Citation
WHAT was Operation Turquoise, the French military intervention in
Rwanda, all about? Was it to end the massacres of Tutsis and moderate
Hutus? An attempt to bring some calm to the bloodlust that gripped the
country and allow humanitarian workers to relieve a traumatised
population? Or one nation's brave attempt to establish a bridgehead for
multi-national intervention by the United Nations while bureaucrats
dithered and argued in New York?
The answer, now that the French troops have left, is none of the above.
France intervened in Rwanda for France.
The French have one obsession with regard to Africa the spread of the
English language. General Jacques Lanxade, France's chief of general
staff, calls it the Anglo-Saxon Conspiracy
.
One French theory is that the British and Americans are colluding with
President Museveni of Uganda to establish an anglophone hegemony over
Central Africa including the strategically insignificant states of
Rwanda and Burundi. According to senior French special forces
commanders such as Colonel Didier Thibaut, who led paracommandos into
Rwanda in June, and his colleague, Marin Gillier, from the marine
commandos, the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front the Tutsi and
anglophone-dominated rebels was trained by the British. That's why
they are so good,
said M Gillier as his troops dug in for what they
thought would be a battle with the RPF in Gikongoro, two days after the
Patriotic Front took the capital, Kigali.
The French troops arrived long after the worst of the massacres. While
some commanders saw their main role as protecting Tutsis, others were
convinced they were going to war against the RPF.
M Gillier's first operation, he thought, was against RPF infiltrators
near Kibuye. With the help of the media, he was put right and was able
to save 1,500 Tutsis who were hiding amid the corpses of their
relatives from nearby Hutu militiamen.
There have been temporary beneficial side-effects from Operation
Turquoise. It stalled the exodus of people fleeing the RPF from the
southwest into unstable Zaire and Burundi; and it did establish a
little security for aid workers to feed people who included those who
had been involved in the slaughter. The main aim, however, was to stop
the advance of the rebels until Paris could catch its breath and swap
sides. Between April and June at the height of the killings and
contrary to a United Nations arms embargo on Rwanda French officials
colluded with the Zaireans in Goma to ship more than 100 tonnes of
mainly French weapons to the crumbling Rwandan government, which had
organised the massacres. According to diplomatic sources, the French
secret service was behind an attempt to recruit 100 Western mercenaries
and send them via Burundi to help to block the rebel advances in
Butare, Rwanda's second city. France had backed the former regime
against the RPF since their invasion from Uganda in 1990. But when it
became clear that the RPF would not only take on the French, but were
going to win the entire country, the safe zone
became a bargaining
chip. The deal was this: the French would be allowed to stay for a
while in their corner of the country, thereby restoring France's dented
credibility in Rwanda, while the RPF would advance no further. The
rebels, meanwhile, would concentrate their forces in the northwest, and
the French would leave that region. Good relations between the RPF and
Paris became the order of the day, and the French have maintained their
finger in Rwanda's pie.
The result of that deal was that the RPF swept through to the border
with Zaire and 1.2m Hutus fled to Goma, where they continue to die in
their thousands.
Now, after doing nothing to arrest those responsible for the massacres,
although the personalities are well known, the French have abandoned
the safe zone
.
Their replacements, Ghanaian and Ethiopians in UN blue helmets, have
been unable to win the confidence of the Hutus who see no reason why
they should not be made to pay for their atrocities, and are struggling
to get into Zaire.
