A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  The “G-Word”

  The putrid smell in Kigali told Dallaire all he needed to know about the scale of the murders. Once he had made the mental leap from viewing the violence as war to viewing it as crimes against humanity, he had begun to employ the phrase “ethnic cleansing” to describe the ethnically motivated killing, a phrase he was familiar with from having presided over the dispatch of Canadian troops to the former Yugoslavia.51 He recalls his thought process:

  I was self-conscious about saying the killings were “genocidal” because, to us in the West, “genocide” was the equivalent of the Holocaust or the killing fields of Cambodia. I mean millions of people. “Ethnic cleansing” seemed to involve hundreds of thousands of people. “Genocide” was the highest scale of crimes against humanity imaginable. It was so far up there, so far off the charts, that it was not easy to recognize that we could be in such a situation. I also knew that if I used the term too early, I’d have been accused of crying wolf and I’d have lost my credibility.

  Two weeks into the killing, Dallaire telephoned Philippe Gaillard, who ran the International Committee for the Red Cross mission in Rwanda, and asked him for a book on international law. Dallaire leafed through the Geneva conventions and the genocide convention and looked up the relevant definitions. “I realized that genocide was when an attempt was made to eliminate a specific group,” Dallaire says, “and this is precisely what we saw in the field. . . . I just needed a slap in the face to say, ‘Holy shit! This is genocide, not just ethnic cleansing.’”

  Dallaire included the term for the first time in his situation report during the last week in April. Reuters quoted him on April 30 warning, “Unless the international community acts, it may find it is unable to defend itself against accusations of doing nothing to stop genocide.”52 And he began using the term confidently in May. Even after he had adopted the label however, he left the semantic battles to others. “I didn’t get bogged down in the debate over the genocide terminology,” he remembers. “We had enough proof that it was genocide, and for those who didn’t agree, we had crimes against humanity on a massive scale. What more did we need to know what we had to do?”

  Even after the reality of genocide in Rwanda had become irrefutable, when bodies were shown choking the Kagera River on America’s nightly news, the brute fact of the slaughter failed to influence U.S. policy except in a negative way. As they had done in Bosnia, American officials again shunned the g-word. They were afraid that using it would have obliged the United States to act under the terms of the 1948 genocide convention. They also believed, rightly, that it would harm U.S. credibility to name the crime and then do nothing to stop it. A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking. Regarding issues that might be brought up at the next interagency working group, it stated, “1. Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually ‘do something.’”53

  At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?” Lieutenant Colonel Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. “We could believe that people would wonder that,” he says, “but not that they would actually voice it.” Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, “If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant.”

  The Clinton administration opposed use of the term. On April 28 Christine Shelly, the State Department spokesperson, began what would be a two-month dance to avoid the g-word, a dance that brought to mind Secretary Christopher’s concurrent semantic evasion over Bosnia. U.S. officials were afraid that the use of the stinging term would cause demands for intervention that the administration did not intend to meet. When a reporter asked her for comment on whether Rwanda was genocide, she sounded an awful lot like her boss:

  Well, as I think you know, the use of the term “genocide” has a very precise legal meaning. . . . Before we begin to use [the] term, we have to know as much as possible about the facts of the situation, particularly about the intentions of those who are committing the crimes. . . . I’m not an expert on this area, but generally speaking there—my understanding is that there are three types of elements that we look at in order to make that kind of a determination.

  Shelly suggested that the United States had to examine “the types of actions” and the “kind of brutality” under way. It had to look at who was committing the acts and against whom (i.e., “whether these are particular groups, social groups, ethnic groups, religious groups”). And it needed to assess “extremely carefully” the intent of the perpetrators and whether they were trying to eliminate a group in whole or in part. “This one,” Shelly said, “is one which we have to undertake a very careful study before we can make a final kind of determination.”

  It was clear that copies of the genocide convention had been circulating within the department, as Shelly possessed an impressive familiarity with its contents. In applying the convention’s terms, Shelly said, “Now, certainly, in those elements there are actions which have occurred which would fit.” She agreed that killings were being directed toward particular ethnic groups. The problem lay in gauging intent. Here she gave a largely indecipherable account and refused to commit herself or the U.S. government:

  The intentions, the precise intentions, and whether or not these are just directed episodically or with the intention of actually eliminating groups in whole or in part, this is a more complicated issue to address. . . . I’m not able to look at all of those criteria at this moment and say yes, no. It’s something that requires very careful study before we can make a final determination.

  When asked whether a finding of genocide would oblige the United States to stop it, Shelly again referred back to the terms of the genocide convention, saying that the law did not contain an “absolute requirement . . . to intervene directly.” Pressed again to reveal whether the United States viewed events as genocide, Shelly stalled:

  Well, I think it’s—again, I was trying to get the point across that this is—in order to actually attach the genocide label to actions which are going on, that this is a process that involves looking at several categories of actions. And as I’ve said, certain of the actions very clearly fall into some of the categories that I’ve mentioned. But whether you can wrap this all up in a way that then brings you to that conclusion, I’m simply not in a position to make that judgment now.54

  The UN Security Council was becoming bitterly divided over whether to use the word. Czech Ambassador Karel Kovanda had begun complaining that 80 percent of the council’s time was focused on whether and how to withdraw Dallaire’s peacekeepers, the other 20 percent on getting a cease-fire to end the civil war, which he compared to “wanting Hitler to reach a cease-fire with the Jews.”55 None of their energy was concentrated on the genocide. When the president of the Security Council drew up a statement that named the crime “genocide,” the United States objected. The original draft read: “The Security Council reaffirms that the systematic killing of any ethnic group, with intent to destroy it in whole or in part constitutes an act of genocide. . . . The council further points out that an important body of international law exists that deals with perpetrators of genocide.”56

  But the United States was having none of it. In a cable sent from New York to the State Department, a political adviser wrote:

  The events in Rwanda clearly seem to meet the definition of genocide in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, if the council acknowledges that, it may be forced to �
�take such action under the charter as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide” as provided for in Article VIII.57

  On American (and British) insistence, the word “genocide” was excluded from the Security Council statement. In a gesture that testified to both Lemkin’s success in imbuing the term with moral judgment and his failure to change the policymakers’ political calculus, the final statement read:

  The Security Council condemns all these breaches of international humanitarian law in Rwanda, particularly those perpetrated against the civilian population, and recalls that persons who instigate or participate in such acts are individually responsible. In this context, the Security Council recalls that the killing of members of an ethnic group with the intention of destroying such a group in whole or in part constitutes a crime punishable under international law.58

  The testy genocide debate started up in U.S. government circles the last week of April, but it was not until May 21, six weeks after the killing in Rwanda began, that Secretary Christopher gave his diplomats permission to use the term “genocide”—sort of. The UN Human Rights Commission was about to meet in special session, and the U.S. representative, Geraldine Ferraro, needed guidance on whether to join a resolution stating that genocide had occurred. The stubborn U.S. stand had become untenable internationally.

  The case for a label of genocide was the most straightforward since the Holocaust. The State Department’s assistant secretary for intelligence and research, Toby Gati, who had analyzed whether Bosnian Serb atrocities were genocide, again undertook the analysis, which she summarized in a May 18 confidential memo: Lists of Tutsi victims’ names and addresses had reportedly been prepared; Rwandan government troops and Hutu militia and youth squads were the main perpetrators; massacres were reported all over the country; humanitarian agencies were now “claiming from 200,000 to 500,000 lives” lost. Gati offered the Intelligence Bureau’s view: “We believe 500,000 may be an exaggerated estimate, but no accurate figures are available. Systematic killings began within hours of Habyarimana’s death. Most of those killed have been Tutsi civilians, including women and children.”59 The terms of the genocide convention had been met. “We can never know precise figures,” Gati says, “but our analysts had been reporting huge numbers of deaths for weeks. We were basically saying, ‘A rose by any other name. . . .’” The word-processing file containing the intelligence memo was titled “NONAMERWANDAKILLLGS.”60

  Despite this matter-of-fact assessment, Christopher remained reluctant to speak the obvious truth. When he issued his guidance, on May 24, fully a month after Human Rights Watch had identified the killings as “genocide,” Christopher’s instructions were hopelessly muddied:

  The delegation is authorized to agree to a resolution that states that “acts of genocide” have occurred in Rwanda or that “genocide has occurred in Rwanda.” Other formulations that suggest that some, but not all of the killings in Rwanda are genocide . . . e.g. “genocide is taking place in Rwanda”—are authorized. Delegation is not authorized to agree to the characterization of any specific incident as genocide or to agree to any formulation that indicates that all killings in Rwanda are genocide.61

  Notably, Christopher confined permission to acknowledge full-fledged genocide to the upcoming session of the Human Rights Commission. Outside that venue State Department officials were authorized to state publicly only that “acts of genocide” had occurred.

  © Gilles Peress/Magnum

  In July 1994, after Hutu refugees were struck by a fatal wave of cholera in Goma, Zaire, a French Army bulldozer gathered the deceased for a mass burial.

  State Department spokesperson Shelly returned to the podium on June 10, 1994. Challenged by Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner, she attempted to follow the secretary’s guidance:

  Elsner: How would you describe the events taking place in Rwanda?

  Shelly: Based on the evidence we have seen from observations on the ground, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred in Rwanda.

  Elsner: What’s the difference between “acts of genocide” and “genocide”?

  Shelly: Well, I think the—as you know, there’s a legal definition of this. . . . Clearly not all of the killings that have taken place in Rwanda are killings to which you might apply that label. . . . But as to the distinctions between the words, we’re trying to call what we have seen so far as best as we can; and based, again, on the evidence, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred.

  Elsner: How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?

  Shelly: Alan, that’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer.62

  The same day, in Istanbul, Warren Christopher, by then under severe internal and external pressure to come clean, relented: “If there is any particular magic in calling it genocide, I have no hesitancy in saying that.”63

  Response

  “Not Even a Sideshow”

  Once the Americans had been evacuated from Rwanda, the massacres there largely dropped off the radar of most senior Clinton administration officials. In the situation room on the seventh floor of the State Department, a map of Rwanda had been hurriedly pinned to the wall when Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, and eight banks of phones had rung off the hook. Now, with U.S. citizens safely home, the State Department chaired a daily interagency meeting, often by teleconference, designed to coordinate midlevel diplomatic and humanitarian responses. Cabinet-level officials focused on crises elsewhere. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who happened to know Africa, recalls, “I was obsessed with Haiti and Bosnia during that period, so Rwanda was, in journalist William Shawcross’s words, a ‘sideshow,’ but not even a sideshow—a no-show.” At the NSC the person who managed Rwanda policy was not Lake but Richard Clarke, who oversaw peacekeeping policy and for whom the news from Rwanda only confirmed a deep skepticism about the viability of UN deployments. Clarke believed that another UN failure could doom relations between Congress and the United Nations. He also sought to shield the president from congressional and public criticism. Donald Steinberg managed the Africa portfolio at the NSC and tried to look out for the dying Rwandans, but he was not an experienced infighter, and, colleagues say, he “never won a single argument” with Clarke.

  The Americans who wanted the United States to do the most were those who knew Rwanda best. Joyce Leader, Rawson’s deputy in Rwanda, had been the one to lock the doors to the U.S. embassy for the final time. When she returned to Washington, she was given a small room in a back office and told to prepare the State Department’s daily Rwanda summaries, drawing on press and U.S. intelligence reports. Incredibly, despite her expertise and her contacts in Rwanda, she was rarely consulted and was instructed not to deal directly with her sources in Kigali. Once an NSC staffer did call to ask, “Short of sending in the troops, what is to be done?” Leader’s response, unwelcome, was “Send in the troops.”

  Throughout the U.S. government, Africa specialists had the least clout of all regional specialists and the smallest chance of affecting policy outcomes. In contrast, those with the most pull in the bureaucracy had never visited Rwanda or met any Rwandans.

  The dearth of country or regional expertise in the senior circles of government not only reduces the capacity of officers to assess the “news” but also increases the likelihood—a dynamic identified by Lake in his 1971 Foreign Policy article—that killings will become abstractions. “Ethnic bloodshed” in Africa was thought to be regrettable but not particularly unusual. U.S. officials spoke analytically of “national interests” or even “humanitarian consequences” without appearing gripped by the human stakes.

  As it happened, when the crisis began President Clinton himself had a coincidental and personal connection with the country. At a coffee at the White House in December 1993 Clinton had met Monique Mujawamariya, the Rwandan human rights activist. He had been struck by the courage of a woman who still bore facial scars from an a
utomobile accident that had been arranged to curb her dissent. Clinton had singled her out, saying, “Your courage is an inspiration to all of us.”64 On April 8, two days after the onset of the killing, the Washington Post published a letter that Alison Des Forges had sent to Human Rights Watch after Mujawamariya had hung up the phone to face her fate. “I believe Monique was killed at 6:30 this morning,” Des Forges had written. “I have virtually no hope that she is still alive, but will continue to try for more information. In the meantime. . . please inform everyone who will care.”65 Word of Mujawamariya’s disappearance got the president’s attention, and he inquired about her whereabouts repeatedly. “I can’t tell you how much time we spent trying to find Monique,” one U.S. official remembers. “Sometimes it felt as though she was the only Rwandan in danger.” Miraculously, Mujawamariya had not been killed; she had hidden in the rafters of her home after hanging up with Des Forges and eventually managed to talk and bribe her way to safety. She was evacuated to Belgium, and on April 18 she joined Des Forges in the United States, where the pair began lobbying the Clinton administration on behalf of those left behind. With Mujawamariya’s rescue, reported in detail in the Post and the New York Times, the president apparently lost his personal interest in events in Rwanda.

  It is shocking to note that during the entire three months of the genocide, Clinton never assembled his top policy advisers to discuss the killings. Anthony Lake likewise never gathered the “principals”—the cabinet-level members of the foreign policy team. Rwanda was never thought to warrant its own top-level meeting. When the subject came up, it did so along with, and subordinate to, discussions of Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Whereas these crises involved U.S. personnel and stirred some public interest, Rwanda generated no sense of urgency and could safely be avoided by Clinton at no political cost.