RWANDA: DECODING KAGAME'S "SHOWDOWN" WITH FRANCE
Like many other Rwandans and foreigners, I have spent a couple of days trying to decipher President Paul Kagame's latest outburst against France. President Kagame promised a showdown with France in regard to the investigation into the 1994 shooting down of the plane in which President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, President Cyprian Ntaryamira of Burundi, and all their entourage, including the French crew of the Falcon 50 jet, were all killed. This unprovoked terrorist act was ordered by Paul Kagame himself and executed by Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) officers under his command, thereby triggering the genocide against Tutsi, and the yet-to-be internationally acknowledged genocide against Hutu. More than twenty years later, apart from the investigative efforts of French Judges, the international community has ignored both the assassination of two African Presidents and the genocide against Hutu perpetrated by Kagame and officers under his command.
One of the officers involved in the assassination plot was Lt. General Kayumba Nyamwasa, who then headed the notorious Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) at the time. Now in exile in South Africa, and having survived multiple assassination attempts by Kagame's DMI agents he once trained and led, General Nyamwasa has told a French Judge investigating the crime that Kagame was indeed the mastermind of the terrorist act. This, coming from a former DMI boss, Army Chief of Staff, and co-conspirator, tripped Kagame into yet another fit of rage.
As I reflected on Kagame's now familiar threats to the French, I put on my diplomatic hat and asked myself if at last he has mastered the art of coercive diplomacy, sending an ultimatum to France. An American, Alexander George, in his influential work "The General Theory and Logic of Coercive Diplomacy," in Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War, stated:
"The general idea of coercive diplomacy is to back one's demand to an adversary with a threat of punishment for noncompliance that he will consider credible and potent violent enough to persuade him to comply with the demand."
Was Kagame making a demand to his adversary (France)? If so, what demand? Was the promise of a "showdown" a threat of punishment if France does not succumb to his will? Did Kagame think that this threat of showdown was credible and potent enough to convince France to drop the investigation? By accusing France for having been an accomplice in the genocide against Tutsi, did he hope to leverage the same tool of guilt that he has efficiently deployed to protect himself from accountability? Will Kagame provoke France to war, even as he promised a "low cost solution"? Perhaps another assassination, his most favored low cost solution?
There are many things that Kagame does which do not make sense. His demand to the French by way of threats and genocide allegations is very absurd and bad strategy. Even if France was to get tired of insults from Kagame, or for geostrategic reasons abandon this investigation, would this take away the fact that Kagame and RPA officers under his command shot down the plane, triggering two genocides in the entire history of Rwanda. Absolutely not.
France did not commit genocide against Tutsi. Its role in Rwanda before and during the events of 1994 can be compared to the roles of United States and the United Kingdom since then, and Belgium until 1973. Every regime in Rwanda since the end of colonial rule has had a foreign benefactor, partly a providential financier, but largely a protector against its local (citizens), regional and international enemies. The Kayibanda regime had Belgium that served as the enthusiastic midwife of the 1959 Hutu revolution. The Habyarimana regime found in France a generous benefactor, even when every writing was on the wall, signaling the end of the regime. The Kagame regime has attracted unquestioning support from the United States and the United Kingdom. Protected by powerful hands in Washington and London, Kagame is the hero-turned-villain of the Great Lakes region, feeling secure beyond the reach of national and international justice. Should we then say United States and United Kingdom shot down the plane and committed genocide against Hutu? Absolutely not.
Foreigners may be indifferent to deaths of Tutsi and Hutu as the tragic events of 1959, 1973, 1994 and thereafter demonstrate. They may even aid the regimes, knowingly or unknowingly, overtly or covertly, when such regimes close political space, abuse human rights, commit genocide, or decimate their populations for geo-strategic reasons. The problem with these foreign powers is that, by allying themselves with regimes that do not represent the will of all Rwandan people, they give false confidence to dictators that ruling by impunity has no cost. Yet, impunity has a high price: millions of Rwandan lives (Hutu and Tutsi) lost. These are not statistics. Each one of these had a name.
However, ultimately it is Rwandan regimes that kill Rwandans. It is Rwandans who kill Rwandans. It is you, President Kagame, your regime and the one you replaced that killed Rwandans. It is you and your fellow culprits who should be in the dock, not France.
Bwana Kagame: DMI yawe ubu butumwa ibugushyikirize. Reka kwirakaza, wiruhutsa, ureba igitsuri, ubeshya, uhiga ko uzarasa abafaransa. None se abo wiciye barakare bingana iki? Ntabwo buri kibazo kirangizwa n'isasu. Urabizi neza ko ari wowe wishe Perezida Habyarimana, Perezida Cyprian Ntaryamira n'abo bapfanye bose. Abo mwafatanyije bose mu gikorwa kibisha-Kayumba Nyamwasa, Sam Kaka, James Kabarebe, Charles Kayonga, Karenzi Karake n'abandi bose mwakoresheje-amaherezo muzabibazwa. Nibitaba twese tukiri kw'isi ngo abanyarwanda babibabaze, abana b'abanyarwanda, n'abuzukuru babo bazabacira urubanza no mu bindi bihe.
Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa
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"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.
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