[Peace-discuss] Imperialism and genocide

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Discussions about Darfur often reference Rwanda, and how we don't want 
it to happen again.  Such sentiments are used to reject suggestions of 
imperialist involvement as unworthy.  But now the imperial role in the 
Rwanda massacre is becoming clearer.  Here's an article from the 
Independent(UK), preceded by a comment from the interesting list 
lbo-talk. --CGE]	

According to the dominant ideology, Rwanda was about nothing but an
ethnic genocide, Yugoslavia was about nothing but an ethnic genocide,
Darfur in Sudan is about nothing but an ethnic genocide, etc.
Imperialism first helps ethnicize politics in reality half way (by
simplifying and hardening formerly fluid tribal formations into often
racialized ethnic groups and using one to govern the rest) and then
ethnicizes people's understanding of it totally in ideology.  If
what's happening is an ethnic genocide, there are "good victims" --
the ethnic group subjected to genocide -- and "bad guys" -- the
government in the Third World committing genocide.  You go in by
declaring that what you are doing is to save "good victims" from "bad
guys" and end by deposing the government and setting up the "good
guys" who say they represent "good victims" in power.  The "good guys"
then run the country for you.  In the process you help sentimentalize
and dumb down politics in your own country: realpolitik, the ruling
class think, should be reserved for closed meetings of the power
elite, for masses don't and shouldn't understand it.

Realpolitik that the French socialist power elite around Mitterrand
discussed in closed meetings, a glimpse of which is available in the
newly declassified documents, is that, the way they saw it, Rwanda was
about a proxy war between the French-backed Mouvement républicain
national pour la démocratie et le développement (MRND) government, its
Forces armées rwandaises (FAR), and peasant militias loyal to the MRND
on one hand and the Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) of Paul Kagame,
which was backed by Uganda and the USA, on the other hand.  The French
understanding of realpolitik is closer to reality than the sentimental
ideology of an ethnic genocide, but the French socialist imperialists
lost, so they totally lost the ability to control the narrative, too,
which they had already all but lost to the American and Americanized
media favoring US imperialists even before their actual defeat.

The Le Monde article that the Independent cites not only claims that
what was happening in Rwanda was nothing but an ethnic genocide and
but also that the French socialist imperialists should have gotten
hints by late 1990 that a genocide was being prepared and should have
certainly recognized that a specific plan for it was hatched _between_
the Arusha accords and the assassination of the then Rwandan President
Juvénal Habyarimana.*

Notice, however, that the only source of the plan was an anonymous
informant, uncorroborated by others.  The media, generally devotees of
humanitarian imperialism, find it useful, though, because the Arusha
accords and the Habyarimana assassination might disrupt their
narrative without it for they both might remind some of the reality of
the civil war that was an inter-imperialist proxy war.

That said, the Le Monde article has bits that felicitously reveal the
line of thinking common to all imperialists when they confront a
looming defeat.  Here's one from February 1993.

      Le lendemain, le général Christian Quesnot, chef
      d'état-major particulier de François Mitterrand,
      ainsi que le numéro 2 de la cellule Afrique de
      l'Elysée, Dominique Pin, présentent différentes
      options au président.

      La première consiste à évacuer les Français et
      à retirer le dispositif Noroit. Les auteurs la rejettent
      aussitôt : "C'est l'échec de notre présence et de
      notre politique au Rwanda. Notre crédibilité sur
      le continent en souffrirait."

"Our credibility in the continent would suffer from it [our defeat]."
That's how they think -- French imperialists regarding Rwanda and US
imperialists regarding Iraq and Iran.  So they soldier on . . . till
the bitter end that is, alas, bitterer to natives than colonizers.

* <http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-930272,0.html>
Génocide rwandais : ce que savait l'Elysée
LE MONDE | 02.07.07 | 10h48  •  Mis à jour le 02.07.07 | 18h37

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12 janvier 1994

"Eliminer 1000 d'entre eux dès la première heure"

Dans un télégramme diplomatique du 12 janvier, l'ambassadeur à Kigali
rapporte les confidences d'un informateur du représentant des Nations
unies. Celui-ci a livré les détails "graves et plausibles" d'un plan
de déstabilisation radicale du pays. Il commencerait par des
provocations contre les troupes du FPR à Kigali, pour susciter une
riposte.

"Les victimes rwandaises que ne manqueraient pas de provoquer ces
réactions seraient alors le prétexte à l'élimination physique des
Tutsis de la capitale, explique le diplomate. Selon l'informateur de
la Minuar, 1700 Interhamwe [membres des milices populaires] auraient
reçu une formation militaire et des armes pour cela, avec la
complicité du chef d'état-major FAR. La localisation précise des
éléments tutsis de la population de Kigali devrait en outre permettre
d'éliminer 1000 d'entre eux dans la première heure après le
déclenchement des troubles."

Trois mois plus tard, le 6 avril, un missile abat l'avion transportant
le président Juvénal Habyarimana. En quelques heures, la machine
génocidaire se met en marche comme prévu.

--Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com

=========================================

	The Independent
	Mitterrand's role revealed in Rwandan genocide warning
	By Alex Duval Smith in Paris
	Published: 03 July 2007

The former French president François Mitterrand supported the 
perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide despite clear warnings that 
mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according 
to declassified French documents.

The publication of the documents in today's Le Monde for the first time 
confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret 
diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French 
president was obsessed with the danger of "Anglo-Saxon" influence 
gripping Rwanda. In three months from April 1994, at least a million 
Rwandans - mainly Tutsis - were systematically slaughtered in killings 
engineered by the Hutu regime to exterminate its ethnic rivals and repel 
the Uganda-trained Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The documents, obtained by lawyers for six Tutsi survivors who are 
bringing a case against France for "complicity with genocide'' at the 
Paris Army Tribunal, suggest the late President Mitterrand's support for 
the Hutus was informed by an obsession with maintaining a French 
foothold in the region. One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France 
was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide 
Rwandan government. "Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we 
have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The 
French military executed the orders of French politicians. The 
motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust 
France from the region."

Mr Compte said the file of diplomatic messages and initialled 
presidential memos, obtained from the François Mitterrand Foundation, 
provided evidence that the French military in Rwanda were under direct 
instruction from the Elysée Palace. The lawyer yesterday called on the 
investigating judge at the Paris Army Tribunal to interview senior 
French political figures, including military figures, diplomats, the 
former defence minister, Pierre Joxe and former prime minister, Alain Juppé.

"It emerges quite clearly from the documents that diplomats, the French 
secret services, military figures and Mr Joxe wanted France to disengage 
from Rwanda, or at least to act differently. But the president was 
obsessed,'' said Mr Compte.

Among the evidence to suggest France was informed of the mounting 
genocide is a diplomatic telegram from October 1990 in which the French 
defence attaché in the Rwandan capital Kigali alerts Paris of the 
"growing number of arbitrary arrests of Tutsis or people close to them". 
The cable adds: "It is to be feared that [it could] degenerate into an 
ethnic war.''

Another diplomatic memo, sent by French ambassador Georges Martres on 19 
January 1993, quotes a Rwandan informant as saying that thepresident of 
the country, Juvenal Habyarimana, had suggested "proceeding with a 
systematic genocide using, if necessary, the army''.

Habyarimana was killed on 6 April 1994 - the date that marks the start 
of the genocide - when his plane was shot down over Kigali.

Even though Rwanda was Belgian for most of the colonial era, France took 
a strong interest in the country after independence, seeing it as a 
bulwark against the powerful influences of English-speaking Uganda and 
Kenya.

In the 1980s, French involvement in Rwanda was limited to two dozen 
military advisers. But when the Uganda-based RPF began launching attacks 
against President Habyarimana's regime in 1990, France sent arms and 
troops. Critics claim French troops stood by and watched as Rwandan Hutu 
soldiers massacred Tutsi civilians.

France claims its military involvement was aimed at aiding Hutu-Tutsi 
power-sharing. Last year, a French investigating magistrate, Jean-Louis 
Bruguière alleged the RPF shot down Habyarimana's aircraft and issued 
arrest warrants against nine high-ranking officials in the current 
Rwandan government.

	###