Science professor arthur vanden houten and Flagler College history Professor John young taught a class on the the rwandan genocide and the response by the u. S. And the United Nations. The professors placed particular emphasis on the slow reaction to the crisis from the International Community and how that then shaped 21st century Foreign Policy for many countries. This is about two hours. So, i mean as a kind of overview just to refresh everyones memory here, we started with an overview of the history of it. Rwanda. Talked about how the genocide was an outgrowth of 19th and 20th century rwandan history. There were tensions between ious as his cities ethnicities, various groups. This was exacerbated by colonialism the germans and the , belgians defining people by ethnicity. And this tension was precipitated by the withdrawal of the colonial powers in the 1950s and 1960s, such that there was tension for the next 20 and 30 years erupting into violence. Becoming pretty severe starting in 1990 with the invasion of from uganda of the ruewanda Rwanda Patriotic front. This violence escalated through the early 1990s. There were reprise old reprisal killings in rwanda. That brings us to our topic of genocide and the u. S. And International Response to the genocide. Ok, so we are going to talk tonight about the kind of narrative of the genocide itself. What happened between late 1993 and the middle of 1994. Of course, the genocide itself taking place over 100 days between april 6, 1994 and midjuly, early to mid july of 1994. We do this through a number of books that our students have been exposed to. Maybe we should talk about them. We have samantha power, a problem from hell, which is an overview of the u. S. Response to genocide beginning with armenia and the nazi genocide. Chapters on cambodia, rewind up. We have also read for tonight,. Omeo dallaire his account in the peacekeeping force in the United Nations force in rwanda. For rwanda, excuse me. , a canadian general, never saw combat from before this time. Accepted this command in late 1993. Found himself in a maelstrom of Epic Proportions in 1994 and a unique witness to this whole thing. We have studied dallaire. We have read power. We have read a number of primary witnessesictims and and perpetrators of the genocide. Thats where were left tonight. Weve also encountered on on an aesthetic level through film and other things. I think this leaves us very well prepared to talk about from an intellectual and emotional standpoint, the u. S. Response and the International Response to this whole thing. One thing i would just add to that is obviously during the course of the semester weve confronted you with quite a few different texts, ideas, themes, issues and challenges. Obviously some of them have been quite difficult and quite wrenching, but really, i think, weve seen the course progressing to the time where we would spend, you know, two solid weeks on the rwandan genocide because of its implications for policy in the 21st century because so many of the issues weve confronted through the semester crystallize here. Theres obviously no sense in weighing one genocide as more significant than the other. But the growing role of the United States as a world power, and the way the genocide in rwanda unfolds have put us in a position where many of the issues weve grappled with during the semester are really in front of us at this point. It seemed appropriate to synthesize some of these ideas. In a way, the rwanda genocide is the climax of this course. This is the most obvious case of genocide since the nazi holocaust. Its an obvious case. It fits the definition. People were singled out, targeted. There was an attempted extermination. If they had not been successful in their military endeavors to retake the country in 1994, this might have led ultimately to full extermination. In a way its the most complete of all of the genocides. The pace of genocide is frighten ing. That in 100 days, 800,000 is kind of the official toll or the toll that is accepted. Maybe more than a million. Its uncertain exactly how many people were killed, but a frightening number of people were killed. This genocide also produces some serious emotional resonance, as weve seen also already. In this course already. In confronting this weve all , felt the emotions of this topic. I think rwanda brings a lot of this to the fore, particularly the emotional frustration as we encounter the u. S. And the International Response to all of this. We stood helplessly by. And let this happen. As yoution here at wer, howd dallaire, po have you experienced this frustration . What has been your experience as students with this . Tiffany. Anger. Ok. I marked it down every time he says we could have done this but we didnt do this. Every time he mentioned i tried to get this through. I told them this was going to happen, and nobody reacted. Or the reaction was were not going to worry about it. We wont have the resources. We cant let you do that. We wont let you do this. Its so frustrating. And angering to read that. They had so many opportunities, one after another, to intervene, and they never did. Okay. Other responses. Yeah, eddie. Half measures like they didnt make true on their promises. Especially the International Community. I think it was midmay when he called for reinforcements around 5000 men. The u. N. Agreed on it, but none of the countries sent men. They all argued who should sent the men. Send the men. When it came down to just logistics. It wasnt even about the lives, it was the logistics. The money and resources they koe could allocate to the problem. Eventually led to them not really responding at all. I think thats an excellent point. Were talking about resources that given the collective resources that could be martialed by the United States, by france, by really any european country that might have had a stake in this. Of course belgium sent some people, but what was actually sent, what was actually provided was a pittance. And that is exaggerating it, really. They sent damaged vehicles that showed up not in working order with manuals in the wrong languages, without parts needed to repair the vehicles needed to be repaired. Of course, the number of people sent was paltry compared to what could have been sent and what really should have been sent, probably. David . For me the most difficult aspect of everything. As you mentioned there were so many logistical and technical problem thats werent addressed by anyone at all until they were notified until they realized there was a problem. The most difficult thing for me was the empty leadership that came from the supposed leaders. They seemed to only be basing their intervention on the symbol of international intervention. But there is no practically applied leadership to those promises. And ultimately when you have that it cant be just words. You cannot base anything on symbolism. The symbols mean nothing when it comes to the ground. How did they seem to call out for this weight or heft or force behind the rhetoric . It was the john not john, but the cameroonian . The u. N. Political attache, the one who was really in charge of the entire mission. Special representative. Contacts inires new york. Their response was always whenever he would give them a report from the field and typically with Political Leadership is you want to trust the people in the field giving feedback because they are the ones that are actually in the physical situation but they didnt regard anything he had to say. Their response was no, youre straying from the bounds of your mission. I think ultimately that was to me, it was the most concerning. It is so striking in dellaire how frequently people hes appealing to seem to be playing defense. They seem to be looking for ways to actively avoid what hes calling for or what seems to be compelling based on the circumstances. Yeah, go on. Often this is out of selfinterest. One has to of course analyze motives and take a lot of things into account here but it seems that at times people who should be perhaps, and hindsight is 20 20, we can look it back at this and say, people should have acted differently, but the blatant self interest that comes across so many times, the careerism that seems to be happening so often is particularly concerning. Elizabeth . Yes, how out of touch everyone seems to be and dallaire even acknowledges that in the beginning when he talks about the peacekeeping manual is written for a post world war ii world, not a postcold war world. I think that it is reinforced when you see the inaction but completely out of touch with whats going on on the ground. We saw that in bosnia. We see that here. Even in cambodia, there was the disbelief because thats was not what the modern world was supposed to be. Right. So what they do david raised this point and you raised it again. They do this kind of symbolic show of aid, right . Never is this more striking than, i think, Madeleine Albrights statement after the pullout where they reduce the size of u. N. Troops on the ground somewhere from 4,000 to somewhere around 270 people in the country of rwanda which is the size of maryland with a population of 10 Million People or Something Like that. 270 peacekeepers. And she says, and this is a quote they are to have a small skeletal operation to show the will of the International Community. Were not going to tolerate the killing of innocent civilians, so we are going to leave people in the country to show that we have a will, right . It comes across as completely empty rhetoric. Andrew. Speaking on leadership, what really bugged me was the fact that they always said that even any real force would take time like with the bombing. We had to find the plane and then we had to find the clearance, but when france decided to send in operation turquoise, they were there like that, you know . So that was very frustrating, to show that they had the capability and there was this bureaucratic paper work to go through. Or even more frustrating, once the United States decided to get involved to aid the refugee crisis, which was mostly hutus, 1. 7 million hutus fleeing into neighboring, what aire, whatesire z is now the democratic republic of congo. At that point, you know, all sorts of aid was martialed. I guess this was a bandaid on an open wound of the aorta. Were going to do something at this point, but in dallaires words, what is the title of that last chapter . Too much too late. Too much and far too late. It really rings very hollow. One of the most interesting things out of dallaires book, the hindering fact, the fact that you only had a very small number of leaders. Dallaire was the force commander. He had no political until later, the very useless leader who came in. Before that the political commander got sick and he did not come in. There was no replacement for him. You had this very unexperienced general, who not only had to work with the political aspect of the country, but who was also supposed to do this preparedness and security grunt work, but at the same time, one of the quotes was what page are you on . 106. Of power or dallaire . Dallaire. This writing i think goes with the conversation were having where he says, i also thought that planting the flag would serve the same symbolic purpose was my flag rising. He says we were still having endless administration and resource problems. Later he says the colonel radioed back to say they did not have paper or pencils to write with. Requests for more had been denied for budgetary reasons. He says it is maddening i was forced to fight a petty internal war over office supplies. He talks about they did not have kitchens, food. They had to struggle with lodging for the soldiers. It was a struggle to get soldiers in the first place. The fact that they get there and they do not have the resources they need to maintain a decent living style. These are some of the most basic failures. Except for the belgians, of course. Why were the belgians quarters . Ce how did they get nice quarters and end up in the situation that they were in . It was written in their contract. Yes. Their contact with the United Nations that they had to be housed in brick and mortar buildings. They were not to be in tents. This was not for the comfort or anything like that of the soldiers. It was to put on a good show in front of africans who were inferior peoples in their eyes. It was a blatant relic of colonialism. The belgians were the colonialists and that hadnt disappeared in the 1990s even though they had been gone for 35 years. Tiffany. I think what was really frustrating about this is the denying of resources. All they had to do is sign off on them. When it comes down to where dallaire is going to be housed he wants him to be in this nice almost, because he is the force commander and has to keep up appearances. Its ridiculous that hes willing to spend those resources to keep up appearances but not on the resources that they need to be effective in rwanda. Yeah, yeah. Matt . When we are talking about when we are talking about belgium. I struggled on how they wanted to partake with the u. N. Just to rhonda with the because they set up the Political Landscape that allow this genocide to occur. Ir doing that the hutus and the tutsis had their identification guards and they laughed and said, basically, fend for yourself. And now they have decided they want to come back. As im reading the book they want to have their own houses spread throughout the town which is a logistical nightmare. Wouldnt you rather have all of your soldiers in one place defending each other . I do not understand what they were doing back in rwanda. They didnt seem like they had a moral reason to be here. They just wanted to come and cause a ruckus. It did not help really. I think it is also striking, coordinating the Different National groups within the force, the belgians with respect to their attitude toward the locals, the sense of superiority they had and if not a blank check, a broad writ to resort to violence. And they effectively complicated beyond measure his ability to sort of negotiate in this delicate moment and again, right, the legacy of all of this just weighs so heavily on the circumstances. Matt raises a very important point here. The legacy that the belgians have makes this very puzzling. The belgians were the ones that instituted the system of identity cards. Which shockingly, once the belgians left and rwanda became an independent, they kept in place. Rwandans had to register as hutu or tutsi or troi, although that was a really small group. Segment of the population. This identification card the people had to carry was really a signal for persecution. The hutu government placed quotas on certain professions, teachers, government ministers, physicians and people in other professions could not be only a certain percentage of them could be tutsi. They kept in place this relic, but at the same time, when people find out the belgians are coming in, they are concerned because this is the entrance of their old oppressor. There are strange motivations going on all over the place. Right . David, do you want to respond to that . Dallaire talks about that. How concerned he is they would how the belgians soldiers would react inside the country. What i was going to say is i think its important to note that the u. N. When we say this was a u. N. Kind of mission, that almost sounds like the whole weight of u. N. Member states was behind it, but thats obviously not the case. He writes here when he sent there are more obstructionists than there are those into it. Yeah. When he sends it in, he says most countries did not comment, did not have positives or negatives. Any kind of comment to review. They probably didnt even read it, except, the countries he points out is belgium, canada had concerns about using their own troops. It was almost as if the u. N. Were just kind of seeing you could almost imagine them saying, ok, were going to rwanda and that is going to happen, whoever is in charge of that, they can handle it, that is not my duty. But it has the u. N. Name on it. A total failure and void of leadership. Elizabeth, sorry. We passed over you. That actually brought me to another question. How convinced are dallaire and power and the effect of the global complacency and the frenchs idea to remove the upper echelons of the government . I thought that was really interesting. Come in with operation turquoise. The local communities were so complacent. They saw this as a green flag. We can go in. We have this contract. We need to appear superior. I just thought it was really disturbing how the colonial legacy has maintained in africa through global complacency that has been there for generations, years, hundreds of years, and how its not looked at as such in a modern era because we see ourselves as a modern people. And so, these legacies of colonialism and slavery and all of that are persisting in the modern time, and how reluctant we are to face that. But this is the fault of the politics. To the colonial era, to even the earliest stages. Right, the french are getting their old friends out. The french are constantly supplying the rgf and supplying supplying the hutu government in the first place. They are getting supplies in. They are getting weapons in. This is part of the story that, i think, is not wellknown. The french are quite complicit in this. Absolutely. Thats created tension between rwanda and france since. As they move toward english as the official language and move away from the francophone dialects entirely. Its interesting. In the context of french politics at the time the decision to intervene takes off. You know, theres a couple of key events. One is when Nelson Mandela shortly after being elected as president of south africa begins to urge that there needs to be action and intervention. We know that internal french government sources are anxious at that point that the that part the anglophone heart of the african continent will now demonstrate leadership and they see it as they need to step in and intervene. But also domestic french politics plays a role. In the french system you have a president and Prime Minister. You can have situations where you have divided government. At this moment, you have a divided government. You have the socialist president. You have the neogaullist parties with t