After the very public failure of US efforts in Somalia in 1993, Clinton became very gun-shy about committing US forces in significant numbers to international hot spots.

It is also the reason why the US avoided action in Rwanda in 1994 as well even going as much as refusing to use the phrase "genocide" in public statements early on. The US contributed virtually nothing of value during that situation as well.

Clinton's foreign policy failure coup de grace came in his efforts at the Oslo Peace Accord. It can be said that his efforts to pressure both sides into a quickly drawn up peace agreement may have set off the third intifada and doomed efforts for a generation.

Lets face it, without US involvement, the rest of the world has a tendency to sit by and let things like this go on. When we have leadership which would

UN and NATO forces were pretty thin on the ground and not prepared to deal with large scale military forces in the region. It was a moral and professional failing not to defend the "safe area". However, it was one which could be expected without enthusiastic support of the West to do something about it.

Dobbs is just doing the job he is paid for. And he continues to qualify the Srebrenica war events from July 1995 as "genocide" even if he himself said in one of his previous articles that "he must admit that he finds it difficult to use the word genocide, which conjures up images of the Holocaust". And he was furiously attacked for saying it by multitude od Muslim organizations around the world.

Simply, Dobbs is enormously frightened and he dares not say anything what may provoke a new outburst of wrath among the Muslim people and Muslim organizations. Dobbs is a poor wretched journalist who can not find the way out from the intellectual dungeon in which he locked himself (un)willingly. I feel deep sorry for him, because I can imagine how it looks like to be confined by your own greed and fear.

Its not Mr. Dobbs who is the one who considers the events in Srebrenicia genocide, it is the official charge of the tribunal which is trying those people accused of being responsible of it.

This is not a point of debate, it is the crime for which the accused is being tried on. The events themselves have already been considered genocide in the legal definition of the term based on 2 prior convictions relating to the same common facts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/world/europe/11hague.html?_r=1

The Tribunal does not have to re-argue the issue again since it has already been determined in prior rulings. It is already established as a factual assessment of the facts concerning a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt. [See the concepts of judicial notice and collateral estoppel]

For the time being, the tribunal is still the most reliable artiber of facts and arguments which can be supported by evidence and good faith representations of the law. Unless you are able to find some rules of evidence employed or some procedure adopted by the tribunal from which one could claim that the defendants are not capable of receiving a fair trial, there is little reason to attack the Tribunal's findings on the subject.

The same reason it is right now happening in Syria and no one does anything to stop it. SC is blocked by veto power which is no logical attribute that the 5 state's should have. Responsibility comes for international community and it will be a call no matter what period we are discussing and no matter where the atrocities take place.

Upon entering Srebrenica, the Bosnian-Serb forces did not massacre the Bosnian-Muslim women, children, or the elderly who came under their control. On the contrary, they arranged for them to be sent to safety in Muslim held territory. The Popovic trial chamber noted that "the Bosnian Muslim women, children, and the elderly were transported out of Potocari on buses and trucks, to ABiH-held territory near Kladanj. Each convoy was escorted by [Bosnian-Serb] Bratunac Brigade Military Police or members of the SBP."[22]

If the Bosnian-Serb forces had intended to destroy the Bosnian-Muslim ethnic group, why would they spare the women, children, and the elderly? There are no other instances of genocide where the perpetrators spared the women and children.

The Krstic Appeals judgment offers speculation that "The decision not to kill the women or children may be explained by the Bosnian Serbs' sensitivity to public opinion. In contrast to the killing of the captured military men, such an action could not easily be kept secret, or disguised as a military operation, and so carried an increased risk of attracting international censure."[23]

This is pure speculation on the part of the trial chamber. There are other, far more plausible, explanations for the killing of the military men besides genocidal intent. The military men were combatants against the Bosnian-Serbs in an ongoing war. Clearly, that was the reason why they were targeted for destruction, not because of their ethnic affiliation. If targeting an enemy military force for destruction during an ongoing war constitutes evidence of genocidal intent, then genocide is a component of every war that has ever been fought in human history. It is an utterly ridiculous proposition.

The Krstic defense argued before the ICTY Appeals chamber that the genocide convictions should be thrown out because "the record contains no statements by members of the VRS Main Staff indicating that the killing of the Bosnian Muslim men was motivated by genocidal intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica." Incredibly, the Appeals Chamber dismissed that argument on the grounds that "The absence of such statements is not determinative. Where direct evidence of genocidal intent is absent, the intent may still be inferred from the factual circumstances of the crime." [24]

Michael Dobbs’ ruminations about how “Srebrenica genocide” was predicted but not prevented are disingenuous and simplistic, to put it charitably. It is high school history paper prose, not sophisticated analysis.

The quote from General Mladic misses its intended mark. It appears to be criticism of, not encouragement, to commit genocide. In fact, during the rest of his speech (which Dobbs omits) Mladic condemned forced ethnic recomposition by saying that “people are not pieces on a chessboard that you can just move around at will”.

Radovan Karadzic’s statement, as quoted, sounds like prudent, common sense, analysis of the situation taking into account the likely consequences of the horrendous atrocities perpetrated by Naser Oric’s forces against Serbian residents of Srebrenica. Exactly the same fears, and for identical reasons, were expressed by UNPROFOR commander, General Phillipe Morillon. Asked at the Milosevic trial what in his opinion provoked the massacre of July 1995, Morillon answered: “Accumulated hatred. There were heads that rolled. There were terrible massacres committed by the forces of Naser Oric in all the surrounding villages. I went to Bratunac at the time I intervened [1993], I felt that.” [Milosevic trial Transcript, p. 32031]

The politicians and functionaries Dobbs quotes enunciated views in conformity with their current political agendas and/or sources of their campaign contributions.

Dobbs quotes selectively something that Izetbegovic told him in an attempt to highlight the latter’s pacific intentions. But Izetbegovic’s most famous statement was that he would be happy to sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia under his faction’s control. He is also known for withdrawing in March of 1992 his support of the Cutilheiro peace plan that shortly before he had negotiated and signed. All sides had endorsed it.

Izetbegovic’s adherence to that peace agreement would have avoided the Bosnian war altogether. That would have been the best genocide prevention strategy, if that is something that Dobbs is sincerely interested in.

Izetbegovic's culpability for the outbreak and continuation of war in Bosnia is greater than that of any other political actor of the time. In 1991-92, he insisted on Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia, even though at least 40% of the republic's population was fiercely opposed to it. In doing so, he violated Bosnia's constitution, which mandated consensus among the three national groups on constitutional issues. Had Bosnia remained in Yugoslavia, Bosnia would have continued to exist as a unitary republic and the Muslims would have been the second-largest nation after the Serbs.

In March 1992, Izetbegovic withdrew his signature from the Cutileiro agreement, and thereby made war inevitable. Recall that Cutileiro agreement envisaged an independent Bosnia, but a thoroughly decentralized one. Izetbegovic would brook no decentralization. One should also mention Izetbegovic's rejection of the Owen-Stoltenberg peace plan in 1993, which both Serbs and Croats had accepted. Imagine all the horrors that could have been avoided had a peace agreement been signed in 1993.

One can go on and on. Izetbegovic's use of the enclaves, created by the United Nations for ostensibly humanitarian reasons, to stage armed attacks on neighboring Serb villages was the height of irresponsibility. He had to have known that the Serbs would not tolerate this forever. It was Izetbegovic who refused to extend the three-month Carter-negotiated ceasefire in the spring of 1995. The Muslim-Croat spring offensive ended in disaster, as could have been predicted. It is indeed tragic that the Bosnian Muslims in those years were led by a man of such catastrophic ineptitude.

Incidentally, it should also not be forgotten that Izetbegovic was supposed to have stepped down as president in 1993. Yet he just went on and on.

We are all Bangladeshi well known with Genocide because we are also one of victim. Our people feel it with sorrow. we was victim by Pakistani army. So our sympathy for those people who are victim of genocide in any where. please struggle against Genocide we are beside with you.
http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html
firaiyamjie

Danijel Toljaga [aka Mr. Baseball Bat] criticizes Michael Dobbs for not being consistent and extreme enough in following the Srebrenica party line (let’s see if Dobbs will now respond by asking Toljaga whether he is paid by the word for his prolific diatribes, and how much?). Mr. Baseball Bat’s assertions, however, are without basis.

He has no evidence independent of the corrupt judgments of ICTY. Nazis can quote to their heart’s content the finding of the German court that Van den Lube set fire to the Reichstag; that hardly obligates any reasonable and critical person to accept it as a fact. Especially since we now have satisfactory historical evidence that the event was politically orchestrated by the Nazis themselves. Unreconstructed Communists may also quote extensively from court verdicts handed down in the Moscow show trials of the thirties, but I think that few historians will use the evidence presented there or the resulting judgments as a credible basis for drawing reliable conclusions. Exactly the same applies to ICTY. It is a political, ad hoc tribunal set up not to investigate facts but to impose through its questionable judgments a rigid factual matrix satisfactory to those who formed and finance it (Mrs. Albright had brutally frank views on that subject and she enunciated them unashamedly on behalf of ICTY’s sponsors).

Has Mr. Baseball Bat any independently verified facts and assessments to offer? Redefining villages torched by the side for which he advocates as fortresses, and the slaughtered peasants who inhabited them as soldiers, will not do the trick. A certain number of uninformed readers may go for it, but informed opinion on both sides of the Srebrenica debate will have nothing to do with it. Mr. Toljaga should aim higher than the lowest common denominator of intelligence and information.

On 6 April 1994, the most intense genocide since World War II was unleashed upon an unprepared world. Starting in Kigali, the Rwanda capital, the systematic slaughter of an ethnic group, the Tutsis, spread with a ferocity that even its sinister organizers could not have hoped for. In one hundred days it consigned about 800,000 Rwandans to their deaths. The perpetrators, high within government circles, had made meticulous plans. A radio station under their control, Radio Mille Collines,2 had been whipping up anti-Tutsi hysteria for months. Secret arms caches were kept ready for use by government soldiers and the party militia, the core cadre of which had been trained in the tactics of slaughter. Lists of Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers had been compiled for targeting. Only a trigger was needed. It was provided in a fashion as unexpected as the genocide itself: the killing of the Rwandan government head under whom the génocidaires (genocidists) had worked. As the wave of death spread across the country, the international community stood by in a stupor, and even sought to avoid its moral and legal responsibilities to mitigate this immense human and humanitarian tragedy.
The key international leaders have admitted that they should have acted. US President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who was the US ambassador to the UN at the time of the genocide) and UN Secretaries-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan (who was under-secretary-general for peacekeeping at the time)3 have all said that early intervention could have saved many thousands of lives. On a visit to Africa in March of 1998, President Clinton admitted that the world "did not act quickly enough" and that "we did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name—genocide."4 Secretary of State Albright stated that "we—the international community—should have been more active in the early stages of the atrocities in Rwanda."5 Many believe that the international community could have acted even earlier, to prevent the genocide before it started, or to nip it in the bud in the first few days. There are, however, no detailed studies on the precise measures that could have been undertaken by the international community and the international organization that bears the most responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, the United Nations.6

What was necessary for prevention? Three things were needed: an intelligence capability (for early warning and planning), preventive measures (i.e., a capability for intervention), and the political will to make use of these two. Tragically, it was the latter that was fundamentally lacking, since the first two were present in a nascent state. Though inadequate, they could have been further developed given more political will. There was, in fact, a UN peacekeeping force already deployed in the country, with a mandate to contribute to Rwandan security. Its commander had received secret intelligence about a genocide plot which he deemed convincing enough to begin planning for an active intervention. He was, however, restrained by his superiors at UN Headquarters in New York, who felt strongly the lack of commitment from the major powers in the Security Council, especially the United States. The atmosphere in New York, reflecting that in Washington, greatly dimmed the prospects for a greater, more pro-active UN presence in Rwanda that could have saved hundreds of thousands of human lives.

This paper will examine each of these three requirements: detailed intelligence, preventive measures and political will. It will suggest alternative policies and actions that, in hindsight, should have been followed to further develop these capabilities. It is essential that the international community not only learn, but also implement, the lessons from Rwanda. In the words of US President Clinton: "Let us challenge ourselves to build a world in which no branch of humanity . . . is again threatened with destruction . . . to strengthen our ability to prevent, and, if necessary, to stop genocide."7 We hope that this paper, which proposes, in hindsight, detailed scenarios for possible genocide prediction and prevention in Rwanda, will contribute to such an effort.

2. BACKGROUND

Few outsiders could have anticipated that Rwanda, a tiny, mountainous nation located in the Rift Valley of south-central Africa, would provide the backdrop for an unprecedented African horror. To the casual foreign observer, Rwanda's rustic setting along Lake Kivu, its lush hills, its agrarian economy, and its pastoral culture created a semblance of simplicity and placidity. Rwanda seemed too remote, too unsophisticated, and too docile of a nation, to produce nation-wide bloodshed and record numbers of refugees. When the UN peace-keeping mission was planned in 1993 the assumption was that this would be an easy, relatively trouble-free mission.8 This perception of Rwanda and the UN mission, however, was misguided. A careful examination of Rwanda's past reveals deep social tensions, a stalled agrarian economy, a history of political upheavals, and a frightening pattern of organized, mass killings in one of the most densely populated countries of the world (at 270 persons per square kilometer).9 A chronology of major events before and during the genocide is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Chronology

Major Events Prior to the Genocide

1894 – In Rwanda, a German colony, Tutsi (cattle-owners) are given privilege over Hutus (farmers); Tutsi monarchy recognized

1919 – Rwanda placed under Belgian trusteeship by League of Nations and later by UN

1959 – Hutu "social revolution" for majority rule; violent encounters and massacres; over 100,000 Tutsi refugees flee (many to Uganda)

1961 - Sept. – Legislative elections held under UN supervision; large majority vote in referendum for abolition of monarchy

1962 - July 1 – Rwanda gains independence from Belgium; continued ethnic fighting

1963 – In massacres, between 10,000 and 14,000 Tutsis are killed; smaller number of Hutus are also killed

1973 - July – Major General Juvénal Habyarimana seizes power in a coup d'état; outlaws political parties (until 1992); in 1974 establishes Movement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement (MRND) and ethnic quota systems

1987 - Dec. – Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) formed at a Congrès in Kampala

1990 - Oct. 1 – RPF launches a major attack ("invasion") from neighboring Uganda

1992 - July 12 – Cease-fire agreement (amended) signed

1993
Jan. 20-26 – Massacre of over 300 Tutsis in North Western Rwanda (Gisenyi)
Feb. 8 – RPF military offensive violates cease-fire
March – International Commission of Inquiry releases report on HR violations
June 22 – UNOMUR established (SC res. 846) to ensure ban on military assistance; becomes operational
Sept. 30 – integrated into UNAMIR
Aug. 4 – Arusha Accords signed by Pres. of Rwanda and Chairman of RPF
Oct. 5 – UNAMIR established (SC res. 872);
Oct. 21 – Burundi's Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, is assassinated by Tutsi soldiers
Dec. 28 – RPF battalion escorted into Kigali by UNAMIR in Operation "Clean Corridor"

1994
Jan. 11 – Gen. Dallaire's "genocide fax" includes informant's allegations
April 6 – Downing of President Habyarimana's plane and launch of genocide
July 4 – RPF takes control of Kigali.
July 18 – RPF reaches frontiers of Rwanda and unilaterally declares a cease-fire

Detailed Chronology During the Genocide

April 6 – Force Commander Romeo Dallaire goes to a meeting of the Army headquarters staff at Army headquarters. Théoneste Bagosora, the Chef de Cabinet, is chairing. He dismisses Dallaire's proposal to turn power over to PM Uwilingiyimana or to consult with her.

April 7 – Dallaire travels to the Ecole Supèrieure Militaire (ESM) in Kigali, observing the bodies of killed Belgian peacekeepers on the way. At ESM he finds that battalion and unit commanders from throughout the country had been assembled, impossible at short notice, and Bagaosora is giving orders. It occurs to him that a coup may have been staged.

April 12 – Belgian Foreign Minister informs UN Secretary General (SG) that the Belgian contingent will withdraw from UNAMIR and recommends suspension of entire mission

April 20 – Special report of the SG on UNAMIR proposes three alternatives: Force expansion (including enforcement mandate to "coerce opposing forces into a cease-fire"), reduction, or withdrawal

April 21 – SC takes second option and authorizes a force reduction to 270 (SC res. 912).

May 17 – SC adopts res. 918 including an expanded mandate to UNAMIR II:
- Contribute to the security and protection of civilians and relief operations
- Creation of secure humanitarian areas, where feasible
- A mandatory embargo on delivery of arms and related material to Rwanda
- Investigation of serious violations of international humanitarian law

June 22 – SC adopts res. 929, invoking Chapter VII, authorizing a
- French military intervention ("Opération Turquoise")
- ". . . to use all necessary means to achieve the humanitarian objectives" (of UNAMIR II)

July 4 – RPF takes Kigali as Rwandan government forces leave

July 18 – RPF declares a unilateral cease-fire and civil war is over

Historical Review

For the first half of the twentieth century, Rwanda was ruled by European powers, first by Germany from 1897 to 1916, and then by Belgium until 1962. Given their lack of manpower and resources, the Germans allowed the Rwandans virtually to govern themselves. Seeking political stability, they accepted the existing institution, a monarchy headed by a divine king, or mwami.

The king's subjects were divided into three principal social groups: the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Hutu, mostly poor peasants, comprised the vast majority. The more prosperous Tutsi, including the mwami, owned land and cattle, the traditional indicators of wealth in Rwandan society. In 1990 they made up about 14 percent of the country's population, compared to the Hutu's 85 percent. The remaining one percent were composed of the peripheral Twa, groups of nomads and hunters who lived in forested areas. Hutus and Tutsis traditionally lived and worked together, their huts juxtaposed in villages throughout the Rwandan countryside.

The differences between these two social groups were not tribal, as they both spoke the same language, practiced the same customs, and lived under the same rulers. The primary distinctions were economic, and some would say, physical. Historically, only the minority Tutsi possessed cattle; this gave them a higher societal status and, thus, a preferred access to elite government posts. Tutsis were generally recognized by colonialists as taller and more slender with thinner noses, their counterparts shorter with wider noses and thick lips. But this was far from a hard and fast rule. Intermarrying between the two groups was common.

After World War I, Germany lost its colonial foothold in Africa, and Rwanda fell under the control of Belgium. The Belgians exploited the disparities between the two principal social classes by giving the Tutsi educational and other preferences. They instituted an identity card system (which was later to become an important tool in the hands of the genocidists) whereby the "ethnic" identity of a person and his or her family became fixed and the former movement between the Hutu and Tutsi social classes was prohibited. The Belgians believed that the more "superior," more malleable Tutsi aristocrats, now easily identified, would be better able to institute European reforms. This belief led to widespread resentment by Hutus of both the Belgian colonists for creating the favoritism, and of their Tutsi neighbors for benefiting from it.

By the end of the 1950s, popular sentiment toward Belgian colonial rule, among Hutus and Tutsis alike, had changed from tacit compliance to fervid opposition. Each group sought both the establishment of an independent Rwandan nation and total control of that nation's government. Hutu and Tutsi political parties were formed. The cause for Rwandan independence was aided by increasing distaste with the Belgian rule at the United Nations. In 1962, the Republic of Rwanda was formed, and elections brought the Hutus to power (under President Gregoire Kayibanda) for the first time in Rwandan history.

As in the neighboring Congo, Belgium had prepared its colony very poorly for independence. The underlying resentment between Hutus and Tutsis heightened. The transition to republican government was anything but peaceful and cooperative. During a two-month period in the fall of 1961, vengeful violence by Hutus led to the killings of over 100 Tutsis, the burning of over 3,000 homes, and the displacement of close to 22,000 persons. A report by the UN Trusteeship Commission concluded that "an oppressive system has been replaced by another one," and ominously predicted that "it is quite possible that some day we will witness violent reactions on the part of the Tutsi."10 Indeed, the Tutsi refugees who had settled in neighboring countries such as Tanzania, Burundi, and Uganda, began to form small, roving, armed bands—pejoratively labeled inyenzi or "cockroaches" by the Hutus—to engage in terrorist acts against the new Hutu regime.

The first decade of the independent Rwandan state involved repeated attempts by Tutsi rebels to overthrow the Hutu government by both subversive activities and overt military operations. In response, widespread violence was inflicted upon Tutsi citizens by the Hutus in power. As a result, by the mid-1960s over 20,000 Tutsis had been slaughtered, and more than 150,000 had been forced to flee to the nation's periphery.

In 1973, during a period of economic stagnation and anti-Tutsi sentiment, Juvénal Habyarimana, the Rwandan Minister of Defense, overthrew the shaky regime of President Kayibanda. He established an authoritarian, nepotist government dominated by his Hutu political party, the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement (MRND). The Habyarimana regime systematically worked to weaken and isolate Tutsi citizens. It required all citizens to carry cards that labeled them either Hutu or Tutsi. Through discriminatory policies, and sometimes open harassment, it weeded out Tutsis from positions in the military, civil service and local governments.

By 1990, Tutsi rebels in Uganda had organized a united, military organization dedicated to re-establishing Tutsi rule in Rwanda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On multiple occasions between 1990 and 1993 the RPF launched military incursions from Uganda into Rwanda, plunging the country into civil war. With the encouragement of international organizations such as the Organization for African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations, the RPF and the Habyarimana regime officially concluded a cease-fire in 1991, though this was broken on many occasions. In August 1993, at Arusha, Tanzania, they finally reached an agreement on a power-sharing arrangement that would return multi-party rule to Rwanda. To assist in the implementation of this agreement, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) arrived in the capital of Kigali in October of 1993, under the command of Major General Romeo Dallaire. The UN peacekeeping operation was under the political control of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), Mr. Jacques Rogers Booh-Booh, who also had a good offices mandate to mediate between parties and facilitate the peace process.

During the first few months of UNAMIR's mission, however, the peace agreement between the Hutu and Tutsi representative institutions was far from being implemented. Then on April 6, two surface-to-air missiles brought down the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi as it approached the runway at Kigali airport. Almost immediately, the systematic, well-planned, and merciless killings of Tutsis and Hutu moderates in Kigali began. In addition, ten Belgian paratroopers, part of the Belgian contingent of the UN force, were disarmed and murdered by Rwandan government troops as they sought to protect the Rwandan Prime Minister, who was assassinated. In the subsequent three months, the genocide swept across the country, as hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and political dissidents were slaughtered by the Hutu-dominated militias, the Interahamwe, as well as the gendarmerie and the Presidential Guard.11 News of these atrocities sent shock waves throughout the international community and the peacekeeping office at the United Nations.

Evidence suggests that a strengthened intelligence capability among the United Nations could have unveiled the detailed plans for this genocide. Furthermore, had the UN engaged in preventive diplomacy or, later, preventive deployment of troops, it may very well have been able to prevent many senseless killings that followed. Intelligence-gathering in several areas in particular could have provided clear and sufficient clues about the genocide months in advance: illicit arms flows, insider information on the genocide plots, the training and activities of the Interahamwe, the activities and reputations of the plotters themselves, and a long-standing pattern of ethnically-based human rights violations. Unfortunately, the UN did not analyze or synthesize these important pieces of evidence nor did it pro-actively seek further information that could have corroborated and deepened the information at hand.

A range of possible preventive measures were also ignored by the UN. Before examining in detail these early warning signals and preventive actions, it is important to see if the UN actually had the mandate, if not the means or the initiative, to gather intelligence and to act upon it for prevention.

UN Mandate for Monitoring and Prevention

The UN peace-keeping force was first envisioned in the Arusha Accords, which were signed in Arusha on 4 August 1993 after almost three years of civil war between the government of the Rwandese Republic and the rebel forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). The Accords were designed to bring an end to hostilities and to pave the way for a transition to democracy, with the UN force to play a major stabilizing role.12 The Arusha Accords envisioned a series of democratic reforms, including steps towards a broad-based transitional government (BBTG), national elections, the integration of the armed forces of the two main combatants, and the repatriation of refugees who had fled to neighboring countries during the civil war.

In the Arusha Accords both parties pledged to promote the security of Rwanda. They promised to uphold the Ceasefire Agreement of 16 September 1991, which included the "suspension of supplies of ammunition and weaponry to the field," as well as a "ban on infiltration of troops and on the conveyance of troops and war material to the area occupied by each party."13 These prohibitions imply that any type of movement of arms, including shipments from abroad, would violate the Ceasefire Agreement, and thus the Accords. Thus, by August of 1993, the two official parties to the Rwandan civil war had agreed in writing to prevent the influx of arms to Rwanda.

The UN force, according to the Accords, was to "assist in the tracking of arms caches and neutralization of armed gangs throughout the country." Moreover, the mission was to have an even larger mandate to "assist in the recovery of all weapons distributed to, or illegally acquired by the civilians."14 While the actual mandate of the force would be determined later by the UN Security Council, these proposed security missions show, among other things, that the negotiators of the Arusha Accords sought a proactive, investigative force designed to prevent the flow of arms to any sources of instability.

The mandate provided by the Security Council for the peacekeeping force was less ambitious, but it still committed the UN to lessening the militant conditions in Rwanda. Resolution 872 of 5 October 1993, which formally established the peacekeeping force, gave UNAMIR a primary function to "contribute to the security of Kigali," including by monitoring a "weapons-secure area established by the parties in and around the city." UNAMIR troops were also instructed to "monitor observance of the cease-fire agreement" embodied in the Arusha Accords of August 1993, as well as "other demilitarization procedures." This force was to investigate "instances of alleged non-compliance" with the provisions of the Arusha Accords related to the integration of the armed forces. These "instances" could be either observable transgressions or hints of them. UNAMIR was also mandated to "investigate and report on incidents regarding the activities of the gendarmerie and police," ostensibly to ensure that these groups provide security and to contribute to an abating of tensions between the Rwandan government and the rebel forces of the RPF.15 The United Nations had also planned to use UNAMIR as a complement to the already existing peacekeeping operation, UNOMUR,16 which had been mandated to gather information about potential transgressions, chiefly the illicit flow of firearms through the border with Uganda, that might disrupt the peace process. This resolution demonstrates that in the months prior to the genocide, during which the secret preparations were taking place, the United Nations had possessed the mandate to investigate non-compliance with the accords and to promote the security of Rwanda.

Even more broadly, under Article 1 of its Charter, the UN has a responsibility "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace."17 According to Article 99 of the Charter, the Secretary General possesses the power to bring potential threats to the peace directly before the Security Council.18 In this way the Secretary-General can use his discretion to shine a spotlight on any matter that he feels may endanger the mission of the UN.

Furthermore, in the matter of the serious international crime of genocide, the international community has a legal as well as moral obligation to intervene. Article I of the 1948 "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" requires that the 128 states parties (including all five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council) consider genocide a crime "which they undertake to prevent and punish."19 This includes "conspiracy to commit genocide," "attempt to commit genocide," and "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" (Article III). Thus, planning for, or the spreading propaganda for genocide are criminal acts, as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was later to uphold.20 Article VIII of the Genocide Convention allows parties to summon the UN to take action for the "prevention and suppression of acts of genocide." In other words, any state party could present a charge of genocide before the UN, and call upon the body to take action. In addition, parties to the Genocide Convention are obliged to "enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention."21 Thus, parties to the Convention must make their obligation "to prevent and to punish" genocide part of their national law. In summary, a firmly established treaty gave both the UN and individual countries a responsibility to prevent the destruction of one ethnic or religious group, in whole or in part, by another.

Thus the UN had a mandate for proactive investigations and some authority and means for intervention. We can now examine the indicators and evidence that could, at least in hindsight, have been used to predict the genocide and the means that might have been used to prevent it. A summary list of the early warning signals is given in Table 2.

Table 2. The Early Warning Signals Known to the UN
– Informer ("Jean-Pierre") reports of concrete plans for genocide—January 1994
– Rwandan military officers send Dallaire a note on coming massacres—December 1993
– Past massacres and assassinations (e.g., human rights reports—January 1993, etc.
– Public media (RTLM) racist propaganda—1993-94
– Political maneuver by extremists to unsettle the peace process—1993-94
– Weapons stockpiling in violation of the peace accords—continuous
– Militia training and complicity in massacres—since 1992

3. EARLY WARNING SIGNALS

Illicit Arms

The country is flooded with weapons. Two beers will get you one grenade.
– A Western Diplomat in Kigali22

The UN peacekeeping force had a strong mandate to monitor illegal arms, but there was a major deficiency in its investigative capability. We begin by focusing on the key weapons that triggered the genocide: the Soviet missiles that brought down the Rwandan President's plane.

The French newspaper, Le Figaro, has alleged that the serial numbers of the two surface-to-air missiles which struck the plane match those of missiles seized from Iraq by French troops during the Gulf War of 1991. The reporter, Patrick de Saint-Exupery, cited testimony from two anonymous officers of the French military, who claimed that the SAM-16 missiles, after being confiscated from Iraqi stockpiles, were sold to Rwandan government forces between November 1993 and February 1994 as part of a covert French policy labeled "le secret défense."23 These missiles, smuggled into Rwanda from abroad, were just a small part of a massive weapons influx that violated the Ceasefire Agreement and created tremendous insecurity. Bernard Debré, the French Minister of Development at the time of the crash, repudiated the substance of the Le Figaro story and, in turn, accused the American State Department of supplying the missiles. Debré claimed that the two missiles were seized by American, not French, forces in the Gulf, and soon after sold to the neighboring country of Uganda.24 Yet he produced no concrete proof that would shift responsibility for the missiles away from the French government. And further evidence shows that the missile affair fits a broader pattern of acts of French favoritism to the Rwandan government.

France was a principal source of arms for the Rwanda government under a policy of staunch support for the Hutu regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, the Rwandan president. According to the Human Rights Watch Arms Project, France, while regularly proclaiming to the international community its neutrality in the Rwandan conflict, supplied machine guns, artillery, armored vehicles, and six Gazelle helicopters to the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR), the Rwandan army, after the outbreak of fighting in 1990.25 In fact, French military officials often encountered difficulty obtaining approval of the Interministerial Committee for War Material Exports for arms transfers to Rwanda because the volume of equipment was so great.26 Even high-ranking Rwandan government officials admitted to having received abundant French support. For example, the Rwandan Minister of Defense in June of 1993, James Gasana, confirmed that a French bank, Crédit Lyonnais, had guaranteed a $6 million arms deal between the Rwandan government and the government of Egypt involving the transfer of heavy artillery, mortars, and Kalashnikov (AK-47) automatic rifles. In order to help finance the deal, the Rwandan government was forced to put up much of its tea harvest for collateral.27 The magnitude of the deal suggests both that elements of the Habyarimana's regime had no interest in abiding by the Ceasefire Agreement, and that the French government had made a clear policy preference of unconditional military support to one party during a time when disarmament and impartiality were crucial to ensuring peace.

In the period leading up to Arusha, the Habyarimana regime played a direct role in the arming of civilians, justified as against an invasion of outsiders (Ugandan Tutsis). Its goal, according to a secret government document obtained by the Human Rights Watch Arms Project, was to distribute nearly 2,000 assault rifles to civilians loyal to the President's political party (the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement or MRND) under the guise of a "self-defense" force. While this civilian force had not yet engaged in human rights abuses to the extent of the Interahamwe, the report cautions that "it is frightening to ponder the potential for abuses by large numbers of ill-trained civilians equipped with assault rifles."28 There was no slowdown in the import of military hardware to Rwanda; rather, high-ranking Rwandan officials were arming their citizens and militia, and trading tea for weapons. After Arusha, no weapons were supposed to come into the country, but that was also systematically flouted.

Arms had become plentiful in Rwanda; grenades were sold alongside mangos and avocados on fruit stands at markets around Kigali.29 UNAMIR officials were aware of, but could not cope with or monitor, the extent of illicit arms transfers. They were unsuccessful, moreover, in obtaining the necessary approval to conduct searches, raids, or to confiscate weapons from civilians and militia members. UNAMIR communications in the months before April 6 show that UNAMIR officers were aware that prodigious amounts of arms and ammunition were flowing into Rwanda and were concerned about the danger it presented, but they were denied permission by UN headquarters in New York to take offensive action to confiscate weapons.

Ominous signs appeared of a motive for the stockpiling and distribution of these instruments of death. A Belgian UNAMIR lieutenant sensed they were to be used for an impending catastrophe, as he was later to recall:

We also realized something big was being prepared, but we didn't know exactly what. But we learned quickly through informants that arms were hidden in the area and distributed in anticipation of the massacres.30

The UNAMIR mandate to help establish and monitor a "weapons secure area" around Kigali was being challenged. Under the mandate, it was agreed that weapons, except personal arms, could be transported only under escort by UN military observers. But machine guns and some heavy weaponry were readily seen. At the end of January 1994, SRSG Booh-Booh griped to the press that "weapons are distributed from arms caches around Kigali and even inside town."31

An informer named "Jean Pierre" declared that there were four major arms caches. He even took an African UN peacekeeper to one of them: the headquarters of the MRND. There, in the building, he showed the astonished Senegalese soldier a large stockpile of weapons, mostly AK-47s, ammunition, and grenades. (The Senegalese peacekeeper, who posed as a friendly African officer, was obviously not wearing a UN uniform, to permit passage through the sentry post at the entrance of the building.)

UNAMIR officials also directly observed French involvement in weapons transfers. Under the direction of Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal, sector commander for Kigali, UNAMIR troops even confiscated a shipment of arms from France at the Kigali airport on January 22,32 and also observed another shipment on April 9, three days after the commencement of the genocide. In short, violations of the Arusha Ceasefire Agreement were plentiful, highly visible, and fostered by non-Rwandan players.

To high-ranking UNAMIR officers, direct observation of the proliferation of these arms demanded rapid, preemptive action. Force Commander Romeo Dallaire had, in the first few days of January 1994, "implemented the first offensive ops [operations] planning against armed political militias and suspicious area." The peacekeeping force was to be "focused on ensuring the Kigali weapons secure area and gathering of information regarding armed political militias and suspicious area in order to prevent escalation of tensions."33

UNAMIR officials believed that information-gathering on weapons distribution was vital to their mission and had planned to take offensive action. All that was needed was the physical/logistical capability and the approval from New York to carry out such operations. Since UNAMIR was considered a defensive mission, it lacked sufficient equipment, particularly armored personnel carriers, to undertake offensive, "search and seize" type operations. Even so Dallaire asked for permission to begin raids on the known arms caches. As well, UNAMIR commanders called on their superiors at UN headquarters to grant and arrange for future shipments of the necessary equipment. But neither new equipment nor the authorization to conduct searches and seizures with the capability at hand were granted.

Conscientious Informers

Late in the day of January 10 I had a visit from someone who asked to be called 'Jean-Pierre.' He was a leader of the MRND militia, the famous Interahamwe . . . He explained he was struggling with his conscience. He was in the process of systematically arming all cells of the capital. He'd received orders several days earlier to identify every Tutsi in each cell, and when word came, to assassinate all of them point blank. From what he told me, they were capable of killing about 1,000 Tutsi every twenty minutes, so this was an extensive organization, and that was our undoing.
— Colonel Luc Marchal, Commander of Kigali sector for UNAMIR34

The most startling and explicit early warning came from human sources. High-ranking UN officials in Kigali and New York were informed in clear language and with convincing evidence of a sinister plot to sabotage the peace process and carry out genocide.

The key personality was a former security aide to President Habyarimana who was responsible for training the Interahamwe. Referring to himself as "Jean-Pierre," the informer had several meetings with Dallaire and Marchal in which he disclosed a macabre plot to which, he claimed, he could not, in clear conscience, be a party. Jean-Pierre asserted that, since the arrival of the UNAMIR force, the goals of the Interahamwe had changed. While originally the militia served as a national force aimed to help protect the country from RPF attacks, it was evolving into a partisan strong-arm designed to wreak violence against the Tutsis. As a leader within the Interahamwe, Jean-Pierre had been ordered to compile lists of Tutsis in Kigali which he thought were to be used "for their extermination." The informant said that while he supported the actions against the RPF, he could not "support the killing of innocent persons."

The organizers of the plan, whom Jean-Pierre said included leaders of the extreme factions of Habyarimana's political party, the MRND, sought to block the establishment of the new government, and to force UNAMIR to withdraw from Rwanda by engineering more violence. For example, Jean-Pierre had himself played a role in efforts to prevent the installation of the new members of the BBTG. In one operation planned for early January, the Rwandan opposition "deputies were to be assassinated upon entry or exit from Parliament," and RPF forces were to be confronted in order to "provoke a civil war." As it turns out, demonstrations by an organized mob in front of parliament were sufficient to hold up the swearing in ceremonies. The plot was not hatched on schedule, but the preparations continued.

The informant asserted that if, during the swearing-in ceremony, the "Belgian soldiers resorted to force [to prevent the assassinations] a number of them were to be killed and thus guarantee Belgian withdrawal from Rwanda."35 In addition, the informer pointed out exact locations of Interahamwe weapons caches in and around Kigali that were to be used in the subsequent slaughter of Tutsis. According to Marchal, "a UN officer accompanied him to MRND headquarters. In the building there was indeed a stockpile of arms and ammunition," providing further irrefutable evidence to UN officials that arms were being improperly stored for distribution by the government.

It quickly became clear to Dallaire and Marchal that immediate action needed to be taken, as Jean-Pierre's assertions backed up their own observations. Faxes were sent to New York around the time of their meetings with Jean-Pierre giving clear evidence of the informant's credibility. As mentioned, Jean-Pierre had explained that deputies of the BBTG had been targeted on their way to and from the parliament. Confirming this, the outgoing code cable from SRSG Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh of 11 January 1994 mentions the establishment of road blocks by the Presidential Guard and the Interahamwe around Kigali, and that "their aim was to prevent the deputies from getting to the parliament and to prevent essential meetings at Prime Minister level and senior political levels in order to solve the impasse between the parties." In the process, "civilian drivers were beaten." The cable also mentions that hundreds of armed protestors loyal to the MRND "blocked the entrance to the parliament and harassed deputies," a description of events which corroborates the informant's story. In addition, UN officials had verified the existence of the weapons caches first-hand.

Also on January 11, Force Commander Dallaire sent an urgent fax to New York, addressed to Major General Maurice Baril, the UN Secretary-General's military advisor, describing the informant's revelations that there was a plan to "exterminate" the Tutsis, brutally sabotage the peace process, remove the Belgian peacekeeping contingent, and provoke a civil war through forceful confrontation (see Appendix). Within the "genocide" fax, as it has come to be called, Dallaire outlined his plan to raid arms caches promptly to prevent the contents from being used in the plots. "It is our intention to take action within the next 36 hours," Dallaire wrote. "Recce [reconnaissance] of armed cache and detailed planning of raid to go on late tomorrow."

Dallaire noted that Jean-Pierre would be willing to offer further information, specifically the locations of more weapons and ammunition, in exchange for a UN pledge to provide protection and asylum. "He was ready to go to the arms cache tonight," Dallaire stated in the fax, "if we gave him the following guarantee. He requests that he and his family be placed under our protection." Dallaire went on to urge his superiors in New York to grant Jean-Pierre's request, but indicated that he had little background on UN policy in this area. "It is recommended the informant be granted protection and evacuated out of Rwanda," wrote the Force Commander. "This HQ does not have previous UN experience in such matters and urgently requests guidance."

No doubt the plots represented a major threat to the goals of the UN mission as well as to the lives of the peacekeepers themselves. The presence of secret weapons caches undermined the security of Kigali and were a violation of the Ceasefire Agreement upheld in the Arusha Accords. Moreover, plots to provoke civil war would mean the failure of all efforts to bring peace to the war-torn country. They should have sounded alarm bells in the mind of peacekeeping officials in New York. But action was not forthcoming; guarantees for the informer were not given. Over the next few months, the ominous revelations were forgotten in the hustle and bustle of regular diplomatic and peacekeeping activity. Besides, other issues were pressing on the UN and troubling its leadership.36

The informant's revelations called for a bold UNAMIR response beginning in January. As was mentioned earlier, Dallaire was ready to take preemptive measures, which he described in detail in his fax, but he was denied permission from his superiors in New York to raid the weapons caches. He was told instead to divulge the plan to the government head, President Habyarimana, whose inner circle included members of the Akazu (or "little house") who were developing the genocide plot.37 By denying permission to provide guarantees for Jean-Pierre, by failing to act to gain more information on a continuing basis, and by vetoing proactive preventive actions, New York blundered. Perhaps in the hope that others could take initiatives where the UN did not, Dallaire was also told to inform the ambassadors of the United States, Belgium and France, which he dutifully did. Jean-Pierre broke off contact, not being willing to risk his life and the lives of his family members.

Nefarious Plotters

I am planning for the apocalypse.
— Theoneste Bagosora, January 1993

Plans for the genocide had been "in the works" for some time. In early 1993, when a friend asked Col. Theoneste Bagosora, a key plotter, what kind of work he was doing, he replied with the above quote. But this sinister and detailed planning needed to be done carefully, incrementally and, above all, secretly.

Still, rumors about it were in circulation. For instance, the possible existence of "Network Zero," a group of extremists who planned Tutsi massacres, was noted in the report of a UN Special Rapporteur in 1993. Even earlier, in October 1992, Belgian Professor Filip Reyntjens had described the notorious group as composed of Coalition pour la Defense de la République (CDR) and Akazu leaders, and extremist military and Interahamwe units dedicated to promoting their ideal of "Hutu power." The "Zero Network" was likened to a Latin American death squad, able to roam the country slaughtering Tutsis with no censure from the government. Indeed, it must have had the tacit approval of President Habyarimana, who was negotiating, under considerable international pressure, to obtain the most favorable terms against the Tutsi rebels.38

The names of the organizations and many persons responsible for the genocide are now well established. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has indicted many of the leaders. NGO groups, such as Africa Watch, have provided detailed accounts based on interviews conducted after the genocide with a wide range of Rwandans. It is more important, however, to discover if the sinister organizations and individuals were identified prior to the genocide. The Human Rights Watch Arms Project did produce a report in January 1994 that described an inner circle of nefarious figures around the President, but it couldn't confirm the existence of the group.

"[A] persuasive number of non-French Western diplomats, Rwandan military officers, and civilians with a long standing personal relationship with Rwandan President Habyarimana told the Arms Project that they suspect members of the regime, and in particular the first circle or so-called 'little house' around the President . . . to be responsible for these terrorist attacks. These people told the Arms Project that powerful elements in the Akazu, who have largely ruled Rwanda since 1973, opposed both the negotiations to end the war and the opening to opposition political parties. Nonetheless, there is no proof at this time."39

An inner circle of political figures close to President Habyarimana, the Akazu, served as the backbone for planning the massacres. The leaders of this group consisted of the President's wife and extremist military officials, including Habyarimana's brother-in-law, Col. Eli Sagatwa, and Col. Léon Mugesera. This clique opposed any compromise with the RPF and the opposition parties, both of which were to be included in the envisioned broad-based transitional government under the Arusha Accords. The Akazu also served as a propaganda engine for extremist elements of the MRND and the CDR, a radical party seeking a "final solution" to the ethnic conflict between Tutsis and Hutus, and later one of the main organizers of the genocide.

Force Commander Romeo Dallaire later called Col. Théoneste Bagosora the "king-pin" in the genocide plot. But Dallaire did not know this when the crisis erupted, to great detriment. Within hours after the plane crash and the death of the President, he sought and received Bagosora's assurance that the Rwandan army troops would stay calm. Little did Dallaire know that Bagosora's troops had been sent to assassinate the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, kill the Belgian troops protecting her, and murder the leaders of opposition parties, the President of the Supreme Court, and many human rights activists.

Vile Propaganda

The only remedy is total extermination, to kill them all, totally wipe them out.
— Hutu extremist radio (RTLM) broadcast before the genocide40

Throughout the Arusha period, extremist elements within the Rwandan government, including the plotters of the genocide, attempted to whip up public anger, hate, and vengeance against the Tutsis. Inflammatory speeches and chants were broadcast throughout the country by Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) created precisely for that purpose. The peacekeeping force monitored several of these radio broadcasts.41 But it was hard to take them as serious, authoritative, or credible, because they were so extreme. They fully demonized the Tutsis in an incredible and unrealistic fashion, for instance by likening them to cockroaches (inyenzi) that needed to be exterminated.42 Belgians were also targets of propaganda. Unfortunately, UNAMIR and the UN did not analyze these broadcasts to determine what the specific threats and consequences could be, e.g., who might be the next targets for assassination or massacre.

The seriousness of this hate propaganda became all too evident to UNAMIR in the early stages of the genocide, when the radio station advocated the death of Belgian peacekeepers, who were accused as perpetrators of the assassination of the President:

These Belgian bandits have committed many atrocities that merit punishment. We Rwandans will never forget that these bandits killed the President we loved. The red-skinned Belgians have behaved like beasts. They should pay for their acts.43

It is relevant to recall that these allegations were consistent with the sinister plan revealed some three months earlier by the informer Jean-Pierre. He had accurately foretold that Belgian paratroops would be targeted and killed to "ensure their withdrawal." The Belgian government unilaterally withdrew its contingent from UNAMIR within ten days of the start of the genocide.

As the genocide developed, the extremists used the airwaves to justify their actions and to assign blame on the Tutsis for the nation's shortcomings. Outrageously cruel and inhuman broadcasts filled the airwaves. Macabre lines were set to popular tunes. These chilling words, set to a charming melody, were sung on the air:

Where are those Tutsi who used to phone me? Ah, they must have all been exterminated. Let us sing: The Tutsi have been killed. God is always just! The criminals will be exterminated!44

Public rallies were another means of spreading propaganda, inciting violence, and preparing the Hutu majority to condone, if not commit, the atrocities that were to occur. Venomous speeches by members of Network Zero immediately preceded several massacres of Tutsi civilians. For example, in November of 1992, the MRND-leader Dr. Léon Mugesera viciously urged a crowd to take up arms against their Tutsi neighbors. "Their home is Ethiopia," Mugesera declared. "Let's find them a shortcut to get back there. That's the Nyabarongo River." The very next day, small-scale massacres of Tutsis were reported in the Kibya region of Rwanda, and bodies were dumped in the river.45

On 7 April 1994, the Prime Minister of the Interim Government, Jean Kambanda, rallied Hutus while holding a gun aloft: "The enemy uses his gun, you must fire back! Go behind the front line, find their accomplices. Shoot to kill! Everyone must have his own gun, don't be afraid to use it." Fortunately, this speech was videotaped and later used against Mr. Kambanda in his trial before the International Tribunal. (He was sentenced to life in prison on 4 September 1998 after having pleaded guilty to genocide charges.46)

Macabre Militia

All parties in Rwanda and all over the world have young people as members. That is what we have. But we do not have militias.
— Matthieu Ngirumpatse, chairman of the MRND, 27 April 199447

We know that they [MRND] gave them weapons and trained them militarily up to one thousand and seven hundred . . . We have the army, we have the police force to protect the country, what are the others for?
— Parti Social Démocrate (PSD) spokesman Felicien Gatabazi48

The Interahamwe are well trained military killers.
— article in the Rwandan press, 17 March 199249

The origins of the militia in Rwanda date back to the period following the signing of the initial Ceasefire Agreement between the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces Armées Rwandaises or FAR) and the RPF at N'Sele on 29 March 1991. Given the invasions by RPF forces, the Habyarimana regime wanted to use civilians to boost the defense of Rwanda.50 It sought to strengthen defense forces without violating the spirit of demobilisation and disarmament embodied in the Ceasefire Agreement. By arming civilians, the regime believed it could accomplish these goals. This defensive concept of the militia in Rwanda is confirmed by the informant, Jean-Pierre, who tells Dallaire in the fax of 11 January 1994 that the main objective of the militia "in the past was to protect Kigali from the RPF" [emphasis added]. One meaning of the word Interahamwe is "those who have the same goal" (or "those who fight together"), and the Interahamwe, on the surface, appeared to be a patriotic organization dedicated to helping repel RPF advances. Yet the motives of its suppliers and its leaders, and the way in which the Interahamwe was trained, demonstrate that, at its roots, the organization was more of an engine for killing civilians that would eventually carry out most of the genocide.

Several frightening characteristics of the Interahamwe should have sounded alarm bells in the minds of UNAMIR officials in Kigali and New York. For example, extremist individuals played a role not only in supplying the Interahamwe with arms, but also training its members in combat tactics. Extremist government officials within the CDR and the ruling party, the MRND, were also instrumental in providing support to the Interahamwe. During the Arusha period, these groups exploited foreign resources to indoctrinate militia members. For example, the Rwandan College was a sectarian institution for Rwandan youths established and assisted by the government of Canada since the 1960s. Soon after the emergence of the Interahamwe the head of the college, Father François Cardinal, complained that Canadian funds were being diverted from the school and used by high-ranking government officials, probably to equip the militia. Cardinal accused Colonel Léon Mugesera, a member of the Akazu, of being responsible for this act of corruption. Henceforth Canada withdrew aid for the College.51 It became increasingly apparent that Habyarimana's public explanation for the foundation of the militia was not accurate; the Interahamwe acted less like a national security force and more like an instrument of the ruling party.

As arms poured into Rwanda and tensions escalated during the post civil-war period, it became clear to members of the local media that the Interahamwe was not merely a "youth movement," as Habyarimana had once labeled it. In March of 1992 an article in the Rwanda press portrayed the Interahamwe as "military killers." Leaders of the Interahamwe trained their subordinates not to defend territory, but rather "in commando tactics such as the use of knives, machetes, rope trapping and binding of victims and silent guns so as to kill people." The article pointed out that the militia had become more ideological and apocalyptic in its doctrine. Members were trained to believe not only that the RPF was the enemy, but that rival political parties "will jointly kill members of the MRND."52 Moderate government officials were aware that the training of the Interahamwe could lead to more killing. The Minister of Finance at the time, Marc Rugenera, stated after the genocide that "the military training given to the militias of MRND and CDR is part of the evidence that the killings were planned and prepared long in advance."53

Some elements of the Rwandan media held that the newly trained and equipped militia were responsible for civilian massacres, and even predicted, months before the commencement of the genocide, that massive killings would take place. On 17 December 1993 the journal Le Flambeau mentioned that plotters within the MRND and CDR were seeking a "final solution" comparable to that of Hitler. It stated that "political adversaries and defenseless populations" would be targeted and slaughtered. The journal also announced that "about 8,000 Interahamwe sufficiently trained and equipped by the French army await the signal to begin the assassinations among the residents of the city of Kigali and its surroundings."54 Such an ominous prediction, however, passed without a response from UNAMIR.

UNAMIR possessed neither sufficient mandate nor personnel to monitor the training of the Rwandan militia. UNAMIR officials came to understand from informants and arms monitoring—not through direct observation or oversight of the training of its members—that the militia posed a danger to the peace process. For example, Dallaire's fax of 11 January 1994 states that the informant did mention the existence of 1,700 Interahamwe members trained in "discipline, weapons, explosives, close combat and tactics." Yet even the fax failed to take into account the extremist, apocalyptic rhetoric and tactics of slaughter included in their training program. Similarly, while patrolling UNAMIR units did observe movements of arms in the country by the Interahamwe, they did not directly observe the training or uncover the doctrine at the militia camps.

UNAMIR did possess a mandate to "investigate and report on incidents regarding the activities of the gendarmerie and police."55 The gendarmerie included "communal policemen" of the countryside who, according to African Rights, "were among the very worst killers." While the gendarmerie is a separate organization from the Interahamwe, African Rights reported that "the Interahamwe would not have had the force they did if it were not for the weapons and physical support they obtained from the communal policemen."56 To carry out its mandate to monitor the gendarmerie and police, UNAMIR established a civilian police contingent (CIVPOL) of sixty personnel in December of 1993. This unit sought to monitor, among other areas, the training school for the gendarmerie. While CIVPOL reported 54 instances of "serious crimes, complaints and allegations of human rights violations" as of the end of March 1994, it made no claim that the gendarmerie and police were in any way complicit in planning the massacres of Tutsis or moderate Hutus. Later, the two organizations were to become an integral part of the killing machine. Nevertheless, the progress report of CIVPOL of 30 March 1994, did determine that the "security situation in Rwanda and, especially in Kigali, has seriously deteriorated" and pointed to "the availability of weapons" and "ethnic and politically motivated crimes" as principal causes.57

While the training methods of the Interahamwe alone could have served as a warning signal to peacekeepers, the history of atrocities committed by the militant organization provided even more concrete evidence of wrong-doing and a portent of things to come. Parts of this militia collaborated with extremist elements of the Presidential Guard in "Network Zero," which sponsored death squads and compiled lists of Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be killed. In mid-March of 1992, between 60 and 300 Tutsis were killed and over 10,000 were displaced in Bugesera. Similarly, 300 Tutsis were butchered in Gisenyi during one week in January of 1993, almost immediately after the early agreement on power-sharing had been announced.58

Immediately prior to and during the Arusha period, the number of massacres appears to have decreased, perhaps due to international pressure and the UN presence. The killings became more selective. The targets for assassination were mostly moderate government officials and human rights leaders, many of whom were Hutu. The Network Zero, using Interahamwe forces, orchestrated grenade attacks against leaders of parties in opposition to the MRND, parties who would have obtained greater power under the envisioned BBTG.59 Network Zero was responsible for the killing of Samuel Gapyisi, leader of the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR), the most prominent rival of the MRND, in May 1993. Felicien Gatabazi, head of the Parti Social Démocrate, the second-largest opposition party, was murdered in February 1994, apparently because he was a moderate who appealed to Hutus.

Horrendous Human Rights Violations

History paints a long-standing dark backdrop to the sinister genocide. Rwanda had suffered widespread killings and long-standing human rights abuses for several years. It was not, however, always easy to tell who did the killings, whether the government's army (FAR), the RPF, the Interahamwe, local gangs or even individuals. What was needed was an analysis of the killings to reveal patterns and causal links. The UN force did not do this kind of analysis, nor did UN headquarters. Most of our information on human rights violations, both then and now, comes from human rights organizations.

NGOs in Rwanda had documented a history of human rights abuses that indicated clearly the propensity for violence, if not genocide. These violations, which are summarized in Table 3, had been occurring since independence, but escalated immediately after the RFP attack on Rwanda in 1990. From October 1990 to April 1991 the Government arrested over 10,000 people, of whom three-quarters were Tutsi. Most were released without charge by April 1991. In the Northwest prefecture of Gisenyi local officials incited Hutu attacks on Tutsi civilians. The mobs killed over 300 Tutsis, burned over 500 houses, and caused thousands to flee their homes. This pattern of sporadic massacres of the Tutsi population, seemingly in response to both RPF attacks, cease-fire agreements, and international interference, included the massacre of the Babogwe people in January and February 1991, Tutsi massacres in the Kibuye area in August 1992, and the Bugesera massacres of Tutsi in March 1992. During the visit of the International Commission of Inquiry in January 1993, burgomasters (mayors) in the Northwest warned that violence would flare up when the commission left. RGF Captain Pascal Simbikangwa, in full view of the Commission, threatened the executive director of the Rwandan Association for the Defence of Human Rights and Public Liberties with death. After the Commission's departure MRND and CDR militias led attacks on Tutsi across the country, leading to the death of over 300 civilians. International human rights reports continuously stressed the involvement of government officials and, by 1992, the role taken by the MRND and CDR militias in leading the attacks. Following the massacres, road blocks were put in place to prevent victims from fleeing the area, and the UN Special Rapporteur noted during the 1993 massacres the "phone system had suddenly 'broken down' (in the areas involved) . . . and had curiously become operational again without any needs for repairs."

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i liked American foreign policy before Obama. Someone like Bush would have gave the Chinese something to think about. But when Obama first came into power he extended an "arm of friendship" to Iran. Iran quickly threw it back in his face and Russia and China and the whole World laughed at how weak the USA appeared. I hope to God they get a strong leader soon because if they go the UK will be brought down with it and Asia will rule the World again..

"Is rio orange war always forfait b and you inevitable ?"
MaximB

We don't know what was said in the discussions that took place between various parties while several thousand men were still alive and being held prisoner in Bratunac prior to their being conveyed to their execution sites.

Until Carl Bildt, Rupert Smith and Yakushi Akashi answer the questions posed by Hasan Nuhanovic in his book "Under The UN Flag" about the substance of their conversations with Mladic and Milosevic when it was already known to them that large numbers of prisoners were being held ready for execution, we are left to guess at why nothing was done to intervene even with the knowledge available at that late stage in the progression.

Kofi Annan knows but the remorse he expresses for what was allowed to happen to the prisoners who were left to be slaughtered does not extend so far as informing the survivors and relatives why the more organised stage of the genocide was allowed to proceed unhindered.

The U.N. Security Council and key governments need strong, independent Early Warning systems to predict where and when ethnic conflict and genocide are going to occur, and to present policy options on prevention and intervention. The Brahimi report made by the special commission on U.N. Peace-keeping makes just such a recommendation, and it should be implemented. Selected country desk officers and top officials of the U.N. system now hold monthly "Framework for Coordination" to discuss current crises, but inadequate staffing prevents long-range strategic planning. There is not a single person at the United Nations whose responsible for genocide early warning and prevention. Who do you call? Ghostbusters.

The International Campaign to End Genocide advocates creation of a Genocide Prevention Focal Point at the United Nations.

It would be most effective in New York in the Secretary General's Office of Policy Planning. The important thing is that it be adequately staffed with full-time genocide early warning specialists with direct access to top U.N. officials. addiction treatment center

Meanwhile, NGO's and Genocide Studies Centers should establish our own independent Early Warning networks that can provide daily reports and regular policy options papers. The open secret of the new information age is that policy-makers would get better intelligence if they read the New York Times or London Times daily, the Economist weekly, and used the Internet, than if they counted on their embassies' classified cables. In fact, there are plenty of open source reporting services, including the U.N.'s. But none of them focus on the early warning signs of genocide. Too much information results in confusion and inaction.

I have worked on an open source, unclassified daily reporting service on atrocities and pre-genocidal warning signs for the State Department Office of War Crimes, the U.N., and a few other interested governments. We limited our summaries to twenty five stories per day. But even that was too many and access was only for its subscribers. Genocide Watch hopes to raise the money to create a similar service open to everyone, highly selective in content, disseminated through the list-serve that currently goes to policy makers through The Humanitarian Times. It will become a clearing house for reports from many human rights groups as well as open sources from around the world.

Early Warning models matter. They must be comprehensible to policy makers, and provide specific guidance. The U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs currently has a small contract with a London-based coalition to provide early warning services. The model used is multi-variate and statistical, rather than processual. It gives country scores to a large number of abstract factors ("level of democracy, trade openness, history of armed conflict, ethnic diversity") and then assesses the risk of genocide from their sum. The model is useful to the extent that it demonstrates the benefit of promotion of democracy and other general policies. But statistical models do not describe the intentional process by which political leaders push a society toward genocide. They therefore cannot be used to formulate specific counter-measures at each stage of the genocidal process. What can a policy maker at the U.N. or the State Department do about a history of armed conflict or ethnic diversity? addiction treatment center