or diplomatic liabilities among Rwanda’s neighbors was Tanzania. While Prime Minister Malecela and several within the ruling Tanzanian elite were friendly toward Habyarimana’s regime, in 1990, both Tanzanian president Mwinyi and foreign minister Diria were from coastal Swahili backgrounds and had no affinity with either side. Moreover, conflict within Rwanda created insecurity on a distant western border. Tanzania had a vital interest in seeing peace restored.21
Regional Summitry
EARLY SUMMITS
Notwithstanding the inherent issues involved, neighboring chiefs of state rushed to bring the Rwandan conflict to a close. Within a fortnight of the October 1 incursion, Tanzanian president Mwinyi hosted a summit with Museveni and Habyarimana at which the Rwanda government agreed to dialogue under OAU auspices and Tanzania and Uganda agreed to pressure the RPF to accept a ceasefire.
On October 23 and 24, the heads of state of the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi), meeting at Mobutu’s home in Gbadolite, proposed establishing a peacekeeping force and noted Mobutu’s effort to facilitate dialogue between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front. Two days later, a second summit convened at Gbadolite at which Museveni, now chairman of the OAU, confirmed Mobutu as mediator. The chiefs of state authorized a military observer group of officers from Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zaire, and the RPF to be established under OAU supervision.22
When the military observer group convened November 12–19 in Goma, Zaire, to draft the terms of a formal ceasefire, they touched the foundations of the conflict’s intractability. While it had agreed to dialogue with the Patriotic Front, the government of Rwanda would not accept that group as representative of the refugee community nor admit wholesale repatriation of refugee populations. The RPF on the other hand wanted full recognition as an opposite in the negotiations, as an internal armed force whose interests had to be accommodated.
By this time, the Rwandan government thought it had repulsed the invasion; many of the insurgents had fled back to Uganda, and the rest were scattered along the frontier trying to pull together under Major Kagame’s leadership. Neither side was particularly anxious to accommodate an international intervention and mediation. The OAU was not able to get the RPF and the Rwandan government to agree on terms of a ceasefire or on deployment of a military observer group. Mediation was instead being imposed by self-interested neighbors and patrons.
In a pattern that would be reiterated numerous times, this blockage led to military pressure from the RPF, which was countered by repression and ethnic violence abetted by the government. During the months of November and December, the Rwandan government pushed back RPF attacks along the Uganda-Rwanda border. In January 1991, the RPF returned to the attack along the northern border, briefly occupying the regional capital of Ruhengeri and freeing prisoners held in the local prison, including prominent political prisoners like former chief of security Theoneste Lizinde. In reprisal, the government, exercising state-of-emergency powers, arrested over eight thousand persons suspected of supporting the RPF. Attacks against Tutsi Bagogwe in the government heartland of Gisenyi/Ruhengeri area killed more than two hundred civilians.23
SUMMITS IN ZANZIBAR AND DAR ES SALAAM
Increased violence again drew in regional summitry. Meanwhile, President Habyarimana, having failed to stop repression at home, lost ground in regional discussions. On February 17, in a hurriedly convened mini-summit on Zanzibar between the presidents of Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda, Habyarimana at last accepted the principle of a ceasefire.
Two days later, at a regional summit on refugees at Dar es Salaam (Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zaire attending), Habyarimana agreed in principle to the right of refugee return, and neighboring chiefs of state covenanted to facilitate naturalization for refugees who wanted to stay put. Significantly, the Dar es Salaam Declaration thanked Mobutu for instituting dialogue and urged him to maintain the momentum of dialogue “between the Rwandan government and the armed opposition.” The declaration thus confirmed Mobutu as mediator and recognized the RPF without naming it as the opposite party in the conflict. The notion that Uganda was attacking Rwanda through its cohorts no longer held water with presidents of the region. With diplomatic optimism, the declaration held that dialogue would find “a solution to the problem facing the parties concerned.”24
FROM N’SELE TO GBADOLITE
In March 1991, as ceasefire talks began at N’sele, Zaire, President Habyarimana announced his intention to offer an amnesty for those who had taken up arms against the Rwandan government.25 But that initiative did not significantly change the dynamics of the conflict; the peace process was in its infancy. By March 29, Casimir Bizimungu, foreign minister of the Rwandan government, and now Major General Paul Kagame, vice president of the RPF, signed a ceasefire agreement, committing to ongoing dialogue and to the deployment of a military observer group under OAU supervision. Political dialogue was to start in fifteen days following the deployment of an observer group of the regional states of Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burundi. But the military observer group did not get organized until May. When it deployed in Kigali, the Rwandan government restricted its movement around the country. The ceasefire, which was broken almost immediately by skirmishes along the Uganda border, turned into a stalemate between the Rwandan government’s conventional forces and RPF bush warriors in a low-intensity civil war.
Meanwhile, the Rwandan government’s position on internal politics seemed to soften. That March, the government, under pressure from the international community and from its own jurists, released eight thousand suspected RPF sympathizers who had been detained since January.26 In June, the president promulgated a new constitution that allowed multiparty political competition. On June 18, the legislature, the National Development Council (CND), passed the Political Parties Law and the race to establish political parties took off.27 By the end of the year, the CND finally passed two amnesty laws, one for refugees and exiles and one for persons within the country convicted of infractions of the law short of violent crimes.
THE OAU PROMOTES ANOTHER SUMMIT
At the OAU Summit in June, pressure built for another try at peacemaking. The OAU chiefs of state directed the secretary general of the organization to convene another regional summit to continue the mediation process. Accordingly, Mobutu hosted a meeting at Gbadolite to work out the terms of a new ceasefire. With the witness of the president of Nigeria, as new chairman of the OAU, the parties signed on September 16 a ceasefire agreement, seen as a revision of the understanding reached at N’sele six months earlier. The major change was in the makeup of the military observer group; this time it was to be composed of Nigerian and Zairean officers. Political dialogue was also initiated at Gbadolite, but the mediator broke it off in ten days, exasperated at RPF intransigence.
Absent a ceasefire reinforced by political dialogue, renewed fighting broke out in December and January, allowing the RPF to demonstrate its capacity to attack and leaving it with a permanent foothold in northern Rwanda, thus confirming its status as an “internal” insurgency. Back in Kigali, negotiations to install a multiparty government under the June constitution stalled; in frustration, a new government was finally sworn in on December 30, naming Sylvestre Nsanzimana as prime minister and including only one minister who was not from the president’s party. In response to renewed fighting in the north, the government increased the size of the army fivefold, turning the usually balanced budget into deep deficit.
RESULTS OF SUMMITRY
A year and a half after the October 1990 RPF attack, the regional chiefs of state had little to show for their considerable efforts to stop the fighting and arrange a peace through summit agreements. Undertakings at the summits did move the parties closer to recognizing each other as antagonists with whom to negotiate. The chiefs of state laid out quite early the elements of a putative peace process: ceasefire, political dialogue, military
