OAU, and finally France moved to bring the parties together, the United States took a watching brief and played behind the scenes.
At the Department of State, Assistant Secretary Herman Cohen regularly received intelligence reports of the ongoing efforts to establish peace in the region. On learning of the RPF attacks on Ruhengeri in January 1991, he contacted President Museveni of Uganda by phone to ask Ugandan help in preventing the incursions and stopping the fighting.39 The department then instructed ambassadors in Kampala and Kigali to proceed by urging Museveni to deny Uganda as a sanctuary for attacks on Rwanda and asking Habyarimana to accelerate national reconciliation within Rwanda, to intensify direct talks with the RPF, and vigorously to pursue a comprehensive refugee agreement. In addition to this bilateral approach, the United States tried to encourage a joint demarche with the European Community in order to have a common message from all Western donors to both Rwanda and Uganda. The European Community would agree only to a more modest parallel demarche, and even then it had to drag a reluctant Great Britain in its wake.40
In April 1991, Cohen convoked American ambassadors from the region to a meeting in Bujumbura. The chiefs of mission concluded that there were “no vital US interests at stake [in the regional crisis], either internationally or domestically.” With regard to Rwanda, they recommended that the United States not assume a leadership role but, “in coordination with EC colleagues, exert influence selectively to uphold U.S. interests.” They felt the United States should use the crisis to encourage movement on democracy and human rights interests, to tell the RPF that the United States supported its democracy and political equality goals, and to seek a durable solution to regional refugee problems. Following their deliberations, the assistant secretary articulated the fundamental US approach to the conflict in a news conference:
We believe that the protection of refugees who return to their homes should be ensured by a democratic political system that provides to every citizen equal rights and defends human rights.
We condemn any use of force to settle the problems of refugees and ask all governments in the region to prevent any use of their territory for military action against their neighbors.41
The assistant secretary went from that convocation to meet with President Museveni and with the Ugandan foreign minister, pressing the Ugandan government to interdict military supplies to the RPF and to move the RPF toward negotiations. Meanwhile, reports from the field outlined the distance between the two sides. In Kigali, US ambassador Robert Flaten reported that President Habyarimana was still blaming the war on Museveni and holding that “Museveni has not changed at all!” According to the president, political dialogue was possible if the RPF took its place as a party among other parties within a pluralistic environment. Automatic integration of RPF forces into the Rwandan army was totally unacceptable. The military observer group set up under terms of the N’sele Accord had not inspected RPF positions and did not appear truly neutral.42
In Kampala, the US chargé stated that the ceasefire was not holding, that artillery and small arms fire along the border occurred daily, and that a major escalation was eminent. Thousands of Ugandans were displaced by the war all along the border. According to credible reports, the RPA had taken over portions of Kisoro District in Uganda, and the National Resistance Army still connived with or acquiesced in RPA activity. During the lull in fighting, both sides had had the time to reorganize, train, and equip.43
After the June 1991 OAU Summit at Abuja put Nigerian president Babangida in the chairmanship and confirmed Zairean president Mobutu as mediator of the Rwandan dispute, the United States asked the OAU leadership to do the following:
• To request both sides to observe the ceasefire
• To mediate the GOR/RPF dialogue on an urgent basis
• To request that Museveni permit the OAU-sponsored military observer group (MOG) to operate in Uganda
• To reiterate to Museveni the need to deny the RPF operational support in Ugandan territory
• To urge Habyarimana to implement programs of democratization and national reconciliation44
Babangida proposed a mini-summit of heads of state in the Central/East African region. US ambassadors in the region were instructed to inform their host governments that the United States supported the OAU’s renewed efforts to mediate the conflict. That same demarche also inferred Belgian and French preference for African mediation.45 Having sought OAU leadership in resolving this conflict, the United States, nonetheless, pursued a bilateral initiative when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Irvin Hicks met informally with representatives of the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the Rwandan government in Harare.
The US hope was that, without impinging on other mediation efforts, this meeting might help revive the peace process and “lead to an agreement on a cease fire and to the RPF’s participation in the democratic process.” That hope was quickly dashed in a spate of acrimonious charges. The government representative, Augustin Ndindilimana, said he had come to inform the participants that Rwandan government forces controlled all national territory, that pushing back against incursions from Uganda was permitted under ceasefire terms, that the RPF would not let the military observer group inspect their forward positions nor were they seeking to join in political dialogue as a recognized party, and that the presence of Western forces in Rwanda was a guarantee of a political process open to all Rwandans.46
The RPF representative, Pasteur Bizimungu, said that the Rwandan government had failed to respect the N’sele Accord. He brought as evidence the continuing presence of foreign troops, the incarceration of political prisoners, and the inactivity of the military observer group. Were it not for foreign troops, the RPF would have achieved military victory. Visits of the observer group had been turned back because the Rwandan military insisted on accompanying them everywhere. Hicks found the Rwandan government intransigent and the RPF legalistic. The Harare meetings, in sum, made “little progress.”47
For all its early efforts in promoting the peace process in Rwanda, Washington policy focused largely on other trouble spots in Africa and deferred to Brussels and Paris on Rwandan issues. As spelled out at the Bujumbura chiefs of mission conference, US policy had been to “keep former metropolitan powers (including EC) out in front in solving the problem.” Since France among European Community partners had troops on the ground and the most direct entrée to the Habyarimana regime, Washington policy makers determined to let the French take the lead.48
Three factors seemed to have occasioned deeper US engagement in the Rwandan crisis in early 1992. First, there was general admission among the tripartite partners—France, Belgium, and the United States—that the peace initiative mediated by President Mobutu in the context of the Economic Community of Great Lakes States or the efforts of the Organization of African Unity was not bringing the conflict to a close. Nor were differences among political groups within Rwanda being bridged. In short, there was little progress after over a year of effort by states from within the region.49
Second, the nongovernmental and academic communities began to highlight the continuing seriousness of the crisis. Roger Winter at the US Committee for Refugees had been urging greater US government attention to the plight of Banyarwanda refugees since the early 1980s.50 Gene Dewey of the Congressional Hunger Committee had traveled to the area in March of 1991 and reported that Rwandans wanted help from the outside in resolving the crisis.51 In March 1992, academic and government specialists met under auspices of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Invited as a discussant, I returned to Rwandan questions for the first time in nineteen years. Our panel recognized the increased corruption under Habyarimana’s administration and attendant economic decline, the fragile political situation, and the ravages of civil war. As a counter, we recommended economic and political decentralization within Rwanda and “the creation
