Margery Boichel Thompson, publishing director and series editor of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), has shown patience and perseverance in finding an appropriate publishing house for this study. My thanks also go to ADST for adopting my book for its Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.
At Ohio University Press, Gillian Berchowitz, director and editor in chief, and Ricky Huard, acquisitions editor, had the courage to take on this project. Nancy Basmajian led the editorial staff in the difficult task of turning a belabored manuscript into a readable book.
Finally, I should recognize the unknown peer reviewers for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and Ohio University Press for their encouraging praise and keen suggestions, which added depth and clarity to my efforts in telling the story of the Rwandan political negotiations, a prelude to genocide.
ABBREVIATIONS
| APROSOMA | Association for the Social Promotion of the Masses |
| ARDHO | Rwandan Association for the Defense of Human Rights |
| CDR | Coalition for the Defense of the Republic |
| CEPGL | Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries |
| CND | National Development Council (the Rwandan parliament, 1976–1993) |
| FAR | Rwandan Armed Forces |
| FDC | Democratic Forces for Change |
| GOR | Government of Rwanda |
| ICTR | International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda |
| MDR | Democratic Republican Movement |
| MRND | Revolutionary National Movement for Development |
| OAU | Organization of African Unity |
| PADER | Rwandan Democratic Party |
| PARERWA | Rwandan Republican Party |
| Parmehutu | Party of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Hutu |
| PDC | Christian Democratic Party |
| PDI | Islamic Democratic Party |
| PECO | Green Party |
| PL | Liberal Party |
| PSD | Democratic Social Party |
| PSR | Rwandan Socialist Party |
| RADER | Rwandan Democratic Rally |
| RPA | Rwandese Patriotic Army |
| RPF | Rwandese Patriotic Front |
| RTLM | Free Radio-Television of the Thousand Hills |
| SRSG | Special Representative of the Secretary General |
| UNAMIR | United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda |
| UNAR | Rwandan National Union |
| UNOMUR | United Nations Observer Mission Uganda/Rwanda |
PRELUDE TO GENOCIDE
Rwanda, prior to 2006 change in subdivisions. Based on map by United Nations Geospatial Information Section, no. 3717 Rev. 7 December 1997
INTRODUCTION
Like most conflicts, the Rwandan civil war and attendant genocide are not easily confined within brackets of time. This study looks at the period of conflict in Rwanda from the incursion of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) on October 1, 1990, until the April 6, 1994 downing of President Habyarimana’s plane. This event relaunched the civil war and opened the door to genocide, bringing the Arusha peace process to an untimely end. An epilogue brings forward the implications of this period for the genocide and subsequent events in Rwanda.
In this introduction, I review perspectives on the Arusha negotiations found in current literature, recount the antecedents of the Rwandan conflict, and pose the question of why humanitarian intervention failed. Subsequent chapters seek the answers to that question in a story that follows the international intervention against the backdrop of political negotiations in Arusha and political wrangling in Kigali. In that narrative, the arc of humanitarian intervention confronts questions that are customarily faced in international interventions as well as questions that reflect the peculiarities of the Rwandan context. A notation of conflict-resolution issues at stake and an inventory of lessons learned thus bookend each chapter.
What Do Folks Say about Arusha?
The conclusion of this study is that the Rwandan peace process, centered in the Arusha negotiations, helped set the dynamic context of genocide in Rwanda. Yet, in the voluminous reporting and analysis on the genocide in Rwanda, there is little systematic focus on the Arusha political negotiations, on the events leading up to those discussions, or on the effect of those negotiations on the outbreak of genocide. Few commentators stop by Arusha. Those that do intersperse occasional references to Arusha within their larger narrative. Most studies, with reason, concentrate on the breakout of genocide itself and its eventual suppression by the Rwandese Patriotic Front. Among the commonly cited references, the most comprehensive is Human Rights Watch’s Leave None to Tell the Story, which mentions the Arusha negotiations in various places but only as a backdrop to growing internal political tensions.1 Gérard Prunier’s The Rwanda Crisis gives a chapter to the negotiations but similarly focuses on how negotiations played out within Rwandan domestic politics.2 Grünfeld and Huijboom give numerous details about the situation in Rwanda during the period of negotiations, but little on the process of negotiations.3 André Guichaoua’s more recent work, full of behind-the-scenes details and excellent analyses of the ebb and flow of political contests within Rwanda, has but two chapters on the Arusha negotiations, and those are seen through the optic of the domestic political scene.4
Memoires of the period naturally deal with the moments when the writers were engaged in Rwandan affairs, most after the accords were signed. For example, in his excellent narrative on post-genocide Rwanda, Robert Gribbin, US ambassador in Kigali from 1996 to 1999, offers but a short chapter on the talks, noting, “I was not there and so cannot throw much light on the inner workings of the talks.”5
Two Rwandan accounts from opposite sides of the conflict give useful insights into the Arusha negotiations. Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa, an officer in the Rwandese Patriotic Army and the Patriotic Front’s representative to the OAU, was at the time of the Arusha negotiations RPF’s secretary general as well as a member of the RPF negotiating team. He does not treat the negotiations chronologically or thematically, but his Healing a Nation: A Testimony does highlight RPF’s ambiguity toward the peace process.6 On the other side, Enoch Ruhigira, at that time the director of Habyarimana’s presidential office, shows in his La fin tragique d’un régime how Habyarimana progressively