Living in such a country is difficult. There are still many villages and towns with a mixed population. Tutsis and Hutus live side by side, pass each other on the roads, work in the same place. And, privately, they conspire. Such a climate of suspicion, tension, and fear is fertile breeding ground for the old, tribal African tradition of underground sects, secret associations, and mafias. Real and imaginary. Everyone secretly belongs to something—and is convinced that everyone else, the Others, also belongs to something. And, naturally, the thing they belong to is a hostile, enemy organization.
...
Rwanda’s twin country is its southern neighbor, Burundi. The two have a similar geography and social structure, and a common history going back centuries. Their destinies diverged only in 1959: in Rwanda, the peasant revolution of the Hutus was triumphant, and its leaders assumed power, whereas in Burundi the Tutsis maintained and even strengthened their rule, expanding the army and creating something akin to a feudal military dictatorship. Nevertheless, the preexisting, almost organic connections between the twin countries continued to function, and the massacre of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda evoked a retaliatory massacre of Hutus by Tutsis in Burundi, and vice versa.
In 1972, the Hutus from Burundi, emboldened by the example of their brothers in Rwanda, attempted to stage an insurrection, slaughtering, for starters, several thousand Tutsis, who, in response, killed more than a hundred thousand Hutus. It was not the fact of the massacre alone, for these occurred regularly in both countries, but its staggering proportions that created an uproar among the Hutus of Rwanda, who decided to react. They were further inspired by the fact that during the pogrom, several hundred thousand (a million, they sometimes say) Hutus from Burundi sought shelter in Rwanda, creating an enormous problem for this poor country already periodically beset by food shortages.
Taking advantage of this crisis (they are murdering our kinsmen in Burundi; we do not have the wherewithal to support a million immigrants), the commander in chief of the Rwandan military, General Juvénal Habyarimana, staged a coup d’état in 1973 and declared himself president. The coup exposed the profound rifts and conflicts within the Hutu community. The defeated president Grégoire Kayibana (who would later be starved to death) represented a moderately liberal Hutu clan from the country’s central region. The new ruler, on the other hand, hailed from a radical, chauvinistic branch inhabiting Rwanda’s northwest. (Habyarimana, one can say, is the Radovan Karadžić of the Rwandan Hutus.)
Habyarimana will rule for twenty-one years, until his death in 1994. Massively built, powerful, energetic, he focuses all his attention on erecting an iron-clad dictatorship. He institutes a one-party system. He names himself party leader. All the country’s citizens must be party members from the time of birth. The general now improves upon the all-too-simple scheme of enmity: Hutu versus Tutsi. He will enrich this formula by adding another dimension, a further division—those in power versus those in the opposition. If you are a loyal Tutsi, you can become the head of a hamlet or a village (although not a minister); if you criticize the authorities, however, you will end up behind bars or on the scaffold, even if you are 100 percent Hutu. The general was absolutely correct to proceed this way: Tutsis were not the only ones hostile to his dictatorship; there were also large numbers of Hutus who genuinely hated him and resisted him in every way they could. Finally, the conflict in Rwanda was not only a quarrel between castes, but also a violent clash between tyranny and democracy. In this sense the language of ethnic categories, and the mind-set it stems from, is terribly deceptive and misleading. It blurs and neglects the more profound truths—good versus evil, truth versus lies, democracy versus dictatorship—limiting one to a single, and indeed superficial and secondary dichotomy, a single contrast, a single set of oppositions: He is of infinite worth because he is Hutu; or he is worthless because he is Tutsi.
While strengthening the dictatorship was the first task to which Habyarimana devoted himself, gradual advances were also being made on a parallel front: the privatization of the state. With each passing year, Rwanda was increasingly becoming the private property of the clan from Gisenyi (the general’s small hometown), or, more strictly speaking, the property of the president’s wife, Agathe, and of her three brothers, Sagatawa, Seraphin, and Zed, as well as of a bevy of their cousins. Agathe and her brothers belonged to the clan called Akazu, and this name became the password that could open many doors within Rwanda’s mysterious labyrinths. Sagatawa, Seraphin, and Zed had luxurious palaces around Gisenyi, from which, together with their sister and her husband, the general, they ruled over the army, the police, the banks, and the bureaucracy of Rwanda. So, a little nation somewhere in the mountains of a distant continent, ruled by a greedy family of voracious, despotic petty chieftains. How did it come to acquire such tragic worldwide renown?
I have already mentioned how in 1959 tens of thousands of Tutsis fled the country to save their lives. For years after, thousands upon thousands of others followed. Their camps stretched along Rwanda’s borders in Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi, communities of unhappy and impatient exiles living with only one thought: to return home, to their (already mythic) herds. Life in such camps is listless, wretched, and hopeless. But there are people who are born in such places, reach adulthood, and still retain the desire to accomplish something, who try to fight for something. So it was with the Tutsis. Their main objective, of course, was returning to the lands of their ancestors. The ancestral ground is a sacred concept in Africa, a deeply desired and magnetic place, the source of life. But leaving a refugee camp is no simple matter; doing so is often forbidden by the local authorities. The one exception is Uganda, where a civil war has been raging for years, and disorder and confusion prevail. In the eighties, the young activist Yoweri Museveni starts a guerrilla war against the horrific regime of the psychopath and butcher Milton Obote. Museveni needs fighters. And he quickly finds them, because in addition to his Ugandan brethren, the young men from Rwandan refugee camps are volunteering: militant, battle-hungry Tutsis. Museveni gladly accepts them. They undergo military training in Uganda’s forests, under the direction of professional instructors, and many of them go on to finish officer-training schools abroad. In January 1986, Museveni enters Kampala at the head of his divisions and seizes power. Many of these divisions are commanded by, or include in their ranks, Tutsis born in the refugee camps—sons of the fathers who had been driven out of Rwanda.
For a long time no one notices that there has arisen in Uganda a well-trained and battle-tested army of Tutsi avengers, who think of one thing only: how to revenge themselves for the disgrace and injury inflicted upon their families. They hold secret meetings, create an organization called the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and make preparations to attack. During the night of September 30, 1990, they disappear from the Ugandan army barracks and from the border camps, and at dawn enter Rwandan territory. The authorities in Kigali are completely surprised. Surprised and terrified. Habyarimana has a weak and demoralized army, and the distance from the Ugandan border to Kigali is not much more than 150 kilometers: the guerrillas could march into Kigali in a day or two. That is what would certainly have happened, for Habyarimana’s troops offered no resistance, and maybe it would never have come to that hecatomb and carnage—the genocide of 1994—were it not for one telephone call. This was the call for help General Habyarimana made to the French president, François Mitterrand.
Mitterrand was under strong pressure from the French pro-African lobby. Whereas the majority of European capitals had radically broken with their colonial past, Paris had not. French society still includes a large, active, and well-organized army of people who made their careers in the colonial administration, spent their lives (quite well!) in the colonies, and now, as foreigners in Europe, feel useless and unwanted. At the same time, they believe deeply that France is not only a European country but also the community of all people partaking of French culture and language; that France, in other words, is also a global cultural and linguistic entity:
Francophonie
. This philosophy, translated into the simplistic language of geopolitics, holds that if someone, somewhere in the world, is attacking a French-speaking country, it is almost as if he were striking at France itself.
Moreover, the bureaucrats and generals of the pro-African lobby still suffered acutely from the Fashoda complex. A few words about this. In the nineteenth century, when European countries were dividing Africa among themselves, London and Paris were obsessed by a bizarre (although then quite understandable) notion: that their possessions on this continent be arranged in a straight line with territorial continuity. London wanted to have such a line stretching north to south, i.e., from Cairo to Cape Town, and Paris wanted it from west to east, i.e., from Dakar to Djibouti. Now, if we take a map of Africa and draw two perpendicular lines on it, they will cross in southern Sudan, in a place along the Nile where a small fishing village lies—Fashoda. Europe at the time was convinced that whoever first secured Fashoda would realize his expansionist ideal of an uninterrupted colonial empire. A race began between London and Paris. Both capitals sent military expeditions toward Fashoda. The French got there first. On July 10, 1898, covering on foot the difficult track from Dakar, Captain J. B. Marchand reached Fashoda and planted the French flag. Marchand’s division consisted of 150 Senegalese—brave and devoted men. Paris went wild with joy. The French were bursting with pride. Two months later, however, the British arrived in Fashoda. The commander of that expedition, Lord Kitchener, realized with astonishment that the village was already occupied. Ignoring this, he raised the British flag. London went wild with joy. The British were bursting with pride. A fever of nationalist euphoria engulfed both countries. At first, neither side wanted to back down. There were many indicators that World War I might erupt then and there, in 1898—over Fashoda. In the end (for this is a long story), the French had to withdraw. England was victorious. Among old French colonials, the Fashoda episode would remain a painful wound, and they would instantly go on the attack at the news that somewhere, anywhere, the
Anglophones
were making a move on something.
And so it was this time, when Paris learned that the English-speaking Tutsis, from the territories of English-speaking Uganda, had invaded French-speaking Rwanda, and thus violated the borders of
Francophonie
.
The divisions of the Rwandan Patriotic Front were already closing in on the capital, and Habyarimana’s government and clan were packing their bags, when airplanes deposited French paratroopers at the airport in Kigali. Officially, there were only two companies of them. But that was enough. The guerrillas wanted to fight Habyarimana’s regime, but they preferred not to risk war with France, against which they wouldn’t have stood a chance. They called off the offensive on Kigali but remained in Rwanda, permanently occupying its northeastern territories. The country was de facto partitioned, although both sides considered this to be a temporary, provisional situation. Habyarimana counted on being strong enough in time to expel the guerrillas, and they in turn believed the French would withdraw one day, and that the regime, together with the entire Akazu clan, would fall on the very next.
There is nothing worse than this state of being neither at war nor at peace. One group went on the attack hoping to enjoy the fruits of victory; but now this dream is dying—the offensive must be suspended. The mood is even darker among those who were attacked: yes, they survived, but they saw before their eyes the specter of defeat, realized that the end of their rule was possible. They now want to save themselves at all cost.
Three and a half years will pass from the 1990 fall offensive to the slaughter of April 1994. Violent disputes erupt within Rwanda’s government between those favoring compromise through the creation of a national ruling coalition (Habyarimana’s people plus the guerrillas) and members of the fanatical, despotic Akazu clan directed by Agathe and her brothers. Habyarimana himself hedges, hesitates, does not know what to do, and increasingly loses his influence over events. A radical branch of the Akazu clan seizes the upper hand, rapidly and resolutely. The clan has its ideologues: they are the intellectuals, scholars, professors of history and philosophy from the Rwandan university in Butare—Ferdinand Nahimana, Casimir Bizimungu, Leon Mugesira, and several others. It is they who formulate the ideology that will legitimize genocide as the only possible solution, the only means of ensuring Hutu survival. The theory developed by Nahimana and his colleagues holds that the Tutsis are simply a foreign race. They are Nilotic people, who arrived in Rwanda from somewhere along the Nile; conquered this land’s indigenous inhabitants, the Hutus; and started to exploit, enslave, and destroy them from within. The Tutsis seized everything that is valuable in Rwanda: land, cattle, markets, and, with time, the state itself. The Hutus were relegated to the role of a conquered people, condemned for centuries to live in poverty, hunger, and humiliation. But the Hutu nation must take back its identity and dignity, resume its place as an equal among the other nations of the world.
But what—Nahimana reflects, in dozens of speeches, articles, and brochures—does history teach us? Its experiences are tragic, and fill us with dispiriting pessimism. The entire history of Hutu-Tutsi relations is a dark passage of unceasing pogroms and massacres, of mutual extermination, forced migrations, furious hatred. There is not room enough in tiny Rwanda for two nations so foreign and mortally at odds with each other. Moreover, Rwanda’s population is growing at a dizzying rate. By mid-century, the country had two million inhabitants; now, fifty years later, close to nine million live here. So what is the way out of this cursed circle, what escape is there from this cruel fate, for which the Hutus themselves, as Mugesira admits self-critically, are responsible: “In 1959 we committed a fatal error, allowing the Tutsis to escape. We should have acted then: erased them from the surface of the earth.” The professor believes that now is the last opportunity to correct this mistake. The Tutsis must return to their real native land, somewhere along the Nile. “Let us send them back there,” he exhorts, “alive or dead.” That is what the scholars from Butare envision as the only answer, the final solution: someone must die, must permanently cease to exist.