regard.12 Even more revealing is the comparison with the Hutu diasporas.
Organizational strength, internal cohesion, leadership skills, and the ability to draw maximum tactical advantage from the domestic politics of the host country; these are the key ingredients that spell the difference between success and failure. On each count, the record of the Tutsi fifty-niners can only be described as dismal. Though formally affiliated with the monarchist Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), the party virtually disintegrated after its leadership was forced into exile. While some Unaristes joined hands with the Muleliste rebellion in eastern Congo in 1964–65, a small group went to Communist China for military training; others, labeled inyenzi (“cockroaches”) by the new Rwanda government, opted for a “direct action” strategy and proceeded to launch armed raids from Burundi, the Congo, and Uganda, only to be repulsed—at great cost to themselves and Tutsi civilians inside Rwanda—by the Rwandan National Guard and their Belgian advisers.13Despite substantial support from a group of radical Tutsi politicians in Bujumbura (but not from the Crown), they never were able to translate this informal alliance into an effective military posture. In eastern Congo, their tactical alliance with the Banyamulenge of South Kivu proved short-lived; the Banyamulenge rapidly switched sides after the setbacks inflicted to the Mulelistes by the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC). Even more damaging to their ultimate goals was their international image as crypto-communists in league with Communist China.
THE SECOND-GENERATION TUTSI DIASPORA: UGANDA
The second generation of Tutsi exiles drew important lessons from their elders' inability to get their act together. None were more aware of the necessity to clean up their act than the Ugandan exiles who provided the spearhead of the military crusade that ultimately led to the capture of power in Kigali in July 1994. Though space limitations do not permit a full discussion of their troubled history, most observers would agree that the key to their success lies as much in their organizational skills as in their ability to make the most of the opportunities offered by the rise in 1981 of the anti-Obote guerrilla movement headed by Yoweri Museveni, the National Resistance Army (NRA).14
Already in the 1970s, the Rwandan Alliance for National Unity (RANU) provided a coherent organizational frame for mobilizing support within and outside Uganda: collecting funds, coordinating cultural activities, reaching out to the international community, and lobbying for the right to return to Rwanda. Between 1981 and 1986, when the NRA seized power in Kampala, a solid phalanx of second generation fifty-niners joined Museveni's movement, fought pitched battles in the Luwero triangle at a cost of 60,000 killed in action, and ultimately gained strategic access to Museveni's security apparatus when two of their officers, Fred Rwigema and Paul Kagame, respectively, rose to the positions of Deputy Minister of Defence and Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence.
Meanwhile a series of initiatives from Tutsi exiles in Uganda and the United States led to the birth, in 1987, of the RPF and the tacit endorsement by many of its leaders of the military option of a return by force. By the eve of October 1, 1990 and the attack on Rwanda, the RPF had grown into a powerful politicomilitary organization, combining political mobilization and military training with wide-ranging lobbying activities in the United States and Europe. By then, its recruitment net extended to Tutsi exile communities in Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, and eastern Congo, infusing further strength into its ranks. Only after its capture of power on July 4, 1994, did the RPA develop into a formidable military machine, capable of effectively projecting its muscle into eastern Congo and beyond.
THE HUTU DIASPORAS
If the destinies of the RPF were served by exceptionally good fortune, the same cannot be said of the Burundi Hutu diasporas. Although the 1972 diaspora gave birth to the Parti de la Libération du Peuple Hutu (Palipehutu) in the Mishamo refugee camp in Tanzania in 1980, at no time was the party able to aggregate a range of political and military resources comparable to the RPF; its leadership never was able to match the organizational and strategic talent of a Rwigema or a Paul Kagame, let alone the latter's diplomatic skill in reaching out to external actors.
At no time was the party able to capitalize on anything like the extraordinary good luck of the FPR in Uganda in the early 1980s. Burundi exiles are notorious for their lack of internal cohesion.15 Their history is one of incessant splits, whether in Europe, in Rwanda, or in Tanzania. Their fissiparous characteristics became even more evident after the 1993 exodus and the emergence of several military wings of rival parties, the Front de Libération National (Frolina), the Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (FDD), and the division of the Palipehutu into three separate factions. Though some are said to draw benefits from the smuggling networks in Kigoma, and more recently from the shipment of arms from Zimbabwe and Kinshasa, their resource base is hopelessly inadequate for the task at hand: “All of the rebel groups (in Tanzania) complain of the lack of funding, arms and other resources necessary to carry out a sustained military campaign in Burundi.” 16Again, compared to the RPF's ability to draw international support (most notably from the U.S. Committee for Refugees in Washington) and visibility, the performance of the refugee factions on that score is less than impressive. “The main complaint of the rebels,” notes a recent International Crisis Group report, “is the lack of international support. As one rebel leader said: ‘ we don' t have anyone to support us the way the Banyamulenge are supported by Rwanda and Uganda.’ ” 17
The case of the 1994 refugees from Rwanda is unlike any other in terms of the magnitude of the human flow, the volume of weaponry transferred, the tightness of the political and military encadrement, the extensive support it received from the Mobutist state, its devastating impact on the natural environment, its catalytic effect on ethnic loyalties, the questions its raises about the political implications of humanitarian aid, and last but not least, the ultimate tragedy they suffered at the hands of the RPA. To review each of these dimensions would take us too far afield. Suffice to note that the seriousness of the threats posed to the new Rwandan state was without parallel in the history of mobilized diasporas. Exceptional circumstances called for exceptional measures. However, the destruction of the camps in October 1996 by the RPA was part of a wider underlying design, namely, not just to “secure” Rwanda's western border but to (a) to extend the search-and-destroy operations to the campsites in South Kivu and in so doing, deal a crippling blow to the refugee populations sheltering extremists (b) deny Uganda's armed opposition movements (notably Tabliq and the West Nile Liberation Front) access to safe havens in the Congo, and (c) pave the way for Kabila's “second coming.” On each count the Kagame strategy succeeded beyond all expectations, at least in the short run. From a wider perspective and with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the ultimate goal of the operation—making the Congo safe for Rwanda—has fallen somewhat short of the master planners' expectations.
THE TOOLS OF POLITICAL MOBILIZATION
As this discussion makes clear, contextual variables are of critical importance in explaining the success or failure of mobilized diasporas. Nonetheless, agency also matters. Context alone is not enough to explain the different tools and techniques that enter into processes of mobilization: ranging from coercion to ideological manipulation, from rumor mongering to arms smuggling, from practices and attitudes borrowed from the world of the invisible, and to the use and misuse of information designed to raise the political awareness of the rank and file. Not all of these are productive of success.
Coercive mobilization by some factions of the Hutu diaspora has often had the opposite effect of what was intended, causing tremendous disaffection among civilians and bitter rivalries among exile factions. What some factions view as legitimate means of ideological mobilization—such as the diffusion of historical narratives designed to demonize the Tutsi enemy, a favorite Palipehutiste technique—others tend to reject. Recourse to magic looms large in the arsenal of Congolese factions, notably among the Mai-Mai and the RCD, sometimes with disastrous consequences for the families and communities to whom, wrongly or rightly, magic powers have been attributed. Next to the availability of funding and weapons, information (or misinformation) is of critical importance. On that score, the performance
