International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa. Kurt Mills
Secretary of State Warren Christopher finally said that “If there is any particular magic in calling it genocide, I have no hesitancy in saying that.”49 Indeed, there is magic in the term, and it can be stripped of its power by the simple act of avoiding the term.
The media did little to put pressure on the Security Council to act. It was portrayed as tribalism—age-old ethnic hatreds which flared up periodically and which the international community could do little about.50 Even when the New York Times identified it as genocide on 23 April, it concluded that little could be done.51 The Guardian agreed.52 Other newspapers had little interest in covering the story as a result of “compassion fatigue.”53 As Edward Girardet argues, “it took the concept of genocide”—again that magical incantation—“the deliberate destruction of human life based on ethnic, racial, or religious discrimination—to convince most editors finally to cover the story.”54 Even this less than helpful coverage was short-lived. The momentous elections in South Africa, which signaled the end of apartheid, took place and the world’s press corps moved en masse to South Africa to cover the elections and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela.55
At the same time, the Pentagon discussed the possibility of blocking the the broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines, which had been advocating and facilitating the genocide. This would not have stopped the genocide, but it might have slowed it down. But even this was too much; instead, one senior Pentagon official advocated for contributing to food relief.56 On 4 May UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called Rwanda a genocide, calling for intervention.57 On 11 May the ICRC delegate in Rwanda, Philippe Gaillard, told the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that 250,000 people had been killed.58 On 13 May, Gen. Dallaire submitted a report to the Security Council asking for an additional 5,500 troops.59 This was authorized four days later, with a mandate to protect civilians.60 This was just authorization; deployment depended upon a further report by the Secretary-General. Ambassador Keating called the resolution a “sham.”61 Indeed, UNAMIR II would not be deployed until after the genocide had ended and the RPF had taken control.62
On 24 May, the French minister for human rights, Lucette Michaux-Chevry, used the term genocide.63 On the same day Warren Christopher finally authorized use of the term genocide—if in an incoherent, muddled way.64 A report by the Secretary-General to the Security Council finally recognized Rwanda as genocide.65 This, however, did not lead to any swifter response. Dallaire wanted to create safe areas in Rwanda to protect civilians. The United States wanted to engage in “outside-in” protection—creating safe areas on the borders with Rwanda, thus obviating the need for military intervention in an ongoing genocide.66 The U.S. offered fifty armored personnel carriers (APCs) stored in Turkey. However, they arrived after the genocide ended without guns, radios, manuals, and spare parts. The UK offered old trucks in return for a significant amount of money (the demand for money was eventually rescinded).67
The one even somewhat robust military response came, eventually, from the French. Through its Opération Turquoise it deployed in excess of 2,500 highly trained troops from the French Foreign Legion. This was completely separate from UNAMIR—indeed, there was little consultation with Gen. Dallaire.68 France got the go-ahead from the Security Council on 22 June—after the vast majority of people had been killed. The week before, Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said, “We have a real duty to intervene in Rwanda…. France is ready, with its main European and African partners, to prepare an intervention on the ground to put an end to the massacres and protect the populations threatened with extermination…. France will live up to its responsibilities.”69
The question was which responsibilities he was talking about—those found in the Genocide Convention and the “never again” norm, or France’s ties to its Hutu clients? This was not made any clearer by Prime Minister Édouard Balladur when he stated, just days before the RPF took power, that “France has sent its soldiers out of a moral duty to act without delay in order to stop the genocide and provide immediate assistance to the threatened populations.”70 It went in with lots of firepower—firepower Dallaire could have used earlier to protect people. Rather than going to areas where Tutsi were being slaughtered, the French went to areas where Hutu were being threatened by advancing RPF soldiers. While Prunier argues that perhaps 13,000–14,000 people were saved by Opération Turquoise,71 the action had little to do with stopping people from being killed in a genocide. Rather, it was about supporting a long-time ally. By protecting Hutu areas, the French troops protected the génocidaires and allowed them to escape to neighboring countries.72
The RPF took Kigali on 4 July and declared a unilateral cease-fire on 20 July. The genocide was over. The international community had done nothing to stop it. This fact, and the manner in which it was ended, ultimately resulted in an even larger human conflagration in Rwanda’s next-door neighbor, Zaire.
Could the Genocide Have Been Stopped?
There is a debate about what the UN and states could have actually done to prevent or stop the genocide. A report to the Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflict argued that 5,000 troops “could have made a significant difference in Rwanda.” The most pessimistic analysis, by Kuperman, argues that because of limitations in airlift capability, the international community could only have reacted fast enough to save at most 125,000 lives—calculated as 25 percent of an estimated 500,000 people killed.73 There were plenty of warning signs that the situation was unstable and significant violence was possible. When UNAMIR was first created, the UN Security Council could have authorized a larger force with a more robust mandate. This would have required the agreement of Rwanda. A reflection of the “Somalia Syndrome” and a more cautious approach to peacekeeping and associated activities was to be found in Presidential Decision Directive 2574 signed by President Clinton just weeks after the genocide began. The United States wanted to reduce the percentage of UN peacekeeping expenses it paid, indicating a financial imperative in limiting the extent of UN peacekeeping—and also more restrictive criteria for when the U.S. would support—and participate in—Chapter VI and Chapter VII operations.75 Support by the U.S. and other countries for a large operation was not forthcoming. Michael Barnett argues that there were three other moments when the international community failed to act when it could have to prevent the massive loss of life: (1) when UN headquarters declined to allow UNAMIR to take more robust action against those suspected of planning a genocide; (2) failure of the Secretariat to provide significant information in its possession and argue for an early intervention based on that information; (3) Security Council refusal to authorize action in the weeks in April immediately after the genocide started.76
Once UNAMIR began to be deployed, other warning signs became apparent. The 11 January “genocide cable” was only one of many points where relevant information was made available to the UN and other actors. This cable was shared with the ambassadors from the United States, France, and Belgium. Dallaire provided other information to UN headquarters. He was finally given the go-ahead to search for weapons, but given the restrictive terms of UNAMIR’s mandate, including that any such operations be done in cooperation with the police, few weapons were found. Again, the UN could have acted more forcefully on early warning information to prevent the genocide, but it did not. There was not sufficient interest on the part of key players.
Once the killing started, it was not possible to ignore the killing itself, but there were strenuous efforts to avoid recognizing the import of the killings. Portraying the killings as part of a civil war or age-old tribal hatreds seemed to make it “normal,” just one of those things that happens in Africa periodically. Beefing up UNAMIR would entail crossing the Mogadishu Line. Yet we also perhaps see the first glimmers of the working of the “never again” norm. This norm identifies genocide as the most egregious of all international crimes and creates pressure to act. The verbal contortions used to avoid using the term genocide represent simultaneously the moral pressure to intervene and the unwillingness on the part of most of the global power elite to actually do so. It was only once the term genocide started to be uttered from the mouths of those representing the major powers that there was discussion and action toward putting a