As we remember victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi for the 32nd year today, a profound contradiction hovers over our land, the region and the world. Guardians of Never Again who stopped this genocide and forced its perpetrators out of power are now sanctioned by the same international community that neither helped to stop this crime of crimes despite the promise of Never Again nor responded to repeated calls for disarming defeated ex-FAR and Interahamwe genocide militia who crossed into then Zaire (now DR Congo) in 1994. ALSO READ: ‘We must learn from past failures,’ says UN chief Put in its true historical context, we could say that the same world then US President Bill Clinton apologized for on his first visit to Rwanda on March 25, 1998 where he wondered why it chose the ‘dark road’ and promised never to shy [away] in the face of evidence is now punishing stoppers of the same genocide for putting up defensive measures to keep away the same genocidal militia (now called FDLR) and keep the promise of Never Again the same international community betrayed in 1994. ALSO READ: As we mark Kwibuka 32, we must confront genocide ideology at all costs Remember, from as early as late 1994 through 1995 when Mobutu Sese Seko was still President in then Zaire (DR Congo), Rwanda, through different leaders, including then Vice President Paul Kagame now President, had consistently and repeatedly been calling for disarming ex-FAR and Interahamwe genocide militia. Through all these years ─ one after the other, the same international community has consistently failed to answer the call with deeds despite recycled promises and even sending a UN force there in 1999 to do just that and keep the peace. Commenting on this turn of events, President Kagame told diplomats in Kigali on March 6 that Rwanda faces an impossible choice: to either tolerate the continued presence of the FDLR and its growing network of militias...closer to the border. Or to defend ourselves and be condemned. The Choice is...very clear. Kagame’s words came in response to sanctions ─ first from the EU and then US, targeting some senior military leaders, businesses and even the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) as an institution. The accusation is alleged support to AFC/M23 rebels and violating the Washington Accords. The Government of Rwanda calls the sanctions ‘one-sided’ and unjustified. So, we ask: what explains this triple betrayal and failure by the international community to live up to the promise of Never Again promised in the Genocide Convention of 1948? Crucially, what lessons can we draw from this inexplicable but consistent behavior from this Community that can enrich, as a nation, the strategy of Never Again moving forward? First, let me clarify that I refer to the failure by the international community to stop the genocide, disarm ex-FAR and Interahamwe genocide militia before crossing to DR Congo (then Zaire) as well as recent sanctions as a triple betrayal to Rwandans for three key reasons: to begin with, under the Genocide Convention of 1948, the international community committed to Never Again be a bystander to genocide and was in Rwanda despite knowing beforehand that it was being prepared. This choice to disregard its legal and moral obligations is a critical betrayal. Secondly, after the initial failure to act, the same international community which was represented by the UNAMIR and Operation Turquoise, enabled, together with the Mobutu regime in Kinshasa, the defeated ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias (now rebranded as FDLR) to cross to Zaire with their arms as ‘refugees’. This act facilitated their reorganization that made the 1997-98 insurgency in the northwestern parts of the country possible, leading to many deaths of genocide survivors – including an attack on the Ecole Secondaire Nyage on March 18, 1997 that led to the killing of seven students and wounding 30. This experience─where the genocide militia then called Abacengenzi (now FDLR) ordered students to separate according to their ethnicity and when they refused, started killing them, foretell what FDLR would do if allowed to return on Rwandan soil─a factor those sanctioning the country’s army either fail to see or don’t care about. To understand how colossal the failure to disarm ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias was to DR Congo and learnable by the international community, consider that at that time, Tanzania also received refugees─ about half a million of them in 1994, but disarmed the militias and ex-FAR before they were allow to cross over and, subsequently, this peace loving nation facilitated their repatriation in 1996 when the country became more peaceful. Today, unlike DR Congo, the country is at peace with Rwanda. Finally, I add sanctions to the list of continued betrayal by the same international community not merely because this Community promised years ago to eradicate FDLR and bring peace to eastern DR Congo, with its UN force there enjoying its 27th year on the territory (first, MONUC-1999 to 2010 and then MONUSCO:2010-present) and spending billions of dollars for no visible fruits, but because this Community neither prioritized disarming the FDLR militia despite being part of the ‘root-cause’ of the problem nor acts with the same firmness with Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi and his government despite repeated violations of the Washington Accords and publicly promising to bring the war to Kigali. In acting thus, where is the neutrality, the will to peace and justice? While some observers might accept without question the claim both the EU and US sanctions are strictly about alleged support to AFC/M23, they fail to see why prioritizing disarming FDLR would not only address a root-cause of the conflict and take away Rwanda’s considered existential that it says explain the defensive measures but also never both to question why this militia has survived all these years despite repeated promises by the international community and Kinshasa to eradicate it. With this background, in part two of this article, I will explain why the factors that explain why the international community didn’t contribute to stopping the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi are also, at the core, the same factors behind the sanctions against military some senior officials, businesses and RDF, 32 years after the genocide. The writer is a researcher, consultant, educator and commentator on national, regional and global affairs.
