U.S. v France
in
Rwanda-Gate:
The Forgotten (but NOT Gone) Scandal of
The Clinton Democrats in Africa
The Forgotten (but NOT Gone) Scandal of
The Clinton Democrats in Africa
translated from the French & adapted by CM/P
from
from
La France dans la Terreur Rwandaise
(Chapter 18)
(Chapter 18)
by
Charles Onana
Charles Onana
The Real Position of the US in the Peace
Negotiations over the Rwandan Crisis
While France was busying itself
finding a political or diplomatic solution to the conflict, the US, very
discretely supported a military solution, that is, the same expedient option
that Paul Kagame, as head of the ‘Tutsi rebellion’, had chosen. During the peace negations in Arusha,
the US even sent its military ‘advisors as observers’ to Tanzania. One of these military advisors, Lt.
Col. Anthony Marley, a long-time trainer of Tutsis in the U.S., represented the
State Dept. We will return to him to discuss his dealings with Paul Kagame in Uganda.
The military dimension would come
to be essential to the Americans as they began to use Uganda as a sort of
‘sub-contractor’ for furnishing necessary logistical support to the ‘Tutsi
rebellion’. This arrangement,
which was never officially recognized, appeared in the testimonies of both
African and Western observers, as well as in the decisions and in certain
reports by the American administration.
At the time of the first attack
by ‘Tutsi rebels’ against Rwanda, on 1 October 1990, it appeared that certain
of the invaders were serving in the Ugandan National Resistance Army, and among
these was their leader Paul Kagame, who received military training in the U.S. at
the behest of the Pentagon in one of its IMET programs (International Military
Education & Training).[1]
Remigius Kintu
According to Remigius Kintu,
leader of the Ugandan Opposition in exile in the U.S., Col. Tony Marley confirmed
to him that seven of the ten supposedly Ugandan soldiers trained in the U.S. at
that time were in fact Tutsi members of the RPF/RPA. And Paul Kagame was, himself, trained at the U.S. Command and
General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, while other officers in the
rebellion received their training in Louisiana, California, and Oregon.
Breaking up is hard to do.
During the early 1990s, U.S. support
for the Tutsis was being amped up: in the final year of George H.W. Bush’s
presidency, the White House asked Congress for a 33% increase in the Pentagon’s
IMET budget ($200,000 for the programs in 1992-93) for training officers in the
Ugandan Army. This increase might
have seemed odd, as Ugandan President Museveni was facing no threats from either
inside or outside his country. His
power had been consolidated, and he had absolutely nothing to fear from a totally
leader-less opposition. In fact,
the American financial aid was essentially meant for those elements of the
‘Tutsi rebellion’ in the Ugandan Army who were already preparing a war against
the Habyarimana regime they intended to topple. It is thus clear that the Americans, as early as the
beginning of the 1990s, had taken the side of supporting the destabilization of
the Habyarimana government from Uganda.
It was also at this time that the
U.S. began discretely suppling weapons to the ‘Tutsi rebels’ within the Ugandan
Army. In September 1992, less than
two years before the terrorist attack of April 1994, a scandal broke in the
American press over the illegal transfers of arms, and especially of missiles,
to Uganda. Some of the Ugandan
president’s inner circle were charged by the U.S. Justice Dept. with smuggling
around 400 TOW missiles and 34 launchers, as well as a number of Chinook CH-47C
helicopters, worth about $15 million.
400 TOWs and a few choppers = $15 mil.
The Ugandan president’s personal
secretary, Innocent Bisangwa-Mbuje, and the Ugandan Ambassador to the U.S.,
Stephen Kampipina Katenta-Apuli, were considered by US investigators as the
lynch pins in this operation.
Among others involved were a retired General in the Egyptian Air Force,
Mounir Fahmy Barsoum, a retired officer from the Egyptian Army, Col. Sultan
Abou Sharaf, a former-adviser to the Ugandan government and an American
national, Diane Lewis, and an American arms dealer based out of New York, Nezih
Kent. The U.S. Justice Dept. would
also name several accomplices, among whom were the Ugandan Minister of Defense,
General David Tinyefuza, the permanent Secretary of Defense, Ben Mbonye, and
two high-ranking Libyan officers.
In the month preceding the raid
by U.S. Customs Officials, a front company was created in Orlando, FL, under the
name The Poseidon Trade Group. It was behind this front company that
the players in this deal would get together, sometimes in Orlando, sometimes at
JFK in New York. The Egyptian
Colonel Sharaf, who represented the Ugandan authorities in this deal, had,
himself, created a shell-company in Geneva under the name Myrion
Holding, Ltd., to facilitate the smuggling
of the TOW missiles and the helicopters.
Their plan was to pass off the
TOWs and launchers as ‘construction materials’. The arms had to be transported by boat from Jacksonville,
FL, to Entebbe, Uganda, by way of Limassol, Cyprus. As for the helicopters, they would have to be transported to
Uganda by a Libyan company based in Malta. When the U.S. Justice Dept. found out about the involvement
of this Libyan business, they immediately set about looking into whether this
(even) indirect involvement of Libya in the deal would constitute a violation
of the UN Security Council’s 1991 arms embargo against Tripoli.
Worried about the effects his personal
secretary’s being arrested on American soil would have on his relations with
the U.S., the Ugandan head-of-State decided to put up a one million dollar bond
for his boy and financed it by mortgaging the $20 million in contraband merchandize
through the “Uganda House”, an institution within Uganda’s mission to the United
Nations in New York City. The
Justice Dept agreed to free Innocent Bisangwa-Mbuje and drop the charges
against him, but on one condition: that he testify against the Ugandan
president, Yoweri Museveni. Then things
got real weird real fast.
In reality, the American customs
officials considered Museveni’s personal secretary to be the key player in this
missile smuggling deal and figured he was pretty well informed on the arms
traffic between Uganda and the U.S.
This is why the Justice Dept. was interested in cooperating with him
and, in the end, getting specific information from him on the exact position
held by the Ugandan head-of-State in this whole business.
From the evidence gathered by the
investigators, the case seemed much more volatile than it had in the
beginning. The Dept. of Justice
was threatening to charge President Museveni personally.
DoJ v King M7
The entire plan was about to blow
up after certain important members of the Bush administration found out that
Museveni was on the verge of becoming the principal target of the US Justice
Department’s investigation and that it would be hard for the CIA and the DIA to
pretend not to know about the intended final use of these weapons.
Faced with this troubling situation,
backfires were immediately lit.
The Ugandan government told U.S. Justice that all these weapons were meant
for the war against poaching and gorilla trafficking in the Great Lakes region. The lie was huge, but the judges, under
great political pressure, began to back off. One detail got by the American investigators: the kind of juice that Museveni’s
allies had within the Washington power-establishment. As the Justice Dept. gradually tightened the screws on
Innocent Bisangwa-Mbuje, President Museveni’s personal amanuensis, the U.S. State
Dept. and its lawyers intensified their lobbying efforts in the courts.
Victory in this match with the
U.S. Dept. of Justice was about to be declared for Museveni and the ‘Tutsi
rebellion.’
With the ascension of Bill Clinton
to the U.S. presidency, Yoweri Museveni became the central figure in America’s
foreign policy for Africa. So it
became mandatory to avoid bothering this corrupt autocrat the U.S. planned to
depend on as leader of its political offensive in Central Africa.
After the new POTUS had been
sworn in, the pressures from the CIA and the State Dept. were redoubled to
quash the prosecutions of Museveni’s private secretary and all the
American nationals and Egyptian officers involved in this arms trafficking
case.
Sisters in Neo-Colonialism
The whole affair took a hard
political turn because of certain influential members of the Clinton
administration who were strong supporters of the Ugandan president: people like Madeleine Albright and
Susan Rice. A real arm-wresting
match broke out between the Justice and State Departments.
First, Federal Judge Kendall
Sharp announced that all charges against the principals in the Orlando Arms
Trafficking case were being dropped due to “insufficient evidence.” The Federal Prosecutor, Bob Genzman,
who had opened the case to begin with, fought back: “We totally disagree with the court on the facts and the law
in this matter.” He added: “Unfortunately, given the court did not
submit this case to a jury, the Public Prosecutor cannot file an appeal.”
But justice actually reared its head after the file, which was being handled by the CIA and the Pentagon, was hacked
into. Then the case of the
Orlando Arms Traffickers took a less judicial turn. Because it seems that certain of the missiles intended for
the Ugandan military were, in fact, to be used in the war against the Sudanese
government of President Omar al-Bashir.
At this time, Washington was looking to get rid of Sudan’s
head-of-State, Omar al-Bashir, whom they accused of supporting international terrorism and,
especially, radical Palestinian movements.[2]
Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir
This sudden halting of the
investigation into missile smuggling by the Ugandan Army for the benefit of the
‘Tutsi rebellion’ in Rwanda, and intent on the destabilization of those African regimes considered
‘undesirable’, is stark testimony to the sort of double-dealing the U.S. was up
to, as well as to the significant influence of certain secret interests. It was just such interests that would
guide American involvement in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region, generally, for
years to come.
Sirs Eric Lubbock and Douglas Hurd
In light of these discoveries, a
former British MP in charge of Human Rights, Eric Lubbock, decided to go to
Douglas Hurd, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs,
to complain about the U.S.’s secret activities in Africa and the dangerous
political situation currently existing in Uganda: “We have received disturbing reports about recent
developments in Uganda, where, on 6 August 1992, the Ugandan president issued a
decree banning political parties, against the advice of Parliament and contrary
to current norms in many African countries.”
Mr. Lubbock added: “If it is revealed that President
Museveni tried to come by those missiles on the down-low, in violation of U.S.
laws, it would not be appropriate for us to continue giving assistance of any
kind to Uganda, especially in the form of military aid and training, and this
is how it should continue until the president resigns and free and fair
elections can be held in the country.”
Douglas Hurd, visibly ill at
ease, replied to the British MP :
“Political parties were not banned in Uganda, but their activities have been curtailed for some time. A
domestic debate has gone on about whether a government that must answer for its
actions should have to return to a system of multi-party democracy.”
Douglas Hurd’s lame arguments in
defense of the Museveni regime are not at all convincing. Even the U.S. Ambassador in Kampala,
Michael Southwick, was quite direct that “Museveni’s dictatorial practices make
him a dangerous man” in the sub-region, a statement that would lead the Ugandan
president to characterized the American’s words as impolite and totally out of
place.
With all of that, the U.S. continued to play its double game, officially supporting Peace on one hand,
while secretly sending military aid and training to the ‘Tutsi rebels’ on the
other. To better understand this
attitude, it is necessary to look at the investments that, in certain sectors
of the American economy, are valorized by Kagame and his ‘rebels’.
The investigative journalist and
former NSA analyst, Wayne Madsen, confirms that the destabilization of the
Great Lakes region has been part of a longstanding project at the Pentagon and
White House and that, in this perspective, the involvement of the U.S. in the
internal affairs of Rwanda has been on-going for some years: “The destabilization of Central Africa,
and of Rwanda in particular, really began in 1994. The Hutu-dominated government of Rwanda[3]
was an obstruction to Washington’s plans.
However, the involvement of the Intelligence Services in Rwanda’s
internal conflicts dates to before the Clinton administration. This interference actually arose during
the presidency of George H.W. Bush.”[4]
Wayne Madsen--like Snowden
but with REAL Information
We’ve been able to verify Wayne
Madsen’s statements by consulting different confidential reports from the Bush (1) administration showing that beside the hidden military support to the ‘Tutsi
rebellion’, the U.S. carried on certain activities on the diplomatic level that
demonstrated they were not in favor of keeping President Habyarimana in power
even if they showed a certain official moderation toward his regime.[5]
It was the Rwandan ambassador in
Washington, Aloys Uwimana, who brought us what he had learned over time: “I came to Washington on 1 October 1997
from Tokyo, where I had been the ambassador since 1984. The Rwandan case blew up with the
famous conference of Rwandan refugees in Washington (August 1988), organized by
Roger Winter[6], then
director of the American Committee for Refugees. A fierce defender of the RPF and a friend of Museveni’s,
Winter would support the RPF to the end.
Roger Winter, the Christian Scourge of Muslim Sudan
"This conference produced a
declaration of war against the Rwandan government. In fact, one of its resolutions called for Rwandan refugees
to be returned to the country by force if the Rwandan government would not
permit them to return freely and unconditionally. President Habyarimana must have realized the danger here because
he instructed me to approach the Tutsi leaders and to invite them to take part
in all the events organized by the Embassy, like the meetings of MRND cells
abroad or diplomatic receptions . . .
“This is how I met certain
leaders like Alexandre Kimenyi, editor-in-chief of Impuruza, a magazine of unprecedented virulence against the
Hutu, calling them ‘ants’, or one George Rubagumya, who traveled regularly
between the U.S. and Uganda.”
The Rwandan ambassador goes on:
"For the American government under Bush senior,
the inescapable solution was the adoption
of a multi-party political system and economic reforms, especially of the [neo-Liberal] ‘structural
adjustment’-kind. For Bush, this
would deprive the RPF of any argument. Through the State Dept., the U.S. president applied a great deal of pressure on the
Rwandan government in this direction, and when it carried out these policies, President Bush sent a personal, hand-written
message to his Rwandan counterpart congratulating
him and assuring Habyarimana of the full support of his government.
"I got along very well with the Under-Secretary
of State for African Affairs, Herman
Cohen, to the point that we were able to work smoothly together throughout this
difficult period. However, at the beginning of the
crisis, I told Herman Cohen that this war
was not aimed at Rwanda, in which the U.S. has always claimed loud and clear that
it has no strategic interest.
"When I told him this war was aimed at
Congo-Zaire, he said I was crazy.
"In the opinion of many observers, Habyarimana’s
principal misfortune was his not allowing
Rwanda to serve as a rear-base from which to hunt Mobutu, whom the US had already cut loose. I don’t have any formal evidence for this. But if the attitude of the Bush government was rather reserved on the
matter, the Pentagon was always very pro- RPF.
"Clinton’s coming to power was going to change the
whole game: with Madeleine Albright as
Secretary of State, George Moose at African Affairs and Prudence Bushnell at the Central African desk that handled
Rwanda. I remember two incidents
that, in looking back, might have been
quite revealing. One day, George
Moose, Under-Secretary of State for
African Affairs, invited my Burundian colleague and me to lunch. In the course of the meal, he asked us a question: ‘In your opinion, what head-of-State is
the leader of the Great Lakes region of
Africa?’ We started right off by
elimination.
George Moose and Prudence Bushnell
"We eliminated Mobutu, who had become the bête
noire for the Americans; Museveni was implicated in the invasion of
Rwanda; the Burundian president [i.e., Melchior Ndadaye, murdered by Burundian Tutsi army officers in October 1993] was too young
and lacked experience; and, finally, Tanzania was still holding a grudge
against Habyarimana for what, according
to them, had happened to President Kayibanda. So that only left
Habyarimana. Sometime later, the
American government sent out a military mission
that criss-crossed the capitals of the sub-region, Kinshasa, Kampala, Kigali, Bujumbura, and Dar-es-Salaam. It was during this mission that the
decision to assassinate Habyarimana was
finalized.[7]"
Burundian president Melchoir Ndadaye--
first of three duly-elected Hutu heads-of-State
to be murdered by 'Tutsi rebels' between
October 1993 and April 1994
Let’s stop and take a closer look
at two points in this testimony:
the pressuring of Habyarimana and plans for his elimination.
Ø
Pressures on Habyarimana
State Dept's African-hand Herman Cohen
We dug up a confidential US State
Dept. document dated 15 July 1992 that discusses with great specificity these
pressures. Examining Washington’s
discrete methods, the document was written by Robert Pringle and addressed
directly to Herman Cohen:
"We suggest calling the Belgian Foreign Minister
and the French Director of African
Affairs, [Paul] Dijoud to exhort them to keep up the pressure on Habyarimana to
apply the Rwanda-RPF [Arusha] accords and
give support to the machinery of peace keeping, (. . .)
"The
points concerning Dijoud:
Elysées' Africa-hand Paul Dijoud
"We are particularly concerned that the Rwandan
political leaders, especially President
Habyarimana, are rejecting what has been accomplished by their negotiators because they feel they are conceding too much
to the RPF. We think if you call Habyarimana and urge him to support the
application of the Accords, it would help greatly. We look forward to more actions in this vein by getting
another important figure involved, either
with a phone call to Habyarimana or a personal letter to the Rwandan president.
"If the question of US support comes up, we
expect to keep up our current level of technical
assistance throughout the peace process.
"The
points concerning Claes:
Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes
"Western diplomatic efforts toward encouraging
peace in Rwanda seem to have been paying
off more quickly than expected.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the agreement
is fragile and that the peace process is going to need much greater effort from
Rwanda’s foreign friends. We are particularly concerned that
Rwandan political leaders, especially
President Habyarimana, are rejecting what has been accomplished by their negotiators, because they have given up too
much to the RPF. We think it would
be useful if you could bring this subject
up with Habyarimana and strongly urge him to support
the implementation of the agreement.
"We look forward to acting in the same fashion
by getting another important figure
involved, either by telephoning Habyarimana or by sending a personal letter from
this personality to the Rwandan
president. We hope you will be in
a position to bring some financial
support to the Observers Group.
(If it comes up) while we expect to maintain
our current level of technical assistance, it will be difficult for us to do
more because of reductions in the budget
for security aid to Africa. (. . . )
"The Belgians came to us to let us know that
Habyarimana would be in Brussels some
time during the next week. We think
he also intends to go to Paris.
According to the discussions we
have had with the Belgian representative in Arusha, Belgium would be amenable to a contribution of as much as $1
million to support a mission of observers for the
peace process. Without reporting
this payment, it would be good to ask Claes if he thinks Belgium might give a financial contribution to the peace
process.
"The French also expressed a desire to make a
financial contribution. While we should be able to put together $300-$500,000 to
support the peace process in Rwanda, you
must not make any promises before the
allocation of funds has been decided.
A demand for funds on this matter
has already been differed by the U.S. Dept. of Defense pending the outcome of the
Arusha negotiations. We are going
to try again to put these funds together, but nothing is certain for the
moment. . . .”
It is apparent that the U.S.
carries on its lobbying through political personalities and French and Belgian
diplomats. When Herman Cohen went
to meet with Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes and French government
representative Paul Dijoud on the matter of Rwanda, it was above all meant to
pass Washington’s message on to President Habyarimana. It is clear from this cynical action
that the US was banking on Habyarimana’s bending over for the Arusha Accords,
even though they were fully aware that he found the terms totally unacceptable
because they disproportionately favored the RPF.
Along with these various
pressures being applied to Habyarimana, the CIA developed a very specific set
of questions about the working relations of force that prevailed on the ground
and especially on the role and the interests of France in the region. These questions also pertained to
identifying important figures within the RPF.
So it is surprising that all
these facts establishing the real and continuing U.S. interest in Rwanda and
the Great Lakes Region did not stir more attention from the French parliament.
Indeed, it seems clear that the
United States followed the crisis in Rwanda very closely, as is further shown
by different official reports and numerous confidential notes from the
Pentagon, the State Dept., and the CIA.
There are even diplomatic cables containing information of capital
importance on the analyses and observations of American diplomats present on
the ground, as many from the Bush as from the Clinton administrations.
Bruno Delaye and Jean-Marc Sablière
Team France
In 1992, for example, a
confidential note from the U.S. ambassador in Paris indicates very clearly that
Herman Cohen, during his visit to France in December, had a discussion about
Rwanda with President François Mitterrand, his advisor Bruno Delaye, and his
Director of African Affairs Jean-Marc de Sablière. The note points out, among other things, that President
Habyarimana was very nervous and seemed to have 'too many problems,' that he
wrote to President Mitterrand asking for a meeting, that he said he was
prepared to accept 90% of the RPF/RPA demands, but that he could not accept the
political marginalization of his own party the MRND[D]. The note specifies that according to
Bruno Delaye, President Habyarimana believed that a long period of transition
would help greatly to stabilize his country. For that it would be necessary to hold the first free
elections at the regional level to assure the stability of the regions. According to the same note, Mr.
Sablière felt that the Quai d’Orsay was not convinced that the RPF/RPA had
completely rejected the military solution.
Herman Cohen stressed that ‘the
rebellion’ was able to capture a large part of the country during the fighting
in the summer of 1992 and was very much convinced that power is gained through
war, but that, according to Washington, the RPF knew they were in no position
to govern Rwanda because they represented all too small a minority of the
population.
Jeffrey Davidow (State) and Janet Leader (U.S. Embassy)
Team America
Another document, another
analysis: In a confidential
diplomatic cable from June 1992, we learn that Deputy Asst. Secretary of State
Jeffrey Davidow on 5 June sat with members of the ‘Tutsi rebellion’ before their
meeting with representatives of the Rwandan government in Paris.
Pasteur Bizimungu Frank Mugambage Patrick Mazimhaka
Team RPF
At this meeting, which involved
RPF officers Pasteur Bizimungu, Patrick Mazimhaka, Frank Mugambage, and the
number-two at the U.S. embassy in Rwanda, Joyce Leader, the discussion involved giving advice
to the representatives of the RPF before their discussions with the Rwandan government officials. It was Mr. Davidow’s
suggestion that the RPF not refuse the idea of letting the French mediators take part in the negotiations.
With a cynicism so often
characteristic of diplomacy, Jeffrey Davidow pointed out that “a mediator
should not so much be impartial as powerful. Because the weight France puts behind Habyarimana is an
important lever that no other mediator has. France will be able to furnish or mobilize resources after
an agreement is reached.”
The American diplomat also asked
if the RPF had considered the political overture being made by Habyarimana as
an opportunity to participate, as a political party, in the Rwandan political
process. Pasteur Bizimungu said
the RPF would agree to participating in the political system, but did not know
just how they could put down their weapons before the institutions and
mechanisms that keep Habyarimana in power were dismantled.
This discussion shows the several
kinds of political and military pressure that were being exerted on Habyarimana
to remove him from power and, especially, the RPF/RPA's taking a good deal of
advice from their American coaches.
The military offensive of 9
February 1993 launched by the RPF/RPA, to the great surprise of one and all, and creating thousands of dead and displaced inside Rwanda, was represented by
the rebels as “legitimate.” At the
time, this attack created limited indignation and the media questioned certain European public figures on the silence of the American
authorities. This silence was understandable considering the abundance of information on this brutal raid available to
the Americans. Here is the
evidence.
A seven-page confidential report
put together by the U.S. State Department in February 1993, just after the attack,
clearly notes:
"The RPF attack in the North of Rwanda with its
accompanying atrocities indicates that the rebels have no intentions of sharing
power with President Habyarimana. On the contrary,
the RPF in Tutsi hands is looking to control the government in Kigali and to force
Habyarimana to step down. (. . .)
"While the RPF has not as of yet taken any of
the principal towns in the country, it currently
dominates a third of the nation's territory and holds the military initiative.
(. . .) The attacks by the RPF over the past two weeks have led to the
displacement of more than 600,000
persons. (. . .)
"Considering the persistence of their attacks
and their official declarations that they
expect the fighting to go on for months, it seems that the RPF is trying to
gain more than just a simple advantage in
the Arusha negotiations.
Rather than wanting to share power
with Habyarimana, the rebels seem to be looking for his quick
capitulation. Paradoxically, on 9 January, the RPF obtained
major political concessions from the Habyarimana
regime in the protocols of the Arusha talks. By teaming up with the Opposition parties, the RPF has succeeded
in isolating Habyarimana’s party, the MRND[D][8],
along with the extremists of the CDR.
"The RPF are also hoping the French will leave
off supporting Habyarimana. The leaders of the RPF probably believed that
France could not continue much longer to support
a regime that is so often criticized for its violations of Human Rights. The recent
attacks by the RPF show their military strength. This movement has demonstrated such intransigence that Habyarimana and the MRND[D], more than ever,
dread making any arrangement with it.
The S.F. Milkman and The Rwandan General
"In October 1993, President
Habyarimana visited the U.S. to find out the true intentions of the Clinton
administration. During his meeting
with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Habyarimana thanked the U.S. for
its support in the Rwandan peace process and for its participation in the
Arusha negotiations. Secretary
Christopher, in turn, congratulated the Rwandan president for instituting
Democracy in his country and for his political courage in bringing about the
signing of the Peace Accords with the RPF/A.
The American Secretary of State
also asked Habyarimana for more details on the new multi-party system
instituted in his country. The
Rwandan Chief-of-State said that Rwanda was definitively finished with the
single-party system now that the constitution had been revised and a dozen
new political parties had come onto the scene. He also asked the US to get more involved in consolidating
the Rwandan peace by sending in UN Peacekeepers. Christopher wanted to know what countries had already
pledged troops to Rwanda, to which Habyarimana responded that Belgium, Morocco,
Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt would all be amenable to doing so.
Habyarimana added that he had
also asked the UN Secretary General to approach France on this issue, but that
Boutros Boutros-Ghali had expressed serious reticence at involving the French
because of the strong opposition by the RPF/A to the presence of any French troops
in Rwanda. Habyarimana said he
would also accept a Belgian participation in the UN contingent.
The Rwandan president reaffirmed
his good will by indicating that once the UN force was in place, five
Ministerial portfolios would be handed over to the RPF; that would make up,
according to him, a solid base for a strong national consensus. Under these conditions, the new
government would have the responsibility of maintaining the security and stability
of the country for the twenty-two months that were expected to lead up to
holding free and democratic presidential elections.
In hopes of pulling together all
the conditions that would lead to this process, Habyarimana asked for help from
the International Community and for financial aid from the IMF and the World
Bank to save his country from succumbing to the poverty and the economic crisis
brought on by the war.
What Habyarimana did not know at
this time was that his ambitions for peace and stability for the region were
not shared by his American interlocutors.
Quite the contrary, the Clinton administration had already decided to go
all in for a military victory by the RPF/A and was counting on just that prospect to
size up the Rwandan president’s state of mind. This meeting would not be fruitful for Habyarimana. It allowed the American authorities to
have confirmation of the fact that the Rwandan president was prepared to grant
all sorts of concessions to the RPF/A in following his logic of peace and
democratization.
If the Rwandan Chief of State was
ready for an electoral rather than a military confrontation with the RPF/A,
President Clinton and his team already knew that the RPF/A would very soon
remove Habyarimana from power permanently.
In light of this information and
of Washington’s “sponsorship” of the RPF/A, one might wonder just what was
ultimately served by the Arusha Accords.
President Habyarimana was asked to democratize his country, and he did. He was asked to negotiate with the
‘Tutsi rebels’, and he did. He was
asked to make concessions to the rebels, and he did so to such an extent that
even the Americans said he had gone too far! So much so that the rebels did not hesitate to violate every
cease-fire. In reality, the
International Community tried in all kinds of ways to pull the Rwandan
president out of this losing political game.
The U.S. ambassador to Rwanda, Mr.
Robert Flatten, recapitulated very well the ambiguities of the International
Community’s relations with Habyarimana:
“I think there came a moment when Habyarimana figured that he was being
rejected, he was being asked to leave the negotiating table, as he was no
longer taking part, and he knew not how, as president of the Republic, he could
return to the negotiations, to re-involve himself in the negotiations.”[9]
Ø
The project for the elimination of Habyarimana
On this most important issue,
there are still Americans furnishing relevant clues. We found a report from 13 January 1994, classified SECRET,
from the CIA to the White House and State Dept.—this is more than two months
before the attack. It is entitled
“Comments by a high official of the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the RPF’s
strategy in the negotiations for the Integration of Forces.”
In this report it says: “The military strategy regularly
adopted by the Rwandan Patriotic Army was to force the Rwandan government to
come to the negotiating table by weakening their authority to govern in the
country while at the same time mobilizing the forces necessary to overthrow the
regime of President Juvénal Habyarimana in case of failure in the
negotiations. The RPA thinks this
strategy has been effective until now and that no change is anticipated for the
moment.”
The same report adds: “During the ceasefire, the RPA
succeeded in solving several problems:
seeing to the overall reinforcement of its troop-presence at the front;
taking advantage of the ceasefires to train and equip its men while building up
sufficient stocks of arms and ammunition, medicine and food and supporting its
troops in the field. During the
resumption of hostilities, the RPA continued the politicization of its military
by actively appealing for contributions to buy food from its supporters in
Zaire, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, and in Europe and the US. These appeals for donations allowed the
RPA to gather several thousand American dollars that were specifically
allocated for buying weapons on the International market. In the field, the RPA continues to
supply itself with food in part by capturing it from the Rwandan Army (FAR) and
the rest from the public markets along the Rwandan-Ugandan border.”
The source of the information in
this report is considered to have “good access”, which in the argot of the
intelligence community means that it came from someone who was well inserted or
already well established within the RPF/A.
The
attitude of the US at the time of the deployment of the International
Observers Mission along the Rwandan-Ugandan border
"The First Victim of War is UN Neutrality" (Old African saying)
The whole mission was set up so
this surveillance would be outrageously cooperative with the RPF/A. Considering that the porousness of the
Ugandan border was allowing arms to be easily supplied to the RPA, the UN
Security Council adopted on 22 June 1993 Resolution 846 authorizing the
deployment of UNOMUR (United Nations Observers Mission in Uganda and
Rwanda—MONUOR in French), that is, stationing observers along the border
between the two countries. Before
the vote on this Resolution, the RPF wrote to the President of the Security
Council to oppose any form of monitoring on the part of the UN observers. This objection was automatically
seconded by the U.S., which would express its hostility to the observer mission out of fear it would expose Uganda’s support for ‘the rebellion’.
Jean-Bernard Mérimée covering all the Exits
France’s representative to the
UN, Jean-Bernard Mérimée, in a presentation before the French National
Assembly, spoke of “the problems encountered by the observation mission, which
needed materiel means, especially helicopters, while the U.S. was making things
very difficult, claiming, something we all understand, financial reasons for
not supplying the helicopters in sufficient numbers.”[10] Nevertheless, 81 observers, whose
effect would be purely symbolic, were posted to nearly 150 km along the border.
In February 1993, after the RPF/A
offensive, State Dept. envoy Lt. Col. Anthony Marley, dispatched into the field to
supervise certain secret activities alongside the RPA, had to meet with Paul
Kagame in the utmost discretion. A
face-to-face on the Ugandan border had to be arranged very quickly. The Ugandan Defense Minister, Amama
Mbabazi, took charge of this and asked a Ugandan officer to contact Paul Kagame
directly. The US ambassador also
sent a letter to President Museveni to assure him that Kagame had gotten the
message. The Americans knew that
the RPF/A were at the point of taking power in Rwanda, so the meeting with Tony
Marley was decisive.
Ugandan Minister Amama Mbabazi and Lt. Col. Tony Marley (rt of Susan Rice)
On 25 February at 8:30 am, the
mission chief at the U.S. embassy in Kampala, Ellen Shippy, and Lt. Col.
Marley, jammed into an embassy vehicle and headed out for Gatuna (north of
Rwanda) on the Ugandan border, where they were going to meet with the RPA. The rebels sent an escort to accompany
their American guests to Mulindi, the headquarters of the rebellion.
Ellen Shippy with Lt. Col. Marley (rt of Susan 'ouch' Rice)
The talks were finally conducted
in Rwandan territory controlled by the RPA. In the course of this meeting, Kagame deplored the
reinforcement of the French military presence in Rwanda and the support France
was giving to the Habyarimana regime.
He pointed out that the RPA troops were not currently fighting the French, though if that became necessary, the RPF/A forces would be able to face down
the French. He spoke out
especially against the silence and “the apparent inaction of the U.S.” toward
the Habyarimana regime, which, Kagame felt, did not respect the Arusha Accords.
On the matter of all those
displaced by the war, Kagame told Col. Marley that between 7,000 and 10,000
people, fleeing combat in the zone controlled by the RPF/A, had crossed the
border into Uganda seeking refuge.
Kagame denied, however, all allegations that the Ugandan army was
supporting the ‘Tutsi rebels’ in their combat. Ugandan military vehicles seen openly assisting the
soldiers of the RPF/A were, he said, the vehicles of theirs sympathizers and
their civilian contributors. One
of these vehicles that broke down during the fighting had to be abandoned with
its license plates still on it.
But it was decided that from then on the license plates would be removed
from those vehicles donated to the RPF/A so as “not to embarrass their
donnors.” He denied that the RPF/A
was responsible for Human Rights violations or crimes against civilians.
Out of this long meeting came an
agreement for the visit of an American delegation to the Rwandan tea factory
that had recently come under the control of the rebels and was already
generating substantial interest among U.S. investors, and the assurance that
Kagame’s messages would be transmitted to Washington.
The
difficulty the US had with using the term ‘genocide’ to describe the mass
killings of 1994.
To get out from under the biased
and fragmented vision of the Rwandan tragedy that has prevailed for the last
twenty years, we have tried to enrich the discussion by bringing in pieces of
evidence that have been overlooked until now. We want to help those who do not as yet know what is really
at stake in this case to get out of the stale French polemics of “Françafrique” into which they have for so long been locked.
Contrary to appearances, the
appropriate discussion of the “genocide” has missed points essential to any
understanding of this case, like the geopolitical battle between France and the
U.S. in this region of Africa.
Ironically, use of the term
“genocide” was avoided for a long time by the American authorities. Why? Not only would their support for the ‘Tutsi rebels’ have
made the Americans the natural defenders of a “Tutsi genocide”, but the U.S.
government’s quickly taking a position on the “genocide” would have answered
this question and closed down all debate on the term.
The hesitations and great
reservations of the Clinton administration and of the President, himself, on
the use of the term “genocide” prove that from the U.S. government's standpoint, the analysis of
the facts is far from obvious.
Since the attack of 6 April 1994, the American authorities, though perfectly
informed on the situation, refrained from condemning the “genocide”. It is not until much later that the
term entered the official discussion.
The late Christine Shelley--
dead at 54 of cancer in 2006
(perhaps Bad Faith is carcenogenic--just saying)
So on 29 April 1994, a
spokesperson for the U.S. State Dept., Christine Shelley, explained, “the term
genocide retains a very specific legal significance. Though it is not strictly determined in a legal
fashion. Other factors come into
play here.” Visibly disturbed, she
seems to hold an idea that is contrary to Reality.
The next day, 30 April 1994,
after a seemingly endless eight-hour discussion, the Security Council voted for
a resolution that condemned “the massacres” in Rwanda, but no one in this
sky-box of the well-informed spoke of genocide. It must be said that the reports sent to the Security
Council by the UN representative posted to Rwanda were numerous and very well
documented. Moreover, for months
and even more after 6 April, the White House was closely following what was
happening on the ground thanks to multiple official sources from the Pentagon,
the State Dept. and various coded satellite link-ups that transmitted live
images directly to President Clinton’s office.
At the United Nations, U.S. representative Madeleine Albright was covering their tracks. On 5 May she said: “What’s happening in Rwanda was we were
in the process of thinking that a small UN force could handle the situation on
the ground and suddenly a plane carrying two presidents is shot down and that
started an avalanche.” The “Tutsi
genocide” is still not mentioned by this prominent personality who has been especially committed to the cause of the RPF and is the principal supporter of
Paul Kagame within the U.S. government.
On 11 May, at a State Dept. press
briefing, a reporter asked spokesperson Mike McCurry if, since 6 April 1994,
certain criminal acts committed in Rwanda would constitute “a genocide.” McCurry responded, “I don’t know if
there is a legal qualification on this subject.” Another high official, himself also very well informed, a
month after the massacres began, still did not know how to qualify what was
happening in Rwanda.
Mike McCurry--another genocide denier?
On 25 May, during another of Mr.
McCurry’s press briefings, the question arose again. And again he responded, “I have to admit that I do not know
the answer. I do know that the
stakes are being seriously considered.
I think there is a strong inclination in the Department here to see if
what is happening in Rwanda constitutes acts of genocide.”
On 10 June 1994, in the midst of
the war and the massacres, Christine Shelley is on the spot for another press
briefing. Again a question about
the “genocide”: “How many acts of genocide does it take to make a genocide?” Her first response is neat: “That's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer.” Another reporter was a little pissed
off and punched up the same question: “Have you been instructed not to use the
term genocide?” Her reply shot
back: “I’ve been instructed to use
the best terms. There are
expressions that we use, and we try to be precise in our use of them. However, I have not been told to use or
not use this or that thing. But I
have definitions. I have a phraseology that has been carefully examined, and we
are able to use it according to the specific situation we have to deal with and
according to the actions that we have to describe.”
The 10 June 1994 edition of the
New York Times talks about how the Clinton administration has ordered its
spokespersons not to acknowledge the term in front of the cameras: “Don’t use the term genocide, instead
use an interrogatory form or better yet speak of possible exactions.” This instruction is both logical and
normal if the Clinton administration wants to avoid a fundamental discussion
being opened up and having its secret relations with the Rwandan ‘Tutsi rebels’
brought into the light of day.
Bill Clinton, himself, knowing better than anyone else what is really
going on in Rwanda never wanted to use the term “genocide,” always choosing the
term “massacres,” which seemed to correspond better with the reality and his
intimate awareness of the file.
When he went on his African Tour
in 1998, President Clinton did not even plan a stop in Rwanda. To go and hang out with the Rwandan
authorities to commemorate the victims of the “Tutsi genocide” was obviously
not one of his things-to-do list. It was
at the insistence of his Special Envoy to the region, Cynthia McKinney, that he
wound up including Kigali on his itinerary. However, he made his remarks from the airport, where he only
stayed for a few hours.
The Hon. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia
(nearly all her good deeds have been punished)
Several days after this
lightning-visit, Paul Kagame thanked Congresswoman McKinney for talking
President Clinton into stopping off in Rwanda: “On 25 March, 1998, Rwanda was honored by the visit of H.E.
William Jefferson CLINTON, President of the United States of America. It was a historical moment for our
nation. To the people of Rwanda,
President Clinton’s visit was unequalled as a morale booster at this period
when we are struggling with the after-effects of genocide. Fully aware of what it took for Rwanda
to be included on the itinerary of President Clinton’s visit to Africa, I want
to thank you for the very important role you played to make it possible.”[11]
Leader of the Jews of Africa (i.e., Tutsi)
meets with his Israeli homologue
On 12 April 1999, five years
after the Rwandan tragedy, the White House organized a dinner for “The
Millennial Evening” dedicated to The Holocaust, with a theme of: “The perils of indifference, lessons
from a violent century.” On this
particular evening, many members of the Jewish community, among them Elie
Weisel, took the podium to descry the crimes of the Second World War. In attendance that evening was a Rwandan
Tutsi woman. Her name,
Nyiramilimo. She is a doctor and a
survivor of the events of 1994 in Rwanda.
This woman, who contributed a great deal in the way of hateful untruths
to the book of The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch[12],
had come to sell her version of the genocide to Bill Clinton. In her presentation she stressed that
it was just good fortune that had permitted her to survive.
Georges Rutaganda--the Real Hero of
Hotel Rwanda, villainized in the Hollywood story
by the craven RPF-collaborator
Paul Rusesabagina.
This was her most shameful lie, covering up a very disturbing reality:
In fact, this Tutsi woman owed her life to Georges Rutaganda,
former-vice president of the Interahamwe—the 'Extremist Hutu militia' [sic[13]]—close
to the party in power [the MRND{D}] in 1994, arrested in 1995, sentenced by the ICTR to
life in prison for genocide and crimes against Humanity, where he died in 2010[14].
Fueled by hatred for her Hutu
concitizens, this lady berated the dignitaries at the front tables of this clambake with how the survivors and their tormentors could never live in
the same country, even though they might all be Rwandans. While one might be a bit put off by the
virulence of her discourse at this most reverent soirée, Bill Clinton, always
courteous, emphasized that this kind of tragedy must be prevented and that the
“Rwandan massacres are all the more distressing because they were committed
with rudimentary weapons.” If
President Clinton was alluding here to the machetes used by the ‘Extremist
Hutu’, he failed to mention the more sophisticated and heavier weapons
furnished to the ‘Tutsi rebels’, in part, by the U.S. and Uganda. Whatever the case may be, given his
strong understanding of the Rwandan dossier, Clinton in 1999, five years after
the facts, was still refusing to use the term “genocide.”
In his 2004 autobiography, President
Clinton returned to the events in Rwanda and expressed his regrets:
“With a few thousand soldiers and the help of our allies, even taking into consideration the time it would have required to deploy them, we could have saved lives. Not to have tried to put a stop to the tragedies in Rwanda remains one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”[15]
Even ten years after the events, Bill Clinton could still not bring himself to describe the massacres in Rwanda as “genocide.”
This is RWANDA-GATE.
“With a few thousand soldiers and the help of our allies, even taking into consideration the time it would have required to deploy them, we could have saved lives. Not to have tried to put a stop to the tragedies in Rwanda remains one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”[15]
Even ten years after the events, Bill Clinton could still not bring himself to describe the massacres in Rwanda as “genocide.”
This is RWANDA-GATE.
[1] For specificity’s sake: Paul Kagame, who was Director of Intelligence in Uganda in 1990, did not lead the 1 Oct. 1990
invasion, for he was in the early stages of (and never completed) his training
at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth,
Kansas. The invasion force
was led by Ugandan Deputy Defense Minister Fred Rwigema, who was killed early-on under suspicious circumstances and, after some back and forth, replaced
on Museveni’s orders by a repatriated Kagame. (See Chapter 1 of The Generals Book on Rwanda at:
http://newcirqueminime.blogspot.com/2011/10/generals-book-on-rwanda-chapter-one.html
[2] Onana, Charles, Al-Bashir Darfour: la contre-enquête,
Paris, Duboiris, 2010.
[3] “Hutu-dominated government” was more of a misnomer in
1994 than ever, as by the time of the Habyarimana assassination there was
already a broad-based transitional government in place, with an important
number of ministerial portfolios held by “Opposition” or “Tutsi-“ and
RPF-supported parties. After the
political reforms of 1990-93, the only fact that might justify such a
distinction is that the MRND[D] party still represented a vast majority of the
Rwandan people, hence the “Hutu” label.
[4] Madsen, Wayne, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa 1993-99 (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999)
[5] In a confidential note from March 1990 by the US
Ambassador to Rwanda, careful attention was to be paid to the nominations of
FAR officers, and particularly close attention was to be paid to Colonel
Leonidas Rusitira.
[6]
Roger Winter is a founding father of the Democratic Party’s
neo-colonialist foreign policy in Africa.
His ‘Orwellian’ work for ‘Peace in Sudan’ has made extraordinary
contributions to stoking and prolonging that longest of wars in that most
devastated of regions. From the
leadership of his American Committee for Refugees and his driving role in the USAID-Africa and as State Dept. representative to Sudan, not only
has Winter poisoned the African continent with the bloody chaos of sectarian
war that guarantees the continued resource-theft by his clients in Western
extraction industries, and intoxicated the U.S. and International Community’s
consciousness with the righteous outrage and desperate fear that necessarily
cover up his criminality, but he has spawned operatives like Susan Rice, Samantha
Power, John Prendergast, and even George Clooney, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck,
who continue to corrupt the Obama administration’s attempts at progressivism
from within and render the President a Foreign Policy eunuch. And speaking of ‘Orwellian’ shit, here’s
a NYTs puff piece on Winter: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15SUDAN-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[7] Presented in confidence to the writer [Onana].
[8] Founded in 1975, the MRND (for the French Mouvement
Révolutionaire National pour le Dévelopement), the single, mass ruling party of
Rwanda, received a make over during the reforms of 1991 that initiated
multi-party politics to the country.
So in 1993, it was strictly known as the MRNDD (for, still in French,
Mouvement Républicain National pour la Démocratie et le Dévelopment).
[9] Testimony of American ambassador Robert Flatten in the
Military I Trial before the ICTR, case number ICTR-98-41-T, Chamber 1, June
2005.
[10] Assemblée nationale française, tome 3, volume 2,
p.138.
[11]
It should be noted that his tone was not at all
the same when Cynthia McKinney denounced Kagame for his responsibility in the 6
April 1994 attack and the crimes of the Tutsi rebellion in Rwanda and Congo. When the Congresswoman had gathered the
documents implicating the Rwandan authorities and was preparing to present them
to the UN, Kagame’s men tried to break into her home in Atlanta to steal the
evidence she had.
[13]
The term ‘Interahamwe’ has been distorted much
in the same way ‘genocide’ has.
And the term ‘Extremist Hutu’ has no real antecedent in Reality, i.e.,
there were NO Extremist Hutu. Or
Moderate Hutu, for that matter.
Those Rwandans who supported and defended their country—their homes and
families—against the foreign invasion of Oct. 1990 and the subsequent
occupation and reign of terror that came to be euphemized as the “Tutsi
rebellion” were referred to as ‘Extremists’ to normalize the murderous
Western-backed campaign for regime change in Rwanda. If the U.S. had been invaded as Rwanda was, the 'Extremists' would have been called 'Patriots'.
[14] For more details on how Georges Rutaganda saved the
lives of Tutsis and members of the UNAMIR, see the book by ex-UNAMIR
intelligence officer, Amadou Deme: Rwanda 1994 and the Failure of the UN
Mission: The Real Truth. ($56+ on
Amazon)
