Richard Dowden: Britain should cease its one-sided support of Rwanda.
If Kagame doesn't rein in Nkunda, we should tell him we won't fund him.
Monday, 15 December 2008
When United Nations experts revealed in a recent report the links between the Rwandan government and the forces of Laurent Nkunda, the Tutsi warlord of Eastern Congo, the Dutch government cut its direct budget support for Rwanda in protest. Should Britain do the same?
Paul Kagame, Rwanda's clever and combative president has been a favourite of Britain's Africa ministers going back to Clare Short and Lynda Chalker before her. Rwanda's government receives tens of millions in direct budget support from Britain. Tony Blair is its adviser. It is not hard to see why. The previous Rwandan government organised the 1994 genocide, so when Kagame overthrew it and set up a new government in Kigali he was seen as the good guy by the US and Britain. Their guilt over the decision to pull out the UN force in Rwanda as the genocide began reinforced their moral support for Kagame.
When his fighters pursued the remnants of the old Rwandan army into Congo, Britain and the US did not ask too many questions. Nor did they question when Kagame's army and their Ugandan allies, turned that pursuit into a full-scale attack on their vast neighbour, Congo, that ended in the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, the corrupt old Congolese dictator.
Kagame, a visionary leader and a formidable man of action, is warmly welcomed in London and Washington. For them, at last, here was an African leader who spoke their language of progress and could deliver. Rwanda's education and health systems are good. Kagame says he wants to create a new Rwanda where Hutu and Tutsi allegiances would be forgotten. Britain is prepared to pay for that.
Kagame does not, however, believe in too much democracy. Parliamentary elections last September were described by the EU observer team as lacking in transparency. There was "an absence of real political opposition". Kagame does not tolerate one.
But it is his behaviour in eastern Congo that causes most disquiet. Kagame argues that Rwanda will never be safe as long as the genocidaires – those who killed in 1994 – are on the loose in Congo. In 1998, when the government he installed in Congo began to support them and the rump of the old Rwandan army camped there, Kagame and the Ugandans invaded again. Britain and America kept quiet.
This time their intervention triggered a terrible war in which some say five million people have now died. They had all miscalculated the political reaction from other African rulers and the Congolese, who objected to what they saw as a Western-backed rogue state rampaging around the continent. The Rwandans and Ugandans were stopped but they set up local Congolese allies in the border zones. Most of these were Congolese Tutsis. And the genocidaires were able to recruit and rearm as well – sometimes with support from the Congolese army.
The war that had threatened to tear Congo apart has become limited to a vicious battle for the Kivus; eastern Congo and Uganda and Rwanda's borderlands. The Tutsi population was now under threat, seen as a fifth column for the Rwandans. Its self styled protector in North Kivu is the flamboyant but murderous Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and once a member of Kagame's army.
In November he carried out a massacre of some 150 people at Kiwanja. Kagame denies he is a Rwanda proxy but the UN report shows he uses Rwandan banks and has had direct support from the army. It also shows how Nkunda's forces operate out of Rwandan territory and recruit soldiers from its army.
The argument that this is about protecting Congo's Tutsi minority is undermined by Nkunda's grab for the region's wealth. Local people have been forced to mine gold, diamonds, casserite and other minerals that abound in Kivu and export them through Kigali, the Rwandan capital. What had begun as an apparently defensive military operation to protect Rwanda and Uganda from genocidal gangs in Congo seemed to be turning into a violent imperialism aimed more at looting the area than bringing peace.
On paper the solution is simple. The rump of fighters who carried out the genocide now operating in eastern Congo, and Nkunda's forces must both disarm or be disarmed. The two states – and Uganda – must make this happen and make peace. There is no major issue between the states of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, but nor is there trust between them. Outsiders must help build that trust and Britain, a medium-sized player in the region, must not been seen as backing one side or the other. It is time to tell Kagame that if he does not rein in Nkunda, Britain will not fund his government.
The writer is Director of the Royal African Society
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/richard-dowden-britain-should-cease-its-onesided-support-of-rwanda-1067076.html
The dictator Kagame at UN
Dictators like Kagame who have changed their national constitutions to remain indefinitely on power should not be involved in UN high level and global activities including chairing UN meetings
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Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres
Kagame killed 200,000 Hutus from all regions of the country, the elderly and children who were left by their relatives, the disabled were burned alive. Other thousands of people were killed in several camps of displaced persons including Kibeho camp. All these war crimes remain unpunished.The British news reporters were accompanying Kagame’s fighters on day-by-day basis and witnessed these massacres, but they never reported on this.
25,000 Hutu bodies floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.
The British irrational, extremist, partisan,biased, one-sided media and politicians have disregarded Kagame war crimes e.g. the Kibeho camp massacres, massacres of innocents Hutu refugees in DR. Congo. The British media have been supporting Kagame since he invaded Rwanda by organising the propaganda against the French over the Rwandan genocide, suppressing the truth about the genocide and promoting the impunity of Kagame and his cronies in the African Great Lakes Region. For the British, Rwanda does not need democracy, Rwanda is the African Israel; and Kagame and his guerilla fighters are heroes.The extremist British news reporters including Fergal Keane, Chris Simpson, Chris McGreal, Mark Doyle, etc. continue to hate the Hutus communities and to polarise the Rwandan society.
Kagame political ambitions triggered the genocide.
Kagame’s guerrilla war was aimed at accessing to power at any cost. He rejected all attempts and advice that could stop his military adventures including the cease-fire, political negotiations and cohabitation, and UN peacekeeping interventions. He ignored all warnings that could have helped him to manage the war without tragic consequences. Either you supported Kagame’ s wars and you are now his friend, or you were against his wars and you are his enemy. Therefore, Kagame as the Rwandan strong man now, you have to apologise to him for having been against his war and condemned his war crimes, or accept to be labelled as having been involved in the genocide. All key Kagame’s fighters who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity are the ones who hold key positions in Rwandan army and government for the last 15 years. They continue to be supported and advised by the British including Tony Blair, Andrew Mitchell MP, and the British army senior officials.
Aid that kills: The British Budget Support financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.
Genocide propaganda and fabrications are used by the so-called British scholars, news reporters and investigative journalists to promote their CVs and to get income out of the genocide through the selling of their books, providing testimonies against the French, access to consultancy contracts from the UN and Kagame, and participation in conferences and lectures in Rwanda, UK and internationally about genocide. Genocide propaganda has become a lucrative business for Kagame and the British. Anyone who condemned or did not support Kagame’s war is now in jail in Rwanda under the gacaca courts system suuported by British tax payer's money, or his/she is on arrest warrant if he/she managed to flee the Kagame’s regime. Others have fled the country and are still fleeing now. Many others Rwandans are being persecuted in their own country. Kagame is waiting indefinitely for the apologies from other players who warn him or who wanted to help to ensure that political negotiations take place between Kagame and the former government he was fighting against. Britain continues to supply foreign aid to Kagame and his cronies with media reports highlighting economic successes of Rwanda. Such reports are flawed and are aimed at misleading the British public to justify the use of British taxpayers’ money. Kagame and his cronies continue to milk British taxpayers’ money under the British budget support. This started from 1986 through the British budget support to Uganda until now.
Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the Rwandan genocide.
No apologies yet to the Rwandan people. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana by Kagame was the only gateway for Kagame to access power in Rwanda. The British media, politicians, and the so-called British scholars took the role of obstructing the search for the truth and justice; and of denying this assassination on behalf of General Kagame. General Paul Kagame has been obliging the whole world to apologise for his mistakes and war crimes. The UK’s way to apologise has been pumping massive aid into Rwanda's crony government and parliement; and supporting Kagame though media campaigns.
Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame
Kagame receives the British massive aid through the budget support, British excessive consultancy, sector wide programmes, the Tutsi-dominated parliament, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs; for political, economic and English language expansion to Rwanda. The British aid to Rwanda is not for all Rwandans. It is for Kagame himself and his Tutsi cronies.
Paul Kagame' actvities as former rebel
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