• To bring about and cement national unity
• To institute a genuine democracy from the grassroots to the legislative level
• To promote an integrated and self-sustaining economy
• To eradicate corruption in all its forms
• To guarantee the security of persons and property
• To promote social welfare for the benefit of all the citizens
• To promote peace and cooperation between our neighbors and all the peace-loving nations of the world28
INSURGENT STRATEGIES
These goals implied a long-term process. In a March 8, 1992, letter to the Department of State, the RPF attempted to explain the failure of the meetings in Paris the previous January as a premature attempt by the French and the Rwandan government to put forward issues that were short-term and self-serving, such as the distribution of ministerial portfolios. The Front called rather for “a just and durable solution to the problem of peace,” to be discussed after a ceasefire was in place and its monitoring was effective.29 As RPF statements over time show, such a durable solution would include the right of return of all refugees, a constitutional and governmental revolution that ensured a democratic process and fostered national unity, the integration of the two contending armies, and a national debate on the future of the country, all before elections could take place.30
The same documents make it consistently clear that the RPF considered the Habyarimana regime to be oppressive, corrupt, and delinquent in upholding the rights of the Rwandan people. Already at the 1991 Kampala Forum, the RPF document noted that “President Habyarimana and his clique . . . continue upholding the principles akin to Nazism of Germany.”31 On an interim basis, the RPF wanted the Habyarimana regime replaced by an organ of national will and action patterned after Museveni’s National Resistance Movement. In its proposals tabled at the June 1992 ceasefire talks, the Front insisted that “there should be a national council which is broad-based and which has full executive and legislative powers. This national council should preside over the interim period.”32
INSURGENT TACTICS—MILITARY INITIATIVES
For all its evocation of national unity and peace, the RPF pressed for tactical ascendency in field operations, media coverage, and negotiating positions. First, the RPF intentionally used the force of arms to make political points. The initial thrust into Rwanda came when the Habyarimana regime had accepted a UNHCR plan for the programmed return of refugees, a presumed RPF goal. But the RPF wanted an untrammeled right of return to a Rwanda rid of Habyarimana’s control.33
Thereafter, the RPA punctuated negotiating strategy with military tactics: witness the January 1991 attack on Ruhengeri when Habyarimana stalled on ceasefire negotiations in Goma, the quick investment of Byumba right before the June 1992 ceasefire negotiations in Paris, the temporary RPF offensive immediately before the political negotiations opened in August 1993, and, especially, the February 1993 push toward Kigali after the government reneged on negotiated protocols.
The RPF claimed its actions were defensive. Its theme became, “We are not yet in a situation of ceasefire and we have only responded to offensives of governmental forces.” As regards the attack on Byumba, the RPF explicitly laid the blame on efforts of the president and his party to block the peace process. “Thus, the investment of the city of Byumba by the combatants of the RPF was a response to the provocations trying to check the process of peace that had been initiated.”34 In fact, war tactics were the sharp instruments of policy, the means to negotiating preeminence.
INSURGENT TACTICS—MEDIA
In communiqués and press releases, the Patriotic Front fought for media advantage. In an increasingly sophisticated approach, RPA publicists used French and English according to the intended audience. RPA concern for the Visoke gorillas, for example, was published in English for an American audience.35
Where the government was claiming victory, the RPF claimed, on the contrary, the capture of strategic positions.36 Press releases gave details on “defensive operations” in which government positions were overrun and government materiel captured.37 After the Kibuye massacres that followed negotiations on the rule of law, a press release gave data gleaned from Rwandan human rights organizations and excoriated the shelling of an RPA position as a violation of agreements already reached.38 A press release analyzing the “rout of governmental troops” claimed that “the ambition of Major General Habyarimana to resolve by arms the conflict which opposes the Rwandese Patriotic Front to the Kigali regime shows itself today to be an impossible mission.”39
What for the RPF was the outcome of these back-and-forth raids? RPA commander Kagame, with a modesty that belied some press release claims, summarized the RPF battle strategy to a BBC reporter: “I do not think we have been fighting to capture territory. We have been engaging the government troops and we have done a very good job of crippling that army, and that is the army that is being used to keep the dictatorship in place. I think we can even use one square kilometer to do that job very successfully.”40
Even as the Rwandan political complexion changed with the institution of a multiparty government, the RPF condemned it with faint praise. A press release noted that Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye’s April 16 speech on the installation of the interim government “seemed to reflect a willingness and commitment to tackle the many problems facing Rwanda.” But it also found that “despite the apparent goodwill, it is doubtful whether the prime minister has the means to effect the changes he envisages.”41
INSURGENT TACTICS—NEGOTIATIONS
As Rwanda’s coalition government staked out positions and engaged partners in between the meetings with the RPF in Kampala in May and in Paris in June, the Rwandese Patriotic Front returned to a negative and cautionary tone. A June 23 communiqué questioned whether the new government had changed its goals and whether a process of negotiation for a return to a durable peace remained on the agenda of the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs. The RPF concluded that the prime minister and the ministers of the internal opposition, in general, “operate under the pressure of President Habyarimana, of the party-state MRND, and of the military forces of the regime.”42
What had stirred the RPF riposte were calls from the prime minister to bolster Rwandan government troop deployments, presidential criticism of a Brussels meeting between the RPF and the Forces démocratiques pour le changement (FDC, the loose coalition of internal opposition parties), and open discussions by the foreign minister on modalities for carrying out the Paris agreements with France, the United States, and Belgium, including a Rwandan request for Belgian facilitation of the next meeting. As far as the RPF was concerned, the war continued until there was a ceasefire, and ceasefire talks had not yet taken place.
While the commitment to peace had been affirmed in Paris, the modalities of how to put it in place had yet to be discussed; the next meeting on African soil would initiate those discussions. In sum, the only acceptable discussions for the RPF were those that strictly followed the negotiating schedule and strategy that formed the basis of the Paris communiqué and had been buttressed by a sidebar meeting with opposition parties. Moreover, having drawn up the draft text that Facilitator Diria used as a