Citation
COMMENTARY
THE ARMING OF RWANDA, AND THE GENOCIDE
NELSON ALUSALA
In the book Ethnic Conflict in World Politics, the
authors, Barabara Harff and Ted Gurr state
that the World War II holocaust should have
enlightened the world as to what ethnic and
religious hatred can do when used by
unscrupulous leaders armed with exclusionary
ideologies. They point out that many people
hoped that with the end of colonialism, Africa
could look forward to a better world in which
nation-states would guarantee and protect the
basic freedoms of their peoples. Harff and
Gurr pose a question:
when the United Nations came into existence, were we wrong to believe that a
new world order would emerge, one in
which minimum standards of global justice would be observed and violators
punished? Is it still possible that a civil
society will emerge in which citizens
eschew narrow ethnic interests in favour
of global issues?1
While the authors’ concerns are legitimate, it
is true, as they later acknowledge, that some
progress has been made to check ethnic wars
since the mid-1990s. However, the world
badly needs more innovative ideas about how
to fight these scourges, which continue to
plague mankind.
Article I of the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide of 1948 requires that state parties
consider genocide a crime, which they under-
take to prevent and punish. This includes conspiracy to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and direct public incitement to
commit genocide. Rwanda acceded to the
Convention in 1975.2
It has been said many times that the murder of close to one million people in Rwanda
was preventable.3 Certainly the onslaught
that began in Rwanda in 1994 could have
been abated if serious measures had been put
in place early enough. Much of the blame for
the genocide that followed has been ascribed
to the international community’s failure to
intervene. However, many of the contributing factors have yet to be explored. For
example, the question of how weapons
reached the hands of the perpetrators
remains unanswered. Who provided the missiles that shot down the plane carrying the
then presidents of Rwanda and Burundi,
Juvenal
Habyarimana
and
C yprien
Ntaryamira, on 6 April 1994? As Rwanda
commemorates the ten-year anniversary of
the 100 days of atrocities that followed, mystery still surrounds the identity and motivations of the instigators of that human
catastrophe.
The Arusha Peace Accords, which were
signed on 4 August 1993, raised hopes that an
end to the three-year war between the government and the then rebel forces of the
Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) was in sight.
NELSON ALUSALA is a senior researcher in the Arms Management Programme at the ISS
138
The Accords included a power-sharing
arrangement that would lead to multi-party
rule in Rwanda, which would pave the way for
a transition to democracy. A United Nations
(UN) peacekeeping force was included in the
provisions of the Accords, with the aim of
stabilizing the situation in Rwanda during
the transition to peace. The Accords also
bound the parties to the upholding of the
Ceasefire Agreement of 16 September 1991.
The terms of the Agreement included suspension of supplies of ammunition and
weaponry to the field, and bans on both the
infiltration of troops and the conveyance of
troops and war materiel to the area occupied
by each party.
However, despite the Agreement, in
January 1994 a Human Rights Watch report
on Rwanda observed that the country was
being flooded with weapons. These were so
readily available that anyone could exchange
two beers for a grenade.4 According to the
report, France, Egypt and South Africa were
the principal sources of arms shipments to the
Rwandan army during this period. Prunier, in
his book The Rwanda crisis: history of a genocide,
states that “a few weeks [prior] to the outbreak
of genocide, arms had become plentiful in
Rwanda, grenades were sold alongside mangoes and avocadoes on fruit stands at markets
around Kigali.”5 He adds that UN Mission in
Rwanda (UNMIR) officials were aware of, but
could not cope with or monitor, the scale of
illicit arms trading.
Prior to the start of the genocide, the government is said to have played an active role
in arming certain of the (already polarized)
citizens, purportedly against the threat of
invasion from outside forces. The real aim,
according to a secret government document,
was to distribute close to 2,000 assault rifles to
civilians loyal to the president’s political party
(Movement Révolutionaire National pour le
Développement—MRPD), under the guise of
“self-defence.”6 High-ranking officials also
armed citizens and members of the militia,
and traded weapons for tea.7 Although during
the orgy of killing that followed machetes
were the most commonly used weapons,
large-scale massacres were carried out with
automatic rifles and hand grenades.
African Security Review 13(2) • 2004
According to the UN High Commission on
Human Rights (UNC HR), while people were
frequently hacked to death by machetes or
other non-ballistic weapons, the victims were
often rounded up by being threatened with
firearms.8
While commenting on the proliferation
of weapons in Rwanda prior to the genocide,
Jacques Castonguay records that “…assault
rifles, guns and grenades were distributed
throughout 1993. Some militia leaders were
issued with AK 47s, for which they had to fill
in requisition forms; the distribution of
grenades required no such paperwork. By the
time genocide began, some 85 tons of munitions are thought to have been distributed
throughout the country.”9 In the same vein,
Linda Melvern, in her comment “Arming
Rwanda,”10 writes that during 1993, the year
that the Arusha Accords were negotiated, a
project began to import into Rwanda a huge
number of matchetes and other agricultural
tools. Melvern notes that the purchase of
these tools took place in eighteen separate
deals, and by companies not usually associated with agriculture. As well as matchetes
they imported razor blades, nails, hoes, hammers and shears; and that these tools entered
Rwanda under government import licenses
headed “eligible imports”. Melvern concludes that in the three years from October
1990, Rwanda, one of the poorest countries
in the world, became the third largest
importer of weapons in Africa, spending an
estimated $US 112 million.11
According to the report published by the
Human Rights Watch Arms Project, “Arming
Rwanda”, France was a principal source of
arms for the Rwanda government. The report
discloses that in June 1993, the Rwandan
Minister of Defence confirmed that a French
bank, Crédit Lyonnais, had guaranteed a $6
million arms deal between the Rwandan government and the government of Egypt that
involved the transfer of heavy artillery, mortars and Kalashnikov automatic rifles (AK-47).
Four years later, in 1998, a French newspaper,
Le Figaro, carried an article declaring that the
serial numbers of the two surface-to-air missiles that had struck the aeroplane carrying the
two presidents matched those of missiles
Alusala
seized from Iraq by French troops during the
Gulf War of 1989–1991. 12 The reporter,
Patrick de Saint-Exupery, also disclosed that
his sources were some French soldiers, who
had claimed that after the missiles had been
confiscated from the Iraqi stockpiles, they had
been sold to Rwandan government forces.
This had occurred between 1993–1994 as part
of a covert French policy (le secret de défense).13
The government of France denied the story
published in Le Figaro, and accused the
American State Department of having supplied the missiles, arguing that American, not
French, forces in the Gulf had seized the two
missiles and sold them to Uganda. The US
rebutted this charge.14
Although the origin of the arms supplied
to that country has not yet been traced,
Rwanda is just one of several states in Africa in
which the number of small arms and light
weapons sold to a country plagued by ethnic,
nationalist or religious strife has had disastrous effects. Stephen Goose and Frank Smyth
postulate that the post-Cold War era has seen
profit motives replace East–West rivalry as the
main stimulus behind weapons sales.
Countries that were members of the Warsaw
Pact and North Atlantic Trade Organization
(NATO) have been selling off their arsenals on
open markets, with the result that the prices of
some weapons, such as AK-47s, have fallen
below cost.15 The two authors also claim that
many developing countries have joined in the
trade in light weapons and small arms. The
difficulty in tracing such arms dealings is that
governments rarely disclose the details of their
transfers of small arms and light weapons.
The overall result, however, is that
weapons flood strife-torn regions, not only
fanning warfare but also undermining international efforts to embargo arms and to compel the opposing parties to respect human
rights. Goose and Smyth conclude that if
more had been known about the flow of
arms into Rwanda, and if the international
community had had the opportunity to stop
the influx of arms, or at least to make sure
that the arms suppliers made trade with individual countries conditional on their human
rights performance, the outcome might have
been different.
139
Conclusion
The ten-year commemoration ceremony of
the genocide in Rwanda hit the world’s media
headlines, with TV channels showing the
massed skulls of the victims. However, little
was said about the need to know how the
weapons used in the genocide got into
Rwanda. A truth and reconciliation process
has been recommended as a possible first step
towards healing for the Rwandan people. But
will truth and reconciliation prove a therapy,
or will it be a mockery of justice and a warrant
for vengeance? How will healing take place in
an atmosphere enshrouded in secrecy, fear
and assumptions? One of the relatives of the
victims remarked, after the confessions of a
former genocidaire,
…he didn’t kill only two. He killed at
least six in my family and others too. He
killed my brothers, the wives of my
brothers and my nieces. I did not forgive
him because I think he is insincere, I forgave him because the church told me.16
For many of the survivors, the genocide lives
on.
The availability and misuse of small arms
present a serious challenges to the international community. During the UN
Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and
Light Weapons In All Its Aspects, held in New
York in 2001, the participating states recognized that
the excessive accumulation and uncontrolled spread of small arms in many
regions of the world…pose a serious
threat to …safety, security, stability and
sustainable development at the individual, local, national, regional and international levels.17
Except in the case of weapons of mass
destruction, there are relatively few binding
international restrictions on the right of states
to transfer arms. Perhaps the most important
of those that exist at the global level are the
embargoes imposed by the UN Security
Council on particular groups or states, which
are binding on all member states. However,
although the UN Programme of Action to
Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit
Trade In Small Arms and Light Weapons In all
140
Its Aspects contains a series of commitments
at the national, regional and global levels, the
programme in not legally binding.
The 2000 UN Conference proposed several solutions to the problem posed by small
arms and light weapons. Among them are:
• the need for international assistance (both
financial and technical) to the countries
most affected;
• the marking and tracing of weapons;
• effective disarmament, demobilization and
reintegration (DDR) programmes;
• mandatory import and export controls of
small arms;
• the regulation of arms brokering through
strict legislation;
• information exchange as a means of building confidence among states;
• export criteria aimed at prohibiting arms
transfers to zones of conflict/repressive
regimes;
• the involvement of civil society (in raising
awareness of the dangers of small arms and
promoting a culture of peace);
• stockpile management and security;
• the regulation and licensing of civilian possession of small arms and weapons;
• the collection and destruction of weapons;
• the criminalization of illicit activity concerning small arms and weapons;
• co-operation among law enforcement agencies (including customs officials);
• the introduction of national legislative
measures (to control legal small arms at the
national level); and
• improved compliance with arms embargoes.18
On 7 September 1995, the UN Security
Council adopted a resolution to establish an
international commission of inquiry into the
sale and supply of arms and related material
to the former government forces in Rwanda,
in violation of the UN embargo implemented
on 17 May 1994 (UNSC Resolution 1013, of
1995). The commission has submitted an
interim report on its findings and conclu-
African Security Review 13(2) • 2004
sions, which includes recommendations on
measures to end the illegal flow of arms into
the Great Lakes region.
Notes
1. B Harff and T Robert, Ethnic conflict in world politics, Westview Press, Oxford, 2004, pp 1-19:1.
2. The Convention entered into force on 12 January
1951. For the text and list of countries that have
ratified it, see UN Treaty Series, vol. 78.
3. The majority of the victims were Tutsi.
4. Arming Rwanda: the arms trade and human rights
abuses in the Rwandan war, Human Rights Watch
Arms Project 6, January 1994.
5. G Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis: History of a
Genocide, Columbia University Press, New York,
1995, pp 148-9.
6. See Walter Dorn, Jonathan Matloff and Jennifer
Matthews, Preventing the bloodbath: could the
UN have predicted and prevented the Rwanda
genocide? Journal of Conflict Studies, 2000
html> (3 August 2004).
7. G Prunier, op cit, pp 148-9.
8. International Action Network on Small Arms
(IANSA), Rwanda anniversary is a bitter reminder of
small arms threats, (8 April
2004).
9. J Castonguay, Les Casques Bleus au Rwanda , Paris,
Editions l’Harmattan, 1998, p 68.
10. L Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder – The Rwandan
Genocide, London, Verso Publishers, 2004, p 56.
11. Ibid, pp 56-57.
12. P de Saint-Exupery, La France et le Rwanda: nouvelles revelations, Le Figaro, 31 March 1998.
13. Ibid.
14. S Phillip, Fateful crash in Africa: link to US is
denied, New York Times, 7 April 1998.
15. S Goose and F Smyth, Arming genocide in Rwanda ,
< http:// franksmyth.com/clients/FrankSmyth/
franks.nsf/0/>, (8 April 2004).
16. C McGrreal, 10 years after Rwanda genocide, New
Vision, Kampala, < http://allafrica.com/stories/200404070504.html>, (8 April 2004).
17. See Small Arms Survey 2003, p 156.
18. Ibid, pp 231-2.
19. See David Millwood, The international response
to conflict and genocide: lessons from the Rwanda
experience, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, 14
April 1996, Annex 2.
