Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
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108. The generally “pro-American” pro-RPF consensus drew some lunatic fringe left-wingers to the pro-Hutu side (see Deirdre Griswold, “Rwanda: The Class Character of the Crisis,” on the Workers World Service, www.nyxfer.blythe.org; the literature of the Lyndon LaRouche group), which paradoxically put them in the same camp as the very conservative Christian Democrats.
109. For a telling illustration of the problems of “objectivity,” see the polemics between the “pro-Kigali” NGO African Rights (Rwanda: The Insurgency in the Northwest, September 1998) and the “anti-Kigali” NGO Amnesty International (Rwanda: A Public Statement in Response to Criticisms of Amnesty International by African Rights, March 1999).
110. See Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 91–96, 323–324, as well as this book, chapter 1.
111. This was technically true because there were only field notes. Robert Gersony later told me that knowing full well that it would never be published, he had never done the work of writing out a fully developed version, keeping it only in synthetic documentary form.
112. Given the intellectual climate of the immediate postgenocide period, it is interesting that, with one or two rare exceptions, reviews of my book did not fault it for its general pro-RPF slant.
113. This interview was with the French newspaper Libération, where Stephen Smith worked.
114. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis (2nd ed., 1997), 358–372.
115. Many Tutsi and Hutu seem to expect partisanship on the part of their European friends. In 1993, when the freelance journalist Catherine Watson, long known as a supporter of the then struggling RPF, expressed her disgust at seeing them toast the murder of Burundi Hutu President Ndadaye, their bewildered answer was “But we thought you were our friend.” Interview with Catherine Watson, Kampala, March 1994.
116. “Rwanda: The Social, Political and Economic Situation in June 1997,” Writenet, October 17, 1997.
117. Rwandan Office of Information, “Gerald [sic] Prunier: A Eulogy for Genocide,” Kigali, October 23, 1997.
118. African Union, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, Addis-Ababa, July 2000.
119. Symmetrically many in the pro-Hutu camp seem to think that if only they can prove that General Kagame ordered the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s aircraft, this will exonerate them from the guilt of the genocide.
120. The Rwandese government went as far as buying full-page ads in some newspapers to denounce the organization’s “naked propaganda” in favor of Kinshasa. See East African, November 25, 2002, 34.
121. See, for example, the bizarre document by a certain Neil Tickner (“Rwandan Genocide 10th Anniversary: Correcting the Record”) posted at www.genodynamics.com on March 30, 2004, or the strange “research work” of Christian Davenport.
122. When the Paris publisher L’Harmattan published the memoirs of a Hutu survivor of the massacres in Zaire (Béatrice Umutesi, Fuir ou mourir au Zaire, 2000) it was immediately deluged by e-mails denouncing this “revisionist propaganda.” Most of the e-mails seemed to originate from people who had not read the book.
123. Osservatore Romano, May 19, 1999.
124. The article is unsigned but marked *** which is usually used for a piece authorized by the Curia.
125. See “Rwanda: Les oeillères du juge Bruguière,” Le Nouvel Observateur, February 1–7, 2007.
126. Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, L’inavouable: La France au Rwanda (Paris: les arênes, 2004).
127. Pierre Péan, Noires fureurs, Blancs menteurs: Rwanda 1990–1994 (Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2005).
128. See, for example, Nigel Eltringham, Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda (London: Pluto Press, 2004).
129. Gary Wills, “A Second Assassination,” a review of Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (New York: Little, Brown, 1997) New York Review of Books, December 18, 1997.
130. Timothy Garton Ash, “The Curse and Blessing of South Africa,” New York Review of Books, August 14, 1997.
131. Lieve Joris, L’heure des rebelles (Arles: Actes Sud, 2006).
132. There are of course perfectly bona fide NGOs and think tanks that produce excellent material on African conflicts. The distinction between pap and real food is usually the degree of knowledge of the terrain and of the ground analysis provided. For an exercised eye, the difference between formulaic and real analysis in a report can usually be made in less than three minutes.
133. The example of Equatorial Guinea (+21.3 percent of “economic” growth in 2006) is the epitome of the danger of relying blindly on unrelativized economic indicators.
134. World Bank, Africa Development Indicators, Washington, DC, 2007. The rate of continentwide per capita income change has been –0.9 percent during the 1980s, –0.3 percent during the 1990s, and +1.9 percent since 2000. An improvement, but hardly of the Asian type.
135. The most obvious perverse effect of the “war on terror” has been the sanctuarization of the Sudanese regime, which is simultaneously denounced as violating all sorts of human rights and then protected because it contributes to President George W. Bush’s crusade.
136. Given President Kagame’s entrepreneurial ambitions, this factor has been a powerfully restraining influence on Rwandese politics vis-à-vis the Congo.
137. Here again, the case of the Sudanese regime is particularly exemplary.
138. I am not saying that either country is on the point of exploding. I am simply trying, for the sake of the argument, to envision what kind of impact a prolonged violent conflict in these countries would have for the continent.
Appendix 1
1. I have in my possession a letter from Seth addressed to me from Nairobi on 4 May 1998, where he was writing: “With very limited means we carry on our fight… . I hope that you keep up with your search for funds and that you can get us some small support. I beg you not to neglect any effort because we are so hard up. It has reached such a point that we have barely enough money to send our mail.” Hardly the words of a man who has managed to salt away $54m!
2. In 1999 the Rwandese government had again refused to waive the diplomatic immunity of their employee when the Kenyan CID wanted to question him about the murder. But in the meantime the relations between Rwanda and Kenya had taken a great turn for the better and diplomatic relations interrupted in 1996 after the first attempt on Seth’s life had been resumed. Nairobi simply accepted Kigali’s refusal of the diplomatic immunity waiver and no more was heard of it.
3. He was by then in hot waters with his superiors not only because of what he knew about the Sendashonga assassination but also because his RPF brother-in-law Jean-Baptiste Cyusa had quarrelled with the Minister of Education Colonel Karemera, a RPF heavyweight. Mbayire had tried to protect his brother-in-law and had failed. Cyusa was briefly jailed but he managed to get out through personal contacts. He then fled to the United States where the RPF leadership feared that he would join the growing Tutsi opposition.
4. Fondation Hirondelle Press Release on the Court’s Decision. Arusha, 31 May 2001.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is not meant to be an exhaustive bibliography on the general crisis of the African continent, or even on Rwanda and the former Zaire. This is a bibliography on Rwanda after the genocide, on the ensuing Zaire/Congo crisis, and on the impact of these events on the rest of Africa since 1994. Items concerning countries other than Rwanda or the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been chosen for their pertinence to the conflict rather than for their relevance to other countries’ internal situations. For fuller references on Rwanda and the genocide, see the bibliography in my Rwanda Crisis (1959–1994): History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), which contains items published before May 1995. For authors (incuding myself) with extensive publications on the region, the only items included here are those not already mentioned in the previous bibliography. In addition, items on Rwanda relevant to the period prior to that date but published later have been included here.
Global and Periodical Documentation
&n
bsp; A number of sources are of global and sustained interest for information on the Great Lakes crisis and its wider reaches. The daily bulletins of the UN-sponsored Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) issued from Nairobi are a key source for ongoing developments; they are supplemented on an ad hoc basis by assorted documents of interest. These can be accessed at www.irinnews.org. Filip Reyntjens and Stefaan Marysse, both from the University of Antwerp, have published every year since 1997 a useful compendium of topical articles on the region under the title L’Afrique des Grands Lacs at L’Harmattan publishing house in Paris. Details of the most interesting articles appear in the Books and Articles section of this bibliography. During the war the Scandinavian Nordiska Afrikainstitutet in Uppsala published under the editorship of Lennart Wohlgemuth periodical collections of bibliographical data and special papers on the crisis, and the Réseau Européen Congo in Brussels published under the direction of Jules Devos detailed monthly reports of the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo that can be accessed at www.perso.wanadoo.fr/dan.cdm/dem/recdoc.htm. The International Documentation Network on the Great African Lakes Region based in Geneva has been issuing at regular intervals since 1996 compact discs containing thousands of relevant documents of all origins. Their website is www.grandslacs.net. Economic documentation is best obtained from the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, which, concerning the countries involved in the wider Congolese conflict, issues quarterly reports as well as a yearly report on Rwanda and Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Brazzaville-Congo, Sudan, Libya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. These can be found at www.economist.com/countries and www.economist.com/search. The Rwanda News Agency issues dispatches reflecting the Rwandese government’s position. Its website is www.ari-rna.com. There is a website on Namibia at www.Namibian.com.na and one on Sudan at www.sudan.net. The UNHCR website, www.reliefweb.int, is a source of information on refugees. In addition, there are several discussion sites on the region, such as www.altern.org/rwandanet, http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/rwanda-1, and www.altern.org/zairenet, but these are only moderately useful. Grands Lacs Confidentiel is a stridently militant anti-Kigali information bulletin irregularly posted through e-mail at glac@travel-net.com. The website of the Ugandan ADF guerrillas is www.adm-uganda-adf.com/. The quarterly Dialogue published in Brussels gives the Catholic White Fathers’ viewpoint. Traits d’Union Rwanda is a bulletin of information published by a group of Belgian NGOs. The website www.StrategicStudies.org irregularly posted documents produced by the dissident RPF member Jean-Pierre Mugabe. A variety of documents on Zaire/Congo is also available at www.marekinc.com; www.congo.co.za is a Kinshasa government site. The former Maoist and political activist Ludo Mertens created the www.ptb.be/congo website, with a strongly anti-imperialist tone. A very informative site on Congo and central Africa is www.obsac.com, which gave good coverage of the conflict and later of the transition, with a pro-Kigali slant. The website of the Banyamulenge community is http://mulenge.blogspot.com. The U.S. government’s human rights reports for the relevant countries are at www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights. Information on illegal resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo can be found (inter alia) at www.pole-institute.org/ or at www.broederlijkdelen.be/publicaties/coltan14–1.doc. Good general political analysis sites such as www.statfor.com, www.southscan.net, and www.oxan.com have had periodical briefs on the region, and the Stanford University site www.-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/Africa/guide.html has many useful links on Congo and the Great Lakes. The MONUC website is www.monuc.org. A discussion forum in English on the Democratic Republic of Congo is available at www.congokin.com. The Bakongo community website is www.ne-kongo.net. a number of Congolese newspapers have websites; see, for example, www.lesoftonline.net, www.groupelavenir.net, www.lepotentiel.com, and www.eveil.info. An online news site on politics, the economy, and social affairs in the Congo is at http://perso.club-internet.fr/tumba/lettre-ouverte.html. The website of the UDPS is www.udps.org; www.congorcd.org is the website of the RCD political party. A (somewhat unreliable) website for some of the Mayi Mayi groups is www.congo-mai-mai.net. Both www.nkolo-mboka.com and www.robertyanda.populus.ch offer political documents and analyses on the Congo. The website of the International Rescue Committee, with figures on the human losses of the war, is www.theirc.org. In addition, many of the NGO reports listed in the relevant section of this bibliography can be found on their websites, which are indicated after the first mention of their name. London-based Africa Confidential and Paris-based indigo Group Publications (La lettre de l’Ocean Indien, La Lettre du Continent, Africa Mining Intelligence, La Lettre Afrique Energies) offer weekly or bimonthly coverage of the political and business situation. They have paying commercial websites.
Films and Albums of Photographs
Valentina’s Story. London, BBC TV, 1997. 30 minutes.
Zaïre: le fleuve de sang. Paris, 1997. 120 minutes.
La tragédie des Grands Lacs. Paris, Capa/Arte TV, 2001. 140 minutes.
Aghion, A., dir. Au Rwanda, on dit . . . Paris, Arte TV, 2006. 52 minutes.
Bellefroid, B., dir. Rwanda, les collines parlent. Paris. 52 minutes.
Burdot, E., and E. Van Hove, dirs. L’incontournable Mr Forrest. Paris, Thema TV. 30 minutes.
Caton-Jones, M., dir. Shooting Dogs. London, 2006. 114 minutes (fiction).
Chappell, P., and G. Lanning, dirs. The Bank, the President and the Pearl. London, BBC-TV, 1998. 90 minutes (on Uganda and the World Bank).
Cowan, P. M., dir. Le prix de la paix. Paris, Arte TV. 90 minutes (on the UN operations in Ituri).
Fleury, J. P., dir. Rwanda, génocide, justice? Paris, Médecins du Monde video, 1995. 16 minutes.
Freedman, P., dir. Rwanda: Do Scars Ever Fade? 2004. 70 minutes.
Genoud, R., dir. La France au Rwanda, une neutralité coupable Paris. 52 minutes.
George, T., dir. Hotel Rwanda. Hollywood, United Artists, 2004. 122 minutes (fictionalized account).
Glucksman, R., D. Hazan, P. and Mezerette, dirs. Tuez les tous: Histoire d’un “genocide sans importance.” Paris, France 3 TV, 2004.
Heinz, W., dir. Chaos au pays du coltan. Paris, Thema TV. 52 minutes.
Jewsiewicki, B., and B. Plaksteiner, eds. An/Sichten: Malerei aus dem Kongo (1990–2000). Vienna: Springer Verlag, 2001. (Based on the February–July 2001 exhibition in Vienna’s Museum für Völkerkunde, this is a collection of two hundred remarkable popular Congolese paintings, highly relevant to life in the DRC during its last tormented years.)
Jihan el-Tahri and P. Chappell, dirs. L’Afrique en morceaux. Paris, Capa Productions, 2000. 100 minutes.
Kiley, S., dir. Congo’s Killing Fields. London, Channel 4 TV, 2003. 90 minutes.
Klotz, J. C., dir. Kigali, des images contre un massacre. Paris, ADR/Capa/Arte. 94 minutes.
Laffont, F., dir. Rwanda: Maudits soient les yeux fermés. Paris, Arte TV, 1995. 80 minutes.
Lainé, A., dir. Rwanda, un cri d’un silence inouï. Paris, France 5 TV, 2006. 55 minutes.
Meurice, J. M., dir. Elf, une Afrique sous influence. Paris, Arte TV, 2000. 100 minutes.
Michel, T., dir. Zaire, le cycle du serpent. Brussels, 1996. 80 minutes.
———. Mobutu, roi du Zaire. Brussels, 1999. 125 minutes. (An interesting review of this film is by Victoria Brittain, “King Congo,” The Guardian, June 11, 1999.)
———. Congo River, au-delà des ténèbres. 2006. 116 minutes.
———. Congo River, au-delà des ténèbres. Brussels: la renaissance du livre, 2006 (an album of photographs accompanying the film, with text by Lye Mudaba Yoka and Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem).
Nachtwey, J. “The Hidden Toll of the World’s Deadliest War.” Time, June 5, 2006 (photographs with accompanying text by S. Robinson and V. Walt).
Peress, G. Le silence. Zürich: Scalo Verlag, 1995 (a collection of powerful black-and-white pictures on the Rwandese genocide).
Puech, R., and Ch. Bernard, dirs. Guerre et paix selon l’ONU. Paris, Capa,
2006. 60 minutes (on UN operations in Ituri).
Smith, S. Le fleuve Congo. Paris: Actes Sud, 2003 (photographs by P. Robert).
Tasma, A., dir. Opération Turquoise. Paris, 2007. 52 minutes.
Van der Wee, A., dir. Rwanda: The Dead Are Alive. Toronto: Wild Heart Productions, 1998.
Literary Works Based on the Rwandese Genocide and the Congo Wars
Abdourahman Waberi. Moissons de crânes: Textes pour le Rwanda. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2000.
Courtemanche, G. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2003.
Hatzfeld, J. La stratégie des antilopes. Paris: Le Seuil, 2007.
Joris, L. La danse du léopard. Arles: Actes Sud, 2002.