2. U.S. and British governments on the side
of the attacking war-party.
Emergence of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the invasion of Rwanda in 1990
of the attacking war-party.
Emergence of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the invasion of Rwanda in 1990
In the course of the powerstruggle in Rwanda after 1959 tens of thousands of Tutsi fled into exile to neighbouring countries or overseas. By the middle of the 80s a Rwandan Tutsi diaspora was well established in the United States, Canada, Belgium, Uganda, Kenya, and other African countries. Many were young children when they left with their parents or had already been born in exile.[6] They only knew about Rwanda from the memories of their parents. In Uganda the Rwanda Refugees Welfare Association (RRWF) was organized. It later became the Rwandan Alliance for National Unity (RANU). Between 1981 and 1986, the year Museveni took power in Kampala, RANU operated from Nairobi, Kenya. Its seventh congress was held again in Kampala in December 1987, when the name was changed into Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). It had now become a political organisation striving to achieve the return of the refugees and their children to Rwanda.
During the Obote regime in Uganda thousands of Rwandans in exile joined Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) and fought with him until victory in 1986. The two most prominent were Fred Rwigyema, who commanded the RPF troops at the beginning of the invasion of Rwanda on Oct. 1, 1990 and Paul Kagame, who took over the military command of the RPF after Rwigyema was killed. Rwigyema knew Museveni from exile in Tanzania in the 70s. Both Rigyema and Kagame belonged to the small group of Museveni friends, who started his guerilla war in Uganda in 1981. Museveni, Rwigyema and Kagame belonged to what some have called the 'Dar Es Salaam Kindergarten' of left radical revolutionaries firmly entrenched in the ideology of Franz Fanon and his glorification of violence as a means of revolutionary change.
A further consolidation of the RPF's strategy to mobilize the exile community for a return to Rwanda took place at the world congress of Rwandese refugees held in Washington DC in August of 1988. This congress was organized by the Association of Banyarwandans in Diaspora in Washington, supported by the US Committee of Refugees, a government funded organisation, the executive director of which was Roger Winter. The Banyarwanda newsletter at the time thanked Winter for his"daily efforts and contacts on their behalf."[7] Roger Winter became a committed lobbyist for John Garang, the rebell leader and Museveni ally of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), and for the cause of the RPF in Washington. He was among the RPF troops when they made their final move towards Kigali in the summer of 1994.In November of 1996, during the attack of ADFL and Rwandan forces on the Muganga refugee camp outside of Goma in Eastern Zaire, he was with Laurent
Kabila.
Of the later he spoke during testimony to the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights on Dec. 4, 1996, in Washington.
The role of Roger Winter among the RPF raises a critical question. How much was he as a US official involved in influencing the decision of the RPF to adopt a policy of the right of refugees to return by force to Rwanda? It is not known that he ever discouraged the RPF leadership from their strategy of violent return. On the contrary, from his praise for the RPF's military victory in Rwanda in 1994 one can only conclude that he was supporting it. Possibly he encouraged the RPF leadership in this strategy. This constitutes a serious problem for the US government at the time and it should be further investigated. Rwanda had an internationally recognized government, which enjoyed normal diplomatic relations to Washington, other states, and the United Nations. How then could the US government directly or indirectly support the RPF, which was committed to fighting their way back into Rwanda by violent means? It fits into the strategy to use rebe
l
warfare as a means of changing power in Africa, which later became so obvious in Washington.
The declared RPF intention to return to Rwanda by force should have prompted a strong counterreaction from the US government, because it clearly is a violation of international conventions.
One should just imagine if East German refugees, of which there were tens of thousands in West Germany during the 60s, had organized themselves into an organisation which would have attempted to invade the GDR in 1980. This would probably have caused WW III. But more likely, it would have been stopped early by the US, British and French military forces in Germany.
The RPF leadership drove its committment to return to Rwanda, if need be by force, to its conclusion and invaded Rwanda from Uganda on Oct. 1, 1990. The overwhelming majority of these well armed fighters were active members of the Uganda National Resistance Army (NRA). The military leaders of the RPF were all high ranking officers in Museveni's army. So it would be fair to say, that on Oct. 1, 1990 the Ugandan Army invaded Rwanda, even if they called themselves "rebells". Fred Rigyema, the commander of the RPF forces, was a major general of the NRA and its Deputy Commander. Paul Kagame was a major in the NRA and Head of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Dr. Peter Baingaina was also a major and head of the NRA Medical Services. Chris Bunyenzi was a major and commanding officer of the NRA's 306 Brigade. Major Sam Kaka was commanding officer of the military police.[8]
Even though President Museveni of Uganda has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the invasion beforehand, this is not credible. Especially because his assurances to Rwandan President Habyarimana that he would stopp the "Rwandan boys" were never fullfilled. Preliminarily, the RPF invasion suffered a serious defeat from the Rwandan army, which received military support from France, Belgium and Zaire. Of the 4,000 men invasion force, approximately 1,800 were killed and the remaining were driven back over the boarder to Uganda. If President Museveni had seriously wanted to end the invasion, he could have done it then. But, instead, the RPF under the new leadership of Major Paul Kagame, who had for this purpose come back from his training course at the United States Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, was able to regroup and prepare for the next attack. This was only possible with massive logistical support from the Ugandan arm
y. This
alone proves that the Ugandan President was committed to this war.
The invasion of Rwanda in October of 1990 took place while world attention was already focussed on the United States build up for the war against Iraq, which began in January of 1991. Iraq was punished because of its invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990. But, for the Ugandan invasion of Rwanda, a different logic applied. That invasion was not only not critizised, but fully supported by the US and British governments.
The US Pentagon had a military training program for Ugandan officers. Major Kagame was part of this. When he left Fort Leavenworth in the middle of an unfinished course to go back to Uganda, the US military and intelligence services knew for what purpose, to lead troops in a war in Rwanda. Only four month after the RPF invading force was crushed in Rwanda and driven back into Uganda, Kagame had managed to assemble a new force of 5,000 well equipped men to strike against Ruhengeri on January 23, 1991. By the end of 1992 the RPF force in Rwanda numbered about 12,000 men. To keep such an army supplied with food, uniforms, weapons, transportation, and communication, means the deployment of a significant logistical apparatus and financial resources. While some of the money may have been contributed by the Tutsi diaspora worldwide, the core of the support could only have been state sponsored. The Ugandan military and thereby the Ugandan governmen
t was
supplying the RPF.
It was, ironically, the Ugandan President himself, who admitted to this support for the RPF. In an article for the Ugandan newspaper The Monitor, he wrote on May 30, 1999 that "Uganda decided on a two-course action: 1) to help the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) materially so that they are not defeated; 2) to encourage the dialogue between President Habyarimana and the Rwandese in the diaspora." In the same article, Museveni recalls, how he had trained the RPF leader Fred Rwigyema as young boy in Mozambique for guerrilla warfare and how Rwigyema, than a mayor general, was among 4,000 men of Rwandan origin, who were part of Uganda's new army.[9] Museveni than explaines that in 1996 he gave Maj. Gen. Kagame, by than in power as Minister of Defense in Kigali, the idea to "recruit a force of about 1,200 soldiers from among the Masisi Tutsi, train them and make them part of the Rwanda Patriotic Army, in order to keep them as a stand-by force." Ka
game
actually implemented the idea and by August of 1996 had 2,000 of them ready for the invasion of Congo/Zaire which was the beginning of L. Kabila's march to power.[10] The Uganda President describes in these articles exactly the same modus operandi that he followed in preparing the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. Museveni had these several thousand men and high ranking officers of Rwandese origin as a stand-by force for an attack on Rwanda in his army, the Uganda National Resistance Army (NRA). When they attacked, they were called "Tutsi-rebels" even though they were the Ugandan army.
As reflected in press coverage of the time, Western governments and secret services were fully aware of these methods of special warfare, Uganda used against its neighbours. For example, Germany's senior Africa correspondent Gunther Krabbe published an analysis in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with the title "Africa's Specialist for Guerrillas: where the Ugandan Head of State Museveni interferes."[11]
Nevertheless, the Uganda government was not only politically supported by the West but economically, it was and still is fully dependent on the US and British governments. To this day, half of the Ugandan budget is financed by donors. In 1987 Lynda Chalker, Britain's Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, worked for an agreement between the government of Uganda and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was reached in June.[12] Since that time the Ugandan government implemented the IMF's policy of structural adjustment. Currency devaluation, budget austerity, privatisation, market deregulations, and tarif liberalisation made the Uganda of President Museveni the IMF's show case for Africa. And the praise for him was unanimous among Western governments, finance officials, and bankers, especially from Uganda's former colonial power, Britain. The praise for Yoweri Museveni, the former radical Maoist and admirer of Franz F
anon's
theory of revolutionary violence,[13] was so much, that he was invited to give a speech to the 1995 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos.[14]
Lynda Chalker, who was not just a member of the cabinet of John Mayor, but also of the Queens Privy Council, was enjoying among the closest relations to the Ugandan President. Richard Dowden, one of Britain's most senior Africa editors correctly spoke of the "strong personal chemistry between Baroness Chalker, the Minister for Oversees Development, and President Museveni. One of her first trips to Africa was to Uganda in 1986, days after Museveni took power, and the relationship between the baroness and the philosopher-fighter has blossomed."[15]
Sources report, that he introduced the RPF leader, Paul Kagame to her. After the RPF took power in Kigali in July of 1994, Lynda Chalker was the first high ranking western official to visit Kigali. She immediately set up an embassy in Kigali, which Britain did not have before. During her visits to the region, besides seeing Museveni in Kampala, she would always stopp over in Kigali, where Paul Kagame would rearrange his schedule to meet with her. After she left her government position, Chalker became an advisor to the World Bank and to the Davos World Economic Forum. She also entered into a business relationsship with the Dutch multinational Unilever. And her relationship to the RPF leader, now President of Rwanda, is still close. In the US President Museveni and Vice President Kagame were well connected to the government, including to such semiofficial groups as the Prayer Breakfeast.
For Western, in particular Anglo-American strategists Yoweri Museveni epitomized the new generation of African leaders, who ironically changed from radical Marxists in the 1970s Dar Es Salaam University, to liberal market reformists during the 1980s and 90s and who would be used by the US and British governments for their geopolitical interests in Africa. Besides implementing the IMF's policies, Washington and London at the beginning of the 1990s built up an alliance around the Ugandan government against the so called fundamentalist threat from Sudan in the North. Secondly, they started a joint operation between Uganda and the RPF of Rwanda to rearrange the entire powerstructure of Central and Southern Africa. The war in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 was the beginning of this process. This Anglo-American design became more obvious during the following events in Congo. That is why President Nujoma of Namibia in 1998 called the march of Rwanda
n and
Ugandan troops into Congo a security threat to Namibia, and together with Zimbabwe, deployed troops to stop it.
After Laurent Kabila took power in Kinshasa, the London Times of May 20, 1997 describes the Anglo-American geopolitics behind Kabila's success. "In November last year Washington gave diplomatic support to the mainly Tutsi rebellion in eastern Zaire which grew into a revolution and toppled Mr. Mobutu last weekend. As a result French officials saw an 'Anglophone conspiracy' behind Mr. Kabila's movement in which Britain supplied the know-how of the imperial era, and Americans the money and military training necessary for the Tutsis to storm across Zaire in only seven month. There may be some truth in the conspiracy theory. Among the beneficiaries of Zaire's change of regime have been George Bush, who along with former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, is a member of the advisory board of Toronto-based Barrick Gold, which bought a gold concession for 80,000 sqare kilometres in northeast Zaire from the then rebels. But the conspiracy is de
eper and
more subtle." The article than describes the alliance of the new African leaders, Anglo-American strategy would count on: Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, John Garang of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), Issias Afewerki of Eritrea and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.[16]
While the local population keeps starving and dying, the Rwandan and Ugandan controlled rebel movements in Eastern Congo today deliver precious raw materials to Europe and North America. The senior German journalist with 40 years of experience in Central Africa, Peter Scholl-Latour, recently reported about a revealing incident in the summer of 2000 which he was told about by reliable sources in Kigali. When tensions grew between the former allies Rwanda and Uganda and fighting erupted among their troops in the Congo, the US Undersecretary of State for Africa, Susan Rice, personally threatened both governments with consequences if the supply of the strategic mineral Coltan to the US would not immediately resume.[17]
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