On April 7, I wrote about the ‘triple betrayal’ of Rwandans by the international community and promised to explain why the core reasons abandoning the Tutsi to their killers in 1994 are the same reasons today driving sanctions against selected senior military leaders, businesses and the respected Rwanda Defence Force (RDF).

ALSO READ: This country will not die twice

So, what are the factors that drove the international community to abandon its obligations to ensure Never Again and in what ways are these factors similar to those driving sanctions today?

ALSO READ: A preventable genocide, a denied responsibility: What ‘Corridors of Power’ reveals about Rwanda

To start with, let me make two contextual clarifications. First, while some say that the world has changed since 1994, it’s important to point out that its fundamental nature and the nature of key actors in it remain the same. For instance, the state—which is the critical actor in the international system despite the rise of human rights organisations, institutions like the UN and corporations, retains its nature and so do its individual leaders across the world.

Since the nature of the state is unchanged and because states are, at the core driven by calculated selfish interests, I will show that what drove them to inaction in the face of genocide still drive them today to prefer sanctions against RDF even in the face of the existential threat posed by the Kinshasa-backed genocidal FDLR militia.

Secondly, the legitimate blame placed on the international community’s inaction is largely based on idealistic and liberalist trust in international law and morality as drivers of state action in the world. Yet, while desirable, in real life, states are often driven by pure power to pursue what clever souls call ‘national interests’ with the law and morality largely conveniently deployed where it serves the same interests and ignored at will.

Otherwise, if international law and morality guides the behaviour of states, not only would nations had acted to protect the Tutsi but also the legal principle under Article 2, Clause One of the 1945 UN Charter that confers equal sovereignty on all nations regardless of wealth or size would rule and no country would sanction, punish or seek to own another as western power do without UN authorization.

To that extent then, to understand the real world in which come nations seek to own or enslave others, we must distinguish between de jure sovereignty or legal equality of nations and de facto sovereignty—which is power to enforce sovereignty and the basis on which powerful nations do whatever they want, including sanctioning others regardless of laws or morality.

Unsurprisingly, despite this practical reality we live, it’s the idealized but false view of the world that is repeatedly sold to global citizens by the media! And it’s this FALSE worldview which holds the collective consciousness of the largely unquestioning, nearly robotic and programmed minds of many. It’s this class of programmed majority especially in Africa that also believe, without question, that western sanctions on this or that nation aim to help or serve interests of ordinary rather than their own interests. It’s this shared false consciousness that maintains western domination and exploitation of the world’s underclass.

To illustrate, despite of what the law required and morality demanded, evidence shows that what drove western powers to abandon the Tutsi in their hour of need was not law but ‘selfish national interests’ ─ summarized as geopolitical, economic benefits or cost, opinion at home, racial and cultural considerations.

In 1994, nations that had the proximity, involvement, military means, intelligence, material ability, technological and global influence to stop the genocide are documented to be France, the US and Belgium.

Why didn’t they act in the name of law or common humanity?

Consider France. This country was deeply involved with the regime of President Juvénal Habyarimana─as a key military ally, aid giver and diplomatic guardian. Evidence indicates that France’s leaders saw their interests in Rwanda at the time as revolving around not saving the Tutsi but attaining three aims: ensuring the survival of the Habyarimana and Akazu regime─which was considered a reliable client state; defeating and keeping away ‘les Anglophone’ (English speakers-meaning the RPF) and maintaining its ‘Francophone sphere of influence’ in Africa.

For those who may not know, a client state is a country that is militarily and politically dependent on a more powerful "master” nation.

In Rwanda’s case, this process of being controlled and directed by an external power began during the reign of Mwami (King) Musinga, who was exiled in 1931 for defying Belgian authorities. It continued under his son, King Rudahigwa, who died in 1959 amid his push for independence, and later under Grégoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana—leaders who more fully embraced this client-state dynamic.

To the French, the Habyarimana regime wasn’t merely a ‘good client’ state through which they maintained their influence and material extraction but also a geostrategic asset to keep the broader ‘Francophone Africa’ intact.

Worse, the French also saw the RPF not only as ‘Anglophones’ influenced by the British now encroaching on its vassal state but some of its officials bought into Habyarimana’s propaganda that these were ‘foreigners’ who should be defeated and forced to return to their ‘Anglophone home in Uganda’. This view is still held by some former officials in the Habyarimana regime and in the minds of some of their descendants as can be discerned from their views on social media.

To what would later expand into a geopolitical time bomb, the above propaganda of ‘foreigners occupying Rwanda’ was also accepted by Zaire’s then President Moubutu Sese Seko-who was a US and France client at the time. This is one of the reasons why his government received defeated genocide regime officials, interahamwe militias and ex-FAR into his country without disarming them. So, even after their removal from power, France and Zaire (now DR Congo) continued to support ex-FAR and Interahamwe genocidal militia (now FDLR) to reorganize and return by force of arms.

Critically, a top diplomat who was at a closed-door regional heads of state meeting called in 1995 in Nairobi to help resolve the refugee crisis at the time once revealed a chilling episode where Zaire’s then Prime Minister Léon Kengo wa Dondo who was representing Mobutu at that meeting told leaders including, among others, Presidents Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya at the time and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda in the presence of then Pasteur Bizimungu of Rwanda that they needed to help the defeated ex-FAR return by force of arms because "their country was under occupation by foreigners"─ meaning the RPF/A and ‘old case’ refugees who had returned!

President Mobutu and Kengo wa Dondo’s dream─ of helping ex-FAR and genocidal militia now rebranded as FDLR is still kept alive today by President Félix Tshisekedi and his government working with FDLR.

Further, evidence shows that the French government was also still committed to helping ex-FAR and defeated government officials evacuate safely and possibly return at a later date. For instance, on July 15, a French representative to Rwanda and the region, Yannick Gérard sent a secret telegram to his bosses in Paris asking whether they could apprehend suspects at the time in Zone Turquoise controlled by French soldiers. His Foreign Minister responded by writing: "You can...use all your indirect channels, especially your African contacts, without exposing yourself directly, to transmit to those authorities our wish that they (ex-FAR, officials, militias) leave the Humanitarian safe zone".

Besides the geostrategic, cultural and political commitments, there is evidence of racism as then France President François Mitterrand is quoted by Daniela Krosslak as saying, "In countries like that, genocide is not very important". Alisson Des Forges also quotes French officials at the time saying, "[Y]ou had to expect such things in Africa". The same is repeated in western media with Paris Europe Radio No 1 reporting on April 11 of "Hutus hunting down Tutsis and vice versa" while the Times of London reporting of "outbreak of a civil war" and wondered in an editorial: "Which parties would be asked to ceasefire with whom" as Le Monde said on April 14: "It was now the Hutus who feared vengeance from Tutsi rebels"!

In President Bill Clinton’s America, the priority wasn’t about saving life but money; evading responsibility by instructing officials not to name what was happening as a genocide; fear of what it would politically mean in the face of the 1993 debacle in Somalia where the US army brutally lost 18 marines and lack of what experts call CNN Effect-meaning lack of media attention on the genocide that could have mobilized public opinion and compelled the administration to act.

Besides worrying about costs and even judging jamming RTLM hate radio that was directing killers to the targets expensive because it could cost $4m, restrictions in Presidential Directive 25 (PDD25), President Clinton is reported asking his officials: "what is the Black Caucus saying"!

In the next and final article, we look at the role of Belgium, conclude how reasons for inaction in 1994 are the same as reasons for sanctions today and name lessons from this rare episode in human history.

The writer is a researcher, consultant, educator and commentator on national, regional and global affairs.