First, parties in any conflict need to accept the reality of each other’s presence on the ground and work through to a sustainable “ceasefire.” Once the shooting has stopped, negotiations on the future order ensue: debates about fundamental “law,” or negotiations on “power sharing.” But negotiations about principles, structure, or power often come, as they did in Rwanda, to an “impasse.” Getting past an impasse to a final settlement, an “endgame,” is both an art and impelling goal of international mediation. A transition to a peaceful, secure future should then valorize provisions of a final agreement. Instead, in Rwanda’s case, “things fell apart.” In the Rwandan story narrated here, a brief analysis of conflict resolution issues at stake fronts each chapter. At the end of each chapter, I list the lessons we learned from that segment of conflict mediation, with specific insights into the tragic Rwandan experience.
Rwanda was a terrain where states and international organizations projected their own interests and identities; where peacemakers misjudged the depth of animosity between parties; and where the will to power of the contenders eventually overwhelmed the limited international project to hold the peace process on course. Customary modes of peacemaking and peacekeeping failed, and misjudgments of the peacemaking context contributed to the scenario that engendered genocide. Attitudes and habits of diplomatic actors, deployed in different arenas and within varying modes, did not mitigate the crisis. The Arusha political negotiations became a prelude to genocide and a tragic lesson in a failed international humanitarian intervention.
ONE
Ceasefire
On October 1, 1990, a military force moved from southern Uganda into northeast Rwanda at Kagitumba and headed down the eastern edge toward the tourist camp and police headquarters at Gabiro, the central entrance to Kagera National Park. The military force called itself the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), the military arm of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). Major General Fred Rwigyema, formerly deputy commander of Uganda’s National Resistance Army (NRA) and deputy minister of defense in Uganda’s government, headed the invasion. A large part of the force was made up of Rwandan Tutsi from the Lweru triangle who had joined Yoweri Museveni’s campaign to overthrow Milton Obote. Additional refugees had joined the NRA in 1986 to help put down a rebellion in northern Uganda. Now, the troopers moved out of barracks toward the Rwandan border under various guises. Major General Rwigyema told people that he was preparing for Uganda National Day on October 9. Recruits from within the Tutsi diaspora, as well as Hutu military leaders and politicians who had fled the regime of President Habyarimana, were part of the RPA corps.1
The exiles had carried from Rwanda stories of corruption, injustice, and economic bankruptcy in the Habyarimana regime. Expecting that a disenchanted population would join in revolt against the government, the RPF found that, instead, the people fled before them. Within three days of the invasion, General Rwigyema was killed at the front.2 On October 23, Rwanda government forces ambushed the RPA, killing top officers along with scores of RPA fighters. After suffering additional losses, the RPA broke up into small mobile groups, seeking cover in the Virunga volcano forests and crossing over into Uganda by night. The initial RPA thrust had been broken; the Rwandan government declared victory.3 But Major Paul Kagame, head of Uganda’s military intelligence, rushed back from training in the United States and revitalized the RPA forces, preparing for a drawn-out civil war.
The October 1 incursions quickly stirred an international response. Both President Habyarimana and President Museveni had gone to New York to attend the World Summit on Children and were about to journey on to meetings in Washington. Their precipitate return to their respective capitals highlighted both the surprise and the seriousness of the incursion.4 Key donors, France and Belgium, dispatched forces to protect Kigali and the expatriates in it. The United States began to withdraw nonessential personnel from its embassy.5 Neighboring presidents Mobutu of Zaire and Mwinyi of Tanzania called separate summit conclaves. All external parties wanted the fighting in this poor, overpopulated country to end quickly.
The journey to a ceasefire, however, went along a circuitous path. This chapter explores that journey by first looking at the issues that any search for a ceasefire confronts and then recounting the failed summitry of the first two years. After considering how cooperation between France and the United States and between the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and Tanzania ushered in a durable ceasefire on June 13, 1992, I ask what lessons we learned from the exercise.
Issues at Stake
Although the initial fighting in Rwanda had come to a temporary lull in October 1990, settling the conflict proved a lengthy exercise in diplomatic negotiation and political opportunism. The October hostilities presented a classic spectrum of questions.
What is the nature of the conflict? Was the 1990 RPF attack on Rwanda, for example, an invasion or an insurgency? An invasion across the border of a sovereign state is in international law “aggression” and a matter for UN Security Council consideration. The incursion into northeast Rwanda originated from Uganda with troops who had taken leave from Uganda’s National Revolutionary Army. The Rwandan government characterized the incursion as a cross-border aggression sponsored by the Ugandan government, requiring a collective response by the international community. But the Ugandan leadership insisted that the attackers left Uganda without the authorization or knowledge of Ugandan authorities.
If this was a cross-border attack, it was also without question an insurgency, a battle by Rwandans to find place and power within the Rwandan state.6 Having launched the war, the RPF now sought to legitimize its status as an internal insurgency. The Rwandan government, however, was not interested in bilateral talks or a ceasefire, which would recognize the RPF as the opposite party and change the asymmetry of the government/rebel equation.7
Does a conflict warrant international attention, or should local wars be allowed to flame out?8 In the Rwandan case, the care of refugees, the war-born impediments to trade and humanitarian aid, and especially this ethnic struggle for ascendency that found its echo in eastern Zaire, southern Uganda, and Burundi all constituted threats to regional peace and security.9 The nature of the conflict also determined the applicability of international humanitarian law to the Rwandan case.10 Thus, international interveners came to see the conflict between the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the Rwandan government as an internal insurgency with external repercussions that threatened international peace and merited an international intervention.
Who are the contenders and how cohesive are their organizations? It would seem at first glance that the battle in and around Gabiro was between the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), fighting for the exiled Tutsi, and the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), defending the state of Rwanda and the people within it. However, the RPF/RPA was but one of many groups vying for influence among the Tutsi diaspora. Indeed, the RPF had launched the attack preemptively to forestall an agreement of exiles to a UNHCR plan for programmed repatriation.11 In addition, expatriate Tutsi businessmen were attracted to possible business opportunities in Rwanda under a peaceful, negotiated return.12 Early days of battle showed a force divided in terms of vision, strategy, and operations.
On the other hand, the Rwandan Armed Forces no longer represented a unified country. After over twenty years of one-party rule, Rwandan elites joined in demanding an end to autocratic control and an opening to a democratic, liberal order.13 On July 5, 1990, the seventeenth anniversary of his coup, President Habyarimana promised a new economic and political order. A year later, under a new constitution, the legislature approved a law authorizing multiple political parties.14 Some sixteen parties filed for recognition. Whatever their regional base or ideological perspective, the new parties sought to distinguish themselves from Habyarimana’s rule.15 Thus, even before the RPF invasion, an opening to multiparty politics brought to the fore the north-south chasm in Rwandan politics. Eventually, under a coalition government led by Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye of the opposition Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), Rwandan politics and the war effort became a contest with multiple stakeholders.16
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