President of Rwanda

Paul Kagame (born October 23, 1957) is the president of Rwanda, and was a founder of the Rwandese Patriotic Front and its military commander during the Rwandan Civil War and Rwandan Genocide.

Early life

Kagame was born in Gitarama in Western Rwanda on October 23, 1957. In 1959 an increasingly restive Hutu population, encouraged by the Belgian military, sparked a revolt in November 1959, resulting in the overthrow of King Kigeri V, the last Tutsi monarch. Two years later, the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU) won an overwhelming victory in a UN-supervised referendum, reflecting the Hutu majority in the country.

During the 1959 revolt and its aftermath, more than 160,000 Tutsis fled to neighboring countries. In all, some 20,000 Tutsis were killed. Kagame left with his family at the age of four and moved to Uganda with many other Tutsis, mainly to escape the growing violence.

Military service in Uganda

Milton Obote, then in power in Uganda, sought a scapegoat against which to unify its party, and directed persecutions against the 200,000 Rwandan Tutsi. The exiled Tutsi thus supported Idi Amin who seized power with their help in 1971. In return, Idi Amin rehabilitated them, and Tutsi were engaged in the army. Idi Amin repudiated them after gaining power, and the Tutsis joined Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA), and spent years fighting throughout Uganda. They overthrew Idi Amin on April 11, 1979, and then his successor Milton Obote on July 27, 1985, installing Yoweri Museveni.

In 1985 Kagame was instrumental in forming, along with his close friend Fred Rwigyema, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was composed mainly of Rwandan Tutsi soldiers that had also fought with the NRA; the RPF was also based in Uganda.

In 1986, Kagame became the head of military intelligence in the NRA, and was always viewed as one of Museveni's closest allies. He also joined the official Ugandan military, and participated as a guerrilla fighter in the NRA.

Predictably, after Musoveni was in power, the presence of foreigners became an embarrassment, and Musoveni supported the 1990 invasion by the RPF of Rwanda, to rid and reward the foreign army, a major destabilising factor that led to the Rwandan Genocide.

Invasion of Rwanda

On October 1, 1990, the RPF invaded Rwanda for the first time, in the pretext of rights for refugee Tutsis and democracy in Rwanda. At that time, Kagame was in the United States, participating in a military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Two days into the invasion, Rwigyema was killed, and Museveni made Kagame the commander of the RPF.

The invasion started with some military successes, until France put together a force of French, Belgian, Hutu, and Zairois soldiers.

This invasion gave a pretext for Juvйnal Habyarimana to clamp down on opposition and flag the Tutsi as invaders, and was a major destabilising factor in Rwanda in the leadup to the Rwandan Genocide.

Another invasion was attempted in late 1991, but that faltered as well.

Arusha accords

Main article: Arusha accords

This caused Kagame and the RPF to enter a lengthy series of talks, the Arusha accords, which were eventually signed August 4, 1993. The end result was a power-sharing agreement - the Transitional Broad Based Government (TBBG) that would include the RPF as well as the five political parties that formed the coalition government in place since April 1992, to govern until proper elections could be held. This caused suspicions within the ranks of the RPF, who wondered if the new government would fulfill its promises.

These promises, specifically, had been a sharing of power between two ethnic groups: the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Tutsi had formerly been the elite social group, while the Hutu were the majority. Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, had taken power and held it for decades through non-democratic elections. On April 6, 1994, it seemed that he would adopt the Arusha accords, which would share power between the Tutsi and the Hutu.

Rwandan Genocide

Main article: Rwandan Genocide

After months of Rwandan government preparation for civil war, and saturation radio coverage referring to the Tutsi as cockroaches, and lists of targets read out on radio, on April 6, 1994 Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the President of Burundi were assassinated when their aeroplane was shot down.

Responsibility for the assassination has not been determined. The obvious benefactors were the Hutu majority, but in January 2000 three Tutsi informants told the United Nations that they were part of an elite strike team that carried out the assassination the Hutu president, with two rockets. They told UN investigators in 1997 that the killing of president Juvenal Habyarimana was carried out "with the assistance of a foreign government" under the overall command of Paul Kagame. The UN shelved the report.

As if this was a signal, Hutu extremists began massacring thousands of Tutsi politicians and moderate Hutu citizens. On May 17, 1994, the UN conceded that "acts of genocide may have been committed." At that time, the Red Cross estimated at least 100,000 deaths at the hands of the Hutu extremists, the majority of those being minority Tutsis. Also by mid-May, the U.S. attempted to take action by ordering 50 APCs. At this time, the Red Cross estimated over 500,000 deaths.

The RPF renewed its civil war against the Rwanda Hutu government when it received word that the genocidal massacres had begun. Paul Kagame directed RPF forces in neighboring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania to invade the country, battling the Hutu forces and Interahamwe militias who were committing the massacres. The resulting civil war raged concurrently with the genocide for two months, and in spite of lower troop numbers (15000 men against 50000) this third incursion was successful - mainly because the defenders were preoccupied with the genocide, killing 10000 civilians per day.

At the end of May, the RPF (on its own) took over most of Rwanda. In July they swept into Kigale. France, Belgium, and the rest of the U.N. did nothing to prevent the acts of genocide (which they had knowledge of); this caused Kagame to denounce France and the U.N., specifically, throughout the rest of his life. France, ironically, absolved its government of any responsibility, blaming mostly the U.N. and the United States.

Romйo Dallaire, in his book Shake Hands with the Devil, has this to say about Kagame:

"Let there be no doubt: the Rwandan genocide was the ultimate responsibility of those Rwandans who planned, ordered, supervised and eventually conducted it. ... But the deaths of Rwandans can also be laid at the door of the military genius Paul Kagame, who did not speed up his campaign when the scale of the genocide became clear and even talked candidly with me at several points about the price his fellow Tutsis might have to pay for the cause.... The failings of the UN and Belgium were not in the same league. (p.515)" (Full quote at Role of the international community in the Rwandan Genocide#The UN)

 

Coming to power in Rwanda

When the RPF finally took power in 1994, after the genocide, Kagame was made Vice President of Rwanda and a member of the defense portfolio, with Pasteur Bizimungu as the President of Rwanda. Bizimungu had also been a member of the RPF. While vice president, Kagame was viewed as the power behind the throne, and the most powerful man in Rwanda.

Bizimungu eventually came into a conflict with Kagame over the composition of the government. He resigned in March 2000, and Kagame became president. In May 2001, Bizimungu founded an opposition movement called the Buyanjya Party. It was almost immediately banned by Kagame. Shortly afterwards, he was placed under house arrest and stripped of the privileges enjoyed by former heads of state. In 2004 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to form a militia, inciting violence and embezzlement. As of October 2004, he is still in prison.

Conflict in Congo

See main articles: First Congo War and Second Congo War

Rwandan Hutu militia forces who had fled Rwanda following Kagame's return had been using Hutu refugees camps in eastern Zaire as a basis for incursion against Rwanda. They soon allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire. In turn, these Tutsis formed a militia to defend themselves against attacks. When the Zairian government began to escalate its massacres in November 1996, the Tutsi militias erupted in rebellion against Mobutu, with strong support of Rwanda and Uganda. This coalition, led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, marched unopposed to Kinshasa on May 20, 1997. However, Kabila demonstrated little talent as a politician and relations between him and Kagame quickly deteriorated. In August 1998 Kabila removed all the Tutsi officials in his government and ordered all Rwandan and Ugandan officials out of the country, triggering the Second Congo War.

2003 Elections

Paul Kagame with George W. Bush

On August 25, 2003, Kagame won a landslide victory in the first democratic elections of Rwanda. His only potential significant opponent, Pasteur Bizimungu, had resigned as president and was subsequently put under house arrest.

Despite the general smooth-running of the election, concerns remain about its overall fairness. Many NGOs and opposition candidates protested about the climate of intimidation during the election campaign, said European Union observer Nelly Maes

In March of that year, he had been awarded the Young Presidents Organization's Global Leadership Award for his role in leading and rebuilding Rwanda.

Kagame tends to downgrade the importance of his ethnic background (he is a Tutsi), portraying himself as simply a Rwandan. He is highly critical of the United Nations and its role in the 1994 genocide. Recently (March 2004), he publicly criticized France for its direct role in the genocide and its lack of preventative actions.

Kingmaker

During his years in exile in Uganda, he saw the overthrow of Idi Amin on April 11, 1979, and then his successor Milton Obote on July 27, 1985, and the installation of Yoweri Museveni. In 1994 he invaded Rwanda and saw his own installation, firstly as Vice-President and then President. In November 1996 he was instrumental in the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko from power in Zaire and the installation of Laurent-Dйsirй Kabila during the First Congo War. After a falling-out with Kabila, in August 1998 he supported Tutsis in Eastern DRC in an invasion that became the Second Congo War. On January 16, 2001 Kabila was assassinated by one of his own staff, but Kabila's erstwhile allies were fingered in the plot.

Quotes

He made this memorable quote during the 10th anniversary memorial for the genocide victims:

I start where we must all start, by paying tribute to them (Rwanda’s genocide victims) not as statistics, not as a nameless, faceless, anonymous mass of humanity but as our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and our children. They all should have been a part of our future, not our past.