According to a recent news report, "The UN court trying suspects of the 1994 Rwanda genocide found a female former government minister and her son guilty of war crimes and gave both life sentences, marking the first time a woman has been convicted of genocide." Incidentally, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was a former minister for family and women affairs and her son, Arsene Ntahobali, was a former militia leader. Together with the Interahamwe (the extremist Hutu militia) they abducted hundreds of ethnic Tutsis and ordered their killings.
In the aftermath of such horrendous atrocities, one can't help wondering how difficult it must be to even think about "binding the nation's wounds" and how challenging it is for Rwandans to move beyond anger and ineffable agony to mutual trust and understanding. Like the little boy who ran away to Scotland and found "...that the ground was as hard, that a cherry was as red," that... well, maybe the place wasn't a human abattoir or a national graveyard, the world's response to Rwanda's slippery slide to self-annihilation had been simply to stand in its shoes and wonder.
Even from the direction of the more vociferous elements of the African diaspora, the silence was deafening. Perhaps, a small glimmer of hope-dubious as the motive might have been-was the belated military intervention of French troops under the faint-hearted auspices of the United Nations. I hasten to add this French initiative, code-named "Operation Turquoise," was fraught with difficulties, unknown dangers and incalculable risks. To begin with, the French authorities had been at pains to persuade others that their action was determined purely on humanitarian grounds and derived exclusively from altruistic motives.
Among the sceptics was the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the rebel movement) which was locked in deadly combat with the government in Rwanda, and was convinced that only a victory for them could stop the killings and allow a retreat from the brink of total anarchy and insanity. As far as the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) were concerned, France's unctuous claims and pious platitudes seemed very much like "the devil quoting scripture to suit his purpose." The rebels were adamantly opposed to France's intervention and questioned French bona fides (good faith) neutrality. After all, the French did help stop the rebel advance four years before under the pretext of protecting French expatriates.
In a statement broadcast on its radio, the RPF said that France cannot stop the genocide and massacre that it helped put into action. More specifically, the RPF contended that "France intended to fight for the murderous extremist clique." The rebels recalled that France sent troops to Rwanda when they invaded from neighbouring Uganda in 1990 when they had advanced close to the capital Kigali. The French Foreign Minister had insisted that French intervention would only take place under UN auspices and the French initiative was intended to stop "systematic mass killing" and give the UN a two-month breathing space in order to get its act together and establish a UN peace-keeping force that would be adequate to the task of bringing the carnage to an end and keeping the country pacified.
The RPF's hostility to the French could be judged by their public assertion that the French would be treated as "a hostile force" even if they were acting under UN auspices. The RPF's attitude softened somewhat as, subsequently, they were agreeable to French troops withdrawing as soon as the UN peace-keeping force was in place. One recalls that as soon as the killing started in earnest the UN presence was actually reduced. The perception created was that the signal being sent by the international community was "just go ahead and do what you wish and try sorting out your problem as best you can." In any case, the so-called peace-keepers could be more appropriately referred to as "peace-observers" as they are given neither the mandate, the men nor the equipment requisite to keeping the peace under exacting circumstances.
The commander of the French force in and near Rwanda had made it clear that his mandate was to ensure the safety of all Rwanda in the areas where they were assembled in large numbers and that included disarming the Hutu militias, or more precisely the goon or assassination squads that go by the name of Interahamwe. Ironically, it must have been something of an embarrassment to the French, as French troops were given a rapturous reception as they crossed into Rwanda. The local officials and people who were welcoming the French troops ecstatically and garlanding their vehicles may well have been under the mistaken impression that the French had come to prop up their genocidal government, help repel the rebels and accommodate their genocidal agenda vis-a-vis the Tutsi population.
However, Paris emphatically denied any such intention and categorically maintained that "Operation Turquoise" was a humanitarian mission to protect both Hutu and Tutsi and save Tutsis from possible extinction. Why so little, and so late?