Wider geopolitical factors such as the continent-wide battle between European powers' local allies and Marxist-inspired African nationalist groups helped pave the way for the Rwandan Civil War and subsequent genocide. Hutu hard-liners put their plans for a genocide into force amid fears that the ongoing peace process would see them lose control over Rwanda. The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front would not have been able to pose a threat to the Hutu government in Kigali if it did not have the support of revolutionaries in places like Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique.
It's been a quarter century since upward of 1 million people died in the Rwandan Genocide. But as Rwanda marks the 25th anniversary of the killings — and the rest of the world is reminded of its inaction — the occasion provides a solemn opportunity to explore the geopolitical context that precipitated the genocide. Geopolitics certainly doesn't absolve the perpetrators of their guilt, but it does provide a deeper understanding of how larger forces spurred hard-liners in Rwanda's government to initiate an unparalleled slaughter of their compatriots.
The Big Picture
On April 6, 1994, political pressures resulted in a complete collapse of security in Rwanda, unleashing a genocidal wave of violence across the country. At the time, Rwanda was ruled by a government controlled by ethnic Hutus, who had been oppressing the Tutsi minority since they came to power after colonial rule. During the genocide, Hutu militias and armed forces murdered up to a million Tutsi civilians around Rwanda in an attempt to maintain control over the country. But beyond the immediate atrocities that occurred, the emergency stemmed from broader geopolitical dynamics that were influencing large swaths of Africa.
Looking back in hindsight, the genocide was a situation in which — as happens frequently, if rarely to such extreme proportions — the civilian population fell victim to forces driven by much larger geopolitical trends. Ultimately, it is impossible to detach the genocide from the wider regional context of African revolutionary movements and the way in which their ambitions came to clash with those of post-colonial European actors and their local allies.
Running Amok
Amid a civil war between Rwanda's Hutu-dominated government and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Hutu hard-liners shot down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, in a last-ditch effort to derail a peace deal that was about to enter force. Using the assassination as a pretext, Hutu extremists immediately enacted a pre-planned genocide of the country's Tutsi population, as well as moderate Hutus. Over the next 100 days, Hutu militias — and ordinary citizens egged on by fearmongering on the radio — murdered hundreds of thousands of their fellow Rwandans until the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, managed to put an end to the genocide by gaining control of the whole country.
The conflict between Hutus and the Tutsis predates the colonial order, but in the immediate geopolitical context, the beginnings of the 1994 genocide lie in the Rwandan Civil War, which began in 1990. Since the late 1980s, the relatively prosperous country had experienced an economic crisis resulting from the collapse of coffee prices, Rwanda's most important export. This, in turn, stoked dissatisfaction with the Hutu-led government. Soon, the government's position would come under greater attack, as the RPF invaded from neighboring Uganda in 1990.
A Movement Challenging the Status Quo
In and of itself, the Rwandan Patriotic Front might not have presented an existential threat to Habyarimana's government. After all, Kigali had the firm backing of France, Belgium and the entrenched regime of Mobutu Sese Seko in neighboring Zaire. Indeed, with their support, Rwanda's Hutu-led government had little difficulty in repelling a Tutsi offensive in October 1990. Instead, what made the RPF an existential threat for the Hutu government in Rwanda was the fact that the Tutsi rebellion was the latest incarnation of — and received much support from — a much broader revolutionary movement that had swept across southern and eastern Africa. Based on the ideologies of African nationalism and Marxism, this revolutionary movement successfully overcame oppressive colonial and post-colonial regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia, Mozambique and Uganda, eventually spawning the RPF.
The figure joining together these different rebellions and the Rwandan Tutsi cause was Yoweri Museveni, who had ruled Uganda since 1986. Museveni embarked along the path to revolution in the 1960s while he was studying in Tanzania, which was a beacon of socialist intellectualism in Africa at the time. During his studies, Museveni came into contact with the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), a Marxist guerilla group that was fighting for their country's independence from Portugal.
Back home, Museveni opposed the rule of Idi Amin, joining the armed struggle against the Ugandan strongman's rule. Assisting Museveni in this effort were a number of Rwandan Tutsi refugees whom he had befriended in his youth — and who would one day become the leading figures of the Tutsi resistance against Habyarimana's government in Rwanda. With the support of Tanzania and FRELIMO, these Ugandan opposition forces invaded Uganda and overthrew Amin in 1979. The dictator's departure, however, didn't bring Museveni and his forces to power. Instead, control was taken by Milton Obote, the man whom Amin had himself ousted in 1971. Museveni and his Rwandan comrades-in-arms, including the RPF's Kagame, duly launched a guerilla war against Obote with Tanzanian and FRELIMO backing, finally emerging victorious in 1986.
As Hutu hard-liners sensed that their chances of controlling Rwanda were diminishing, they began to consider a massacre of the Tutsi population as a "final solution" to their problem.
Following his rise to power, Museveni kept his Rwandan allies close, even appointing several of them to senior positions in the Ugandan armed forces. Kagame, in fact, headed Ugandan military intelligence and eventually went to the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College to receive formal military education. The exiles, however, remained focused on Rwanda, drafting plans to wrest control of their homeland from the Habyarimana government.
Despite the failure of the RPF's initial foray into Rwanda in October 1990 (the RPF's leader, Fred Rwigyema, even died on the second day of the offensive), the group did launch a guerilla war under the leadership of Kagame, who quickly returned from the United States after Rwigyema's death to head up the troops. By applying the guerilla methods that FRELIMO had honed in Mozambique, as well as the strategies that Museveni and his allies employed during the Ugandan Bush War, the Tutsi rebellion ratcheted up the pressure on Habyarimana's government, even though the latter enjoyed support from European countries such as France, as well as African allies. Bolstered by the direct backing of Museveni, who could marshal the Ugandan state's resources for the purpose, as well as suspect covert assistance from Mozambique and Tanzania, the RPF managed to grab control of northern Rwanda.
In 1992, Rwanda's dire economic situation and the ongoing war ignited social unrest, forcing Habyarimana to agree to reforms that included a power-sharing agreement with the opposition. But while this more moderate government spearheaded the 1993 Arusha peace accord to end the fighting, it also emboldened hard-line Hutus in the government's ranks. As the accord went into force and members from UNAMIR, the U.N. mission to the country, arrived to oversee the peace deal, Hutu hard-liners sensed that their chances of controlling Rwanda were rapidly diminishing, leading them to consider a massacre of the Tutsi population as a "final solution" to their problem. The peace accord permitted the RPF to deploy forces to Kigali, Rwanda's capital, putting the competing sides in direct proximity and raising the stakes in the battle for control. Hutu hard-liners began to draft a more drastic plan to regain control of Rwanda, preparing the armed forces — as well as the notorious civilian militia Interahamwe — to commit ethnic cleansing.
By April 7, 1994, the killings had begun, ceasing only on July 15 when the RPF gained control over most of Rwanda under Kagame — who remains in control of the country 25 years later. In the end, the genocide and the rebel force that finally ended the killings were simply the latest components of a series of conflicts between post-colonial African countries still close to their former European masters and the wave of revolutionary movements spreading across the continent. And unluckily for the Tutsis and moderate Hutus of Rwanda, the result of the collision of these geopolitical forces was cataclysmic.
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