On February 3, , the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote to the French embassy in Kigali to ask approval for naming Lieutenant Colonel Chollet, head of the French military assistance mission, adviser to Habyarimana. The arrangement would haveeffectively placed responsibility for military operations in French hands. The letter was leaked to the press and the proposal seemed to have been aborted.
But, in April , Lt. Jean-Jacques Maurin was named adjoint to the French military attache in Kigali and filled just the role proposed for Chollet. He advised the Rwandan chief of staff in such tasks as drawing up daily battle plans, accompanied him around the country, and participated in daily meetings of the general staff. French soldiers played such a key role in defending Ruhengeri in January that a French commander asked the Rwandan government to award medals to some of the troops.
France officially supported peace efforts and was one of the sponsors of the Arusha Accords which stipulated the withdrawal of all foreign troops, except those involved in bilateral military cooperation arrangements. According to Gasana, however, who participated in some of the Arusha negotiations, the French were far less intent on a negotiated solution than were the U. Their support for Habyarimana and the MRND was such that they gave the impression that they actually favored a military solution to the conflict.
On January 18, , Mitterrand addressed the delicate problem of continued military assistance in a letter to Habyarimana. Unwilling to have France supply such a force, Mitterrand then orderedhis subordinates to get the U. From the beginning of the war in , French authorities understood the risk of genocide.
Reluctant to weaken their loyal client in any way, they sought to minimize any criticism of him. On February 21, , thereputable Le Monde published an account of a RPF massacre of hundreds of civilians that had in fact never taken place. When the French National Assembly held an inquiry on Rwanda in , French political leaders, bureaucrats, and military officers all declared that their policy was intended to encourage political reform and respect for human rights within Rwanda as well as to avoid a military victory by the RPF.
On the basis of the unstinting support received from Mitterrand on down, Habyarimana and his circle concluded that the French valued the second objective more than the first.
Thus convinced, they dared to continue the campaign against the Tutsi that would finally reach the point of genocide.
Fragile at the start, the Rwandan economy had crumbled under the burden of the costs of war. In war-related expenses accounted for 15 percent of the budget, but by , they consumed some 70 percent of the operating expenses of the state. Foreign assistance increased nearly percent from to , when it amounted to U. The additional support notwithstanding, living conditions worsened dramatically, as per capita income that stood at U.
Under the provisions of the structural adjustment program, government expenses were supposedly carefully regulated, both in amount and in intended use. To evade these regulations and escape supervision by foreigners, Rwandan officials diverted resources intended for civilian purposes to use by military or militia, such as buying military trucks with money allocated for civilian vehicles.
Authorities at the Ministry of Health permitted Interahamwe to requisition vehicles from the ministry and to collect gas coupons each week for their fuel. Military officers imported luxury goods that escaped the high tax ordinarily imposed on such imports and sold them in special shops for profits that were used for the war effort. Despite these various efforts, the Rwandan government was close to bankrupt by mid and desperately needed foreign assistance to keep operating.
Although the nation suffered enormously from the costs of war, Habyarimana personally seems to have profited from the conflict. According to one banker, the president earned commissions on arms sales and deposited the money in European bank accounts held by several of his associates and their children. In July , after a year of negotiations, agreement, disavowal, and then renewed negotiations, Habyarimana was still looking for ways to avoid signing the final peace treaty.
He was finding it increasingly difficult to delay because even France was pushing him to accept the Accords. But others, particularly those at the Foreign Ministry who had believed for some time that Habyarimana could not win the war, used the RPF military success to support their argument for a negotiated settlement.
In combination with the World Bank, they informed Habyarimana that international funds for his government would be halted if he didnot sign the treaty by August 9.
With no other source of funds available, Habyarimana was obliged to sign along with the other parties, on August 4, The international actors celebrated this hard-won success, particularly important as the first peace negotiated with the assistance of the Organization of African Unity OAU.
Tanzania had served as the chief facilitator. France, Belgium, the U. The international community so present in forging the treaty promised also to help implement it by providing a U. The Accords appeared to have dealt with all the major issues in a detailed series of agreements that covered the establishment of the rule of law, the transitional institutions to govern until elections could be held, the repatriation of refugees, the resettlement of displaced persons, and the integration of the two opposing armies.
They laid out a clear schedule for implementation of the Accords. Habyarimana would remain as president, but would lose most of his power to a Council of Ministers, and in that body the MRND was to have only five of nineteen places, instead of the nine held previously.
The RPF also was to hold five seats, but received in addition the newly-created post of vice prime minister. The parties that composed the broad-based transitional government were also to dominate the transitional legislative assembly with a small number of additional seats allocated, one each for less important parties.
In the integrated army, the Rwandan government was to provide 60 percent of the troops, but would have to share command posts fifty-fifty down to the level of battalion with the RPF. The new army was to count no more than 19, soldiers and 6, national police, so both forces, the Rwandan army with more than 30, soldiers and national police and the RPF with some 20, troops, would have to demobilize at least half their military personnel. The carefully calibrated three-part division of power in the government made it unlikely that any one group could dominate and thus be able to disrupt the movement toward elections and real peace.
But the hope of progress depended on each of the groups remaining coherent and able to act as a counterweight to the others.
As the negotiators all knew, that was a doubtful premise given the division of the MDR just three weeks before the signature of the treaty. The Accords actually named Faustin Twagiramungu, head of the smaller of the two MDR factions, as the prime minister to take office when the broad-based transitional government was installed.
This designation, approved by Habyarimana, permitted the signature of the Accords, but did not resolve the dispute within the MDR. Even as the crowds were celebrating peace in the streets of Kigali, the radicals were hardening their opposition to the terms of the Accords. Despite their rapid retreat before the RPF the previous February, some continued to believe that the Rwandan army could win if the battle were begun again.
Soldiers disavowed the accords for personal as well as for political reasons. Colonel Bagosora, although already retired, spoke for those whose careers would be ended by the Accords. Like the soldiers, some burgomasters and prefects feared losing their positions when the Accords were implemented. Administrators were to be subject to reviewwithin three months of the installation of the broad-based transitional government and those found to be incompetent or involved in prior human rights abuses were to be removed.
Having seen a similar review process remove about one quarter of the burgomasters in February , many administrators had no desire to expose themselves to the same fate. The CDR, opposed to the Accords from the start, had no place in the transitional institutions and continued to attack the agreement.
In entries in his appointment book early in the year, Bagosora several times stressed the importance of controlling the flow of information to the public. In August the radio station RTLM began broadcasting, drawing listeners primarily with its popular music, building an audience for the time several months later when it would begin blasting forth propaganda and directives. If the war were to resume and a self-defense force were to be put into action, its recruits would need arms.
According to an entry in the appointment book, Bagosora had foreseen being able to provide firearms for only one third of the recruits. The others were to operate with traditional weapons: spears, bows and arrows, and machetes. Spears and bows and arrows were not easily available on the world market, but machetes were another matter.
Requests for import licenses from January through March show that , kilograms of machetes were imported into Rwanda as part of a larger quantity of 3,, kilograms of metal goods including also hammers, picks, and sickles. Assuming the average weight ofa machete to be one kilogram, this quantity would equal some , machetes or one for every third adult Hutu male in Rwanda. This was about double the number of machetes imported in previous years. These importations were remarkable not just for the extraordinary quantity but also for the identity of the importers.
Kabuga had built his wealth through the export of coffee and the import of a variety of goods, chiefly used clothing, food, and household goods. During this period, Kabuga ventured into large-scale importation of metal goods, including machetes, for which he received seven licenses for a total value of 95 million Rwandan francs, or about U.
One cargo of cartons of machetes, weighing some 25, kilograms, was shipped to him from the Kenyan port of Mombasa on October 26, arriving in Kigali in early November. According to La Lettre du Continent, a Chillington employee said that in February , the company had sold more machetes than it had during the entire preceeding year.
The news account reported that Chillington officials found this so alarming that they had notified representatives of the United Nations peacekeeping force. Burasa, a retiredmember of the armed forces, was the older brother of CDR leader Barayagwiza.
Researchers from Human Rights Watch and FIDH questioned both the local manager, Joe Hazel, and Hobhouse about machete production and sales as well as about general operating procedures of the plant during these months. Hazel declared that there had been no foreign manager of the plant for about six months before his arrival in March and that the plant had been managed by Rwandan staff with only occasional visits by foreign staff based outside Rwanda.
Hobhouse, on the other hand, asserted that there had been no gap in resident foreign supervision. In late and early , hard-liners stepped up the recruitment and training of militia.
As the training became increasingly public knowledge, Minister of Finance Marc Rugenera raised a question about it in the Council of Ministers. The minister of defense at the time, Augustin Bizimana, admitted that the training was going on, but said it was only to prepare the young men to be guards for the national parks and forests.
In a document dated June , Col. Bagosora and eleven others accused of genocide gave the same explanation. The minister of youth at the time was Callixte Nzabonimana, an MRND member, who has been accused of participating in the genocide in his home commune. In mid-October, the Ministry of Youth notified burgomasters that it would henceforth provide the salary for youth leaders at the commune level.
Such posts had existed in the past but had been eliminated in many communes because of lack of funds. The financial situation of the national government had not improved in the meantime, but the minister of youth had decided nonetheless that the services of professional youth leaders were important enough to justify subsidizing their salaries. Youth organizers apparently continued to work throughout the genocide in Kibuye, when most other public services were not functioning. Not convinced that the Accords would be implemented, the RPF continued to enlist young people to be soldiers and trained them in the part of northern Rwanda under their control.
At the same time, it intensified preparations for the political struggle. Since the start of the war, a small number of supporters had worked for the RPF within Rwanda, largely collecting money for the guerrilla effort. In late July or early August , the RPF brought increasing numbers of young people to their zone to train them as political agents to broaden this network within the country.
They prepared them with two or three weeks of theoretical and Marxist lectures on philosophy, history, and economics and then sent them home to gather information on local conditions and to organize sympathizers for the movement. According to witnesses who participated in or observed this program, only one day or one half day was spent on training in arms and most trainees were allowed to fire only one bullet. An apparently authentic notebook kept by a trainee and later captured by the Rwandan army substantiates this information.
Of forty-seven pages of notes, only one and a half record information on guns, information apparently delivered in one two-hour session. RPF supporters organized several hundred cells during , each including between six and twelve members. Leaders apparently insisted that each group include Hutu as well as Tutsi because they feared groups of Tutsi alone would be too easily isolated and attacked.
If adherents could not attract Hutu participants, then the group was not to be formally constituted as a cell. Unarmed and virtually untrained in combat skills, these young agents hardly constituted a military threat.
Even in the political domain, they did not yet threaten the Habyarimana regime. Some bolder supporters publically declared their affiliation with the RPF after the peace treaty was signed, but most still kept their preference hidden. Although the majority operated quietly, particularly outside of Kigali, the elite of Habyarimana supporters, military and civilian, knew they had arrived. The U. Security Council was still smarting under the failure of its peacekeeping efforts in Somalia when the request for a Rwandan force was presented.
Members of the council were reassured by the detailed nature of the Accords and they were impressed that a joint delegation representing both sides had come to ask for a peacekeeping force. Partly because they counted on an easy success, partly because they were not disposed to invest much in resolving the situation in Rwanda anyway, the Security Council failed to devote the resources necessary to ensure that the hard-won Accords were actually implemented.
From the start, Rwandans and some knowledgeable foreign observers recognized the precariousness of the Accords. The longer the delay before the installation of the broad-based government, the greater the likelihood that the entire structure would collapse into renewed war.
The Accords called for a U. As experienced diplomats certainly knew, it would be impossible to keep to sucha schedule. It took three weeks beyond the thirty-seven days for the Security Council even to pass the resolution creating the force.
Despite the warning by the U. As critical observers later commented, the Rwandan operation lacked a powerful patron among council members to force the normally slow pace of the U. Only France had the interest to play that role, but its effectiveness was undercut by its close identification with the Habyarimana government. Not only was the U. The United States, which was assessed 31 percent of U. In the meantime, it was determined to keep the costs of the Rwandan operation as low as possible, which meant limiting the size of the force.
One U. General Romeo Dallaire, named as commander, had asked for 4, When the Security Council finally acted on October 5, , it established the U. The international donor "roundtable" that was supposed to raise funds for Rwanda was delayed due to Rwanda's failure to install the transition government Document 40 and Document Throughout March , the Rwandans failed to resolve the political impasse.
The unresolved political tensions eventually reached a boiling point in April , after President Habyarimana's plane was shot down. The next morning. April 7, , the genocide began during which between , and one million Rwandans, predominantly Tutsi, were slaughtered. While this collection of documents begins to help us better understand the failure of negotiated settlements in Rwanda, key records are still unavailable to the public.
Access to Rwandan, French, and Belgian government documents, as well as key US government documents from the Clinton Administration would provide a clearer picture of state-level and individual motivations in the decision-making process, who the perceived winners and losers were in the negotiations, and how this affected the outcome.
This document provides details about the complexities of the demobilization and integration of the government and RPF forces. Both parties in the negotiations, as well as observers, knew from the beginning that integration of the armies would be challenging. Flaten writes that "President Habyarimana believes that integration of the army will be the most difficult aspect of the RPF's demands.
Ambassador Flaten writes that any mention of demobilization causes a surge in violence on the streets of Rwanda. He reports an outbreak of violence in Ruhengeri, a city to the northeast of Kigali, due to "inadequate reporting [on] the Kinyarwanda radio of the government plans for demobilization of the army. Document 3 Date: July 27, From: Lt. Nsengiyumva Anatole, a Rwandan intelligence officer writes a memo to the Army Chief of Staff for the Rwandan Ministry of Defense about his personal opinions on rising tensions and opposition to the Arusha negotiations.
He says that, "in a nutshell, many people severely criticize the contents of the Accords which only favor the RPF to the detriment of Rwanda…most people who criticize the Accords are worried about the possible merger between the Rwandan Armed Forces [government troops] and RPF elements. The civilian population is opposed to this eventuality and believes that it is a devious way of seizing power in Rwanda from within.
In fact, all those who are against the merger believe that our country is being sold to the enemy. In this cable, Deputy Chief of Mission Joyce Leader clearly makes the connection between rising violence and internal insecurity in Rwanda and the on-going political discussions in Arusha.
Leader reports that the "party youth, the Interahamwe of the president's MRND [Revolutionary Movement for National Development] party and the hard-line CDR [Coalition for the Defense of the Republic] youth, appear to have been the principal architects of recent roadblocks and attacks, while the main opposition party, the MDR, probably provoked most of the recent commune-level violence in the south. She reports that "many Rwandans are convinced that the internal insecurity rampant in the country in the last six months is no accident, but they disagree on the source.
Both sides in Rwanda's political dialogue believe the incidents of internal insecurity fit with the plans the other has to destabilize the country in order to achieve its goals.
In a foreshadowing conclusion, Leader writes that "the use of violence by either side in this political debate…threatens the very fabric of the society by stirring hatreds that will be difficult, if not impossible, to calm. US officials report that "the delegation expressed fears that the process of integrating the RP[F] into the security forces would lead to destabilization.
In their view, a 'disproportionately' high percentage of RP[F] soldiers would upset the ethnic balance and lead to security problems. Similarly they fear that simultaneous integration and demobilization would destabilize further the economy by sending large numbers of soldiers into unemployment.
The delegation and US officials then discuss possible solutions, and look to demobilization plans in other countries as a model. The Rwandans find Nicaragua's demobilization model irrelevant to their problems, claiming Nicaragua's police forces are integrated across ideological lines rather than an army integrated across ethnic lines; Zimbabwe's demobilization model is more promising.
RPF and Rwandan government representatives reconvened in Arusha, Tanzania, to hold negotiations which were to develop into the "Arusha Accords.
The report writes: "There was some concern that any delay would increase the restlessness of the troops in the field, endangering the cease-fire. The report also gives an update of the status of what was being negotiated: " The cable reports that "Col. Marley has already provided to the OAU [Organization of African Unity] information on military integration in the settlements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, and Namibia; we think it might be appropriate to add Zimbabwe to that stack as well.
How would…the RPF be integrated into the army, in what proportion? In what proportion at the leadership levels, in what proportion at the unit levels? And so this was a very big discussion, in and of itself.
This document reports an update on the negotiations at Arusha including the integration and demobilization of the armies, discusses force proportions, possible processes of integration, and estimated numbers of troops to be demobilized. Ambassador Flaten writes: "the Rwandans are ready with a firm proposal for integration, and have done some good thinking on subsequent demobilization. The tough problem will be securing an agreement on the proportion of RPF to be integrated into the Rwandan army.
Demobilization entails the massive scaling down of forces from 40, to possibly 10,, and the planning of how to reintegrate the demobilized soldiers.
The document discusses the logistics of building secondary schools and providing security for demobilized soldiers born in Rwanda. The document also details the impasse during the political part of the negotiations, specifically because of disagreement about whether or not to let CDR Coalition for the Defense of the Republic political party into the transition government, and also clarifies RPF alliances with other parties. Those involved decided to take a break from the political discussions, and move to discuss the military power-sharing and integration.
This document contains a report back from US military and political advisor at the Arusha negotiations Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley about an impasse in the discussions on negotiating the size of the new Rwandan armed forces. He writes that the Rwandan government wants 25, total 17, army and 8, Gendarmeries , and the Rwandan Patriotic Front RPF wants no more than 15, total, but are flexible with how many Army troops, and how many Gendarmes.
Facilitators and observers generally agree that 25, is an excessive total number. This would require a gendarmerie or police-type force of one policeman per 1, citizens, which following the return of some , exiles, would mean 8, gendarmes…the transitional government could also demobilize the integrated armed forces below the level of 25, if the circumstances require.
A neutral international force used to monitor integration would play a key role in the demobilization and integration process. While the details of a demobilization plan are unclear, it would likely involve educational opportunities for demobilized soldiers. This document details plans for a citizen security apparatus under a new government and two key points of disagreement about demobilization.
The Rwandan government wants soldiers identified for demobilization to be separated from rest of the troops, then "released to a demobilization activity. Additionally, the RPF wants remuneration provided to the families of deceased soldiers, but the Rwandan government rejects this because "it has no comparable system and could never verify RPF claims. This report from a US observer, DCM Joyce Leader, contains ideas about how to have the armies meet as a part of the initial integration phase.
Portions of documents from the peace talks enclosed in this cable provide a clear view of the initial challenges and practical complications involved, including establishing a basic level of trust before beginning to integrating the armed forces.
A copy of a text from the Arusha negotiations, contained in the cable from Leader and titled "Proposed Confidence Building Measures CBM for Rwanda," states the following as some of the first problems that need to be addressed: "There remains a high level of mistrust between the two sides, whose senior officers have not yet had a formal contact despite the fact that their representatives have been talking to each other for close to 10 months.
The same document also provides ideas of how to set up an initial meeting between the two armed forces: "The government and RPF forces could engage in a process of asking questions about each other's activities, force level, intentions, trainings, weaponry, perception of the future, etc.
There would be no obligation on either side to answer any question, but any answers given would have to be complete and truthful. As communication improves, issues of increasing sensitivity could be broached. Bagosora expresses his displeasure with the delegation's negotiations. This document shows a clear disconnect between Kigali and the government delegation at Arusha about strategy and negotiating, and among the members of the government delegation itself. The Presiding Judge of the Constitutional Court shall assume the presidency.
Article 4. They further undertake to spare no effort to promote National Unity and Reconciliation. Article 6. The current Government shall, in no case, take decisions which may be detrimental to the implementation of the Broad-Based Transitional programme.
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