The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (review)

Scott Straus ranks among the finest of the scholars writing in genocide studies. The Order of Genocide only confirms the reputation he has gained from earlier work: it is a fair-minded, important, and rigorous monograph. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews that he conducted with convicted Rwandan killers, and on many other sources, Straus builds a dynamic process model seeking to explain why and how ordinary people could be mobilized to murder their neighbors in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Straus comes to his analysis after distinguished coverage for the Houston Chronicle of the 1996 war in Zaire. In 1998 he enrolled in graduate school and "quickly gravitated to theories of mass violence and African politics" (x). Reading about the Rwanda genocide led him to conclude that theories about the genocide "had outpaced the evidence" (x). This is the gap he sets out to correct. In doing so he brings to this book extensive work with both open-ended and structured interviews with ordinary killers in prisons across Rwanda, and a thorough knowledge of the literature on the Great Lakes. He disaggregates regional violence, he analyzes the relevant geographic factors, and he provides linear regression analyses of key factors to create a solidly grounded, comprehensive interpretation of the spread of violence at the local level during the genocide.

For this reviewer, Straus's most impressive contribution to the literature is his highlighting of the critical moments when region after region hovered at the tipping point, with power evenly balanced between Hutu hardliners and moderates. Straus illustrates how the intervention of key military and militia units, new advances by the Rwanda Patriotic Front, and broadcasts by radio station RTLM sapped the strength of the moderates and confirmed that the hardliners were in charge at the very center of power. Moderate officials then abandoned their resistance to government-sanctioned violence. Encouraged by local hardliner elites, mass killing followed. Under these circumstances, Straus argues, international intervention early in the genocide surely would have tipped the balance of power from Hutu hardliners to Hutu moderates. However, without international intervention, civil war and insecurity fanned by government authorities empowered mass mobilization for targeted wholesale murder. In Straus's words, "acute insecurity and orders from above ignited a categorical logic of race and ethnicity. In a defensive battle. . . and in the context of orders to kill, Tutsis became 'the enemy.' In short, neighbors became enemies in war" (173). Central to this interpretation is Straus's argument that under conditions of intense civil war, face-to-face demands by local elites and neighbors to join in the killing were the keys to understanding mass participation in the Rwandan genocide. The very proximity of Hutu and Tutsi living together intensified the sense of deep insecurity among ordinary Hutu and this, to some, made the killing seem necessary.

Straus deftly combines empirical research with theory to critique earlier explanations of the causes of the Rwanda genocide. He finds key flaws in the "ancient tribal hatred" theory as well as more recent theories that make ethnic identity and nationalism salient. His interview data also lead him to downplay the roles of deprivation and a strong "culture of obedience" among Hutu genocidaires. In general, Straus's work reinforces skepticism about all static and historicist models for explaining the Rwanda genocide in favor of a cumulative radicalization model pivoting around a dynamic of escalation (12). Representative of Straus's nuanced approach is his discussion of the role of radio station RTLM in the genocide. Based on his interviews with confessed killers and his analysis of the transcripts of RTLM broadcasts, Straus concludes that radio contributed to the events but that the media alone "did not drive most participation in the genocide" (231).

At the core of this book is Straus's determination to go beyond macro-level explanations to "a more...