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Guerrillas from the Mist: a Defense Attaché Watches the Rwandan Patriotic Front 1 Transform from Insurgent to Counter Insurgent Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P

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Guerrillas from the Mist: a Defense Attaché Watches the Rwandan Patriotic Front 1 Transform from Insurgent to Counter Insurgent Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P Small Wars Journal – Jul 2006 SWJ Maga1zine Volume 5 July 2006 SMALL WARS JOURNAL www.smallwarsjournal.com Guerrillas From the Mist: A Defense Attaché Watches the Rwandan Patriotic Front Transform from Insurgent to Counter Insurgent Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P. Odom USA (ret.) "If you as the head of the UNHCR and the so-called "purely civilian" camps at operation here in Goma do not address the Kibumba and Katale, some 30 and 65 issue of disarming of the ex-FAR [former kilometers to the north, were taking on an air Forces Armées Rwandaise] and militias in the camps, you will probably see an RPA [Rwandan Patriotic Army] brigade on that traffic circle DIAMONDS IN within the next year," I said, pointing at the THE ROUGH junction just outside the window. "There is another war coming if we do not disarm the SPREAD THE WORD!!! 1 camps and get the refugees home." 1) Great articles from our contributors in this edition. Thanks to them. Hope you get as much out of them as It was late fall 1994 and I had just we did. finished another scouting trip through the 2) The Small Wars Council, our discussion board at Rwandan refugee camps in the area outside www.smallwarsjournal.com. Tremendous level of 2 discussion. 300+ members with wide ranging Goma, Zaire. I did not like what I had seen: experience. And the community has been very civil, the ex-FAR area remained a uniformed camp welcoming, and responsive. Join in. with heavy weapons visible in various places 3) SWJ Daily Links – more far-reaching than the Early Bird for news of interest to Small Wars researchers and 1 practitioners. Tell your friends, and start getting your The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was used universally prior to the end of the civil war to describe the Tutsi-dominated insurgent movement news there. Daily. Really. and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). After the civil 4) Online Reference Library – continuing additions, war and the creation of a new government, RPF was applied to the and we are on the brink of converting our content into a political party that emerged from the RPF insurgency and RPA was applied to all Rwandan armed forces including the Gendarmerie, container that lets your search better. Keep checking considered separate from the Army. I adhere to this convention. back regularly. 2 From October 1993 until September 1994, I was the U.S. Defense Attaché in Kinshasa, Zaire. I served as the U.S. Embassy lead in dealing with the July 1994 Goma Refugee Crisis and was on the ground from Read much? Bet you buy some books. Please use the July 16 to August 24, 1994. I worked with the initial planning team links on our site (right bar) to click through to Amazon from U.S. Special Operations Command Europe and then with Brigadier to buy your books and other stuff. You get the same low General Jack Nix and Operation Support Hope. At the request of Ambassador David Rawson, I agreed to go to Rwanda for a 90-day price, we get a small referral fee, we keep running. extension to establish relations with the new Rwandan government. I Thanks. did so in mid-September 1994 and spent the next 18 months in Rwanda. This essay covers that 18-month period in concentrated fashion. For a larger view, see my memoirs: Thomas P. Odom, Journey into Darkness: Dave Dilegge Bill Nagle Genocide in Rwanda (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Editor in Chief Publisher Press, 2005). www.smallwarsjournal.com 2 Jul 2006 – Small Wars Journal of permanence as the former regime authorities SWJ Magazine and the Small Wars Journal are published by structured the camps to recreate Rwanda's civil Small Wars Journal LLC. structure. War was coming. Soon afterward, COPYRIGHT © 2006 by Small Wars Journal LLC. All Ambassador David Rawson and I as his Defense rights reserved. Permission is granted to print single copies, Attaché coauthored a cable to Washington-- without editing or manipulation, for personal and individual use only. including the White House, the Joint Chiefs, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence No FACTUAL STATEMENT should be relied upon without further investigation on your part sufficient to satisfy you in Agency, and the Department of Defense-- your independent judgment that it is true. stating that a Central African War was likely. Our central thesis was that the Rwandan war Visit www.smallwarsjournal.com was not over and that an insurgency launched from the camps outside Rwanda could take Zaire, Burundi, and even Uganda into a full- resumed civil war had been reactive.2 I will scale regional war that could last years.1 We relate the approach we took to the Rwandan asked for a permanent attaché office to cover problem as it then existed and concentrate on the conflict area. Remarkably the cable drew my own experiences as the acting Defense but a limited response. My headquarters at the Attaché. I believe that our experiences then Defense Intelligence Agency, especially the illuminate many of the issues we as a nation mid-level bureaucracy, did not support the idea and a military face today in the War on Terror. of making my acting position permanent. In A greater understanding of what country teams contrast to the DIA, the Army Staff's strategy and especially military attachés do--or should bureau did. No one else said a word about the do--would serve many of our civilian and fact David Rawson and I had gone on record warning that a war larger than the supposedly 2 What I was really proposing was that we capture in our campaign plan the steps we already had in play as a country team. That would do two concluded Rwandan civil war and genocide was things for us: it would allow us to maintain the policy initiative when coming. dealing with Washington bureaucracy and it would short circuit any drift toward mission creep as had occurred in Somalia. It would answer the question, "what in the hell is Kigali doing?" before it was asked. Not everyone agreed with our initiative and certainly not everyone DEVISING A CAMPAIGN PLAN agreed with our thinking. The reaction from the Department of State was in a phrase one of muted indifference. Our fellow embassies around The next spring I grew concerned that we Rwanda said little as well. In the case of the U.S. Embassy in Zaire, that as a country team and Washington D.C. as a indifference would soon grow to near open hostility. As a mission, they did not accept the premise that the camps in Zaire might actually hold collective were not synchronized. I suggested bad people armed with guns and ill intent. The same could be said of the U.S. Embassy in Burundi; as a mission, they saw the Rwandan to Ambassador Rawson we formulate a situation as a mirror image of Burundi where a "bad Tutsi army" campaign plan for Rwanda and the surrounding dominated a "good Hutu" democratic government. In contrast, the U.S. Embassy in Uganda was a source of great collaboration and cooperation. areas, a somewhat unusual step for a small Gratefully, I believe that the Central African War cable combined with our campaign plan cable prompted the Department of State and its embassy to take but one that seemed quite African Bureau to take a more regional approach to the problems. necessary at the time. To our mind, U.S. policy Ambassador Richard Bogosian as a regional envoy breathed real life into that regional approach. On the military side, the U.S. European toward Rwanda since the April 6, 1994 downing Command took the campaign plan to heart and accepted it almost in total as did the Rwanda watchers and policy makers in the Department of the President's plane, the genocide, and the of Defense. Overall I would point to these two cables as a key lesson: it is better to take the initiative and stake out an approach rather than waiting for Washington D.C. to issue instructions. Operating in that manner is more likely to result in policy and actions that reflect the actual situation. Put another way, "it is better to beg forgiveness than to 1 For a full discussion of the Central African War cable see Odom, 202- beg permission." For more detail on the country team, the campaign 203. plan, and Ambassador Rawson see Odom, 180-181, 233, 236-237. www.smallwarsjournal.com Small Wars Journal – Jul 2006 3 IN THIS ISSUE ARTICLES Guerrillas From the Mist: A Defense Attaché Watches the Rwandan Patriotic Front 1 Transform from Insurgent to Counter Insurgent Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P. Odom USA (ret.) Lessons from Iraq; Invasion and Occupation 15 Major M W Shervington, British Army Mao in Mufti?: Insurgency Theory and the Islamic World 31 Dr. John W. Jandora Cops, Spies, and Commandos: 42 The Legal Quagmire that is the Global War on Terror Capt Matthew Collins The Cost of Expediency in Counter Insurgency Operations 48 Major John C. Davis, US Army Meeting the Irregular Warfare Challenge: 51 Developing an Interdisciplinary Approach to Asymmetrical Warfare Lieutenant Colonel Patrick James Christian, US Army WISDOM FROM THE PAST Counterinsurgency: “A Realistic Appreciation” 37 Captain Robert B. Asprey, USMC Originally Published in the January 1963 Issue of the Marine Corps Gazette military leaders well, especially when you minds. We sought to build self-confidence in a consider that these relatively small enclaves of nascent government emerging from an American diplomatic, military, and economic exterior-based insurgent movement with a power, and policy constitute much of our skewed view of Rwandan politics, society, and nation's front lines in the current war.
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