Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
been institutionalized under German colonization, it became even more rigid after Belgium took
over Rwanda in 1916. The discourse around eugenics was at its height in the West, and the colonial
occupants saw a superior race in the Tutsis, who were taller, with larger skulls and paler skin. The
Belgians issued racial identification cards, effectively ending all social movement between groups.
Though Germany and Belgium had supported the Tutsi monarchy, in 1959 the Hutus took over,
killing between 20,000 and 100,000 Tutsis and exiling 150,000 more into neighboring countries,
among them the Congo. But the core group of Tutsis who in 1994 would conquer Rwanda fled,
after the 1959 Hutu takeover, to Uganda. Unable to attain full rights as Ugandan citizens, many of
the young men entered the army as soon as they came of age. In the process of helping Tanzania
overthrow Ugandan dictator Idi Amin so that Uganda's current president, Yoweri Museveni, could
take power in 1986, the Ugandan Tutsis honed their military skills.
In late 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the military branch of the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF), invaded Rwanda, running an insurgency campaign that the Hutus resisted with the
help of Zaire and France. The struggle lasted until 1993, when a ceasefire and power-sharing gov-
ernment were put in place. But on April 6, 1994, the plane of the Rwandan president, Juvénal Hab-
yarimana, a Hutu, was shot down, killing him. Within hours, the Hutus went on a rampage, be-
ginning a genocide that claimed the lives of eight hundred thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The RPA again made an offensive, using the chaos in Rwanda to its advantage. By July 4, they
entered Kigali, Rwanda's capital, discovering a city that had been largely destroyed and that reeked
of death.
Unable to retaliate or maintain order, the Hutu government fled to Zaire, taking the nation's
wealth and military. Over two million citizens escaped across the borders of Rwanda. Between
thirty and forty thousand soldiers and 850,000 refugees arrived in North Kivu, around Goma,
650,000 in South Kivu, 270,000 in Burundi, and 570,000 in Tanzania. The Congolese in Goma later
recalled feeling that an entire country had implanted itself in their midst. North and South Kivu, the
Congolese provinces bordering Rwanda and Burundi, already suffered from ethnic divides, and the
arriving Hutus murdered local Tutsis to solidify their positions.
Since the end of the Cold War, Mobutu had become largely irrelevant to the West, but he saw
in the refugees an opportunity and supported the Hutu leaders, selling them weapons. As the Hutu
military trained and the UN struggled to feed refugee camps, the RPF repeatedly insisted that the
génocidaires
—those who had committed the genocide—be brought to justice, and that the Hutus be
disarmed. They understood well how an exiled group could develop its military prowess and spend
decades preparing for an invasion, just as they had.
If the international community failed to take clear action, it was because the United States and
France had conflicting interests. Whereas the United States finally wanted to support democracy in
Zaire and remove Mobutu, France hoped to maintain its influence in the region. At the time Zaire
was the world's largest producer of cobalt, the second or third of industrial diamonds, and the fifth
of copper.
The RPA went on the offensive by pushing into Zaire, sweeping hundreds of thousands of
refugees back into Rwanda even as others fled west into the jungles. In planning their invasion,
the RPF enlisted rebel Congolese leaders. Rising quickly to prominence among them was Laurent-
Désiré Kabila, who, during the Congo Crisis, had attempted to lead a communist revolution in the
eastern Congo. Che Guevara, who had traveled to the Congo in 1965 to assist with the revolution,
later wrote of Kabila's undisciplined ways and his lack of “revolutionary seriousness.” Kabila had
