12.15.08 The Independent: Britain should cease its one-sided support of Rwanda
clever and combative president has been a favourite of
ministers going back to Clare Short and Lynda Chalker before her.
direct budget support from
Tony Blair is its adviser. It is not hard to see why. The previous Rwandan
government organised the 1994 genocide, so when Kagame overthrew it and set up
a new government in
good guy by the
guilt over the decision to pull out the UN force in
reinforced their moral support for Kagame.
When his fighters pursued the remnants of the old Rwandan army into
and the
did not ask too many questions. Nor did they question when Kagame's army and
their Ugandan allies, turned that pursuit into a full-scale attack on their
vast neighbour,
that ended in the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, the corrupt old Congolese
dictator.
Kagame, a visionary leader and a formidable man of action, is warmly
welcomed in
African leader who spoke their language of progress and could deliver.
education and health systems are good. Kagame says he wants to create a new
Hutu and Tutsi allegiances would be forgotten.
that.
Kagame does not, however, believe in too much democracy. Parliamentary
elections last September were described by the EU observer team as lacking in
transparency. There was "an absence of real political opposition".
Kagame does not tolerate one.
But it is his behaviour in eastern
Kagame argues that
will never be safe as long as the genocidaires – those who killed in 1994 – are
on the loose in
In 1998, when the government he installed in
rump of the old Rwandan army camped there, Kagame and the Ugandans invaded
again.
quiet.
This time their intervention triggered a terrible war in which some say
five million people have now died. They had all miscalculated the political
reaction from other African rulers and the Congolese, who objected to what they
saw as a Western-backed rogue state rampaging around the continent. The
Rwandans and Ugandans were stopped but they set up local Congolese allies in
the border zones. Most of these were Congolese Tutsis. And the genocidaires
were able to recruit and rearm as well – sometimes with support from the
Congolese army.
The war that had threatened to tear
apart has become limited to a vicious battle for the Kivus; eastern
and
borderlands. The Tutsi population was now under threat, seen as a fifth column
for the Rwandans. Its self styled protector in
is the flamboyant but murderous Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and once a
member of Kagame's army.
In November he carried out a massacre of some 150 people at Kiwanja.
Kagame denies he is a
proxy but the UN report shows he uses Rwandan banks and has had direct support
from the army. It also shows how Nkunda's forces operate out of Rwandan
territory and recruit soldiers from its army.
The argument that this is about protecting
by Nkunda's grab for the region's wealth. Local people have been forced to mine
gold, diamonds, casserite and other minerals that abound in Kivu and export
them through
the Rwandan capital. What had begun as an apparently defensive military
operation to protect
and
gangs in
seemed to be turning into a violent imperialism aimed more at looting the area
than bringing peace.
On paper the solution is simple. The rump of fighters who carried out
the genocide now operating in eastern
both disarm or be disarmed. The two states – and
make peace. There is no major issue between the states of
and
but nor is there trust between them. Outsiders must help build that trust and
medium-sized player in the region, must not been seen as backing one side or
the other. It is time to tell Kagame that if he does not rein in
will not fund his government.