There was already quite a bit known about France’s role in helping many of the genocidaires escape to Zäire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during Opération Turquoise, which was ostensibly branded as a humanitarian intervention. Others writers and researchers of the genocide, such as Linda Malvern, have written about the extremely close ties between the government of Juvénal Habyarimana and France—bonds that became significantly stronger after the 1990 invasion of Rwanda by the RPF. After an urgent appeal from Habyarimana, France helped to train a then-shoddy Rwandan army which grew rapidly in size from 5,000 to 28,000 soldiers.

From 1990-1992, the Habyarimana regime purchased $6 million worth of military equipment from France. During the genocide, $13 million passed through the Banque Nationale de Paris to rearm the militias and the army. Human Rights Watch reported that five shipments of French arms came into Rwanda through Goma, Zäire, in May and June 1994. France had a significant number of advisors embedded within Rwandan military units. Even after French soldiers withdrew from Rwanda in 1993 as a result of the Arusha Accords, 40-70 French personnel remained in Rwanda to continue to “advise” the Rwandan military.

Adding to and deepening the case of French complicity was the Mucyo Commission’s evidence accusing those French military personnel, among other things, of actually carrying out killings, raping women, and providing logistical support to the militias, especially the Interahamwe, who organized the killings of Tutsis during the genocide.

The Commission’s details are astounding. While the Commission admitted that a great deal of this “direct complicity” evidence was based on fading memories and fuzzy recollections of eyewitnesses, much of it was dismissed, but there was enough of a pattern of recollection from certain parts of the country (especially from Kigali and the Zone Turquoise) to compel the Commission to make the charge of direct complicity.

˜™***

Around the same time that the Mucyo Commission’s report was made public, I was studying the findings of the case that Bosnia had brought against Serbia in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Serbia of complicity in the genocide that occurred in Srebrenica in July of 1995. The ICJ ruled that while Serbia was guilty of a “failure to prevent and punish” under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention, Serbia was not found guilty of complicity in the genocide itself, because there was not enough evidence of what they called “effective control” of Serbian officials over the activities of Bosnian militias that carried out the massacres.

The rule of precedent—stare decisis—is not a viable doctrine under international law. Cases are heard and decided on their merits alone. Nevertheless, using the standards that the ICJ applied in Bosnia v. Serbia, in which it applied an extremely narrow interpretation of “effective control,” the Muyco Commission’s report certainly contained much stronger evidence of “effective control” than Bosnia had against Serbia. This is especially true when one considers the mountains of evidence that clearly reveal how France helped to finance, train, and arm the Rwandan military and the Interahamwe. Thus, my initial research plan here was to interview Rwandan officials, including those on the Commission, about whether they planned to use these findings to mount a case against France for complicity under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

My thinking about this seemed pretty straight-forward: the fact-finding for the report was fairly extensive. The findings were compelling. The charges were clear. The report even went so far as to call for the indictment and trial of the thirty-some French officials and military officers named in the report. Clearly the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) process was out of the question, since the ICTR process was already beginning to wind down, and its mandate did not include non-Rwandan nationals. It seemed to me that the purpose of the Commission’s report and findings were to provide evidence for a case similar to Bosnia v. Serbia. Why else do it?

The truth is, there were already some signs suggesting that the there were purely political motivations, rather than legal ones, underscoring the Commission’s establishment. It may have been in direct response to a French judge’s ruling in 2006, calling for the arrest of Paul Kagame for shooting down Habyarimana’s plane on April 6, 2004 (the downing of the plane was the spark that ignited the genocide), after which Rwanda severed diplomatic ties with France.

Then, last month, there was a new twist. Rwanda and France agreed to restore diplomatic ties. Apparently talks toward this end have been underway since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France. This was a big surprise to me. The anti-French sentiment here in Rwanda is palpable. There was the tit-for-tat over the Habyarimana question and the complicity question. Rwanda has clearly shifted its regional alignment away from francophone Central Africa and towards anglophone East Africa. The Rwandan government recently decided to eliminate French and adopt English in the public school curriculum. Then there is Rwanda’s successful bid to join the British Commonwealth—one of only two countries in the Commonwealth that are not former British colonies (incidentally, the announcement of Rwanda’s admission to the Commonwealth was made the same day as the French-Rwandan diplomatic rapprochement).

While the details of what Kigali and Paris agreed to in their negotiations for the resumption of diplomatic ties are unclear, one thing is probably most certain: that Rwanda agreed not to pursue the complicity question any further. One thing Kigali got in return, clearly, was a promise from France to be more aggressive in pursuing cases against Rwandan officials and others associated with the Habyarimana regime who have been living comfortably in France after fleeing there in 1994—especially Habyarimana’s widow, Agathe, who was “evacuated” out of Rwanda courtesy of the French army.

˜™***

I mentioned earlier that I had intended to research the motivations of the Rwandan government in establishing the Mucyo Commission, thinking that the primary motivation might be along the lines of the Bosnia v. Serbia case at the ICJ—even if that move was motivated by the French “indictment” of Kagame for the assassination of Habyarimana. But even before I arrived, the lack of any “noise” following the Muyco Commission Report in the media (even the government “sponsored” media here in Rwanda) made me consider other motivations for the Commission’s work. It is my strong sense that this government is “done” with the genocide. The ICTR process is set to wind down. It is no longer hearing new cases, and is slated to wind up hearing and deciding on appeals in 2010. The gaçaça process of locally adjudicating third-class offenses during the genocide is slated to wind up in February.

It might be the case that when the government decided to establish the Mucyo Commission in 2006, it was considering mounting an international legal case. Had it done so, given the findings in Bosnia v. Serbia, the ICJ might very well have made a finding of complicity (this assumes, of course, that France would have submitted to the jurisdiction of the court). But it seems that in the intervening years since 2006, the Rwandan government appears to be signaling to the international community that it is time to move on. In their view, there are too many good things happening here, and to continue to drag on with the genocide, and the years it might take to finally settle these matters of justice, might be counter-productive. The Mucyo findings represent a kind of repository of blame. The government can say it did its work, it made its finding, but there are more important matters that need to be pursued. It is time to begin looking forward and not backward.

I have to admit that while this makes sense, as an advocate of international law, I am disappointed. Clearly the government of France was complicit in the genocide—even if it was not responsible for carrying out killings. The French government needs to answer for what it did here. France is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It has a special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Maybe, for political and diplomatic reasons, an ICJ case is not the best place for that kind of justice to be achieved. But genocide is among the gravest of crimes under international law. Justice demands that France assume its responsibility.

Rwanda is the “poster child” of sub-Saharan African development. It is making some measureable progress on meeting the Millennium Development Goals. It’s a magnet for post-conflict resolution and reconciliation projects. Its Millennium Village has been wildly successful at challenging development stovepiping. Businesses are flocking here. The Global Fund and PEPFAR have large operations here. As far as personal safety goes, Rwanda stands head and shoulders above the rest of the continent. There is no tolerance for government corruption. And for the environmentalists: non-biodegradable plastic bags have been outlawed. Rwanda is, in the words of the Weberian, “efficient,” “tops” on all the lists. He is extremely proud of these facts—not just as a Weberian, but as a Rwandan patriot (thus the Hegelian civil servant frame seems more apt).

As it is now, Rwanda was considered to be an exemplar of development on the eve of the 1994 genocide as well. The difference now is that the state is much more involved in what donors are up to in the country. Rwanda’s “Vision 2020,” the master development planning document, is the first thing that international donors are handed when they propose doing work here. If they cannot demonstrate how they can assist Rwanda in meeting those goals, with government input and oversight along the way, donors are politely (I am sure) shown the door. That’s how the Weberian put it, without mincing any words.

In my courses where development is featured (like my HIV/AIDS course), we spend a lot of time discussing the problems of donor-driven development agendas. Rwanda seems to have rejected that model. The development people we’ve met with do not like this. There is a considerable tension: after all, they are the “experts,” and feel thwarted when the government rejects their suggestions (for anything I suppose) that do not fit into their own goals. It’s not entirely clear how the government crafts those goals; from whom they get their input into what the people “need,” but that’s how it seems to work.

How is one to assess this state of affairs?

In most instances, the problem with development assistance is accountability and corruption. That’s why there has been so much of an emphasis placed on delivering services through civil society rather than the state. But the development experts here readily admit that corruption in Rwanda carries a very heavy price: ouster (and maybe worse). So what’s the problem?

This is a very complicated question. And there’s a paradox at work. Since the 1990s, the aid and development industry has been trying desperately to bypass the state at all costs, given the corruption problem. Yet this same industry confronts a dilemma when it readily admits that this government in particular is free of corruption. So they come up with a different complaint: that the Rwandan government is non-democratic and authoritarian (which in many respects it is). They tell me, for example, that MPs are pressured by the government to meet the country’s master plan for development or they will lose the government’s support, and most certainly the next election (since there is no effective opposition party in Rwanda). So that’s one problem.

The second, they say, is that this plan-driven government is stubborn as hell about letting aid implementation agencies do their work unencumbered. One possible reason for this is obvious: aid agencies were invited in by the Habyarimana regime in the 1980s and 1990s, and thrived here—unencumbered (Peter Uvin has written about this, in his book, Aiding Violence). And all but a few human rights groups failed to notice the genocide that was being planned and even rehearsed right under their noses). It’s no wonder the Rwandan government doesn’t trust aid organizations.

What’s the truth in all of this? Clearly I have not been here long enough to really know. But I have some intuitions. This government is quite secretive and (as we heard from NGO people) not tolerant of dissent. But at the same time this is not the same brand of dictatorial authoritarianism as was the Habyarimana regime. The genocide was the “solution” to the “problem” of sharing political power. France in particular did not want to lose its influence here, and was clearly complicit in the regime’s planning for the genocide to come. But the Habyarimana regime was also notoriously corrupt. And everyone knew that. But that did not seem to bother aid agencies and donors who were “free” to do as they please here, so long as it was “technical” in nature and did not interfere in the regime itself.

The problem here, I think, is what constitutes “development,” especially in the Rwandan context. This government is obsessed with planning and Weberian efficiency. But they are also fervent patriots who believe they are serving the common good, as they see it. That good includes raising standards of living for the sake of the livelihoods, health, and welfare of the Rwandan people. What is remarkably absent is the typical situation where non-accountable bureaucrats and politicians seek power in order to feed liberally at the public trough—and invite their friends to the feast.

Which leaves me to my last point. Rwanda is a “republic,” but not a “democratic republic.” In the former—at least in the Aristotelian sense—the state is run by “the best” in the service of the common good of all. The “best” here means those who serve out of a duty to the common good and not to their own good. But classical republics have authoritarian tendencies. That fact finds discomfort to our democratic-republican sensibilities, but it is well worth our time to carefully consider the intricacies of “development” as we ponder the future of Rwanda.

I recall that one of the students who was with us in 2007 was appalled at this, what she called “genocide tourism.” I am not sure if she was upset at the idea, or of being “forced” to go through these memorials (the one in Kigali and the even more raw and powerful memorial at the Nyamata church in Bugesera) because she was part of our group. On the one hand I can understand her sentiment. It’s not easy to reconcile the idea of visiting these types of museums and memorials as something “to do” while on vacation. One feels a sense of this when leaving the space. You’ve just toured an exhibit that chronicles, in vivid detail, the planning and swift implementation of a genocide of a million people in 100 days. How do you talk about it after leaving? It’s not like seeing Caravaggio at the Chicago Art Museum. Yet the act of touring the exhibit is the same. As in 2007, I left the museum with a profound sense of discomfort.

But I think that is the idea. For the rest of the world, what happened here in the years leading up to 1994 and during those 100 days, the genocide is something to be studied and understood from a safe distance; words on a page; an archival document; a typed testimony; the subject of a lecture. And much of the exhibit here in Kigali is similar to that, with the addition of photographs and some video testimonies of survivors, for example.

Toward the end of the exhibit, one moves from facts and abstractions–the colonial history; the documents; the planning of the genocide; the hate propaganda; the political factors–to realities. One dimly lit room is unadorned and features several glass cases with neatly arranged rows of skulls and piles of bones. The skulls reveal how gunshots, machetes and clubs ended lives. Another case contains these implements. Inside many of the cases are other artifacts, also neatly arranged in the center: identity cards (which the militias used to identity their victims); wallets emptied of cash; photographs; a crucifix.

I have been thinking about these displays, in particular the rows of skulls neatly lined up. I have been wondering why this arrangement is done (here and at other memorial sites). It seems at first cold and clinical–like walking into a room full of anthropological specimens. Perhaps it is simply respectful to have these displays so tidy–each one with its small bit of space in the case. Maybe its meant to convey a sense of equality, although if one takes the time to look closely, one realizes how very different each person was just by looking at the unique features of each. Perhaps its meant to convey a sense of both uniqueness and sameness. I’m not sure. But going into that room, as difficult as that was, made me think about all I had already seen and brought the point home in the strongest possible terms: perversions of economic and political power led to this result and looked the other way as it was happening.

As a scholar of politics, of course I am interested in the political events and circumstances that led to the genocide, and the consequences that are shaping the future of Rwanda and the world right now. But the value of this memorial, this museum, is far more profound than anything one can read about in a book. I’m just not sure how the two really intersect, except perhaps solely within the mind and heart of the person who studies and experiences the genocide in this way.

And so these places are important, especially perhaps because they leave the visitor–even one like me who thinks he “knows” about the genocide–speechlessness when he leaves.

I just re-read the posts I made the first time I was here and realized that in my second post, I mentioned that I would ruminate on a number of topics that interested me during that visit. Of course, I never completed those. Hopefully this time I will be able to do some of those, and perhaps some new ones, from a fresh perspective and point of view.

Even though we’ve only been in-country for less than a day, it feels very familiar and comfortable to be back here. One of my students, Amanda, was with me on the last trip. Both she and I have grown quite a bit in the past two years, so it will be interesting to see how our knowledge and insights into this place have evolved over time. For the other two students–Ashley and Rob–this is their first time in Africa, and so it will be fun to watch their sense of discovery unfold.

We are all interested in Rwanda’s supposedly “post-ethnic” environment and the development projects that are framed in that context. The project that I was interested in pursuing has become moot–or rather, I now have an answer to my initial research question. I was interested in whether the Rwandan government might seek to mount a case in the International Court of Justice over their “finding” in the Mucyo Commission Report about France’s complicity in the genocide. The answer now seems to be most certainly, “no,” since it appears there has been a diplomatic rapprochement between Kigali and Paris in recent months. This seems to suggest that my initial intuition about the Mucyo findings was simply to put the question of complicity to rest (by finding that, despite France’s rejection of the accusation, it was indeed true) while at the same time saying to the Rwandan people, “we’re finished with this question. It’s time to move on.” Even though I believed Rwanda had a much better case of complicity against France than Bosnia did against Serbia, it appears that was not what motivated the constitution of the Mucyo Commission in the first place.

Still, my own interest aside, my reason for being here is really to help out my students in their own research. Amanda is writing a senior thesis on health financing in the areas of HIV, TB and malaria. Ashley’s project (again, a senior thesis) is exploring the claim of many microcredit programs that they “empower women,” without offering a great deal of empirical evidence (or not really defining what they mean by “empowerment.”) Rob in interested in the effects of Rwanda’s efforts at land reform–a vital component to Rwanda’s post-conflict development plans.

So, here we are, ready to get started…

The first point I would like to make, briefly, is that although Proposition 8 and Act 1 were enacted by voters in states as disparate as California and Arkansas, and deal with separate issues, they are deeply interconnected. I will return to this below.

The trouble in both California and Arkansas is that the will of the majority has trumped respect for basic human rights. But shouldn’t the interest of the many outweigh the interests of the few? In some cases, yes. But we do not live in a democracy—we live in a liberal democracy. As any of my students will tell you, the adjective “liberal” does the heavy lifting in the concept of “liberal democracy.” When the will of majorities and the basic rights of individuals conflict, fundamental rights of minorities trump the majoritiarian will. While very few rights are absolute, the reasonable limitations we place on rights ensure that we do not pit individuals and their rights against one another. Limitations are not to be used to exclude whole classes of people from their enjoyment. Our federal Constitution includes basic enumerated rights within its many amendments, and protection of these rights take precedence over statutory law—at the federal or state levels. But our Constitution does not enumerate a right to marriage. Issues surrounding defining and placing (reasonable, constitutional) limitations on marriage are left to the States. So is there a basic, fundamental human right to marriage?

This is an interesting question. Marriage is an institution whose meaning is socially constructed. This means that social and cultural variations attach to the institution. Those “meanings” are particular, not universal. If marriage is so contingent, how could there possibly be any universal “right” to it?

In 1947 and 1948, the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights struggled with this question. They included such a right in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration, guided in particular by the scourge of Nazism—the Nuremburg Laws which forbade Jews from marrying non-Jews and allowed the Nazis to legally separate families. Therefore, according to the Universal Declaration, the right is not to be limited by race, nationality or religion.

But there are limitations. Spouses must be “of age.” Those entering into marriage must equally and freely consent to the marriage. The Universal Declaration, therefore, recognizes that the traditions of a society—no matter how deeply embedded in the culture, no matter how large the majority supporting them—are outweighed by the rights of individuals who wish to enter into marriage.

Now…who can get married? The Universal Declaration specifically uses the words “men and women.” One might argue that, therefore, the right to marry is limited to heterosexual couples. This would require us to project our contemporary concerns back into the past—a presentist fallacy. The terms “men and women” reinforced the contention that the parties to a marriage be adults, not children. In addition, the article does not recognize the right of “men and women” to “marry one another.” The emphasis is on the word “and”—that the right was to be enjoyed on an equal basis by men and women. There is nothing to suggest that they used the terms “men and women” in order to exclude same-sex adults.

Now, lest someone suggest I’ve gone way too far, I will admit that I seriously doubt that the thought of same-sex marriage would never have crossed the drafters’ minds—even Eleanor Roosevelt’s. However, does that mean that, had they considered it, they would have used that language to exclude same sex couples from the right? Of course, that’s impossible to answer. However, the Universal Declaration never meant to be frozen in its own time. It was meant to be a living, organic statement of universal principles—in the words of its preamble, “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Standards change over time, and the drafters were well aware of this. New rights might be included as societies and states progressed. After all, none of the Enlightenment philosophers who first enumerated “natural rights” spoke of a right to social security. In addition, the concept of universal rights meant that rights previously held only by the privileged few would be extended to larger groups of people—that who was considered “human” would grow. The idea that “peoples,” through democratic processes, would seek to limit basic, universal rights certainly would have been anathema to the drafters of the Declaration. Yet this is the outcome that Proposition 8 and Act 1 have achieved.

In the United States over the past few decades, the extension of “direct democracy” by ballot initiatives and referenda has slowly replaced our older ideal of republican government—that is, democratic government through responsible, elected representatives whose duty it is to effectively balance majoritarianism and individual rights and liberties through a process of reasoned deliberation. This recent “democratic impulse” is, I believe, a symptom of Americans’ overall dissatisfaction with, if not hatred of, government. “Let the people decide!” is a popular sentiment. But this trend has distracted us away from the liberal democratic ideals that have developed through our amended Constitution—where the balance between “liberal” and “democracy” must always favor basic rights. This trend concerns me deeply.

What makes universal human rights meaningful is the principle of equality. Equal rights emphasizes the rights-holder rather than the right itself. Universal human rights foster recognition of the “self-in-other” that is the basis of human freedom. For some reason, however, Americans have a difficult time seeing the “universal” in rights, and focusing on the “particular.” “I have a right!” Americans tend to view rights as a kind of privilege—the right to exclude others from what I have a right to enjoy. When we place fundamental questions about who should have rights before the public on a ballot, we get into potentially dangerous territory. The question of who has rights should never be “sold” to the highest bidder through a process of pitting groups and their particular interests against one another on issues of basic fairness and justice. That, to me, is the antithesis of the liberal democratic ideal and a sign of political laziness.

The question of marriage and family are deeply intertwined. The third clause of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration, which I discussed above, states that the family is the “natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” The drafters intended thwart both the tyranny of social “tradition” and totalitarian states. Families are group units formed by free individuals who have a right to form families of their own choosing: no arranged or child marriages; no determining of the number and spacing of children; no denying people of one race from marrying people of another; no forcible separation of families.

Tyrannies can be of one, of a few, or of many. That we would allow democratic processes to be used to deny individual, fundamental, universal human rights is a repudiation of our fundamental liberal democratic tradition. It is deeply un-American.

It would stand to reason that my concern about Proposition 8 and Act 1 stems from my particular interest as a gay man. After all, my particular rights have been curtailed (or denied). Nevertheless, I am more deeply concerned as a human being and an American citizen. Our fundamental human rights should never be sacrificed on the altar of democracy.

(Originally published in the Hendrix College Profile, December 2008. Reposted with permission).

We arrived more than a week ago, and today is our first full day of R&R since we arrived. We’re currently at Lake Kivu, in a town called Gisenyi. We have seen so many people, visited so many projects, and learned about so many things that it is truly a challenge to recount them all. We’ve been to sites in and around Kigali, Ruhengeri and Gisenyi.

Among the things we have done during the past nine days are the following:

• We visited a mountaintop hospital, village clinics, schools and a church where 10,000 people were killed in the 1994 genocide.
• We met with a farmer who, armed with a new disease-resistant variety of cassava, is about to yield a harvest that was impossible a few years ago.
• We sat in on a village-based microcredit “trust group” meeting, and watched as the group received a new set of loans for developing their small businesses (for example, a village bakery and a sorghum distribution business).
• We met with and interviewed 16 high-school graduates, nine of whom are in competition for four scholarships at our College.
• We met with the Rwandan Minister of Education.
• We learned how the Clinton Foundation has set up projects in Rwanda to respond to rural health needs and HIV/AIDS.
• We got a rare opportunity to sit in on a gacaca court session. These are public, community-based court hearings that are hearing “category 4” cases (destruction of property, looting, etc.) perpetrated during the genocide.
• We have met a lot of Americans who are motivated, as missionaries and “friends of Rwanda,” to do work here as part of their mission to God.
• We visited the plantation of the late Rosamond Carr, who, at the age of 84, opened up an orphanage on her plantation to care for children orphaned during the 1994 genocide.

I originally considered offering a day-by-day accounting of all of these visits. But long travel days, somewhat sporadic internet access and the desire to wait and see what broader patterns have emerged from this trip have prevented me from doing that. So, over the next several entries, I will focus on different aspects of what I have observed during our visit here. I have learned and come to understand a great deal more about Rwanda than I ever dreamed of. This experience has convinced me of the value that opportunities like this trip add to the classroom learning experience. Although one would think that such an observation is glaringly obvious, the complexities of contemporary Rwandan society and politics that we have witnessed are still quite remarkable. The subtleties would be difficult to notice if one’s only reference were book chapters and journal articles.

In subsequent entries, I will consider various aspects of our visit here thematically. Entries will probably include topics such as:

• Democracy and governance in Rwanda
• Does post-genocide Rwandan economic, social and political development represent a break from the past?
• The influence of Western (particularly American) Evangelism: Is Rwanda the “New Israel”?
• The genocide and complications of creating a “post-ethnic” Rwanda

For now, I’ll offer up some general impressions I’ve had during our travels throughout the country.

Kigali

We spent the first week of our visit in and around Kigali, the capital city. Kigali is quite spread out among the hills and valleys that make up the terrain of most of the country (Rwanda is called the “pays des mille collines,” the Land of a Thousand Hills). Reading accounts of the carnage that took place in Kigali during the genocide, it is almost impossible to believe this is the same city. The city is vibrant with activity. The main roads are well engineered and the streets are very clean (and traffic is relatively light compared to Nairobi, for example). Besides Harare (the capital of Zimbabwe), which I visited in the mid-1990s, Kigali is the nicest African capital I’ve seen.

Nevertheless, this is the dry season, and the inversion is quite severe. The air is constantly hazy, with the smoke from burning wood (which most people use for heat and cooking) and vehicle exhaust that is trapped near ground level. The electricity grid in the central part of the city is stable.

Our home base was the Chez Lando. I would recommend it to anyone coming here to visit. It is reasonably priced and very comfortable. They serve a good breakfast buffet every morning. The outdoor patio bar is friendly and relaxing. You’ll find a nice mix of Rwandan professionals and non-governmental organization (NGO) field people at the hotel. It feels more “down to earth” than the nicer digs found at the Serena. I understand the Lando is cheaper and nicer than the Mille Collines (“Hotel Rwanda”), where we will be staying at the night before we return to the U.S.

Outside Kigali

Rwanda is roughly the size of Maryland. The Rwandan countryside is among the most beautiful I have ever seen. While the Eastern province is quite a bit flatter (it borders Tanzania), most of the rest of the country is like the mountainous parts of the Eastern United States. It particularly reminds me of the Smokies of western North Carolina or the Ozarks of northwestern Arkansas. The topography of northwest Rwanda, which we visited for several days last week (staying in Ruhengheri and Gisenyi) is much more dramatic, especially as you approach the range of volcanoes shared by Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (where the mountain gorillas live). Very rural and very densely populated, this part of the country has some of the richest and most productive farmland in the country. The volcanic soil is dark as midnight. As you drive through mountain passes on the way from Kigali, the views of valleys below are breathtaking. You’ll see an immense variety of crops grown here: bananas; plantains; sorghum; beans; maize; potatoes; cassava; rice; tea and coffee.

Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa–590 persons per square mile. There literally are people everywhere—not just in towns and villages, but moving between them: on foot or bicycle; hauling plastic containers of water and various items on their heads for market or for home. One immediately notices the pervasiveness of land pressures: nearly every plot of land is cultivated or used for grazing, even on hillsides. In concert with the government, a variety of development NGOs recently have promoted terracing on the hillsides to prevent soil erosion. Heifer International, the Little Rock-based NGO, is active here in promoting “zero-grazing” techniques for cattle, in order to free up more land for cultivation. The shortage of land and the antagonism between cattle growers and cultivators was one of the many factors that contributed to the animosities that fueled the genocide.

One also notices evidence of the Rwandan policy of villagization, which has been part of the policy of the Government of National Unity since the late 1990s. In order to promote a sense of community (or, more cynically perhaps, to promote the consolidation of local authority), new villages—called imidugudu in Kinyarwanda—have sprung up throughout the country, but most noticeably (as far as I can tell) in the northwest. So you’ll see lots of new buildings—market spaces; storefronts; schools, and houses—in order to accommodate village life. The last I read about this, in the early 2000s, there was some resentment about this movement. Some people lost their land and homes in the move to the new villages. Others have been able to keep their land but now must travel long distances to maintain, cultivate, and harvest it. For others—especially survivors of the genocide—the new villages feel like much safer spaces than the places they once lived. It’s a complicated business and but one of many instances of how the genocide colors everything here, and how contested the genocide, its origins, and the aftermath continue to be. Of this I will write more about later.

Roads and Beautification

With the exception of the northwest, which is quite mountainous (and perhaps for other reasons), Rwanda has the nicest, best built and maintained roadways I’ve experienced in Africa. Of course, I’m only speaking of the main roads—the majority of roadways are still unpaved dirt roads, but even some of those are pretty nice (Note: the unpaved roads in the northwest are made of volcanic rock—which can be very uncomfortable if you are in need of a bathroom break).

One also notices how, even outside the major cities (which are often nicely landscaped, relatively speaking), people and communities have taken the time to plant gardens in their roadside “yards” or in the oddest of places along the roadside. And these are well-kept plots…not your typical throw-together plot that clearly has been neglected or abandoned. One reason for this, most likely, is a national policy of setting aside Saturday mornings for community beautification projects–even in the capital city. I’m not sure if this happens every week or once a month, but I do know that that cars are not allowed on the roadways unless you have official business (or are driving a group of tourists around). Whatever the policy, the results are quite noticeable.

English vs. French

Since the Belgians took over this part of German East Africa after World War I, Rwanda has been a francophone country (in terms of the European language of choice). Despite this, Rwanda is definitely not the place for haute cuisine.

Many Rwandans still speak French, and it continues to be taught in many schools. Increasingly, however, the government is pushing the nation toward an Anglophone future. Consider, for example, the photos of Paul Kigame, the current President of the country, that one finds in every public and private place of business (a very African practice): the caption “His Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda” is in English, rather than French.

Some of this “switch” from French to English is reflective, I think, of the recent antagonism between Rwanda and France over the latter’s role in (both) the perpetration of the genocide and the “escape” of the genocidaires into Zaire (now the DRC).

A more practical reason has to do with the formation of an Eastern African economic trading zone that Rwanda has entered. As Rwanda realigns its regional policy toward the Great Lakes, it must conform (especially in its business practices and language training) to Anglophone Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.

For now, I’ll leave it at that. But there will be more to come.

I am going to be catching a bit of that wave myself, as I join a couple of faculty colleagues who are leading a small group of students on a two-week research tour of Rwanda. This series of entries will be part travelogue and part research diary, as we visit a number of projects and programs involved in Rwanda’s post-genocide reconstruction and development.

As a political scientist who worked as an international development “professional” in a previous life, I have many reasons to be interested in looking at the supposedly remarkable “comeback” (many evangelicals call it a miraculous rebirth) of this country from the horrors of civil war and unbelievably brutal killing that took place in 1994. All of the conventional wisdom about post-conflict justice, reconciliation and rebuilding seems to be in abeyance in Rwanda. How can a society that experienced such atrocity so recently be in such good shape today? Such a turn-around seems remarkable in any case. For an African nation, it seems unprecedented.

During our two-week visit, we will be visiting a variety of project sites and communities working in such areas as micro-credit, education for children orphaned by the genocide, drilling for water, building the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, and addressing the challenges of HIV/AIDS. These projects and programs are supported by a diverse cast of characters–from traditional village-based development programs to market-based entrepreneurs to evangelical Christian churches. Many of these are supported by groups in the United States who see in Rwanda a unique opportunity to do some good in the world. Of course, the social scientist in me wants to critically examine and explore what the elements of success in Rwanda might be, and what costs–if any–are attendant. Have “traditional” development and “Western-style” notions of justice, democratic governance and human rights really failed? Or is Rwanda such a unique case that the models we use to think about these things simply do not apply?

A brief example (and one that I will be interested in exploring in-country) might illustrate what I’m talking about. Central to the post-genocidal political discourse in Rwanda is a strong, decidedly post-colonial nationalism. But it is not simply post-colonial (meaning “against the West”)–it is also post-ethnic. One article mentions the importance of being “Rwandan first,” and avoiding appeals to ethnic or racial identity. As many know, the genocide and explanations of it are deeply entangled in a discourse of ethnic hatred–much of which has been challenged by a variety of experts and observers in the years following the genocide. But to many around the world–as well as Rwandans themselves–the genocide was carried out largely by Hutu against Tutsi. It was also carried out by neighbor against neighbor. The new post-ethnic discourse of Rwandan identity–a true sense of nationalism–ostensibly has been key to Rwanda’s ability to “move on.” Some wonder whether this “collective amnesia” is sustainable. After all, despite the fact that the economy is growing, armed conflict has been halted (especially between Rwanda and groups still based in the neighboring war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo), and Rwanda is the safest and least corrupt country in Africa, it still has one of the world’s highest population densities, and 95 percent of its people still engage in subsistence farming. If, as Paul Magnarella suggests, it was the cauldron of population pressures and land scarcity that ultimately sat at the heart of the killing in 1994, can the healing and reconciliation that the Anglican “Bishop of Rwanda,” John Rucyahana writes about in his recent book hold in the long term?

These are among the many issues that I hope our visit will help us to explore in some depth. As I understand it, I will have fairly regular access to the internet during most of our visit, so I hope to post stories and observations fairly regularly. If that doesn’t work out, I will save my entries and post them in the order and frequency with which they were composed, and post them after our return in early July.

Comments and observations are always welcome.

That question assumes that the administration’s policy of invading Iraq was the product of a deliberative process. Please! The rush to war was so furious that even the advice of sages such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft to move cautiously went unheard. Those urging deliberation were brushed aside and labeled “unpatriotic.” “French fries” were removed from Capitol Hill menus to protest France’s recalcitrance in threatening a veto of any U.S.-backed resolution to the U.N. Security Council to authorize the invasion.

(For just a moment, think about how unbelievably silly that “freedom fries” business was. How embarrassing. Such an action does not reflect reasoned debate. But I digress).

So now Bush wants to take it slow. He said that many reports issued in Washington never get read, and just gather dust. But he has read the Report, and would like to think about it a bit. He has lots of other people thinking about what to do and how to do it. The “Decider” is now the “Listener,” “George the Deliberator.”

What about “the Staller?” “The Stonewaller?” Some are suggesting that the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation will actually suffer the dusty death suggested by the president after all. The idea is that once the report has fallen out of the news cycle, and this “deliberative process” has emerged and takes on a life of its own, the White House will drive the agenda, shift the discourse, basically ignoring all or most of the Study Group’s recommendations. This move has many furious. Reading the letters to the editor of the New York Times—despite the obvious ideological leaning of Times readers—clearly reflects a great deal of impatience. There is a strong feeling out there that the voters expressed their strong displeasure with the current policy in Iraq in November. They wonder what is going on—and see behind this “Stall to January” just another wily move by a sneaky President to get around doing anything that would signal a significant change in policy. They point to the fact that the President Bush has made it pretty clear which of the ISG’s recommendations will not receive much of an audience within the White House.

Whether Bush has actually become deliberative and thoughtful—which I doubt—or whether this stalling is simply a reflection of how paralyzed this administration has become is not the point of this short essay. What I am more interested in is a broader question: what is the role of deliberation in the formulation of U.S. policy at this point in time, given the “grave” deterioration of both the political and military situation in Iraq? Is this pause, which began before the election and which will continue into early next year, truly a moment for deliberation? Will we (the American public) deliberate? Can we be patient to try to find solutions (if there are any) that might make some sense?

I wonder. We have been told since the day after the elections that the results were a clear message to the White House: do something different. Now. This is the same public that, from November 2002 to March 2003 (while U.N. weapons inspectors were making slow but steady progress in getting Saddam Hussein to comply with the disarmament resolutions), were demanding, invade now! “Get ‘r done!” Just because the American public has lost support for the war—a fact that makes those who opposed the policy all along enormously happy—does not mean that they have changed their minds about how policy should be formed. We are running a substantial risk of the danger we faced in the un-deliberative moments before the invasion. Policy driven by the whims of the American electorate is a policy of disaster. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place.

Let me qualify that: this obviously was George W. Bush’s war. The “sheep” we have become (or perhaps always have been) simply bleated (loudly) our approval. The administration did a masterful job of selling us quite a bit of snake oil. This is our war. The solution has to be ours as well. That means we have to consider everything, and stop demanding that the administration simply do something because we’ve become uneasy about the body bags. That “something” should be carefully thought out and debated. Those who have been paying attention, listening to experts rather than elected officials, are keenly aware of how many options there are out there, and how many of those contradict one another. For example, some argue, persuasively, that Iraq is a failed state and that “enough is enough” because we’ll never find a political solution upon which our whole military mission is based. Others argue, persuasively as well, that we need a “surge” of new forces to do what we needed to do in the first place.

Which is a better idea? I cannot say. What I will say is that careful and sustained deliberation goes from the shallowness of supposed opposites to deeper explorations into assumptions and theories driving such policy prescriptions. That is where we need to bring this discussion. In my opinion, we need to talk about the wisdom of a “unity government.” We need to think about whether Iraqi national institutions—whether the constitutional structure, the military, and other institutions—are truly national or have simply become institutionalized arenas for sectarianism. We need to think about the bleeding away of important and almost irreplaceable human resources from the country. We need seriously to consider the place of Iraq in the politics of the Middle East. We need to talk about assumptions and challenge them.

That’s a lot to talk about. Let’s get to it.

"Does this scenario ring a bell?" I asked.

One of my students raised her hand and replied, "It sounds a lot like Columbine."

Of course, that was precisely the answer I hoped my scenario would provoke. This exercise provided us an opening to try to begin to understand what was going on, while already we seemed to know everything we needed to know: this was the opening of a war. Yet, as the weeks went on, we were exposed to a strange array of very confusing rhetoric from the White House. Were the attacks an act of war (the references to Pearl Harbor were ubiquitous), or was it a criminal act? Were the terrorists war criminals — like the political leadership of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan — or were they simply "outlaws," or more abstractly, "evildoers?"

Of course, so much has happened since then: the "global war on terror" and its centrality in U.S. policy has evolved and changed so dramatically over the past four years, sometimes it is difficult to notice how daily events, little and small, have brought us to where we are today. Today, we are debating the scope and implications of presidential authority during "wartime." The first act in this long production began, as I recall, in November 2001, when the Bush administration first articulated its policy that it would constitute military tribunals for "unlawful combatants" captured in Afghanistan. The White House argued that such detainees were not technically prisoners of war, and therefore the prohibitions of the fourth Geneva Convention against trying (and, presumably, executing) prisoners during the course of a war did not apply. When we noticed that no tribunals had actually been convened, we discovered a new twist in the policy: that the President had the right to hold such people indefinitely, without charging them with a crime if he so chose.

Then came the revelations about Abu Ghraib, followed by stories about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and the practice of "extraordinary renditions." Congress then demanded a prohibition against any form of torture by the military or any other officials of the U.S. government — such as the CIA. President Bush signed the bill but attached a "signing statement" to it, saying essentially that his duties as Commander-in-Chief, rather than as Chief Executive, will be the final determinant of whether and how the law will be executed. Finally, we were treated to the revelations that the NSA had been empowered by a secret order of the President to electronically surveil communications emanating from or received by persons within the United States itself.

The daily piling of developments in the "war on terror," one after another, can render our wider undertanding of the "big picture" next to impossible. This is why I was so pleased to open the New York Times on Saturday and read a very brief but provocative Op-Ed by Joseph Ellis, "Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History." In it, Ellis wonders whether the 9/11 attacks really threatened our existence, or in the more common formulation, "our very way of life." He posits a few questions, not to offer "definitive answers, but to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the significance it has achieved." Ellis' piece touched upon something that had been bothering me for some time, but I never could quite put my finger on it. Each day brings another new thing, and we chew on it and discuss it, and wait for the next shoe to drop. But we don't often step back and see where we've come from, or where we have been. Ellis has invited a serious debate. I will accept his invitation, for I think it is long overdue.

Ellis' piece recounts past wars and the "lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing" overreaching of government authority meant to counter the threats: the Alien and Sedition Acts; the supsension of habeas corpus during the Civil War; the "red scare" of 1919; the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; and McCarthyism during the Cold War. Those wars, Ellis maintains, constituted genuine threats to the nation or its "way of life" (especially the Cold War). In other words, they generated far better and more sane foundations for governmental overreach. The "war on terrorism" simply doesn't make the grade — which makes the overreaction to it by the Bush White House seem that much more execessive and unnecessary.

Obviously the U.S. invasion of Iraq — right or wrong — qualifies as a "war." But, in my mind, and despite the fact that 9/11 may have been a catalyst, reason or excuse to do it, it is only linked rhetorically with the "war on terror." The invasion and aftermath qualifies as "war." And on this point, I will go no further, for my argument is about 9/11 and the war on terrorism.

If we take a cue from David Campbell, author of Writing Security, the search for the self-in-other and its demonization is as American as "Mom, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet." In the enemy-other, we need to have some kind of identification, and know the threat, because ultimately, the threat is, well, us. The enemy we find in the wars we have fought in the past contains, or is driven by, enemies whose aim we can understand, for it is the fear of living under their subjugation that drives our will to fight them. Nazism and Communism, as the two most obvious examples of world-wide conflict (which, we are told, is what this current war is all about — a "clash of civilizations") whose masters we feared. We could identify with Nazism because it was, indeed, so close to home in so many ways. Consider the vitriolic radio broadcasts of Father Caughlin during the 1930s. Similarly, we understood Communism in the same vein: a State organized around the deprivation of Enlightenment-era liberties in the pursuit of a greater social utopia.

Campbell did an excellent job of dispelling the realist myth that what we were trying to achieve in our policy of "containment" was merely the bottling up of the Soviet military threat: the massing of Soviet troops along the armistance lines of World War II that would later come to be known as the Iron Curtain. Campbell's close examination of the secret National Security Council directives during the early days of the Cold War revealed that the protection of the American "way of life," extravagantly flourished with rhetoric, sat at the heart of the policy of containment — rather than a military standoff.

Now, if you read any State Department paper or assessment of the threat posed by al-Qaeda, you will see embedded within it many elements of a purported "ideology." The idea here is to transform a wild-eyed, fanatical form of terrorism into something we can fear, and indeed, respect, for we know it well. Along the overgreased Axis of Evil we slip and slide into the irrendentist goal of the greater Umma, or Islamic state, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia.

Actually, the Umma is merely a community — a premodern social community sharing common values like we might find in a small town in Michigan that breeds separatist Americans. This is not an ideology — a concept that is entirely modern, for it weds ideals with institutions for instantiating them in a modern reality.

My point here is simply this: I am highly skeptical that "radical Islam" qualifies as an ideology, or that our "fight" against it qualifies as a "war." This is, and should be considered as, a police-action to round up fanatical people who have perpetuated and continue to perpetuate crime. This is little different from the Timothy McVeighs of the United States (and there are quite a few of them), or of people who do drive-by shootings for whatever ends they deem so important to their identity and way of life. And if this is not a war, then war-powers do not exist. And if war-powers do not exist, we have real cause for alarm at a President who would claim them, and a Congress that refuses to protest in the slightest.