Chapter 3 War and Peace in Rwanda

Chapter 3 War and Peace in Rwanda Tom Dannenbaum I. Introduction In 1994, the people of Rwanda experienced the most devastating genocide since the Holocaust. The massive crimes against humanity perpetrated in the short period from the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 to the fall of Kigali on July 4 are the tragic legacy of extensive regional and international attempts to mediate a sustainable peace between the parties to what had been a relatively low- profile conflict. This chapter examines the Rwandan war with a view to understanding how these peacemaking efforts failed in such emphatic fashion. In particular, it evaluates, first, the unsuccessful attempts by local regional actors to design enduring cease-fires with a view to peace in 1991 and, second, the internationally sponsored Arusha negotiations of 1992-1993, which, despite concluding with a signed com- prehensive peace agreement, ultimately failed to prevent both the genocide and the reengagement of the warring factions. With respect to the regional attempts at peacemaking in 1991, the chapter argues that though there were important flaws in the process, the real reason for failure was that the conflict had yet to reach a stage at which either party was ready to compro- mise on core aims in order to end the fighting. The moment, in other words, was not yet propitious for peacemaking—there existed no mutually acceptable agreement that could have brought the war to an end. With respect to Arusha, the failings are more complex. In what follows, this chapter contends that there were at least three core factors behind the demise of the final agreement. First, the Arusha Accords failed to deal adequately with the needs and requirements of the old ruling oligarchy, particularly with respect to the protocols on the transitional government and the integration of the military. The insurgency’s military superiority on the ground garnered it a victor’s agreement. However, it had not yet won the war, and the old regime’s control of the military gave government forces the capacity to spoil the process of implementation. Second, democratization pressures from the international community (particularly donors and international financial institutions) caused the governing party to legalize opposition parties, and ultimately introduce coalition partners, at the same time as it was trying to wage war, manage a collapsing economy, and negotiate with the hostile insurgents. Although these democratization pressures certainly accelerated the peace process, they did so K. Eichensehr and W.M. Reisman (eds.) Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention © 2009 Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in The Netherlands.ISBN 978 90 04 17855 7. pp. 77-119. 78 Tom Dannenbaum at the cost of generating a significant fissure between the coalition partner-led nego- tiating team and the president and his military. The result was that the delegation at Arusha represented neither those in charge of the government nor the Rwandan military. These first two factors helped to create a constituency of leaders that was motivated to sabotage the implementation of the Arusha Accords. The third factor was the failure of the United Nations, and the international community in general, to provide a robust and powerful peacekeeping force to contain these spoilers and prevent them from destabilizing the nation and ultimately the region. Together, these weaknesses in the Arusha process contributed to the break- down of Rwandan society in mid-1994 as the country deteriorated into genocide and further war. However, although ameliorating these factors would certainly have improved the chances of a successful peace agreement between the government and insurgent forces, the conflict was such that an enduring peace agreement would have been very difficult to achieve under even a perfectly designed and managed process. To understand why this is so requires an understanding of the Rwandan civil war, which in turn requires an appreciation for the history from which it arose. II. A Brief History of Rwanda Prior to the Conflict Rwanda’s first inhabitants were the forest-dwelling Twa (by far the smallest of the three ethnic groups that comprise modern Rwanda, at around 1 percent of the total population). Having lived in relative isolation for up to 3,000 years, the Twa were largely displaced by an influx of agrarian Hutu in around 1,000 A.D. as part of the Bantu expansion.1 Starting shortly after this, but accelerating significantly in the fif- teenth century, a third group began to migrate into the region: the predominantly pastoralist Tutsi. Neither the Hutu nor the Tutsi honored a central locus of power or authority at this early stage. Consequently, interactions between them took place at the local level, where the groups tended to trade and integrate relatively peacefully. The Tutsi assimilated to Hutu culture, traditions, and language, and the two groups intermarried with regularity.2 However, in most of the small political groupings that developed across Rwanda during this time, Tutsi leaders tended to take control.3 Indeed, along with their professional distinctions, this distinction in political status better captures what “Hutu” and “Tutsi” meant at this stage than do ethnic or cul- tural ascriptions.4 This early political differentiation would ultimately prove critical to the long- term development of Tutsi and Hutu identities. The first major step in this development was the reign of Tutsi King Rwabugiri (or Kigeri IV) in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Rwabugiri was the first ruler to centralize political control over Rwanda; he consolidated the various political entities that had been under the 1 J. Tebbs, Rwanda, War and Peace 25 (1999). 2 Id. at 26. 3 Id. at 26-30. 4 Alex de Waal, Genocide in Rwanda, 10 Anthropology Today 1, 1 (1994) (explain- ing that during this era Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa “were three different strata of the same group, differentiated [only] by occupational and political status”)..

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