Peace by Non-Lethal Means: A Transcultural Approach to Healing Genocidal Wounds in Rwanda ₁

Abstract

This paper invites a political and historical reading of African conflicts. It argues that the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is neither the outcome of miscalculation by the élites or some 'ethnicity habit,' nor the absurd product of 'biological fatality or spontaneous bestial outburst.' It is an outcome of the long-standing power struggles between Hutu and Tutsi, set at each other's throats by the colonial administrations and the Catholic church. The seeds of the ideology of ethnic hatred grew, with complicity from the élites, into clashing nationalisms.

Anchored in this historical perspective, the paper surveys the root causes of the Rwandan madness and what is to be done about it. It suggests that only collective hegemony, through inter-cultural communication and mutual empowerment, rather than gunboat peace, may help remove the genocidal seeds and heal the wounds. The success of this policy requires the international community to develop a politics of race-neutral empathy by resolutely expanding the notion of those for whom we care.

To adopt a life that is essentially non-assertive, non-violent, a life of humility and peace is in itself a statement of one's position. But each one in such a life can, by the personal modality of his decision, give his whole life a special orientation. It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole race of man and the world with him. By my monastic life and vows I am saying NO to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies and the whole socio-economic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. I make a monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my church can ever seriously be aligned with those forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also, and perhaps against these most of all.

--Thomas Merton

Preface to the Japanese Edition of The Seven Story Mountain ₂

I. Introduction: Crisis Identity Card of Africa

Under the title "Africa Shifts Toward Democracy, Finding Both Hope and Peril," the New York Times, in its delivery of June 21, 1994, characterizes Rwanda in the following terms: "Africa's Hell, pure and simple, with prospects ahead of more grisly killings by either Hutus or Tutsis, barring outside intervention." ₃

This gruesome picture, both actual and predictive, is just one among the many wars and conflicts which have affected and afflicted the continent since independence. ₄ Indeed, cases of actual or potential serious state collapse are legions in Africa. On the one hand lie cases in which large-scale armed violence abated or stopped: Zimbabwe, Uganda, Namibia, Chad, Somalia, and South Africa. Yet the social fabric still remains very delicate and fragile. Moreover, the social and political balance between the forces enmeshed in the power struggle is still too volatile to think that a definite national consensus has been devised to the satisfaction of the majority of the people in these countries. On the other hand, lie the most tragic instances to date: Somalia, "the case study in the failure of international intervention," ₅ Angola, in its 19 year-old fratricidal war after years of liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial domination, Burundi, with its recurring tragedy of ethnic massacres; the Sudan, devastated by the continent's longest war aggravated by a North-South schism itself worsened by the militant and extremist Islamic intolerance of the Khartoum government, Mozambique awaiting with anxiety its first pluralist election after the precarious peace set in, and Liberia, where a protracted internal war (somewhat tempered by the Cotonou Accord) continues its carnage. A unique case in point of political insanity remains the colonialist war Morocco has been fighting against the Sahraoui people in Western Sahara.

Such disintegration has not reached the same proportion as in other countries. Nevertheless rebellion in eastern Sierra Leone, Casamance (Senegal), and Djibouti, ethnic fighting in northern Ghana, Tuaregs uprisings in Mali and Niger, and popular unrest in Guinea (Conakry), rampant violence in Congo, constitute serious threats to stability, and more importantly, to the fragile democratic opening being re-tried in Africa. More frightening, however, is the increasing violent and organized militancy adopted by Islamic Fundamentalists in Morocco, Niger, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia, etc. This is likely to paralyze these countries, as in Algeria, where the Islamic Salvation Front's violence has kept everything in abeyance over the last three years or so. Last, the social and political tensions in Togo and Zaire, and the precarious balance between state and society in those countries under the IMF caudine forks, exacerbate the despair and helplessness that characterize Africa as we approach the twenty-first century.

Alongside those disparaging pictures, however, there is a new dawn emerging: its spectacular embodiment is "the election of President Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It was not just that Mr. Mandela triumphed in the last redoubt of White minority rule. It is that he welcomed his former foes, F. W. de Klerk and Chief Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi, into his administration with open arms, providing an object lesson in the value of tolerating the opposition as a form of good, stable, even shrewd government." ₆ Its first manifestation (after the Western nations, under the guise of communism containment, stifled the experiment in its infancy in Angola and Mozambique) is to be found in Namibia. Its most recent illustration is taking shape in Rwanda, where the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) formed its first cabinet appointing Pasteur Bizimungu and Mr. Twagiramungu, both Hutu, as president and prime minister. The new cabinet, through its president, appealed to all Rwandans to return to Rwanda and promised there will be no reprisal against the refugees after repatriation. The RPF created at once a new dynamic and an unusual spate of "hope for Rwanda." ₇ It explicitly endorsed the power-sharing scheme embodied in the August 1993 Arusha Accord between the RPF and the former Rwandan Government. Yet, the fate of any policy of national reconciliation and political reintegration will depend on the attitudes of international aid agencies, and the responses of the international community in general, the Western nations in particular, toward the new political life dawning in Kigali. The new leaders, however, must hasten to create the conditions of democratic legitimacy for their military victory and make the way for a long-lasting honey moon between them and the Rwandan people of all conditions and ethnic background.

The tasks of building a new Rwanda, engineering and gearing the birth of a new nation urge us to focus on the future. Yet, to understand the thrust of this analysis and the rational behind its prescriptions, it is imperative to investigate the past and expose the root causes of the savagery that has brought Rwanda into an absolute state of wrack and ruin. After this historical synopsis, I attempt to evaluate the cost the Rwandan people paid as a result of their encounter with Europe, before assessing what needs to be done in order to successfully face the challenges that this particular case represents for the modern Homo Politicus. At each of these steps, special attention is devoted to the place and role of the Roman Catholic Church. This reflection wonders whether the tragedy that has clutched and aggrieved Rwanda since 1959 can be read as the outcome of some form of nationalism or just blunt barbarism. It refuses to see the continuing "seasons of blood" ₈ as ethno-tribal cleansing and invites to consider the 1994 crisis as the apex of a long-standing political conflict whose complexities defy conventional conflict resolution panaceas.

II. Root Causes of Rwanda's Tragedy

A. The Pre-Colonial Background to the Three Decades of Intermittent Horrors.

Located in the Central African Rift Valley, Rwanda is a small landlocked country (26,338 square km) of the size of Belgium, its former colonial metropolis. It hosts a population of 8.2 million that includes three ethnic groups: the Twa or Batwa, the Hutu or Bahutu, and the Tutsi or Batutsi. This, it is said, is the order in which these people established themselves in the country. Before the 1959 Revolution, which caused the first Tutsi exodus, they represented respectively: 1% (Twa), 84% (Hutu), 15% (Tutsi). Probably as a result of the exodus, these figures are now: 1%, 90%, and 9%. ₉ Rwanda has the highest density in mainland Africa, 271 inhabitants per square km, climbing up to 422 should one take into account only the arable area.

Before European conquest of Rwanda-Urundi, ethnicity was not a major factor distinguishing between the different groups inhabiting this land. It was rather their socio-professional occupations that drew some distinctive lines between them. Thus, the Twa were hunters and potters; the Hutu agricultural producers; and the Tutsi, cattle herders. According to Ian Linden, actually, "genetic differences" between the three groups "have no operational significance"; ethnicity is seen "as a component" of power ideology, where different "group[s] of people hav[e] the same relationship to the mode of production". "The Hutu," he wrote, "are therefore a class in as much as they are direct agricultural producers in a feudal mode of production. The Tutsi are a class in as much as they appropriate surplus labor in the same mode of production." But the feudal economy was not a common feature of the country as a whole: although it was to be extended by the colonial power, "the isolated Tutsi households of the north were simple cattle-herders in an exchange relationship with Hutu farmers. In such regions production was dominated by kingship." ₁₀

There is general agreement that the Tutsi were the last to settle in the country. But there has been no such agreement as to "how the Tutsi minority managed to extend their hegemony over the Hutu peasant" ₁₁ . This is no place to comb in detail all the responses given to this question. The most ideological of these which set the ground work for ethnicity and ethnic hatred is examined in the following sub-section. The basic mechanism whereby the majority of the population were subjugated is, however, recognized by a wide range of students of Rwandese politics: ubuhake or "contract of servage," also known as "cattle agreement" or "cattle-clientship." ₁₂ The ubuhake allowed eventual land dispossession and domination of Hutu by Tutsi. In Rwanda, cattle were wealth, the key to political and social standing; and the cattle were owned almost exclusively by the Tutsi. The Hutu desire to own cattle was the fundamental reason for their subjugation. The Hutu wanted cattle; the Tutsi wanted servants and labor for their crops. The Tutsi despised agriculture. To acquire cattle the Hutu obligated themselves to perform services for the Tutsi. In Rwanda, this took the form of a cattle agreement called the ubuhake, which enabled the Hutu to obtain cattle, provided they were loyal to the Tutsi who granted them the cattle. The cattle agreement involved subjugation on the part of the Hutu to the extent that in some places, in return for the use of cattle, the Hutu relinquished their pastures and arable land, and were bound to provide crops as well as personal and military services for the Tutsi. In this way the Tutsi wielded almost total political and economic power over the Hutu. On the other hand, the personal allegiance between the Tutsi and Hutu ensured protection for the latter. The Tutsi exploited the Hutu, but also provided security.

Over a period of centuries the Tutsi had gradually usurped the ownership of the land from the Hutu. All land, theoretically, became the property of the mwami, the absolute and semi-divine sovereign?. ₁₃

This political and economic domination is the basis of the coercive bras de fer to engage the people in their future relations. Real estate constitutes a two-way-mechanism to self and political alienation: land owning is the surest path to ennoblement, that is, in our case "tutsification." And the latter makes one eligible for political office holding. Those seeking protection in general, and those seeking to escape from "the threat of expulsion in personal relationships" are all-inclined to alienate further land. In an environment of this sort where clientship predominates, "powerful landowners and patrons represented in microcosm the political power of the State as a coercive organ of the ruling class." ₁₄ Evolution up the social ladder in this land was thus conditioned by a cause-effect dialectic, cow-land: possession of the former gets one started; it moves one into cattle-owning, itself bringing under one's control land, the latter conferring some class status upon its owner ₁₅ . This process, brought to completion through manipulation of traditional symbols of kingship and religion, transformed Rwanda into a feudal state with: "a subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. the fief) instead of salary, ?, the supremacy of a class of specialist warriors; ties of obedience which bind man to man? fragmentation of authority-leading inevitably to disorder." ₁₆

There is, however, a general agreement that, in the resulting "society of great internal complexity," the Batwa and Bahutu enjoyed fairly peaceful relationships. Moreover, to consider Hutu and Tutsi as "tribes," or even as "distinct 'ethnic groups'" would be inaccurate. As Alex de Waal observes, Rwanda was one of the rare "true nations in Africa". Rwandans "speak the same language, share the same territory and traditional political institutions, and-despite caricature to the contrary-it is often impossible to tell which group an individual belongs to on the basis of physical appearance" ₁₇ . So, despite Tutsi colonialism, deeply resented by Hutu, instances of open animosities and violent outbreaks were minimal, up until the Europeans conquered that "African Switzerland," sitting up-the-hill, in the form of a "human heart," in central Africa. ₁₈

B. Ideology of Ethnic Hatred: A Result of "Divide and Rule" Policies

So, despite the "suffocating constraints of the caste system in which [they] had been enclosed" ₁₉ , the people of Rwanda of the Mwami (this is the official title of the king of Rwanda) contrived to maintain a relatively low level of violence against each other. This apparently bizarre homeostasis between the oppressed and their oppressors, was probably due to the effectiveness of the image of the mwami as the "projected father" of everyone in Rwanda: Twa, Hutu, Tutsi. He was regarded as "source of justice, promoter of the lowly," and a "negation of the stratified society over which he ruled" ₂₀ . It was considered a serious insult to even think of the ethnic appurtenance of the mwami or his mother: they are kings (abamis) ₂₁ .

German conquest, and later on, Belgian colonial administration, eventually brought down this superficial symbiosis through relentless efforts of ethnicization. To start with, Europeans saw in Ruanda-Urundi only "barbarism" to be "submit[ted] to civilization" by "turn[ing]"the countries into "coffee lands" ₂₂ . To achieve such a goal, colonial rule and missionary Catholicism (the White Fathers) colluded to produce the racial-supremacist ideology that sharpens the Hutu-Tutsi pre-colonial difference.

Hutu extremism and the option for the "final solution" are not gratuitous historical accidents: they are the product of the Western ideology of racial supremacy and policy of "divide and rule." European conquerors were impressed by the sophisticated central Tutsi-run organization of the kingdom they found in Rwanda. But imbued with their racial biases, they could not admit that such complex political and administrative sophistication was the work of Africans. If not European, such genius "could only have originated from a place geographically, culturally and above all racially nearer Europe, that is Ethiopia." ₂₃

Thus, on the ground of purely racial and racist prejudices and for political purposes, the Germans and later on the Belgians elevated the Tutsi to an extra-African, White, Asian or Aryan origin. Their "gigantic stature and patrician gait" signals their origin and their mission in life: they must "rule, command" ₂₄ . Tutsi domination, for the Germans, is an "innate" attribute of "their superior intelligence, calmness, smartness, racial pride, solidarity and political talent" ₂₅ . As a result, "the Tutsi consider themselves", according to European testimonies, "as the top of the creation from the standpoint of intelligence and political genius" ₂₆ . In contrast, the Hutu are portrayed as "a singularly servile, boisterous and cowardly people, whose sense of dignity and amour propre had been dulled almost to extinction by centuries of bondage" ₂₇ .

This hypothesis that sees no civilization in pre-colonial Africa that was not brought about by outside forces was given strong support by the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda, in particular, by the White Fathers' Mission. After the League of Nations gave Belgium, in the aftermath of World War I, the mandate to run the former German territory of Ruanda-Urundi, there was some hesitation as to what direction to take. They undertook an experiment of appointing Hutu chiefs and kings. On express advice of the ecclesiastic leadership in Rwanda, the colonial power moved to the absolute consecration of Tutsi domination over the full range of the territory. Indeed, on advice of, and active campaign by Archbishop Classe, the Belgian colonial administration ousted Hutu and replaced them with Tutsi chiefs. The alleged motive was that Hutu chiefs failed their rulership test. The most dramatic instance of destitution came about on November 12, 1931, when King Yuhi Musinga, who resented both Belgian presence and the Catholic Church influence in Rwanda, was deposed on the ground that he lacked "prestige and authority" ₂₈ .

For the Church, the road to progress lay nowhere but in the hands of "Tutsi youth eager to learn, willing to know what comes from Europe and to imitate Europeans, able to acknowledge that ancestral customs have become obsolete, yet endowed with the same good political shrewdness and adroitness their ancestors showed in the governance of men". ₂₉ So convinced, Archbishop Classe consorted with the colonial regime to engineer a transfer of power from Hutu majority to Tutsi minority and worked to consolidate Tutsi domination through mass conversion, the preeminence of Catholicism, and the absolutism of the colonial state. The peak was reached when in 1943 such intimate collusion brought about the conversion of Mwami Mutara III who was to dedicate his kingdom to Christ, the King. ₃₀ In 1946, on the occasion of the dedication, Mutara III thanked Christ-the-King to have given Rwanda the divine light of Belgian colonial administration along with its science of good government. ₃₁

The active involvement of the Church in Rwandan politics would not, however, have brought to fruition the transformation of Rwanda into a catholic state without the ruthless iron fist of the Belgian colonial state. The religious influence, on the other hand, constituted the superstructural rampart without which colonial brutality against, and de-humanization of, the Rwandese people could not have reached its goal without any major social explosions against Belgian colonial regime.

It is notorious that a handful of colonial officers were displayed by the Germans in Ruanda-Urundi for financial reasons essentially. Historically, it should be recalled, it was those financial constraints, limiting colonial metropolises' ability to import the staff necessary to run the colonies from the "mother country", that forced them to open schools for training indigenous auxiliaries. What must be stressed is how "so much was accomplished by so few people" ₃₂ to render German, and later on Belgian, rule effectual.

C. Sowing the Germs of Butchery

Both Germans and Belgians failed to promote any remarkable economic development; but they were, in contrast, successful in maintaining order and recognition of their respective kings. ₃₃ Both resorted to indirect rule. Whereas the German officers leaned on Musinga and established with him reportedly "mutually advantageous relations," the Belgians undertook to weaken local chiefs and made them dependent upon Belgian administrative will. In any event, however, there was no doubt as to the most effective recourse when it came to maintaining authority. Brutal punitive expeditions were the principal means German officers used to bring 'rebel' or recalcitrant chiefs into compliance with German rule or Mwami authority: systematic destruction or burning of whole villages and their agriculture, cattle appropriation, hangings. Even in Burundi where violent repression was reputed to be lesser than in Rwanda, refractory chiefs' villages were set on fire and cattle were arrogated as a way of ruining the people and obtaining submission. ₃₄

Moreover, the Belgian soldier in Rwanda was "a professional looter, and [was] capable, whether on his account or by order of his superiors, of sucking as much out of an acre as professionals born and bred to the work." ₃₅ On the other hand, Belgian colonial policy makers, just like their British or French counterparts, never planned for the independence of their colonial possessions. The idea of independence imposed itself as a result of the heavy and invaluable part the colonies took in World War II; this contribution was indeed acknowledged in the Atlantic Charter through the promise of self-determination to colonial people in case of victory over Germany and its allies. Although the juridical mission of the trust authority was to methodically prepare the country for independence, Rwanda, not unlike Belgian Congo, was not ready for the show of party politics that came with it. The country "split along ethnic and regional fault lines." As Pakenham observed, " When the Belgians scuttled out of the Congo in July 1960, they had left the country well prepared for war and anarchy. The prospects of their departure from Ruanda-Urundi, though delayed for two years, had the same disastrous effect". ₃₆

If anything it can be argued that Belgium, with the active collaboration of the church, through the supremacist ideology and the manipulation of images and cultural symbols, set in place Tutsi ethnic hegemony atop a powder-keg whose fate would depend on the outcome of clashing nationalisms. The same causes producing the same effects, when, starting in the 1950s, the colonial state and the church switched side away from Tutsi nationalism to cultivate and harness Hutu nationalism, they bred and fueled Hutu extremism whose expression is not far removed from the patterns of looting and punishing proper to colonial soldiers.

D. Clashing Nationalisms and the Emergence of Hutu Extremism

A by-product of the above evolution, Hutu nationalism is also a direct result of Western racism and ethnocentrism, that is, European blind opposition to change in the status of the colonies after World War II. Such opposition was rationalized as opposition to, and containment of, Communist expansion into the so-called developing areas. In Rwanda, this new ideology caused both the Church and Belgium to switch their alliance from Tutsi elite to Hutu counter-elite. ₃₇ With strong support from both temporal and spiritual powers, Hutu elite operated without restraints pushing for their exclusive hegemony.

It must be emphasized here that Tutsi domination over centuries could have generated a strong Hutu nationalism even in the absence of the political circumstances that marked its emergence in the 1950s. But without these circumstances, it probably could not have taken the deadly form it has displayed with such consistency since its inception. A fundamental factor that upset the balance of power to the detriment of the Hutu is the Belgian colonial policy that limited their access to power and to education. But the distributions of favors by the Church and Belgium are linked to each group's attitude toward the Church.

Fascinated by the relative central organization and stability they met in Rwanda, in comparison to the anarchy prevailing in Burundi, both colonial institutions-Church and colonial administration-favored Tutsi aristocracy from the start. Yet, those attuned to power and politics know what may threaten their power basis, even in its slimmest form. Thus, unlike the Hutu, the Tutsi showed no enthusiasm for Christianity. They were at once skeptical of the intentions of the Church and of Belgium. First hesitant, then cautious, they converted however en masse in the 1930s and 1940s. The apex of the conversion came about with Mwami Mutara's baptism in 1943. The honeymoon did not last very long however. By the early 1950s, European colonial obstinacy caused the wind of nationalism to swirl from Asia into Africa. Within Rwanda, loyal to its ultimate goal, that is to establish "a capitalist elite firmly" anchored "in the neo-colonial net," ₃₈ Belgium, with the support of the Church, was pressing for reforms including the abolition of ubuhake, the socio-economic basis of Tutsi domination, actually abolished in 1954.

In the national debate over socio-economic reforms and social justice, Tutsi elite and Hutu counter-elite split. Tutsi aristocracy became increasingly nationalistic, anti-clerical (Tutsi Abbé Kagame's staunch opposition to the White Fathers is unique in Rwanda's nationalism history), calling for independence as soon as possible. For the Mwami, such independence would lead to a constitutional monarchy. Organized into the Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR) ₃₉ the Tutsi called for land reforms, higher education, and, to confound Hutu propaganda, selected as UNAR president François Rukeba, a Hutu of half Congolese breed. ₄₀ Bent on evicting trust authority through self-government, Tutsi nationalism called for the abolition of Belgium-established ethnic distinctions on the national identity card. Rhetorically, at least, these nationalist claims were all-inclusive.

The Hutu nationalist agenda, against the backdrop of the Tutsi call for inclusion perceived as a new stratagem to secure Tutsi aristocratic dominance over the majority of the Rwandese people, called for the codification of customary law, legal recognition of private property rights, abolition of ibikingi, ₄₁ development of credit unions, freedom of expression and economic union with Belgium. It saw causes of malaise in the Belgian indirect rule, prevalence of ubuhake, absence of a strong middle class and syndicalism. ₄₂

Ideologically, the Hutu credo sounds very much like a middle-class liberal petition. The Bahutu Manifesto, however, adopted ethnic overtones: it denounces the "political monopoly of one race, the Tutsi race [emphasis mine] which, given the present structural framework, becomes a social and economic monopoly," and proposed, as a remedy, "the integral and collective promotion of the Hutu." ₄₃ Official documents and tracts as well treated Tutsi as "Hamitic," as foreigners to be returned to their fathers in Abyssinia via the sea. ₄₄ The open attack on the Kalinga (the sacred drum of the Nyiginya dynasty) was indicative of Hutu extreme abhorrence of Tutsi "colonialism" from which they are now seeking "independence." The demand was politically very explicit. "The fact of independence for the Hutu people vis-à-vis Tutsi colonialism will be definitely and solemnly consecrated by the total abolition of the triple myth of Tutsi feudal colonialists, 'Kalinga-Abiru-mwami'" ₄₅ . More telling, however, was Hutu opposition to the suppression of ethnic identification on the national identity card, fearing this would only increase the Mutusi preferential treatment, while concealing Muhutu discrimination whose statistical evaluation it would render very difficult, if not impossible. ₄₆

Clashes between the two antagonistic nationalisms became virtually inevitable. But the spark that set the country ablaze was the sudden death, on July 25, 1959 of mwami Mutara who died shortly before he was to make an important policy statement. Apparently, he went to Bujumbura, in then Urundi, to consult with the Belgian administration. Only hours after his exchange with the Belgian officials, he suddenly died on foreign soil in Bujumbura, after an injection he received from his personal doctor. The official explanation was that the mwami died of a heart attack.

But for the Tutsi, this was just another assassination, probably plotted by the same agents (the colonial state and the church) who killed the father, Mutara Rudahigwa, baptized in 1943. The successful designation of Jean-Baptiste Ndahindurwa as successor Mwami under the name of Kigeri V outmaneuvered both Belgian officials and Bahutu nationalists. It was known as the coup d'état of Mwima. Belgian ratification of Kigeri designation was seen by Hutu as a rekindling or refurbishment of the monarchy.

The Church threw all of its weight behind the Bahutu claims. A pastoral letter of February 11, 1959, called peremptorily to "dissolve racial differences into the higher unity of the Communion of Saints," while acknowledging that "in our Rwanda ?, riches?, political and even judicial power, are in reality to a considerable degree in the hands of people of the same race." ₄₇ The Church, upset with Tutsi sympathy with the Protestant Church, showed open opposition to both independence and unity, as it saw in the growing independence nationalism in Rwanda and Congo as well the "sad reality of Communism " creeping into the regions. ₄₈

How the nationalists on each side viewed and portrayed themselves throws some light on the nature of their respective nationalism. Hutu elected to the National Parliament identified themselves with the "Monrovia Group," whereas elected Tutsi called themselves the "Casablanca Group." In African political jargons, the former means moderate and pro-Western, the latter progressive/revolutionary and anti-colonialist. ₄₉ In any event, Hutu nationalists did not consider themselves as revolutionary; they praised Belgian munificence in their Manifesto, which contends Tutsi evil to be worse than the European, and rejects "hamitization" as being unnecessary for reaching out to Western civilization. ₅₀

This polarization led to the deadly confrontations that bereaved the country starting with the peasant revolution of 1959. After independence, the Hutu-Tutsi schism was compounded by another, this one internal to the Hutu, whereby the Hutu of the North (mainly Gitera) opposed those of the South (Gitarama). The new schism led to the coup de force of Juevenal Habyarimana (North) that overthrew the Gitarama-born President Kayabinda in 1973. This new dimension of the crisis meant in practical terms that the victims of the massacres, since 1973 at least, were no longer only Tutsi, but also Hutu and Twa who found themselves in opposition to the Habyarimana regime whose longevity in power depended upon the "efficient system of repression " it engineered. ₅₁

E. Immediate Factors Leading to the Grand Catastrophe

Despite the "long story with complex roots, many contradictions, [and] brutal twists of fate," some "sudden accelerations and periods of spiritual collapse screw[ed] on the fuse" ₅₂ and caused it to eventually blast off in April-May 1994. These events are by nature political, economic, social and cultural. A detailed analysis of the accelerating course is not necessary here. It suffices to just point, in swift strokes, to the main events.

The tonic mélange of contradictory political, social-religious, and economico-cultural factors transformed "the African Switzerland" into the Auschwitz of Africa. Politically, simultaneous foreign pressures for democratic opening and military support sent a wrong message to the Habyarimana régime, leading it to rather deliberately "dodge any basic change and just to co-opt the opposition into a docile business-as-usual 'new'" governmental structure. The resulting manipulation of the democratic transition process in a country already at war since 1 October 1991, and the French Legion military support eventually gave the upper hand to the regime to "veer off into violence" and methodically set the ground for the madness which follows. In addition, in December 1991, the Catholic church let off its long-time ally, the "sociological majority." In a pastoral letter, "the primate of Rwanda first offered a strong self-criticism of the church itself, for its cozy association with the regime" before picking up on the social and political malaise of the Rwandese society. According to Gérard Prunier,

He then went to denounce a political situation where 'assassination is now commonplace', where the government refused to play the democratic game fairly, where opposition parties were mostly opportunistic, where nobody seemed serious about reaching a negotiated peace with the guerrillas and finally where there was no serious debate on the real social sins of the country which were buried under political verbiage, namely of discrimination in education and neglect of the living conditions of the peasantry. ₅₃

This shift of loyalty by the church constitutes, in fact, a dramatic withdrawal of legitimacy to a regime openly more concerned with "keeping its money and privileges" than anything else. ₅₄ The last straw which broke the back of the Rwandese camel was, however, the Arusha Peace Accord of 4 August 1993. It called for: a transitional government to include the guerrillas, the fusion of the Forces Armées Rwandaises ₅₅ and the Rwandese Patriotic Army, ₅₆ the deployment of the United Nations Mission for Rwanda, and the demilitarization of Kigali. ₅₇ For the regime and its supporters, the Accord embodies a scathing defeat. Only four days after the Agreement was reached, the massacre started with no apparent sign of improvisation. ₅₈

These political developments themselves festered against a backdrop of economic ₅₉ and cultural down-slides. First, the war efforts of the Government depleted foreign currency reserves of the country, aggravated its foreign debt, and resulted in an unprecedented inflation. ₆₀ At the same time, the International Monetary Fund, through its Structural Adjustment Programme, has brought the Rwandese people at arm-length control, overseeing two devaluations of the national currency between 1990 and 1992, while the prices of coffee and tin, precipitously collapsed. Scattered famine in the country compounded with demographic pressure ₆₁ and the decline in foreign aid to bring the infectious and explosive situation to its full ripe stage, stirring up fears of every description, sending the political and military élite at each other's throats to increase and improve on expected spoils range. The Rwanda Crisis, by Gérard Prunier, offers the following picture:

In the case of Rwanda, the free fall of world coffee prices in the late 1980s corresponded with the political disintegration of the regime. [?] The elite of the rubanda nyamwinshi had been kept reasonably satisfied with the proceeds of coffee, foreign aid, tin and tea, roughly in that order. By 1989 coffee and tin prices were both near total collapse, and foreign aid was shrinking. The elite started tearing each other apart to get at the shrinking spoils, Abakiga against Abanyanduga, then among the victorious northerners Abashiru against Abagoyi, and within the top Abashiru people between the various affinity groups or families. Mme Habyarimana, nicknamed 'Kanjogera' in memory of the murderous nineteenth-century Nyina Yuhi, emerged at the top of the heap as the best player?

Of course, the atmosphere quickly became suffocating. Corruption had become an open sore in a country co-administered by the Catholic church and priding itself on its virtue. Political murders were taking place with abandon among an élite which had known only one bout of eliminations, after Kayinbanda's downfall, and was used to a peaceful life. The small men of rubanda nyamwinshi, in whose name all this was being done, started to grumble. And this is where the growing crisis went from the economic to the cultural. ₆₂

In the last analysis, it is the stratagem of the Northern clan to hold on to power that defeated the Arusha Peace Accord. The butchery that followed was a major element of the plot. The Peace Accord provided for a transitional coalition cabinet to be inaugurated on December 31, 1993. The inauguration never took place. In fact, under the pretense that his Staff never briefed him that it was set for that day, late president Habyarimana put off the ceremony ad eternam ₆₃ . The Government side, on the contrary, charged that the RPF has obstructed the implementation of the Accord by withholding its participation in the interrim government. ₆₄

III. Groping with the Massacre

A. The Lack of Adequate International Response

The abyssal exodus of Rwandans into Zaire caught the world unawares. It generated an attention rivaling the one that prompted "Operation Restore Hope" in Somalia. None the less, a similar, large-scale massive response is yet to be seen. What makes the difference between Somalia and Rwanda, you may ask? Why such nonchalance or apparent indifference until things got out of hand?

The answer is to be found in the geo-political importance of the two countries. If Rwanda were located in the Horn of Africa, in the vicinity of the Red Sea, at the door-step of the world's largest oil wells, as is Somalia, the terrors in Rwanda and the anarchy that developed in their shadow might have been seen as potentially too dangerous to be tolerated. In addition, I would suggest, many people do not see Rwanda as part of "useful Africa," despite its proximity to Zaire. Or, precisely because of that proximity, the political calculus was to buy time for governmental troops. It may have been to prevent the Patriotic Front from gaining control of Kigali when uncertainty still existed as to what they might do, or what regional political chemistry a RPF government in power in Kigali may concoct along with the Museveni regime in Kampala, or, in alliance with a Tutsi domination in neighboring Burundi. It may also be that the silence was generated by weariness with the Habyarimana regime and designed to help the RPF to win its war of attrition over Kigali. But this last hypothesis would ring sound only if a total embargo had been put to work against Kigali. The French unilateral intervention allegedly to draw a line around the so-called "safe area" in the south-western Rwandan sand, ₆₅ does not support this conjecture; nor does the arms supply to the government by France, Zaire, Egypt, and the former South African Apartheid regime. ₆₆

The sluggish response of the international community betrays the old political realist wariness according to which states prefer to observe and wait for one side in a conflict to crush the other. Indeed, it exhibits old tactics of the Westphalian system to just wait and eventually extend recognition and support to the victor. The US withdrawal of recognition from the Rwandan government right after the RPF took military control of Kigali, and President Clinton's dispatching of Brian Atwood, the USAID administrator, William Perry, his Defense Secretary, and his Joint Chiefs Staff, General Jdoukatchivili (?) to visit the Central African region only substantiates this opinion.

The external world has largely perceived the Rwandan tragedy essentially as one of those "outbreaks of tribal violence and 'ethnic cleansing'" that erupt in the "backwaters" of remote and "destitute" Africa, "where foreigners rarely venture to tell the world about it". Otherwise, "to the outside world, the tribal massacres there [in Rwanda] were an inexplicable horror, an atavistic replaying of ancient hatreds" compounded by "a reform-minded change under the prodding of Western countries gone horribly wrong." ₆₇

This perception of African conflicts is groundless and wrong. To view what reliable media reported as a meticulously planned genocide in Rwanda as "a mindless tribal violence" is a reflection of the prevalence of old stereotypes. But it is exactly how it has been seen, and that is why the outside world, especially the big powers, abstained from even providing the resources and logistic African troops needed to move in and possibly head off the senseless slaughter.

B. A Political Conflict

As shown earlier, the conflict is essentially political, and has a long historical background. Political animosities and horrors as have polarized the Rwandan society were woven through centuries.

There are many instances of European failure in Africa. Rwanda is one of the most tragic instances of Africa's encounter with Europe, one case in illustration of European failures in Africa. The monumental level of dehumanization achieved by colonial policy can today be measured only in the magnitude of the horrors the world has witnessed since independence in the country, but all especially in the macabre tragedy that unfolded before the indifferent eyes and apathetic complacency of the international community in the mid of 1994. This failure is also that of the Roman Catholic Church because the church has been intimately associated with power-holders of every description since its arrival at the "ibwami" (the royal court) in Nyanza in Rwanda on February 2, 1900. ₆₈

A historical lesson which stands out in relation to the Rwandan situation is that:

The tragedy of history is not the perpetual hopeless clash between saintly individuals and diabolic establishments, it is rather the perpetual clash between the relatively decent societies and the bloody ones. To be more precise: the perpetual cowardice of relatively decent societies whenever they confront the ruthlessness of oppressive ones. ₆₉

This is particularly true of most African conflict cases; even in those lands where no large-scale terror has been recorded, in the daily life and struggle over scarce and ever shrinking resources, one finds the decent societies of Africa giving in to ruthless power-greedy elites, be they civilian or military. I suggest that this is the logic of violence politics as has governed the world all over. So, any endeavor to devise, implement, sustain and further lasting solutions to the politics of carnage and terror which has engulfed Rwanda, must acknowledge the multifaceted failure of the past. It must also go beyond conflicts and mass slaughter to grasp and tackle their root causes.

The basic equation behind the Rwandan horrors is the struggle for power domination. So, in 1959, the Hutu, with the support of the Catholic Church, shook off centuries-long political and economic domination of Tutsi aristocracy. Ironically, however, emancipating themselves from the aristocratic oppression, the Hutu showed no signs of toleration of diversity. Indeed, since the Hutu took power and forced the minority Tutsi into exile, the power base and the struggle for its control dramatically, drastically, and swiftly reversed: from ethnic (Tutsi-Hutu) divisions into regional (Hutu-Hutu along North-South) cliques. "What is vital for ? understanding the reasons of the tragic split which led to the present Rwandese ultra-violence," Prunier observes rightly, "is the fact at the time it was a centre versus periphery affair and not one of Tutsi versus Hutu." ₇₀ Indeed it is this power squabble that led to the 1973 coup d'état whereby Chief of Staff Habyarimana (a Northwestern Hutu from Gisenyo) overthrew, in 1973, Mr. Kayinbanda, the first president of Rwanda, (a Southerner, from Gitarama). The same cause producing the same effect, it's not surprising that the prospects of sharing power with, not only Hutu Southerners, but also with refugee Tutsi as a result of the 1993 Arusha Accord ushered in the phobia of the hard-liners who methodically designed, prepared and exacted the carnage which started with the murder of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994. According to news reporters,

The killings, when they came, were not random, or even spontaneous. This was no outbreak of spontaneous ethnic hatred, or a frenzy of universal madness. The killing machine had been well prepared in advance, the targets, at least in the early days, had been carefully chosen, the killers (in the army, the Presidential guard and the militias) were given precise orders. The aim was nothing short of the total elimination of the political opposition in all its forms, and particularly the RPF supporters (who, in the eyes of those orchestrating the massacres, automatically included all Tutsis) and the preservation of the power of a small clique. ₇₁

It is hard to say how many Rwandans have been killed since the Hutu uprising of 1959. In recent years, punctuated by RPF guerrilla war, the targets of the carnage have been Tutsi and other moderates who happened to favor opposition parties to Major-General Juvenal Habyarimana's regime. But until the invasion of 1990, Tutsi lives were the prominent, if not only target of planned violence. The massacre between 1959 and 1963 took 100,000 Tutsi lives, and forced 200,000 into exile. The jacquerie broke out from time to time (whether initiated by Hutu or by Tutsi incursive attacks across borders from Uganda) without anyone paying careful attention to its toll. It seems further difficult to estimate the number of victims of the war since 1990.

In contrast, starting in April of 1994, using "the Nazi industrialized method of genocide," in a matter of ten weeks Rwandan extremists (militias and army, and Hutu civilians) killed between 500,000 and one million people, and forced nearly half of the surviving population to seek protection in neighboring countries. Even in the refugee camps, over 50,000 "people have died from disease since they first crossed into Zaire ? in mid-July." ₇₂ And, still now, "people are being killed every day for just talking about going back to Rwanda". ₇₃ As Robert Block related:

Much of Africa's most densely populated country has become a hollow, wind-swept land of rolling hills and smoking volcanoes.

Where there are people, they live in ghost towns or in displaced persons camps where they are looked after and fed by foreigners. In rural areas controlled by the victorious Tutsis?there are farmers and soldiers and hardly anyone else: few if any shopkeepers, no barbers, no street vendors, no officials. There are no police, no courts, no judges, no law. The capital of Kigali still has less than half of its 350,000 pre-war population. ₇₄

IV. Glimpses of Hope

The new power configuration in Kigali reveals the tension between nightmare and hope set up in the introduction. It shows that there is still room for hope in poverty-stricken and violence-laden Africa. A democratic and multiracial South Africa, under the enlightened leadership of President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, stands as the best beacon of such hope. The Namibian and Ugandan experiments fall within this same category. Similarly, in Rwanda bereft by the "most brutal and horrific confrontation" this century has witnessed -- a "rebuke" to Africa ₇₅ -- emerged a new hope, embodied in the RPF and its coalition government. In fact, in its eight-point program the Front made public before it invaded Rwanda across from Uganda, the removal of "the system which generates refugees" was an explicit goal along with "democracy and national unity". ₇₆ In practical terms, this means that the potential for inclusion and inclusiveness as political tools for bringing about national unity and societal cohesion is there. A first step in that direction, once the refugees return home, is to be found in the interim cabinet in which "parties other than the R. P. F. obtained over 50 percent of the posts. ₇₇ There resides a potential for a lasting solution to the crisis.

Besides this internal political dimension of the Rwandan nightmare lie the regional and international aspects. An immediate regional concern is the Zaire of General Mobutu. Mobutu's regime over years since its coming to power operated as an advanced outpost of the Western interests in the region. Mobutu's own ambition to play a regional hegemon fueled his lust for power, making him a puppet who reigned with an iron fist over his people he has rendered more and more destitute. His hostile resistance, over 4 years, to the national urge to promote political openness does not make him suited to play any major role in the eventual denouement of the Rwandan crisis, although we must reckon with the very presence in his country of over 2 million of the latest refugee influx. This 25th hour tragic exodus of refugees into Zaire, it may well be suspected, could be the outcome of the French intelligence working hand-in-hand with that of Zaire through the high command of "Operation Turquoise," the French forces in the so-called "Safe Zone" along which borders with Zaire the huge flow of refugees was recorded. Mobutu's close relations to the Habyarimana regime, his own long political alliance with West-European imperial powers, makes him untrustworthy in the process to bring peace into Rwanda. The world awaits the day the big powers will eventually put someone like Mobutu into quarantine.

Although suspected of backing Tutsi claims, Uganda may play a positive stabilizing role in the region first through its attempt to resolve its own national question and also through the demonstration effect of its democratic experiment in case this is successful. Tanzania must be given credit for its role in the region. It must be induced to initiate and effect a sub-regional non-aggression pact and a mechanism of consultation at the highest level, which must hold periodical and rotational meetings. Such action should be tried in concerted effort with Uganda, and must include all the Great Lakes Region countries. The last chance of peace, however, resides in the joint economic and social development efforts that remain to be undertaken. It must be remembered that the volatility of the social situation in both Rwanda and Burundi demands that no time and no opportunity is wasted.

Can Rwanda count on the international community of states? The answer to this question is an inqualified yes! However, caution is recommended in the face of the overall response of the international community of states to the traumatic "senseless massacre and genocide" ₇₈ that afflicted Rwanda. Whether out of "empathy fatigue" or because of being frightened away by the mismanaged operation ₇₉ in Somalia, selfish national interests pre-empted states reactions following the massacre of April 1994. Eventually, too little was delivered too late and under conditions which are least amenable to human dignity. The most tragic yet was "that Africa, rather than moving decisively to prevent the massacre that took place, sat back and looked to the world community for intervention." ₈₀

A. What Is To Be Done

My personal sympathy lies with individual citizens's actions, no matter where they live. Given the unfettered Christian faith of the Rwandan people, it is my suggestion that both as human beings (susceptible to be moved by the gloomy spectacle of young children and babies crying on the dead bodies of their parents or teens carrying the corpses of their younger brothers or sisters), ₈₁ and as Christians, we mobilize resources to help the Rwandan people to return home and return to life. Pressure must be put on the U. S. government so as to bring to an end the old Cold War policy in which an umbilical cord of security and mutual concern links the United States only to Europe. Such an ethnocentric attitude, incompatible with the universalism inherent in a superpower role, is counter-productive to the lives and freedoms of the people who inhabit the non-European regions of the world.

Humanitarian interventions must not aim to feed public relations only. For interventions designed to shape and sell the self-serving image of a good, well-intended, generous, well-disposed and caring nation cannot be and have not proven effectual. When they are not "too little too late," such interventions do not address the root causes of the crisis. They reshuffle the symptoms of the crisis, but leave the root causes intact. Like paramecia in hibernation, after the winter of outcries and condemnations passed, these causes resurface ever stronger. New conflicts erupt that keep aid and relief industries busy. This is the self-reproductive cycle of conflict and violence.

In more concrete terms, what can we do to help the people of Rwanda retake possession of their country and their lives? The UN Secretary-General, Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali, rightly observed in his Agenda for Peace that to pre-empt and prevent war, we must deal with "the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice, and political oppression." ₈₂ I posited earlier that the crisis is eminently political. Dispossessed of their land, deprived of any meaningful social positions in their own society, subjugated, dominated and oppressed, there were not many avenues left to the majority of the people but to shake, neutralize, and throw into the dustbin of history the yoke of the few: be they feudal aristocrats, oligarchic elite, civilian or military. The ultimate solution to the crisis thus must be political. Contingency measures are in order, however, to alleviate the suffering of those involved in the delicate situation that prevails today both in Rwanda and in neighboring countries. Indeed, relief efforts must be guided by the cognizance that what happens in Rwanda is likely to produce a demonstration effect in Burundi.

1. Emergency Assistance

Emergency assistance must be prompt and comprehensive. Indeed, the new government of President Pasteur Bizimingu is faced with two-fold bitter legacies, in addition to the smoldering ethnic animosity that has fueled ethnicity since late 1959. Nearly half of the Rwandan nation fled the country, with the active killers and murderers dispersed amid them in their refugee camps; on the other hand, the economy is shattered. ₈₃ Another element which has to be taken into account in providing emergency aid in cases like this one is the "time-bomb" that the defeated military represent: their leader, Major-General Augustin Bizimungu has publicly declared his determination to fight his way back to Kigali. Brian Atwood, President Clinton's special envoy to Rwanda, warned that the military "?are planning to invade the country" ₈₄ . According to Radio BBC, the soldiers have not disbanded and are seeking fresh weapons and ammunitions. ₈₅ In Eastern Zaire, especially, soldiers are reportedly being trained for counter-offensive. The true emergency here requires that "coping with the present disaster" go "hand in hand with thinking about the future." ₈₆ The inadequacy of the international community's response to the crisis that I underlined earlier must be qualified here. The sluggish international response was punctuated by the tergiversation and indecision of the UN, and exacerbated by the lack of resources that bred inaction on the part of the OUA. All three connived to create a unique and unparalleled precedent: over half a million human lives-that could have been spared-were lost in a carefully planned genocide; and another over 2 million humans were instructed or forced to leave the country by the same agents that committed the genocide, and that the belated international responses have been feeding in the refugee camps scattered in neighboring countries. One wonders what motivations stand behind the UN Security Council's handling of the Rwandan crisis; or, for that matter, what caused the big economic powers' unwillingness to let the UN perform the mission, or to get individually involved. This situation has been a test case of the independence of the international body.

Ironically, however, the refugee crisis received an attention far greater than the muted outrage that followed the genocide. The US Administration committed about $500 million and thousands of troops. While the United Nations sought to raise $465 million from its office in Geneva. But given the state of the economy, the extent of the slaughter, the number of the refugees, and the threats that non-disarmed former governmental troops constitute, emergency measures that fall short of becoming permanent assets for the reconstruction of the country cannot help to stabilize the new Rwanda and its government. Political and development assistance must be jointly delivered to make emergency aid viable and create a secure lease on the future.

2. Political and Developmental Assistance.

Without the political and developmental assistance, emergency aid will only fall into a bottomless hole. The fundamental political action likely to challenge the root causes of the Rwandan nightmare is dealt with in more theoretical terms in the last section of this paper. What follows underscores the political dimension of the emergency phase and prepares the ground for a more structural action.

Traditional conflict management considers these two phases as unconnected. This is one of the big mistakes of past experiences. To act to lessen the threats underlined earlier, these political and developmental measures must be taken as a way of setting in motion confidence-building measures.

One such measure that may appear draconian but is vitally indispensable would consist in regrouping former government soldiers and militias in neighboring countries away from civilian populations they have manipulated into exile. Political figures of the defeated government may be induced to assemble in a quarter that is shared neither with the armed forces nor with the civilians. This separate encampment is designed to limit, if not prevent, the continuing brooding of hatred and politicization of refugees by those who committed the massacres in the first place.

To sort out the refugees before they settle in different camps may not be easy task. It may exacerbate the already extremely harassing tasks of relief organizations and agents and other officials and volunteers. Yet, there is no substitute to this option if the desired goal is to pre-empt a new surge of violence in the near future. The first two weeks following the takeover of the capital must be essentially devoted to the sorting out and encamping of refugees by category of: soldiers, political officers, and civilians. ₈₇

Discriminatory encamping of refugees appears à priori unjust vis-à-vis those who lost in the confrontation which caused the refugee flow. It is nonetheless necessary as no other option exists that pre-empts a new surge of violence by cutting the grass from under the feet of those likely to initiate it by way of revenge or plain chance. To make this measure effective would require a total embargo of weapons and ammunitions to both sides in Rwanda. The embargo applied to the new hosts of Kigali, coupled with the disarming of the soldiers before their repatriation, reduces the imbalance in favor of the new government, creates a unique situation likely to set Africa apart from the politics of brutal force and violence which has prevailed the world over since the Westphalian system settled in.

To disarm the soldiers before they return to Rwanda would help or compel them to lower their stakes; it sends a message to the soldiers that they are returning home not as soldiers but as citizens; it would place a new responsibility on the government to welcome every returning refugee as a citizen on equal footing, without discrimination, whether positive or negative. This measure also lowers the cost of reconstruction as it does not put any additional pressure on the government to automatically absorb a good proportion of returnee soldiers to become part of the armed forces. Reintegration must be resolved in terms of re-conversion: while keeping the size of the army down, this approach reduces the functional and structural costs of managing state machinery and reinforces the potential for increasing governmental and national output.

Of itself this action aims at starting a process of disarming the African state. This is no place to lay out all the contours of this dramatic proposition. The foundations for it are obvious. One central tenet deserves just mentioning here: African armies are one essential cause of the backwardness/underdevelopment of the continent.

To see defence spending as a cause of underdevelopment runs contrary to the opinion which considers the military as " an important agent of development;" indeed, in Odetola's review terms, "the most effective supervisory agency for directed [social] change" and economic development. ₈₈ In this framework the military becomes the sole guarantor of social and political stability, a sine qua non for social and economic development. Thus a positive correlation is suggested between defense spending and growth, which invites to believe that local weapons production plants not only promote development but help also eliminate dependency.

The opposite opinion sustains that local industries for the manufacturing of weapons and ammunitions rather "restructure" than eliminate dependence. ₈₉ Besides, not many African countries (perhaps South Africa, Nigeria and Libya) own African weapons and ammunitions factory funded by African capital and run by African intellectual expertise to promote technology that subsequently sustains African economy. Moreover, those concerned about social and human development insist rather rightly on the correlation between defense spending and social welfare and posit that armaments adversely affect social welfare in general, and constitute a "cause of underdevelopment" in Third World countries. ₉₀ The truth of the matter is that "militarization distorts and inhibits the development process in all sectors of world society, especially in those which are weakest and poorest." ₉₁ To say nothing of "the human costs of failures in development" which "can have far greater long-term effects than even large-scale non-nuclear war." ₉₂ The very case under consideration calls for almost no caution when assessing the impact of foreign "military assistance and" unbridled "weapons trade opportunities." Under a telling title, Born Arming: Development and Military Power in New States, Mullins suggests, at the conclusion of his seminal work, "that military assistance produces dependence not independence, promotes stagnation not development, results in insecurity not security." ₉₃ If the concern is collective security and people's peace, as it should and must be, the most hopeful direction to a future of promising social concord and peacefully sustained political justice lies in the demilitarization and disarming of the African state.

For the same reasons, in case soldiers cannot be disarmed before their return, every attempt should be made to disarm them not too long after their arrival in their home country. The creation of one single-army and the army size can, in either hypothesis, be predicated against the real security threats and needs of the nation and not the political outbids of either side and the increasing build-up of violence that such practice nurtures.

The above measures call for a strong peace-keeping force under the command of a UN-appointed officer whose deputy, as a matter of principle, must be an African homologous of identical military ranking. The strong peace-keeping force compensates for the down-grading of the national army and operates during the transition period to build the confidence of the people in themselves as they relearn how to interrelate. The transition, in this specific case, should be long enough to allow such a slow process of psychological and cultural healing to take place.

A unique action that will operate as a catalyst for such healing and will ensure its long term effectiveness and viability is education. Education will facilitate the healing and promote adhesion to it. Along with the disarming of soldiers, and resettlement of refugees upon their return, this constitutes the number-one priority. Thus the need to launch a strong drive for education, large-scale teacher training, building of schools. This is the domain where confidence building measures must be emphasized. Here, also, must the pursuit of equality be underscored. For, it is through the channel of school and the church that the venom of ethnic fear, hatred, and insecurity has been passed over to generations. School, without the shadow of doubt, has, since the German establishment, been a major asset whereby Tutsi secured their domination. Even after independence, when things changed, Tutsi withdrew into seminaries which became, as a result, the "havens of Tutsi ascendancy, and the education system, a threatening stronghold of undiminished Tutsi power." ₉₄ Under successive Hutu regimes, and particularly under Habyarimana, ethnicization became the key principle of, and the first condition of access to, both education and public service. Although no domain is to be neglected, it is especially in this field of education that the most profound therapeutic action must be undertaken. Successes here will both condition and determine successes everywhere else.

The school system need be democratized in terms of students, staff, and teachers. That is why international support is necessary to allow and encourage the interim government to deepen, widen, consolidate, and strengthen reconciliation efforts and a policy of inclusion. It remains evident, given the historical causes of the conflict, that economic empowerment of the Rwandans coupled with their democratic political participation and involvement in decision-making process will siphon the venom of ethnic hatred and antagonism. It becomes necessary to mobilize international efforts to help the RPF devise, develop and implement an immediate return/resettlement and economic development program.

In any case, the earlier the refugees return to Rwanda, the better off they would be, and the less painful and more economical the support provided for them would be for the international community.

B. The Solution of the Future: Setting the Groundwork for Collective Hegemony

A question of both theoretical and practical relevance one may ask in this case is who to blame for the recurring blood bath in this country. Who is the villain? As relevant as it seems, finger-pointing will not be of any major help if the physical and emotional wounds are to be healed.

As a matter of fact, it may be possible to identify those who were part of the chain of command that ordered to execute and/or eliminate people for one reason or another. But is it enough to punish the head without punishing the arms which executed the orders? How likely is it to identify all those involved in carrying out these orders without error, so as to do justice to all those who have suffered by their hands? To what extent would not vengeance only help plant new seeds for another cycle of vendetta to be dreaded in the life of the Rwandan people?

Obviously, there is no easy and definite answer to these questions. The solution of collective hegemony I am proposing is supported by two main considerations. The first one is an old African conflict resolution principle. According to this principle, if one throws out every fire wood that becomes smoky, the risk is great that the hearth may become empty. Theoretically, this rejects capital punishment and expatriation as means of rendering justice since both may reduce population by ways which are unnatural, and therefore, ethically wrong. In practical terms, the principle expresses the actual difficulty of exacting a proportionality between the guilt and the reparation: in the best scenario, it is advised, we may only approximate the actual fault line, unless one applies the vengeance law of eye for eye. Juridically, the intention behind the act that calls for reparation and the one behind a reparation act cannot be identical and should not coincide at all. If at all, the proportionality will only be an artificial construct. If we cannot in our desire for justice erase every detail of the wrong committed without bordering on vengeance, this principle calls strongly for toleration. None the less, toleration is no exception to punishment: the philosophical foundation of the principle places primacy on the survival of the community and the compelling obligation to make cohabitation possible within such a community.

There is thus still room to punish the authors of the bloodshed. For there should be no amnesty for war criminals: murderers and torturers in the Rwandan military units and in the militias, and their officers, and going up the chain of command to political leaders must be brought to justice. Something of the sort of a War Crimes Tribunal as set forth for the former Yugoslavia may be appropriate in the Rwandan instance. The difficulty remains, however, the reliability of evidentiary leads more likely to be gathered from refugees who have been trained by their colonial rulers and their Rwandan post-independence partners to hate each other as if they were of different antagonistic racial stock. Besides, any attempt at settlement in Rwanda-where Hutu have been ravaging the country-must equally help ease tensions in Burundi-where Tutsi have engaged in equally appalling brutalities against Hutu. Additionally, it would be an uneasy bet to try to single out with neat demarcations who belongs to one ethnic group from who does not. ₉₅ This is not to suggest, like Dr. Vellut, that the pogroms were a "people's genocide, collectively carried out, with, at the end, the perspective of an ethnically homogeneous territory." ₉₆ I showed earlier-and Dr. de Waal confirmed this in his "Genocidal State"- that the mass killing was not "driven by antagonisms as old as the hills, which cannot be stopped, and for which no individuals can be held responsible;" nor, was it perpetrated by "uneducated peasants immune to ideological exhortations". ₉₇ The " racist ideology [may have] passed over the head of uneducated peasants, but it was not they who directed the slaughter; it was the army officers, bourgmestres, schools teachers and party officials-in many cases forcing Hutu peasants to kill their neighbors at the point of a gun". ₉₈ The point is that this distinction between those who "ordered," "directed" the barbarity and those who "executed" it sometimes fearing for their own lives would be instrumental to the process of healing and reconciliation.

The second consideration for toleration on the road to collective hegemony stems from the fact that the true and real villain in the case under examination is to be found in the long standing alienation existing within Rwanda and that has triggered time and time again an unusually large-scale blood bath here as well as in the neighboring Burundi. ₉₉ This alienation is a product of hate and fear. It is perpetuated by the fears of minority Tutsi that giving up their centuries-long dominant position would entail their absolute and complete elimination as a community by the Hutu majority. How to eliminate such alienation remains the biggest puzzle of the history of man. Writing of the Burundi case, a former US Ambassador to Bujumbura (Burundi) observed rightly: "until the either-or mentality of dominating or being eliminated is overcome, it is doubtful that the Tutsi will engage in the process of working things out." ₁₀₀ The same is true of the Tutsi of Rwanda. More important yet is the truth that until such a false dichotomy and the mentality which sustains it is overcome, the very history of these two landlocked Central African countries teaches us that life for any of the three ethnic groups is to be a permanent and deadly nightmare. For "violence begets violence and the violence becomes more atrocious in each instance". ₁₀₁

This sad lesson implies that none of the communities either in Rwanda or Burundi can achieve ethnic hegemony at the expense of the other ones. To be effectual, to avoid the pitfalls of past history, and to face the challenges of modern history, nationalism, in the African context at large, and especially in our current case, cannot and must not be exclusive. It must overcome competitive elite politics vying for prebendal financial, political, and personal security. The basic equation of nation building here cannot be the tangential intersection of exclusive interests, but rather the common fountain of converging aspirations and dreams.

As human beings, Rwandans of every condition, social status, and biological stock whether Twa, Hutu, or Tutsi, long for a hospitable land where one can live in peace, acquire property, have children, enjoy freedom from want, oppression, and domination. Not only does everyone have the right to a nationality, but none of the Rwandese people shall be arbitrarily deprived of their nationality. ₁₀₂ Moreover, as the poet Langston Hughes warns us, a "a dream" that is "deferred" produces no security for any side involved. Whether it dries up like a raisin in the sun, festers like a sore and runs, or stinks like a rotten meat, or sags or just explodes, it is potentially poisonous and actually infectious: ₁₀₃ it is conducive to social depression to be discharged through aggressive and violent réglements de compte.

The magnitude of the destruction, the dismal state of the Rwandan national economy and the abyssal depth of the social needs of both recent and old refugees call for a conscious and deliberate effort at all levels to arouse and liberate the capacities of ordinary people in the satisfaction of whose expectations the new leaders of Rwanda must ground the foundation of the legitimacy and stability of their regime. These expectations are at once economic, social, psychological and political. Politically, there must be room for an increasingly broad participation in public life which must become the bargaining place between the main cultures that make up the social fabric of Rwanda. Although political parties might be of some import in exacting some order at this stage, long term prospects for peaceful stability grounded in economic justice and social equality will rise only as a result of collective hegemonic democracy based on cultural pluralism. Elite party politics failed Africa. It failed Rwanda through its force and persecution politics.

Nationalism, also, can achieve its historical role of unifying what remains of the brothers and sisters who now show evident signs of weariness with fratricidal slaughter. To keep it from devolving into its destructive form -- also known to the world outside Africa -- ₁₀₄ that has been at work in Rwanda since before independence, it must become a liberating framework for inter-ethnic interaction, cultural emancipation and exchange within Rwanda itself rather than the old scheme of "colonial partnership against the Hutu," ₁₀₅ or neocolonial self-righteousness against the Tutsi.

It is my contention that the RPF, given its political agenda, and being the embodiment of only one-sixth of the total population, has as its only successful alternative such integrative, non-exclusionary, nationalism designed to foster collective hegemony of all the Rwandan people. It is an option that would move up the Rwandan people toward an equitable, interdependent society in which exploitation and oppression of the weakest of its members give way to societal control over collective direction of its evolution.

A society of collective hegemony is neither exploitative nor oppressive: it strives to ensure to everyone "equality of conditions, or in other terms, equal access for everyone to the means of self-improvement and joy." For "that is the law that the voice of justice strictly imposes upon humanity." ₁₀₆ It is a person, not thing, or, to be sure, a people-centered and oriented society to be grounded in freedom and justice and in which priority is given to programs of social uplift at the expense of military build-up.

In the limbo of the Rwandan ethnic hostilities, the project of collective hegemony requires a special promissory note which must be redeemed. This promissory note is cultural. Cultural democracy through cultural pluralism is to be the main ingredient of any political cuisine that may flatter Africans' taste and promote their appetite and desire to get involved in the public debate and take charge of their own lives. In particular, for the Rwandese people to definitely turn their backs on their somber past and enlist a future of hope and self-realization, they must work patiently to free themselves from two currently seething psychological setbacks. To paraphrase Tocqueville, Tutsi minority shall overcome "their views of the innateness of their own superiority," and Hutu majority and Twa shall overcome "their enmity for the humiliation and suffering" and oppression "they have experienced". To prevent false racism and ethnicity from "perpetually haunt[ing] the imagination" of the Rwandese people, "like a painful dream," ₁₀₇ they are to free themselves from ethnically based prejudices, distorting assumptions "about how they got where they are-and what they are doing there anyway." ₁₀₈

This would be a two-pronged action. In the first instance, Rwandan society, like any other national society, is e pluribus unum. The first move must clearly acknowledge the parts that form such society: while vying for a unum, that is, a national entity, free of the current polarizing dilemmas and convulsions, each of the three groups inhabiting Rwanda deserves plain and full recognition as a cultural entity. For, if life is made up of things we may change more or less easily, history has not recorded instances in which one changed one's grandfather. ₁₀₉

The healing movement, in this primary essence, seeks progressively to alter structures and institutions so as to make them truly inclusive. That is "corporate" multicultural politics, in opposition to its so-called "liberal" veneer that argues that current generations are under no obligations at all to seek solutions for old problems created by their fathers. ₁₁₀ The advantage of a self-conscious multicultural society is that it allows each of its groups to value, take pride in, and publicly display its own distinctive qualities and features, that is, its "quintessential self". While "groups are accorded respect, individuals are offered 'equal opportunities'". ₁₁₁

To cement the fabric of the society, reduce chances of conflict, and pre-empt future explosions of boorishness, another step is necessary: the multicultural politics must be complemented and furthered by a politics of inter-cultural communication. Left to itself, multiculturalism, even in its corporate form, may become self-deluding, narcissic, or even ethnicist. As multiculturalism underscores group rights and individual rights as well, and calls for "major compensatory measures to make up for massive dimensions" of multifaceted discriminations of the past, ₁₁₂ the absence of such measures, or any serious flaw in their dispensation could easily lead to ethnicization or polarization of inter-group relations and inflame their lingering hatred. It becomes absolutely necessary to establish a healthy dialogue among the various cultural segments that make up the population.

This dialogue is assumed by and through inter-cultural communication. The main difference between inter-cultural and multicultural communication is that the former takes the debate and exchange among societal segments one step further from where the latter left it. Indeed, in a multicultural setting, the various groups operate as entrenched, autonomous, self-celebrated cultural entities. Groups interaction operates by ways of spectacles and performances that are attended on the basis of friendship, empathy, sympathy, condescension or pure curiosity. Obviously, all these instances are valued and appreciated as means of distraction, and often as sources of information too. Yet, they do not foster any in-depth dialogue likely to open up avenues of collaboration and partnership to sustain societal and community togetherness. If at all, the dialogue is kept in the low-profile zone of informative exchange.

On the contrary, dialogue is a necessity in an inter-cultural society. Here, in fact, societal segments-both as groups and in their various individual components-, and their cultural lives, their aspirations and their dreams, are grasped as in constant, open and moving market where they may-and actually do-collide or collude, interact, intersect, overlap or diverge. The inter-cultural society acknowledges the dynamism involved in such complex process: it "acknowledges the difficulties, misunderstandings and disgruntled exchanges occurring when and where" such give-and-take dynamic is in motion. More importantly, however, it does not consider any of these as insurmountable or indomitable obstacles, but rather as many "fertile grounds [all] pregnant with creative possibilities". ₁₁₃ .

This model of inter-cultural communication, for one thing, fits perfectly into the African traditions of palaver where conflicting, even diverging, opinions are never to be considered as obstacles, but rather as invitations to pursue the dialogue until a common ground agreeable to all sides is found. On the other hand, the Western modality of cultivating opposition is alien to most African cultures. For instance, the term opponent/opposition does not exist in my own language; the same may be true of many other African languages. In lieu of these most Africans would resort to the categories of enemy/enmity. And God knows that most Africans-at least in their traditional settings-do not like letting things evolve to the level of enmity. Or, if so, it is a major responsibility of the elderly to talk it out and bring it down to the level of resolvable conflict.

Building on the role of the elderly in conflict resolution in traditional Africa, I posit that a sustained inter-cultural democracy is the only path to salvation in Rwanda and Burundi. ₁₁₄ Inter-cultural democracy is grounded in four principles. It accepts, fosters, and develops the principle of partnership, acknowledging the inevitability of disagreements and building on areas of agreement. It calls for collaboration, and to that end, emphasizes the necessity of selecting issue areas which are of importance to all sides involved. It operates as special custodian of the society's pluralist values which it helps to further. It keeps conflict to its minimum by cultivating the willingness of all sides of the political and social spectrum, to accept the inevitability of differences, to respect reasoned disagreement and to keep litmus-test issues to a minimum. ₁₁₅

Of itself, a regime of collective hegemony constitutes a confidence building measure and process in a volatile and hostile environment like Rwanda. It regards no single group as a pariah. By validating every group culture and giving each side a chance to be heard, and creating common ground for a minimal platform of joint collective action, it levels off perceived insecurity on all sides and reverses the political game from a zero-sum to something mutually beneficial. In providing a continuum for collaboration or a "nexus for cooperation," whereby the rules of the game are clearly delineated and known to each actor, and are not spelt out in ethnic terms, this regime de-escalates stakes and allows optimum resource extraction and allocation to satisfy collective rather than individual and idiosyncratic goals. When survival is no longer at stake, pre-eminent group position is no longer perceived as vital. Therefore, the rule of force can give way to that of dialogue and cooperation: ethnicity is de-emphasized. It creates therefore the optimal conditions for solid institutions building processes likely to benefit from the support of all sides despite cross sections interests at variance. ₁₁₆ Thus, it can be argued, it creates the best chances for the legitimization of a regime and its institutions.

To be viable, such a regime, built on a solid groundwork of internal legitimacy and cultural dialogue, would require from the international community, especially from the big powers, a new culture of politics. The drama of African international relations is that Africa's decolonization, as elsewhere in the Third World, was unidimensional. The colonized people were decolonized, but the colonizers were not. Theoretically the bondage of colonial control is over, but the colonial powers never felt the need to free themselves from the "colonial neurosis": the colonial ideology, the settler mentality and behavior. That is precisely what needs to be done. Europe needs to be decolonized. African relations to Europe need to be decolonized. Africa's relations to the United States in particular must be dislodged from the quarter of open complicity with European colonial powers where the Truman administration housed them by turning his back on the Atlantic Charter and choosing the European side in the issue of decolonization.

Old European humanism will neither support nor facilitate the emergence of the regime of collective hegemony. It must be recalled that until Europe got "crammed with riches" it grabbed from the so-called "new continents" it enslaved, Europeans enjoyed and experienced de jure no humanism nor human rights. The old tradition of European monarchs and other autocrats granting rights to their subjects translated into the modern Westphalian system of the state elite granting rights to the people from whom they rented their authority. Taken to its international dimension, this anomaly translates into the arrogance of European powers that exempted Africa from self-determination rule at the Versailles Peace Conference to set up the mandate system under which Rwanda was to fall to the Belgians who, after the Germans, institutionalized the naked oppressi variance. ₁₁₆ on of the country by fashioning racial prejudices and creating and intensifying social stratification. ₁₁₇ The same oddity has precluded the North-South Dialogue from ever reaching any positive conclusions to the satisfaction of the "wretched of the earth." It has, it seems, forever corrupted the political system to the point of reversing the order of normalcy and the relations between the governed and those who govern. One of the outcomes of the Westphalian state-system has been that today, instead of the people granting and limiting the rights of the governing elite, it is the other way around: it is the governing elites who grant or uphold rights to the governed masses of the people. Intrinsically, to reject a politics of violence that has tainted and subjugated our world and adopt instead a more humane and humanist and liberating web of relations among free people and countries, that is, to achieve the "global village" we all dream of, we must review our politics of human rights. Fundamentally, all human beings, regardless of race, gender, and social stations in life, are equal: we all have every right and the right to everything.

This view of things calls into play three corollaries. These are inevitable actions that are urgently needed to be taken in order to create a viable, consistent, and enduring environment for peace, justice and security in the world, and all especially, in the places of critical crisis like Rwanda, Burundi, or former Yugoslavia. The endless tergiversation about the crisis in the former Yugoslavia invites one to believe that the gun-boat diplomacy, even translated into peace-keeping agency, cannot breed humanism. Recourse to the use of force must be discouraged, starting with the big powers imposing self-restraints in resorting to, or promoting the use of, force. The old ways of responding to crisis and conflict are proving ineffectual, even deleterious.

Responsibility must be given to the people to control their own destiny. This may require at once abstaining from exporting institutional models, or promoting our own side in the struggle, largely unresolved in many African countries, to dominate the public arena and to control resources allocation. Democratically inclined countries and individuals, in order to bring about a world secure enough to devote time, energy, and resources to the full development of humankind, must support the people rather than the power elite. That is, a world where the scourge of war and violence politics is eliminated; and where the incommensurable resources squandered to develop, increase, and perfect the means of killing or maiming men, women, and children could be invested to relieve the world and humankind from those dangers that threaten their existence altogether. ₁₁₈ In this same vein, a dramatic alteration of aid-politics is in order: instead of giving aid that does not aid, ₁₁₉ donor countries which are a consumer of primary products and others from Africa may buy the latter at a price that is substantial enough to allow into these countries a flow of resources likely to cover both subsistence and development needs. What Africa needs most is the protection of her production. ₁₂₀ This would be a starting-point of a new, humanist economics whereby consumers and producers are credited with equal rights which are given equal regards in the transaction between Africa and the Western nations.

The next century will be marked by increasing egalitarian and survival demands by the have-nots and the "wretched of the earth." ₁₂₁ To meet such demands the international community must invent, without delay, a new dynamic of neutral, that is, raceless empathy. To try to "set afoot a new man," aloof from and above the appalling cynicism and violence we've witnessed in Rwanda and Burundi, and to a lesser extent in other parts of Africa, no other task is more urgent than to set the African men and women free from hunger, free from ignorance, and free from poverty. That requires us all to resolutely expand the circle of those for whom we care.

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Notes

Note 1: This paper is articulated around the Rwanda crisis of 1994. Its analyses and recommendations may, however, apply to Burundi, or even to most African internal conflicts cases. I am indebted to Rob Ercoline, Christian Action Coordinator, Little Flower Church, South Bend, Indiana, who invited me to give a talk on the Rwandan crisis to church members organized under the denomination "Jesus As the Bread of Life ." A primary draft of the paper was thus presented on July Paper of the24, 1994. My gratitude also goes to my colleague, Jeanne M. Heffernan, of the Government & International Studies Department, University of Notre Dame, for her generous time and comments on the original draft. This final version was presented at the Tenth Annual Conference of the Association of Concerned Philosophers For Peace held at Chico State University, Chico, California, September 25-27, 1997. Back.

Note 2: See Robert E. Daggy (ed.), Introductions East & West: the Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton. Greensboro, North Carolina: Unicorn Press, 1981. Back.

Note 3: The New York Times, "Africa, Politically," June 21, 1994. Back.

Note 4: Indeed, "the never-ending state of civil strife in Africa is destroying the continent's capacity to develop." See West Africa, "Destructive Conflicts," 27 June-3 July 1994, p. 1135. Back.

Note 5: Idem. Back.

Note 6: See The New York Times, "Africa Shifts Toward Democracy, Finding Both Hope and Peril," June 21, 1994, p. A 8. Back.

Note 7: Nelson Kasfir, "There's Hope for Rwanda," The New York Times, July 22, 1994, p. A15. Back.

Note 8: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 9: Justin Kalibwani, Le Catholicisme et la société rwandaise: 1900-1962. Paris; Dakar: Éditions Présence Africaine, 1991, pp. 48-9. Though contested, these figures confirm the numerical predominance of Hutu. Back.

Note 10: Ian Linden and Jane Linden. Church and Revolution in Rwanda. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1977, pp. x-xi. This class analysis of the Rwandese society is dismissed by Justin Kalibwani who, using none the less historical materialism as his conceptual paradigm, observed that the economic inequalities within each individual group, especially the Tutsi, do not allow to see classes in Rwanda even by 1900. See Justin Kalibwami, ibid., p. 59. Back.

Note 11: René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi. New York; Washington; London: Praeger, 1970, p. 19. Back.

Note 12: In Burundi, this practice, known as ubugabira, is reported as having been less binding than in Rwanda. See Roger WM. Louis, Ruanda-Urundi: 1884-1919. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 111. Back.

Note 13: Roger WM. Louis, ibid., p. 110. To get a sense of the complex web of relations involved, one need to read Louis (chapter ix), Linden (chapter One); Lemarchand (I). Back.

Note 14: Liden, work cited, p. ix. Back.

Note 15: Idem, p. 18. Back.

Note 16: Marc Bloch. Feudal Society, Vol. II, (London, 1971) quoted in Linden, p. 23. Back.

Note 17: Alex de Waal, "The Genocidal State, Hutu Extremism and the origins of the "final Solution" in Rwanda," The Times Literary Supplement, July 1, 1994, p. 3. Back.

Note 18: Europeans of all sorts agree on the beauty of the landscape of Rwanda-Urundi, as used to be called what were to become the Republics of Rwanda and Burundi. This first impression led to a romanticization of the land, and its eventual colonization by the Germans, and later on, by the Belgians. See René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi.; already cited; also Thomas Patrick Melady, Burundi: The Tragic Years. New York: Orbis Books, 1974; and Kalibwami, op. quoted. Back.

Note 19: Lemarchand, p. 93. Back.

Note 20: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 21: Father Brard wrote: "C'est une grave insulte de dire que le roi et sa ère sont des batousi; ils sont rois (abamis). Brard, "Au Ruanda," quoted by Ian Linden, idem., p. 24. Back.

Note 22: "to submit barbarism to civilization?[Cecil Rhodes] We must turn Ruanda and Urundi into coffee lands [Richard Kandt, Resident of Ruanda, 1913]" Roger WM. Louis, ibid., p. 101. Back.

Note 23: de Waal, ibid.; Kalibwami, idem, p. 49. Back.

Note 24: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 25: Hans Meyer, quoted in Lemarchand, p. 19. Back.

Note 26: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 27: René Lemarchand, Op. cited, p. 42. Back.

Note 28: Lacger, idem, pp. 522-3; see also Kalibwami, p. 199. Back.

Note 29: A letter of Archbishop Classe to Belgium whereby he invited the latter to reserve the administration of the country exclusively to the Tutsi. See Kalibwami, p. 200. Back.

Note 30: Kalibwami, pp. 164-285. Back.

Note 31: Ibid., 284. Back.

Note 32: In 1914 only 190 individuals made up the white population in Ruanda-Urundi: 130 missionaries, a few traders, and about 40 soldiers, 6 civilian authorities in Ruanda and 5 in Urundi. See Louis, ibid., p. 203. Back.

Note 33: Roger Wm. Louis, pp. 200-4. Back.

Note 34: In Burundi, near-anarchy divisions among the chiefs made the administration of the territory easier for the German rulers. See Roger Wm. Louis, ibid., p. 204. Back.

Note 35: Captain de Courcey Ireland, Kivu Expedition, 1909, quoted in Roger Wm. Louis, ibid., p. 189. Back.

Note 36: Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa. New York: Avon Books, 1991, pp. 678-9. Back.

Note 37: For an analysis of the concepts of "elite and counter-elite" and how they operated in this context, see Linden, pp. 220-48. Back.

Note 38: Linden, p. 273. Back.

Note 39: Rwandan National Union Back.

Note 40: Ibid., p. 263. Back.

Note 41: "Plots of land given by the king or nobles to favored clients;" cf. Linden, p. 288. Back.

Note 42: Linden, ibid., pp. 239-5. Back.

Note 43: Lemarchand, p. 149. Back.

Note 44: Idem. Back.

Note 45: F. Nkundabagenzi and B. Verhagen, Rwanda politique, Brussels: CRISP, 1962, pp. 247-8. Quoted from Linden & Linden, op. cited, p. 271. The persistence and virulence of the feudal argument proved effective once again when Free Radio Mille Collines openly called upon the population "to reject the Arusha Accords and to prepare to fight against the installation of a neo-monarchy in the country by the RPF from Uganda". Cf. West Africa, "Why Rwanda," 27 June-3 July 1994, p. 1128. Back.

Note 46: Bahutu Manifesto quoted in Kalibwami, ibid., p. 385. Back.

Note 47: Kalibwami, p. 439. For greater details on the pastoral letter, see excerpts, pp. 436-441. Back.

Note 48: Linden, pp. 264-5. Back.

Note 49: African political spectrum, faced with the Congo Crisis of 1960, broke up into the "Casablanca Group," in favor of Lumumba and for an African solution, and the "Monrovia Group," ostensibly supportive of continued Belgian control over the Congo. Such polarization carried into post-independence Africa under the acception of progressive and moderate Africas. Back.

Note 50: See Kalibwami, ibid., pp. 380-5. Back.

Note 51: Robert Press, "Rwanda Rebels Offer Cease-Fire, But Land, Ethnic Issues Simmer," The Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 1990. Back.

Note 52: Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995 idem, p. xii and p. 158. Back.

Note 53: The pastoral letter, titled "Convertissez-vous pour vivre ensemble dans la paix" (Let us Convert [to Christianity]), was too openly critical of the social and political evils of the Rwandese society not to give the regime the feeling it has to fend it for itself. See Prunier, idem, pp. 132-3; and also Note 10, p. 132. Back.

Note 54: Idem, p. 133. Back.

Note 55: The Rwandese Armed Forces Back.

Note 56: The military Arm of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) Back.

Note 57: See Alain Destexhe, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, New York: New York University Press, 1995, Appendix 2, p. 81. A very interesting chronicle of "The Arusha Peace Marathon" can be read in Prunier, pp. 159-191. Back.

Note 58: The ensuing violence, according to reporters, was very "organized," proof that it was long in preparation. Prunier, idem, p. 162. See also West Africa, "Why Rwanda," idem. Back.

Note 59: I am indebted to George A. Lopez, professor, Government & International Studies, University of Notre Dame, who called my attention on the importance of the economic crisis as a contributing factor to the melee. Back.

Note 60: Foreign currency reserves measured $56.7 million in 1993, against $110.1 in 1991. Foreign debt passed from $736.2 million in 1990, the year the war began, to $1 billion in 1993. See Prunier, p. 159. Back.

Note 61: The demographic factor in Rwandese equation cannot be discounted. As we were reminded at the Cairo World Population Conference: "Rwanda is a tragedy and a warning. It is a warning about the way in which extremists can manipulate the fears of a population threatened by its own numbers and by its massive poverty." Mrs. Gore, quoted from Prunier, idem, p. 353. Back.

Note 62: Prunier, pp. 350-1. As can be seen, political and economic, social and educational spoils of the regime were the exclusive privilege of the rubanda nyamwinshi, "the majority people." Struggles for their appropriation and control pitted northerner Hutu (Abakiga) against southerners (Abanyanduga) without discrimination since after the assumption of power by the abakiga élite in 1973. Even among the northerner supporters of the regime, distinctions are to be made between "the people from Bushiru, the Akazu élite" ("akazu was the nickname given to the inner core of the Habyarimana regime") and those who do not share in this privilege (the Abagoyi ). See Prunier's Glossary, pp. 366-73. Back.

Note 63: West Africa. "Why Rwanda", 27 June-3 July 1994, p. 1128. According to The New York Times, the madness, "at least in its initial stages, was mostly politically motivated, set off by hard-line Hutu who disapproved of a new Government that integrated Hutu and Tutsi." See Donatella Lorch, "The Massacres in Rwanda: Hope Is Also a Victim," April 21, 1994 Back.

Note 64: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 65: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 66: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 67: The New York Times. "Africa Shifts Toward Democracy, Finding Both Hope and Peril," already cited. In its delivery of April 12, 1994, under a front-page picture, this paper talked about "tribal war." The term "tribal" has a racial bias: nobody sees "tribal war" in the former Yugoslavia, in Ireland, or when the Basques or the Corsicans attack in Spain or in France. The greatest limitation of this 'European' view of political violence resides in the fact that it tends to consider some violence as "noble," that is, "legitimate and more acceptable" than some other, not understanding that the use of a given implement of violence reflects rather "a certain level of economic functioning" than "cultural barbarity." Prunier strikes out this point admirably in his chapter "Slouching Towards Democracy," mainly, pp. 140-4; pay attention to his note 23, p. 140. When the violence is perceived as "less noble," as in the case of Rwanda, " For [the] West, It Is Not Worth the Political Candle". Elaine Sciolino in The New York Times, April 15, 1994, A3. Proponents of this attitude deliberately ignore that, as a Somali peasant reminds us, "the tribalism business" is the creation of urban élites who force it on rural people. Abdi Ismail Samatar, "Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention," in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 30: 4, 1992, p. 625. Back.

Note 68: Jubilé du Sacerdoce, L'Eglise Catholique au Rwanda, 1967, p. 7. Back.

Note 69: Amos Oz, quoted in Zaki Ergas (ed.), The African State in Transition. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. xvii. Back.

Note 70: Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, idem, p. 21. Emphasis in original. Back.

Note 71: West Africa, "Why Rwanda," 27 June-3 July 1994, pp. 126-128. Back.

Note 72: Robert Block, "The Tragedy of Rwanda," The New York Review of Books, 20 October 1994, p. 3 Back.

Note 73: Idem., p. 8. Back.

Note 74: Idem., p. 3. Back.

Note 75: President Nelson Mandela, West Africa, "The OAU and Rwanda," 27 June- 3 July 1994, p. 1122. Back.

Note 76: See Nelson Kasfir, "There's Hope for Rwanda," The New York Times, idem. Back.

Note 77: President Bizimungu of Rwanda at a news conference. Nelson Kafir, idem. Back.

Note 78: Kofi Annan, the U. N. Under Secretary-General for Peace-Keeping Operations. See "Towards a Peaceful End," an interview to West Africa, 27 June-3 July, 1994, p. 1131. Back.

Note 79: The rules of peacekeeping have long established that success comes only if peace-keepers do not take side but stay neutral in their pursuit of the general and common good for all protagonists of the conflict. The American Administration still has to learn that. Mr. Kofi Annan stressed this point in his interview quoted above p. 1130. In the hey-day of the Cold War also it was customary law that superpowers supply logistic not contribute troops. One essential reason for this was to avoid conflict over the command of the operation as precisely happened in Somalia with the US.-led Unified-Task Force. The UN., probably infatuated by the new wave of rapprochement between its permanent security members since the collapse of the Soviet Union, seems to indulge in giving assent to operations in which the command may not fall under its own authority. A repetition of another failure of the scale of Somalia will undoubtedly affect the peace-keeping credibility of the UN. Back.

Note 80: West Africa, "Destructive Conflicts," 27 June-3 July 1994, p. 1135. Back.

Note 81: As were made visible on networks during the early summer of 1994. See also front page picture of Tom Squitieri cover story: "Burundi: Africa's Bloodiest War," USA TODAY, December 27, 1993; or that of "those bodies lying by Rusumo Falls of the Kagera River, on the Rwanda-Tanzania border, on May 2" and subsequent article by Donatella Lorch, "Thousands of Rwanda Dead Wash Down to Lake Victoria," in The New York Times, May 21, 1994. Back.

Note 82: Boutros Boutros Ghali, An Agenda for Peace. New York: United Nations, 1992, p. 37. See also Makinda, idem. Back.

Note 83: Martin Plaut, "Rwanda-Looking Beyond the Slaughter," The World Today, 50:8, August-September 1994, p. 152. Back.

Note 84: Idem. Back.

Note 85: BBC World News- Overnight News broadcast on Public Radio International, July 20, 1994. Back.

Note 86: Washington Office on Africa, "Washington Notes on Africa. Update," July 1994, p. 3. Back.

Note 87: This measure would be made easier if refugees host countries had no stake of their own-neither for their domestic nor for their internat stature-in the conflict. Back.

Note 88: See T. O. Odetola, Military Regimes and Development: A Comparative Analysis of African States, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982, p. 5. Interesting additional insight could derive from reading Odetola's first chapter: pp. 1-22. Back.

Note 89: Miles D. Wolpin, Militarization, Internal Repression and Social Welfare in the Third World, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986, p. 19. See also Nicole Ball, Security and Economy in the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988; Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1993, Washington, D. C.: World Priorities, 1993 (15th Edition); Raimo Väyrynen, "Economic and Political Consequences of Arms Transfers to the Third World," Alternatives, VI, 1980, pp. 131-55; and Yoshikazu Sakamoto and Richard Falk, "World Demilitarized: A Basic Human Need," Alternatives, VI, 1980, pp. 1-16. Back.

Note 90: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 91: Yoshikazu Sakamoto and Richard Falk, idem, p. 2. Back.

Note 92: A. F. Mullins, Jr., Born Arming: Development and Military Power in New States, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987, p. 116. Back.

Note 93: Mullins, Jr., idem, p. 117. Back.

Note 94: Linden, p. 284. Back.

Note 95: Ethnic differentiations have blurred as years passed by since the three groups came in contact. Inter-group marriages have not been outlawed nor proscribed; moreover, socio-economic barriers may be overcome: Hutu wealthy enough to acquire cattle may-and did-become Tutsi, as many Tutsi who lost their cattle or are poor have joined the company of Hutu agriculturers. See especially Napoleone Abdulai (ed.), Genocide in Rwanda: Background and Current Situation, published by the African Research and Information Centre (June 1994). Reviewing this collection of essays, Jeneralio Ulimango wrote: "Rwanda, a beautiful country in Centrral Africa, is one of the few places in Africa from which people were not taken out as slaves. Before colonisation it had a highly developed kingdom with a developed caste system. One's status depended on how many cows one had. "The highly developed system benefited only the ruling class. A Hutu could become a Tutsi because of his or her wealth or through what was known as "Kwihuruea-shredding of Hutuness." A person could become also a Tutsi by owing 10 cows." Jeneralio Ulimango, "A Tragic Episode," a review article in West Africa, 25-31 July 1994. Back.

Note 96: Jean-Luc Vellut, "Ethnicity and Genocide in Rwanda," The Times Literary Supplement (July 15, 1994) in response to de Waal's review article: "The Genocidal State," already cited, pp. 3-4. Back.

Note 97: Alex de Waal, "Ethnicity and Genocide in Rwanda," a Response to Vellut," The Times Literary Supplement, July 22, 1994. Back.

Note 98: Idem. Back.

Note 99: Thomas P. Melady, idem, p. 71. Back.

Note 100: Idem, p. 72. Back.

Note 101: Idem, p. 81. Back.

Note 102: This universal, unrestricted, and unfettered right to a nationality is acknowledged and prescribed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15. Back.

Note 103: Langston Hughes, "A Raisin in the Sun". Quoted from Catherine Watson, Exile from Rwanda: Background to an Invasion , Washington, DC.: US. Committee for Refugees, 1991. Back.

Note 104: Nationalism in the name of equality and freedom helped achieve Italian or German unification, and freed Slav people from various European domination. It degenerated into fascism in Italy, nazism in Germany, and, in the Balkans, turned Slavs against each other. See Davidson. Modern Africa. A Social and Political History. London and New York: Longman. 3rd Edition, 1994 (chapters 12 & 18). Back.

Note 105: According to Davidson, "in Ruanda-Urundi, the Belgians deepened the natural differences between the Tutsi and the Hutu people by taking the Tutsi into a sort of 'colonial partnership' against the Hutu". Basil Davidson, work cited, p. 73. Back.

Note 106: Godwin [1793] quoted in Michel Beaud, Socialism in the Crucible of History, Translated and with an introduction by Thomas Dickman, New Jersey: Humanity Press, 1993, p. 3. Back.

Note 107: So did Alexis de Tocqueville express his fears of race relations in the United States. See Democracy in America, New York: Vintage Books, 1945, 2: 391-2. Quoted in Peter I. Rose, "'Of Hue and Caste': Race, Immigration, and Perceptions of Pluralism," in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, special edition by Peter I. Rose, 530, November 1993, p. 189. Back.

Note 108: Peter I. Rose, idem, p. 197. Back.

Note 109: In "Democracy versus the Melting Pot," Horace Kallen observed that "men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies to a greater or lesser extent: they cannot change their grand-fathers. Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons, in order to cease being Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons would have to cease to be." [Nation, 18 February 1915, pp. 190-94; ibid., 25 Feb. 1915, pp. 217- 20.] p. 220. Quoted in Peter I. Rose, article cited, p. 200. Back.

Note 110: See Milton M. Gordon, "Models of Pluralism: The New American Dilemma," in Milton M. Gordon (ed.) America as a Multicultural Society, The Annals of the American Political and Social Science, 454 (March, 1981), pp. 187-88; Peter I. Rose, ibid., p. 199. Back.

Note 111: See Fountainhead Tanz Theatre. "Ten Years After? Possibilities for the Future Through Multi-and Inter-Cultural Communication," Entry Form of the Xth International Black Cinema Festival. Back.

Note 112: Milton M. Gordon, ibid. Back.

Note 113: Fountainhead Tanz Theatre, ibid. Back.

Note 114: This model of inter-cultural democracy may seem tautologic in an environment said to constitute a "true nation" as underscored earlier. Yet, in actuality, there is no doubt that the social and political praxis of vilification of each other has brought the components of this nation as far asunder as those members of any pluri-segmental societies. Back.

Note 115: I am indebted to Gayle & Donald Griffith, Dance professors at Indiana University at South Bend, and Fountainhead Tanz Theatre directors, for sharing with me the Xth International Black Cinema Festival entry form. The Festival took place in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin in 1995. The form underlines the 4 steps for inter-cultural partnership discussed here. Back.

Note 116: Weinstein and Schrire distinguish five conditions which may politicize ethnic cleavages. See Warreb Weinstein and Robert Schrire. Political Conflict and Ethnic Strategies: A Case Study of Burundi, New York: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 1976, pp. 3-5. Back.

Note 117: Read Jean-Paul Sartre's Preface to Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1963, especially, p. 10. Back.

Note 118: At the "Children's Hearing" that took place in Brazil in 1992, Al Gore, soon to become the U. S. vice-president, indicated that each year $1 trillion is spent to perfect and enhance the killing-capabilities of armed forces around the world. BBC Late Night news broadcast on Public Radio International, August 15, 1994 Back.

Note 119: Le Monde, (March 1990) observed: "Every franc we give impoverished Africa comes back to France, or is smuggled into Switzerland and even Japan." According to late President Sikou Toure of Guinea, foreign aid must help us to get rid of aid. Aid in Africa dated back to the independence negotiations period. As of today, yet, Africa's need in foreign aid remains alarmingly huge. Proof of its failure? Back.

Note 120: René Monory, President of the French Senate, in an interview to Jeune Afrique, acknowledges that economic colonialism never ended despite Africa's political independence. He questioned the worth of distributing millions to Africans in the form of aid while actively causing the price of African products to slump by half on the international market. "Ce qu'il faut," he declared, "c'est d'aider les Africains à connaître une croissance, en protégeant notamment leurs productions. Le colonialisme économique perdure. A quoi sert de distribuer des millions si nous faisons baisser de moitié les cours de l'arachide? " The whole argument is worth reading. See Jeune Afrique . "René Monory: Le colonialisme économique perdure," No. 1704 (2-8 Septembre 1993), pp. 24-25. Back.

Note 121: These will be equally challenging and explosive in all parts of the world; they will take a particular connotation in the developed nations as these demands may be compounded by chauvinistic counter-offensives from all quarters of the political right and extreme left. Back.