Considerations from the 1994 Rwanda Genocide: An Opinion

THE FOLLOWING IS PURELY FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES AND NOT TO PLACE SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON ANY SIDE IN THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE OF 1994 AND THE RWANDAN WAR FROM 1990 TO 1994. 

The purpose of this write up is to compare the differences in the approach of the Hutus and Tutsis during the genocide and after the genocide and to see if that may have had any impact on the outcome of the genocide and the Rwandan War from 1990 to 1994. This is purely for educational studies purposes.

Hutus
1. The Hutus are the significant majority of the Rwandan population. Therefore the Hutu have the democratic advantage in any election even if it is free, fair and credible. Therefore opting for violence when a people have the larger numbers significantly really doesn't make sense. All that is needed is the conduct of a free and fair election that meets international standards. Any other ethnic group that wants to win election would have to convince the Hutu for support because they have the numbers. This way the Hutu would have sustained influence over the politics of Rwanda peacefully and legitimately. Throwing this advantage away and opting for violence is the single most strategic mistake of the Hutus as relates to the politics of The Republic of Rwanda.
2. As relates to the actual genocide the Hutus made a terrible mistake by equipping youth militias called Interhamwe. This was a major mistake. This is because the Interhamwe had no uniform and no way of knowing who is an Interhamwe or not therefore those who were part of the militia and committed war crimes would be seen as ordinary Hutu people with a cutlass or wooden baton. This generally tried to implicate the Hutu people because there was no way to tell who is an Interhamwe and who is an ordinary innocent Hutu since they are just young people like the innocent Hutus. Therefore after the defeat of the Hutus it was difficult for the Hutus to say that war crimes were committed against their young people because many of the same young people acted as Interhamwe. So how could the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) know which Hutu youths were innocent when an Interhamwe could just throw away his or her machete and claim to be innocent. Therefore even if the RPF committed crimes against the Hutus how could the Hutus prove this when they used their general population to effect the genocide. This was a terrible blunder on the part of the Hutu people.
3. Similar to the previous point using the general population to effect the genocide brought some blood guilt on the general population both innocent and guilty. This because the general population was seen to be involved in genocide which is not true entirely. The only thing that mitigated this is the genuine risk taken by moderate Hutus to save the lives of Tutsis even at the risk of their own lives. This was the major strategic intervention that helped to show that not all Hutus were genocidaires and not all Hutus have blood guilt. Therefore the strategy of using a general population to fight a war achieved the purpose of implicating the general population irrespective of whether that general population wins or loses the war. Luckily the Hutu moderates saved the Hutus form this horrible predicament which was why a moderate Hutu president was able to rule Rwanda from 1994 to 2000 even after the genocide.
4. The Hutus had a relatively unachievable objective. The Hutus wanted to wipe out all Tutsis forgetting that Tutsis were not only found in Rwanda in Africa. This means that even if the Hutu extremists achieved their goal of wiping out the Tutsis in 1994 in Rwanda what of the Tutsis outside Rwanda? This means that the Hutus would have needed a larger conflict which is more likely to have challenges than a smaller single conflict in Rwanda. Therefore the goal of wiping out all Tutsis was unrealistic and set the Hutus on the wrong path. As said earlier the Hutus being such a large portion of the population had no need whatsoever for such an objective.
5. The Hutus did not resolve the post colonial challeneges wisely. What the Hutus should have done in 1962 was to form Tribunals which would have addressed all atrocities committed by the Tutsis against the Hutu during the colonial administration and era. This way the erring Tutsis could have been legally punished while the innocent Tutsis could have been allowed to freely live peacefully. However since the Hutu population decided to punish Tutsis as a people innocent or guilty especially through massacres and killings the Hutu unknowingly were giving an advantage to the Tutsis because the Hutu action was not just and would always allow the Tutsis to get sympathy from both within and outside Rwanda because of their cruel action taken against the Tutsis in general. Therefore the Hutus erred by not fairly ajudicating crimes committed against the Hutus by the Tutsis during the colonial administration and era. This actually made the Hutus look oppressive and arbitrary even though they had been the subject of cruelty by the Tutsis during the colonial administration. So it is so sad that because the Hutus mishandled the Tutsis crimes during colonial era they now started looking like the violent and cruel people. This is one of the saddest aspects of the whole crisis.
6. During the Rwandnan Genocide The Hutus killed even moderate Hutus who did not agree with the extremists. This divided the Hutus while the Tutsis remained United. By killing moderate Hutus the Hutu extremists acted in an unconcsionable manner which made the Hutus look very cruel as even killing their own people just because they were humane. In this way the Hutu extrememists showed that they did not have high standards of humanity and morality which did incalculable damage to the Hutu population as a whole. It made it easy for the Tutsis and any one else to generalise about the Hutus in a wrong way if they wanted to.
7. The death and assassination of the Hutu president in Burundi by Tutsis forces before the Rwnadan Genocide which lead to over one million Hutu Refugees was wrongly responded to by the Hutus. This was the Hutus greatest opportunity to show the whole world that the Tutsis were violent and didn't believe in democracy. The Hutus however responded by saying that wouldn't happen in Rwanda and the extrememists plotted genocide. Raising the assassination of the Burundi president and the resultant humanitarian crisis would have lead to outrage against the Tutsis and inhibited those in Rwanda from significant violence because they would have already been perceived as the violent and undemocratic people. Unfortunately by choosing to effect a genocide the Hutu people (undermined by the Hutu extremists) threw away this tragedy in Burundi which could have made the whole world to know that they were suffering as well. One thing that is clear over the decades is that the level of sophistication of the Hutus (not education or wealth) seems not to be as much as that of the Tutsis. The Hutus suffered from the Tutsis but always reacted wrongly giving the Tutsis the advantage.
8. The Hutus have failed unfortunately in their efforts of getting their own side of the story out to the whole world. This should have been seen as a critical objective by the Hutus because it is the only real way the world will understand what the Hutu also suffered. Showcasing Hutu moderates as victims of the Rwandan Genocide also would have made it clear that the Hutus suffered therefore the Genocide was really against the moderate Hutus and the Tutsis as opposed to just against the Tutsis. No matter the risk involved the Hutus should have ensured that this was also known accurately and truthfully without any exaggerations. This is an area the Hutus still have to achieve by every legal means to help their future generations.
9. The Hutus were too cruel in the Genocide. There are very few reports of RPF soldiers tearing stomachs of women or raping women with men who have HIV and AIDS or cutting people and leaving them to die in pain. The atrrocties reportedly committed by the RPF were of RPF soldiers shooting and killing Hutus even in refugee camps. This is very different from the kinds of atrocities committed by the Hutus which were to cause pain for their victims which can never be justified. Therefore even though the RPF also committed some atrocities they did not appear as wicked and cruel while the Hutu extremists made the Hutus look like very wicked people because their violent actions in many cases were not that easy to justify because their purpose was to impose suffering and then death as opposed to death alone. Therefore the RPF seemed more professional and humane even though they also committed atrocities.
10. The Hutus made a strategic mistake in their foreign relations. The Hutus should have never requested the French elite forces because Africa was already phasing out foreign military troops even in 1994. Therefore the Rwandan military should have used their foreign relations to strengthen their security effectiveness and capabilities as opposed to requesting operation Tourquoise which required the French military to effectively take sides. This was not good for the Hutus and France because of the level of international support the Tutsis were getting from major actors. Therefore the Rwandan military did not really have a winnable strategy to defeat the Tutsis and never solved the problem of the Tutsis retreating to Uganda and then reinforcing and attacking northern parts of Rwanda and making their way South over and over again. So the Hutus and the Hutu lead Rwandan military had no effective military strategy to defeat the Tutsis other than wanting to kill all of them even though hundreds of thousands of them were outside Rwanda even before the genocide began. The RPF had superior military strategy and better trained and disciplined troops who it would appear generally acted more legally that the Hutu army. This does not mean that the RPF did not commit atrocities they certainly did. The Hutus even had more equipment and some of the RPF equipment were actually from the Rwandan Army that had been defeated as the conflict progressed.
11. One report says that over two thousand Rwandan Hutu soldiers were working for the RPF which undermined the entire Rwandan Army. This also means that the Hutus did not do enough to prevent sabotage within their own ranks and therefore the Tutsis through the RPF had a significant advantage. The Hutu military needed the kind of sophistication that would make infiltration by the RPF or anyone else impossible and easily detected if attempted. This was a major strategic mistake by the Hutus.



Tutsis
1. The first and biggest mistake of the Tutsis was to be cruel to the Hutu during colonialism. This was unnecessary and the Tutsis should have never done this because they were hosted by the Hutus as the history goes from the beginning.
This was truly cruel to turn on your host and start imposing suffering even though under colonial duress. This set the stage for the crises faced by the Tutsis.
2. As relates to the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 the Tutsis acted wisely by training a disciplined army that wore military uniform and that had a specific target of taking over Kigali as opposed to just killing and killing Hutus anywhere they could be found. This also ensured that the RPF could be easily differentiated from civilian Tutsis. So even if some RPF soldiers committed war crimes it did not rub off on the larger Tutsi population. This was a superior approach in the Genocide.
3. The RPF allowed hundreds and thousands of Tutsis to be killed even when this could have been mitigated with earlier RPF intervention. This makes it look like the RPF did not mind the killings of the Tutsi people which made the Hutus look horrible. This may not be the situation but it gives that impression. The late intervention of the RPF may have been strategic but in the overall picture and as more facts emerge it does not make the RPF look so good and humane especially if it is determined that the RPF had the capability to fight the Rwandan military from the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide but did not and allowed the massacres of its own people when some of those massacres could have been prevented with earlier RPF intervention. The impression given though this may not be the situation is that the RPF allowed the massacres of the Tutsis so that they could show just how cruel the Hutus were and how many innocent Tutsis had been killed. This would of course allow the RPF several advantages.
4. The relations of the RPF with Uganda was a master stroke that provided advantage for the Tutsis in Rwanda for decades and really was very strategic to the RPF and Tutsis winning the War in 1994.
5. The Tutsis got the right kind of international support. They got the international support that was known but was not obvious that they were helping on the ground because this support strengtehened the capability of the RPF itself as opposed to relying on the international troop and military support and deployment. This was a major differentiating factor which made it difficult for the Hutus to leverage the French military troops because it was seen that local armies should be allowed to fight. Even the United Nations didn't want to have peacekeepers on a large scale. This means that the Hutus were somewhat disadvantaged because their foreign military support could not really be of help when they needed it most otherwise it would have looked like the French soldier attacking RPF which would not have been a good image for France. Therefore the Hutu military could not benefit maximally from their international support because they didn't have the right approach for the time. Such an approach would have worked excellently in the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s but certainly not in the 90s and beyond because many African countries did not want foreign military troops which they feel will just be helping some entrenched interest to stay in power. The Tutsis got this aspect brilliantly and from a military strategic perspective should be commended not for winning but having a better understanding of how the foreign countries could help them in the prevailing realities at the time.
6. Tutsis were generally kinder during the war. The RPF soldiers would just kill Hutu militia or army quickly and not seek to torture them or infect them with diseases. This means the RPF was much more professional and humane even though they also committed atrocities. This gave the RPF the image of a regular army killing opposing soldiers as opppsed to a cruel force that seeks to make opposing people suffer. This meant the RPF operated above emotional sentiment and hatred therefore they could see more clearly to attain their military and eventually political objectives. Certainly the Hutus had real and genuine grievances but they allowed those grievances to make them hate the Tutsis which made them act irrationally and unfairly to the Tutsis which was a significant disadvantage for the Hutus in the overall assessment. Even if the Hutus had won the Rwandan genocide of 1994 it is not likely that the genocidal government would have received that much international recognition because the mass atrocitoes committed by some of the general popualtion was too negative on the Hutus. The Tutsis showed level headedness and more professionalism and this gave them a significant advantage.
7. The Tutsis response to Hutu atrocities was and is much better than the Hutus response to Tutsis atrocities from the colonial era. The Tutsis organised war crimes tribunals both local and international which ensured that there was some level of justice that met to some extent the standards of international justice. This was a brilliant response. If the Tutsis had done how the Hutus did after the end of colonialism it would have made the Tutsis look just as bad as the Hutu extremists. Using the judicial intervention rather than sustained massacres and killings helped the Tutsis to look more humane and professional and unfortunately look like better people even though none of the tribes are better in the actual sense. But that impression was created. However the Tutsis having not yet brought the majority of erring Tutsis who committed massacres and war crimes to trial in open tribunals as that of the Hutus is a weakness for the Tutsis and if not corrected could be an undermining factor. This is because the Hutus know that some of their people suffered atrocities as well and whenever they get to power properly they would most likely make that known. It is better for the Tutsis to manage that process by enabling Tribunals that would address the atrocities of the Tutsis. If the Tutsis fail to do this they would also be making a significant mistake which would offer great advantage to the Hutus. If the Hutus present evidence of atrocities by Tutsis this will tarnish the Tutsis and give the Hutus the moral support that they were lacking from the international community previously. In football terms this could be termed as an own goal by The Tutsis. Since the Tutsis are still in power this can still be corrected.
8. The Tutsis did not differentiate themselves as moderate and extremists. Even though there are moderate and extremist elements in most populations the Tutsis made it a single Tutsi. This way during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 The Tutsis did not kill each other because they felt some Tutsis were sympathetic to the Hutus. This was very wise and effective and made the Tutsis appear more rational than the Hutus which may not necessarily be true and it may be but that impression was formed. Unfortunately the Tutsis took this solidarity too far by not prosecuting the significant number of Tutsis which also ccommitted war crimes which was discussed in the immediate earlier point.
9. The Tutsis being a small percentage of the Rwandan population knew that the only way to democratic power was tol collaborate with the Hutu majority. They however didn't want this but wanted total power and so were more favourably disposed to war than elections. Only through war could the Tutsis have a chance of gaining total power and war they embarked on and ultimately prevailed in 1994. This was a case of the Tutsis doing a SWOT ANALYSIS and concluding that total democracy could not work for them. Even though this is undemocratic it shows the shrewdness of the Tutsis and their ability to syncronise their actions with their prevailing realities. In this way the Hutus should have emphasised on free and fair elections meeting international standards.
Instead the Hutus played the game that they were weaker in while the played that which they were stronger in. This gave a very great advantage to the Tutsis because they had the right strategy for their situation while the Hutus chose the wrong strategy for their own predicament. No matter the goading the Hutus should have never allowed violence because they were the significant democratic majority. If there is one fundamental area only as having the greatest impact on the Tutsis winning it is realising that only through war could they attain total power and going into war. If there is one fundamental thing that undermined the Hutus it is knowing that they were the significant democratic majority and instead of going for peace and free and fair and inclusive elections they went for war and genocide which was totally unnecessary and a tremendous mistake for the Hutus.
10. The Tutsis have acted quite brilliantly during and after the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. However the Tutsis just like the need for war crimes tribunals that prosecute significant numbers of Tutsis involved in war crimes the Tutsis also need to ensure that all sides of the Rwandan War are known. Why is this advantageous for the Tutsis? Because it shows the whole world that the Tutsis are human beings that are not perfect as well and the Tutsis will gain respect internationally from allowing the Hutus to speak about attrocities committed against the Hutus as well. The Tutsis need to realise that it was a war and every human being knows that in a war all sides are not perfect. Therefore trying to create an impression that Tutsis committed no war crimes does not really help the Tutsis because eventually the extent of Tutsi atrocities would be made known. This unfortunately may create some disappointment with the Tutsis and if the Hutus have international listening ears then this would not be too good for the Tutsis because the Hutus would present their evidence based facts which would make the Tutsis look like they were covering up the Tutsi atrocities. This is not easy for the Tutsis but it's better in the long run. It eradicates the potential for blackmail and ensures that the Hutu especially the moderates are more willing to work with and accept the Tutsis which is needed for long-term success of the Tutsis in Rwanda. This needs to be done fairly and the Hutus which have horrid experiences before, during and after the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 should be allowed to speak out. The Tutsis may not tell the whole world their own atrocities but they should not prevent the Hutus from saying and disclosing the atrocities committed against the Hutus especially where evidence is available. This is one way to stabilise The Republic of Rwanda long-term and protect The Tutsis even whenever the Hutus come to power. Attacking the memory of the Hutus or trying to stifle the Hutus from revealing atrocities committed against the Hutus would be counter productive for the Tutsis especially over time.
11. Even though the Tusis are currently in power in Rwanda and they won the Rwandan War that ended in 1994, the Tutsis cannot realistically expect to remain in power by war permanently. This would not be a realistic objective. At some point the Tutsis have to recognise that only through truly democratic elections can people be expected to govern Rwanda. Rigging of elections has it's limits and would ultimately become a challenge especially where the Tutsis have one of the significant democratic minority in the Republic of Rwanda. Using war every now and then also has it's limits because all the Hutus need to do is advance for peace, free, fair and credible elections which would make the Tutsis at a disadvantage because of their numbers. Also the international community would not tolerate continuous warfare as a means of the Tutsis retaining power in Rwanda. This would make the Tutsis look like the aggressors which would have a profound effect. Therefore the Tutsis need to find a way to fairly and legally relate with Hutus so that their numbers would not always be a disadvantage to them. The international community would only tolerate a seemingly dictatorial system for so long and Rwanda is not economically strong enough to do without international support yet, therefore it is necessary for the Tutsis to consider fair and transparent democratic processes for the long-term . If the Tutsis fail to do this and the Hutus get to power it could be more challenging. Therefore the Tutsis need to strengthen and not weaken fair and transparent democratic processes which is also in the interest of the Tutsis over time.


SINGNIFICANT LEARNING POINT

'The Hutus and Tutsis need to learn from their own history. For example the Tutsis thought that since they were favoured by the Belgian Colonial oppressors that they would always be in favour with the Belgian Colonial oppressors. This was very dangerous and the Tutsis would have been very shocked when the Belgian Colonial oppressors handed over to the Hutus and even encouraged the Hutus to massacre the Tutsis. Both the Hutus and Tutsis were being played against each other. Therefore the Tutsis need to learn from that and realise that any person, entity, organsiation, or nation that reassures the Tutsis that they would rule Rwanda forever is deceiving the Tutsis and setting them up for the same situation as that experienced with the Belgian Colonial Oppressors. Therefore the Tutsis need to realise that operating in such a way as if the Tutsis would always be in power is erroneous and very precarious. With this understanding it is clear that the Tutsis should ensure that Hutus who have been victims of atrocities during and after the Rawandan Genocide and even before the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 are allowed to make this known without fear and intimidation.

The Hutus need to also learn from history. Whenever the Hutus return to power they must not make the same mistakes as they did in the postcolonial era. By now it should be clear to the Hutus that humanity even with all its flaws does not encourage injustice and brutality and that cruelty will always be a disadvantage either immediately or over time. Therefore the Hutus need to be more professional and humane in their conduct even if they feel they have genuine serious grievances.

For the Hutus, Tutsis and Twa in the Republic of Rwanda it is imperative that they do not allow themselves to be pit against each other to satisfy interests that only see The Republic of Rwanda as a way to have access to other African countries. This is the most salient point.

Created 19th August 2023