In the previous article in this series, we saw how the Rwanda Alliance for National Unity (RANU) drew strategy from the failure of UNAR. In this piece, we shall realise how RANU morphed into RPF to enable a political-military strategy. The presence of cadres who had participated in Uganda's NRM guerrilla war within the RPF ranks was a deciding factor. It allowed the movement to avoid purely intellectual debates, to have specific objectives and to acquire both human and material resources that were required before starting the war in October 1990. With the help of networks put in place between 1987 and 1990, RPF knew that it could count on a large mass of the Rwandan population to start military recruitment and war financing within the diaspora and eventually inside Rwanda. RPF contacts allowed it to distinguish friendly, indifferent or enemy territories. Nevertheless, none of these gave official support to the RPF. Very often it benefited from individual support and sympathy. The main issue for the movement was to make the international community understand that it was fighting for a just cause and it had been constrained to take the military option by the Kigali regime and its allies. The reasons for the war were summarised in the RPF programme. These were: discrimination against the Tutsi and sectarianism of the Kigali regime, poor management of state affairs and the question of refugees to which the Rwandan government did not wish to find a solution. After benefiting from the participation in the guerrilla warfare of the NRM and after the victory achieved by the latter and having observed the structures of the Ugandan army, the Rwandan military officers were able to recruit and train Rwandan soldiers. When the war started in 1990, the RPF could count on a few thousand well-trained soldiers of various grades. In the morning of October 1, 1990, a few RPA soldiers attacked Kagitumba border post which they overran very easily after a brief encounter. The same day at 4.00 pm, Major General Fred Rwigema addressed a few hundred soldiers who had already assembled on Rwandan soil. Other Rwandan soldiers from different military camps in Uganda moved towards different strategic points at the border with Rwanda. It should be noted that the Gulf war had started two months earlier and therefore this new unexpected conflict in turn alerted the international community. Reaction of the Rwandan government The Rwandan government seemed surprised by that attack, even when the ordinary people knew that an attack by refugees was imminent. The racist ideology against the Tutsi reappeared in speeches and the national press. The subject of discussion was that RPF was a reincarnation of the Inyenzi raids of the 1960s and that it was made up of Tutsi monarchists who did not accept the 1959 revolution. The RPF attack also allowed the Kigali regime to launch a vast operation to eliminate the opposition on the night of October 4-5, 1990. The regime made people believe that it was an attempt by the rebels to attack the capital. Yet it was a sham attack meant to allow a presidential move to justify a massive cleansing operation against the Tutsi and other opponents of the Habyarimana regime. Between 7,000 and 10,000 people were arrested and imprisoned arbitrarily. Large scale raids took place throughout the country, especially in Kibirira, Mukingo, Murambi, Bugesera. Tutsi civilians were molested, imprisoned or killed together with those who dared to criticise the regime. They were called “traitors” or “accomplices” (Ibyitso). Finally, the Kigali regime launched a diplomatic offensive towards all its Western godfathers and missionary circles to compel them to denounce what was described as an aggression of “feudalists supported by Uganda.” The narrative by Kigali was that the aggressor had the support of Anglophone and Anglo-Saxon countries against a francophone state. The Kigali regime and its allies carefully avoided referring to the reasons expounded by the RPF to start the war. In succeeding pieces, we will witness the process of the dynamics of the war that would eventually liberate Rwanda from decades of ethnic discrimination and atrocities.
