The implication was that goals of peace and security required an international intervention that was both political and military in nature.
But the summit discussions were based on faulty assumptions, namely, that the issues at stake were subject to presidential decision; that the contending parties ultimately wanted peace; and that ceasefires, military observer groups, or peacekeeping deployments could be created ex nihilo by spoken agreement. But neither the respective states nor the Organization of African Unity had the capacity to organize and operationally structure the peace process or ensure the compliance of the parties. Finally, intrinsic to summitry is failure continually to attend to the problem. Interveners responded to violent outbreaks rather than systematically addressing root causes of the conflict.28 Clearly, if peace was to return to Rwanda, the levels of international engagement would have to be broadened.
Donors Respond
France and Belgium, the top two states engaged in assistance to Rwanda, reacted immediately to the October 1990 RPF incursion. President Habyarimana stopped by Paris and Brussels on his way home from New York and secured the promise of military assistance from President Mitterrand and King Baudouin. Both sent troops to Kigali, presumably to protect the capital city and the expatriates living there but obviously reinforcing the Rwandan military’s capacity to carry the battle to the field. While France dealt directly with the Rwandan government and was an observer of the summit talks held under Mobutu’s auspices, the Belgian approach was to send a high-level delegation to all capitals of the region to seek out regional African views and encourage a more vigorous African response to the crisis. Belgians seemed skittish about any direct engagement; the very fact that the Belgian foreign minister was visiting the region in regard to the Rwanda crisis raised an outcry in the Belgian press and in parliament. Once the situation on the front seemed stabilized and the capital city no longer threatened, Belgium withdrew its combat forces but left in place a military training mission working with the gendarmerie. By act of parliament, Belgian military assistance was limited to training, technical assistance, and nonlethal military materiel. Thereafter, Belgium settled into a watching brief, ready to demarche the Rwandan or Ugandan governments as interests required, but with no intention to mediate. Recognizing that the French, because of their troop presence in Rwanda, had the larger say and the larger headaches, Belgium tended to support French initiatives in the region.29
After the failures of regional initiatives, the French director of African affairs, Paul Dijoud, offered to mediate in August 1991, and in October he tried to bring the Rwandan government and the RPF together in Paris. Because high-level RPF representation was absent, Rwandan foreign minister Bizimungu declined to participate. In November, France sent an observer mission to the Rwandan-Ugandan frontier to assess the nature of cross-border incursions. As 1992 opened, Dijoud tried again to organize direct negotiations between the Rwandan government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front. By mid-February, the French foreign ministry admitted that the initiative had been a failure. The problem was twofold: first, the internal situation in Rwanda was “explosive and deteriorating,” with Hutu hardliners in the president’s entourage actively opposing moves toward democratization. Second, neither the Rwandan government forces nor the RPF had shown the capacity to prevail militarily, but the RPF seemed determined to fight on until Habyarimana was removed. In the French foreign ministry’s view, the RPF would continue to secure supplies and establish safe haven north of the border; Uganda would not prevent the use of its territory as a springboard for RPF operations.30
VIOLENCE AND DIPLOMACY
The fragile internal situation became evident in March 1992 in another outbreak of ethnic violence, this time in the southeastern area of Bugesera, a region of new settlement that had attracted Tutsi pushed out of more populous zones to the west and north. The attacks occurred as political parties pressured Habyarimana for a coalition national government in Kigali and for changes in communal and regional (prefecture) governance. Although young thugs, presumably in political hire, led the attack, local authorities were slow to intervene, and some even encouraged the violence. Eventually the National Gendarmerie had to stop the fracas in which some one hundred persons died and twelve thousand were displaced from their homes.31 France, Belgium, Germany (also representing the president of the European Community), Switzerland, Canada, and the United States joined in a vigorous demarche that reminded the Rwandan president of his government’s responsibility to stop killings and destruction and to ensure peace and security.32
Both the donors and the government cast the demarche in the larger context of Rwanda’s political evolution. The demarche called for the creation of a multiparty government “with the least possible delay” and urged moderation in media broadcasts. Inaction by Rwandan authorities, the ambassadors warned, could jeopardize the future of cooperative programs. The president said he shared the ambassadors’ preoccupation but blamed, in part, the rabble-rousing rhetoric of opposition leaders. In his brief on the security situation, the interior minister noted that the onset of violence had left a vacuum in local administration, that is, local authorities did not counter the violence. He also argued that “the existence of multi-partyism by its very nature creates incitement.”33
TOWARD A COALITION GOVERNMENT
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church sought to organize dialogue between the RPF and the Rwandan government. How many of these contacts were carried out informally, the record will not show. But by October 1991, one year after the RPF invasion, the church mediated a meeting in which the contending sides committed to common principles.34 The church also sought broader political representation within the government through the establishment of a government of national unity that encompassed newly revived political parties. By February 1992, this effort had evolved into a ten-person “Comité de contact” of leaders from the Catholic Episcopal Conference and the Rwandan Protestant Council and brought together party leadership to work out their differences and seek a common future in the establishment of a coalition government.35 In March, the church leaders met with RPF representatives, including Commissioner Pasteur Bizimungu, in Nairobi to determine the extent of the Front’s commitment to negotiations with a broad coalition government.36
Even as talks moved forward on a multiparty government, new parties were proliferating. Some were based on sectarian loyalties, like the Islamic Party or the Catholic Christian Democrat Party. Others reflected aspirations of personal leaders. A significant party, the Coalition for Democratic Renewal (CDR), was based on the ideology of Hutu ascendancy. Formed by a charismatic but erratic Hutu civil servant who fell out with Habyarimana, the CDR became a party committed to preserving or enhancing the institutional stature of the Hutu majority, which the party saw as being jeopardized by negotiations with the RPF. Based in the president’s homeland in northwest Rwanda, where Hutu chiefs had ruled in precolonial days, the CDR had links to the president through his wife’s family. The party was not, however, invited to the dialogue that led to the signing of an interparty protocol on March 13 with a view to forming a multiparty “government of transition.” After long negotiations with major party leaders, Habyarimana, on April 16, finally invited Dr. Dismas Nsengiyaremye, a leader of the MDR/Parmehutu party to head a new coalition government.37
THE UNITED STATES EXPANDS ITS ROLE
Political opening within Rwanda induced new international interest in resolving the conflict between the Rwandan government, now largely representative of internal political forces, and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, still harrying Rwandan government forces in the north. From the beginning, the United States had been concerned about the war in Rwanda. The foundations for US policy toward Rwanda were found in the inaugural address of George H. W. Bush and in his first State of the Union message, both of which emphasized democracy and human rights.38 Thus, US policy viewed the conflict in Rwanda in terms of its larger international dimensions, namely, regional insecurity, refugee burdens and challenges to democratic governance, and fundamental human rights. But in an area where it had no significant stake, the United States deferred to regional players and to European partners with keener interests.
