Rwanda: Seven Years after the Genocide

The 1990s saw a multitude of positive developments and unspeakable tragedies in sub-Saharan Africa. With the end of the Cold War, slowly but surely came a sweeping movement toward multiparty democracy. Military dictatorships and authoritarian governments gave way to fragile democracies. From Benin in West Africa to Mozambique in Southern Africa, long-held democratic aspirations came true as prodemocracy advocates assumed political power.

In parts of Africa, however, bloody civil wars continued unabated. In Southern Africa, the civil war in Angola continued despite a brief settlement in the mid-1990s. In Sudan, the National Islamic Front government intensified its war campaign against the south and frustrated international peace efforts to end the war.

The 1990s also witnessed the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Sub-Saharan Africa took the brunt of this deadly disease with some 25 million people infected. Several million people died in the 1990s from AIDS, and many more are expected to die in the years to come. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic has left millions of children orphaned and ravaged the small educated elite, threatening the very survival of many African nations.

But the most tragic event of the 1990s was the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which an estimated 1 million people died while the international community watched with indifference. Rwanda was the victim of the Somalia debacle.

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush ordered some twenty-five-thousand American troops to protect relief workers trying to assist hundreds of thousands of Somalis threatened by starvation. The collapse of central authority in Somalia after the ouster of the Siad Barre government in 1991 led to anarchy and a massive humanitarian crisis. What began as a humanitarian mission to save lives turned into a bloody conflict between Somali factions and the international intervention force. After a bloody clash between U.S. forces and Somalis in Mogadishu, the capital, in October 1993, where thousands of Somalis and eighteen U.S. Army Rangers were killed, the United Nations- led international effort came to an abrupt end.

Consequently, the Clinton administration, burned by its inherited Somalia debacle, became reluctant to intervene in African conflicts. Isolationism began to sweep the power corridors in Congress and the Pentagon. At the height of this isolationist mood came the Rwandan genocide. The international community did little to prevent the massacre of innocent civilians, afraid of being dragged into the conflict. The UN Security Council ordered the pullout of its meager force in Rwanda, sent to keep the peace and provide support for the Arusha peace process. After the devastating experience of the 1994 genocide, Rwanda today is slowly recovering and making incremental progress.

A landlocked nation the size of Maryland, Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Its population is made up largely of two ethnic groups: the Tutsis (about 14 percent), who had been the dominant political and economic force until 1961, and the majority Hutus (about 85 percent), who took power at independence. For decades, Rwanda suffered from violent ethnic clashes in which hundreds of thousands of people died and millions were forced into exile. In 1990, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched a major military offensive from Uganda against government forces inside Rwanda. The government forces were able to repel the RPF and forced it to retreat into the mountains. After several failed efforts, the RPF and the government of Rwanda reached an agreement in Arusha, Tanzania.

In early April 1994, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi along with several senior government officials were killed when their plane was shot down as it approached the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. Shortly afterward, the Rwandan military and Hutu militia began to systematically massacre Tutsis and moderate Hutu opposition members. The Hutu militia and army blamed the Tutsi-led RPF and its allies for the plane crash, while the RPF argued that the killing of the president was part...