In my article of April 10, I shared reasons France and the US abandoned the Tutsi to their killers in 1994 and promised to recap Belgium’s. Herein, I pen the promise. ALSO READ: Why core reasons for not stopping 1994 Genocide also explain today’s sanctions By the end of this process, I will show how the reasons these western powers failed to stop the genocide are, at the core, similar to those driving sanctions against targeted senior military officials, businesses and the army of Never Again─Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). ALSO READ: Why the world of genocide inaction sanctions Never Again guardians To start with, as well documented in Alison Des Forges’ book, Leave None to Tell the Story, Belgium was assumed to be and even considered itself to be the best informed and most qualified to speak on Rwanda─as a former colonizer expected to ‘know’ more than other countries. ALSO READ: A historical timeline of Belgium's divisive politics in Rwanda Yet, despite this assumed position of ‘knowing’—including knowing that genocide was afoot, evidence shows that Belgium didn’t only exhibit puzzling flip-flop on the matter but also took shameful and morally repugnant decisions that cost thousands of lives that could have been saved. ALSO READ: No sanctions can undermine Rwanda's defence, security forces – Kagame For instance, with knowledge of what was planned and the weakness of UNAMIR—the UN peacekeeping force she was part of, Belgium was by February 1994 calling for strengthening the mandate of this force. In fact, its then Foreign Minister Willy Claes warned UN late that month that public opinion would never tolerate having Belgian peacekeepers remain passive witnesses to genocide. Shamefully, when massacres begun, this country was the first to forcefully call for the total withdrawal of the same force—again citing ‘public opinion’ at home! ALSO READ: Rwanda cuts diplomatic ties with Belgium Revealingly, inside Belgium, there was no convincing ‘public opinion’ supporting Claes’ claims! In fact, two opinion polls available at that time show that 44 percent of sampled population favoured keeping their soldiers in Rwanda while 55 percent among Flemish speakers supported their peacekeepers providing security to Rwandans. Importantly, notice that even when Claes called for Bolstering the UN force, the central reason given wasn’t to save lives of Rwandans but that ‘public opinion’ in his country wouldn’t tolerate inaction. After calling for upgrading the mandate of the UN force in February, on April 8, the Belgium cabinet reportedly considered sending its own intervention force after the killing of 10 of its peacekeeping force but concluded that the genocidal regime wouldn’t welcome the proposal on sovereignty grounds! Then, on April 9, the country returned to its February position and applied to the UN to strengthen the UNAMIR mandate from Chapter Six to Seven! But the following day, April 10, Belgium took the decision to withdraw its force! ALSO READ: A preventable genocide, a denied responsibility: What ‘Corridors of Power’ reveals about Rwanda After this incomprehensible policy flip-flop, Belgium became the biggest advocate of complete withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from Rwanda! How can this contradiction in terms be explained? How can then foreign minister Claes who had warned, in late February of a possible genocide and called for strengthening the UN mandate, suddenly, become the principal promoter of complete withdrawal a month later when the danger he warned about reared its head? Some say that the country didn’t push hard enough for the expansion of the UN mandate once it learnt that powerful Security Council members like the US, UK and France would oppose it. Others might rightly say that a proper explanation lies in understanding ‘who’ the real rulers of the world are today and who their juniors. Seen in its broader extent, Belgium’s zig-zag response to genocide speaks to where the country finds itself on the hierarchy of global power and influence. That’s, despite its past oversized colonial possessions and assumed authority today—especially in the region, she has minimal effective power and influence to drive the course of history than she used to have during colonial times and its immediate aftermath. We thus learn that while Belgian politicians still consider themselves part of the main rulers of the world, this perception is largely nostalgic and in softer forms of influence today. That’s why when she pushed for expanding the UN Mandate and US, France and UK said NO, saving face or what Alison Des Forges called ‘honour’ became her main interest to pursue rather than stand on moral clarity and principled leadership. Regardless of Belgium’s place on the ladder of power in the world today, the policy flip-flop illustrate lack of moral clarity and principled leadership at the time. In this debacle, there are three key shameful decisions Belgium took that emboldened killers. The first was the withdrawal of its entire force after the killing of 10 of its soldiers and failure to understand how this would be interpreted by genocide implementers. Remember that evidence now shows that genocide masterminds had calculated that such killings would precipitate the withdrawal of the country’s force—which was the strongest in UNAMIR. Genocide planners determined that the withdrawal of the Belgian force would make the remaining peacekeepers weaker and unable to stand up to killers. With this decision, Alison Des Forges wrote in 1999 that Once the Belgians had left, the interim [genocide] government had no reason to drive away others. The [UN] force would not interfere with the genocide and its presence lent the Rwandan authorities a semblance of international legitimacy. And Colonel Luc Marchal, the commander of the Belgium force within UNAMIR later said that, Our political leaders should have known that in leaving UNAMIR, we would condemn thousands of men, women and children to certain death. The second decision was the abandonment of over 2,000 Tutsi who had taken refuge at ETO school in Kicukiro. These Rwandans had confidence in and trusted that Belgian soldiers would protect them. But, on April 11, this force withdrew leaving all Rwandans behind! As a result, most of them were butchered by government soldiers and Interahamwe militia. Lieutenant Luc Lemaire, the Belgian officer in charge of that force told the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) that If Belgium had been courageous enough to leave our men there, we would have been able to save people. The third cowardly act was deserting opposition politicians, including the family of then Vice President of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Félicien Ngango at the time guarded by three Belgian peacekeepers. When killers arrived at Ngango’s home, they told guards to either leave or face the consequences. Sadly, the Belgian soldiers chose to abandon their charge and the family was mercilessly murdered. To cover up this moral failure and cowardice, Belgian diplomats embarked on a campaign to convince UN members to support complete withdrawal of the UN force so that it’s not seen as the only country abandoning Rwanda! As reported in Leave None to Tell the Story, this campaign was so fierce that a Belgian diplomat camped outside the door of the Security Council in attempted persuasion launched at passing members. In doing that, Belgium didn’t call for expelling or suspending the representative of the genocide regime that at the time sat on the Security Council as one of three members representing Africa on rational basis! Meanwhile, Claes reportedly contacted the then UN Security Council President from New Zealand expressing serious concern about the future safety of UNAMIR if any personnel remained in Rwanda beyond Sunday [April, 17]! And the minister proceeded to convince then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to help his endavour. In response, Boutros-Ghali called Gen Romeo Dallaire asking him to recommend withdrawal of the force! But the Canadian General said NO and added that for him, this was a matter of moral concern. Once saving face became Belgium’s main interest to advance, its officials focused on achieving three practical goals: secure the safety of its peacekeeping force; evacuate foreigners and expatriates and continue pushing for complete withdrawal of the UN force. For readers of patterns in history and how these influence the future, Belgium’s abandonment of Rwandans in 1994 is morally obscene but not surprising. Evidence shows that from colonial days, this country relentless focused on what it considered its own interests at the expense of lives of Rwandans and their unity. From having a role in the Tutsi massacres of 1959 and exile to the 1963-4 mass killings that philosopher Bertrand Russell called most terrible, systematic slaughter that we have seen since the Nazis extermination of the Jews to the support of ethnic politics. Thus, read together, one would conclude that what led this country’s diplomats to relentlessly campaign for the UN force to withdraw once the genocide started in 1994 is NOT different from what drives its campaign for sanctions against Rwanda today! Nor is it different from what drove her in 1960-1 to undermine the UN trusteeship agenda of reconciliation and helping to put in place a broad-based representative government in Rwanda and instead installed Grégoire Kayibanda’s MDR Hutu Power monopoly. In the next article, we discuss why core reasons for abandoning Rwanda in 1994 are inherently similar to those informing sanctions today and what this teaches guardians of Never Again. The writer is a researcher, consultant, educator and commentator on national, regional and global affairs.
