could have similar ongoing effects on regional instability today. Erasure of regional dynamics in the dominant narrative allowed the RPF to prioritize national resocialization policies rather than macro-political and economic factors. It also continued to locate the solution at the national level, rather than opening the door to international or regional solutions that might promote corrective action in Rwanda’s foreign and domestic policies.
Focusing on ethnicity within natural national borders—which were not coterminous with the Rwandan kingdom over the previous three centuries19—disregarded the broader entanglement of regional and international sociopolitical dynamics, particularly the waves of violence and genocide against Hutu in Burundi and ongoing war in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa (Autesserre 2010; Lemarchand 2009; Prunier 2009; Reyntjens 2009). These regional dynamics contributed to the pregenocide situation—and arguably to postgenocide dynamics as well—by enflaming fears of ethnic violence, adding fodder for political manipulation, and creating massive movements of refugee populations who were particularly receptive to ethnic-based ideologies (Lemarchand 2009:20; Malkki 1995; C. Newbury and D. Newbury 1999).
Specifically, the dominant narrative ignored the 1972 killings of Hutu by Tutsi in Burundi, massacres that sank into “near oblivion” in broader global memory (Lemarchand 2009:71). In the wake of an aborted Hutu-instigated uprising that caused the death of hundreds or perhaps thousands of Tutsi civilians in Burundi, the ensuing (Tutsi) government-backed repression from April to November 1972 resulted in the deaths of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand Hutu, specifically primary and secondary school children, university students, teachers, and civil servants (Lemarchand 2009:71). This helps contextualize the anti-Tutsi backlash in Rwanda that paved the way for Habyarimana’s coup in 1973 (Lemarchand 2009).
Ignoring the 1972 events, as well as the October 1993 assassination of the Hutu president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, at the hands of the all-Tutsi army, erased the idea that there was any legitimacy to Hutu fears of power sharing or of Tutsi-generated violence. Ndadaye was the first Hutu president in the history of Burundi, and his election brought to a close twenty-eight years of Tutsi hegemony. His assassination three months after he took office unleashed violence in Burundi on both sides, with Hutu civilians killing up to twenty thousand Tutsi in October and November 1993, and the Tutsi army killing as many Hutu in retaliation. Further, the violence caused some two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Hutu to seek refuge in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 (Lemarchand 2009; C. Newbury and D. Newbury 1999:85). In the context of the uneasy truce between the RPF and the Habyarimana government, these events contributed to the Rwandan Hutu-power regime’s anti-Tutsi propaganda and were part of the undoing of any compromise contained in the Arusha Accords.
The national focus of the RPF’s master narrative obscured Rwanda’s problematic role in neighboring countries, only publicizing international interventions when they were consistent with the dominant narrative—for example, claiming that incursions into the DRC were solely driven by efforts to oust génocidaires who remained intent on killing Tutsi, not by desire to control mineral resources or expand territorial sovereignty (Lemarchand 2009:17–19). Yet, Kagame faced accusations of atrocities—crimes against humanity and even possibly genocide—for events in the mid-to-late 1990s in Rwanda and in the DRC where Rwanda “exported” its war (Prunier 2009; Reyntjens 2009). Scholars, human rights activists, and a 2010 U.N. report accused Kagame and his