Shame: Rationalizing Western Apathy on Rwanda

ALAS, WE KNEW

Alan J. Kuperman plays word games when he asserts that President Clinton could not have known of the "attempted genocide" of Tutsi in Rwanda until April 20, 1994 -- two weeks into the slaughter -- because the press, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the U.N. did not call it a genocide ("Rwanda in Retrospect," January/February 2000).

Two days, not two weeks, after the slaughter began on April 6, U.S. officials knew that extremists with an avowedly genocidal agenda had murdered legitimate Rwandan authorities and were claiming control of the government. U.S. officials knew that these extremists had used the radio to spew anti-Tutsi propaganda for months and that they had recruited, trained, and armed militias. U.S. officials knew that Rwandans had previously used the highly centralized administrative system to organize massacres of Tutsi. And at least some of these officials knew that an eerily prescient CIA study three months before had foreseen a death toll of half a million if violence began again.

As an April 8 State Department briefing made clear, U.S. officials also knew that Hutu soldiers had been killing Tutsi for two days and that the violence was not limited to the capital. They learned this from U.S. embassy personnel and from the French and the Belgians, who had extensive contacts in Rwanda and with whom Washington was planning a joint evacuation of their citizens. U.S. officials had similar reports from the commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, as well as from Human Rights Watch and other NGOs, which had been calling the State Department since the preceding day.

During the crucial first weeks, the U.N., at the behest of the United States, ordered the more than 2,000 peacekeepers in Rwanda to do nothing to halt the killing and then withdrew all but a rump force of 400 soldiers. Some 1,000 elite French and Belgian troops (backed by 250 U.S. Marines just across the border) swooped in to rescue foreign nationals (most of them not at risk) and then left, ignoring the slaughter of Rwandan civilians. Clinton and other international leaders said nothing of substance. Seeing the international indifference, Rwandans became convinced that the genocidal government would succeed. Those who hesitated at first now yielded to fear or opportunism and carried the slaughter throughout Rwanda.

U.N. peacekeepers and the evacuation force could have deterred the killings had they acted promptly. Belgian military records show cases in which they did just that when permitted to use their weapons. Firm and coherent international censure could have influenced the organizers of the genocide. On the two occasions when they received outraged telephone calls from foreign governments, the organizers halted attacks on hundreds of Tutsi at the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali. Jamming the genocidal radio broadcasts would have kept the organizers from passing orders directly to the population. The military radio, the only other channel accessible to the genocide's organizers, did not broadcast to civilians.

Kuperman scoffs at such measures. He takes seriously only the possibility of dispatching U.S. troops, who, he states, could easily have ended the genocide. Yet he goes on to argue that even a major American force could have saved no more than a quarter of the intended victims. He presents figures, computations, a chart, and a graph that lend apparent solidity to this conclusion.

But this solidity vanishes when his underlying premises are examined. Kuperman's assertion that troops could not have been deployed until several days after April 20 rests on the incorrect assumption that Clinton learned of the genocide only on that date. Kuperman also assumes that the genocide swept through "most" of Rwanda "immediately" after its start and killed half the victims by April 21. This assumption exaggerates the early extent and the speed of the slaughter.

In 1994, the Clinton administration confounded genocide and internal war, and now Kuperman does it again. He slides without explanation from discussing the genocide to speculating about intervention in an "internal war," arguing that helping the "weaker" side may spur it to reject compromise and escalate fighting.

Let us be clear: There was a war in Rwanda, but the weaker party was the genocidal government fighting the militarily stronger Rwandan Patriotic Front. Tutsi civilians were not a party to the conflict. They were a people targeted for extermination. Helping them would not have escalated fighting but would have saved their lives.

Americans must face the truth, as all the other major international actors in Rwanda -- the Belgians, the French, the U.N., and the Organization of African Unity -- have already done by investigating their roles in the genocide. Congress should have the courage to follow this lead and investigate what the U.S. government did do and, even more important, what it could have done during a genocide that slaughtered half a million people.

Alison l. Des Forges is a consultant at Human Rights Watch and author of Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.

KUPERMAN REPLIES

Alison L. Des Forges' response and William F. Schulz's letter to the editor (March/April 2000) call into question my recent article on Rwandan genocide.