In the past few months, Rwanda's government has increasingly insisted on action from the international community to combat the threat it says is posed by the ex-FAR, Rwanda's former Hutu-dominated army, and the Interhamwe, the Hutu militia largely responsible for the 1994 genocide which killed at least 800,000 Rwandans. Rwandan officials say these groups have reorganized in refugee camps in the DRC and are preparing for attacks on Rwanda. Congolese officials say Rwandan forces have already entered their country and engaged their troops in battle.
AllAfrica's Charles Cobb spoke with Dr. Charles Murigande, Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Cooperation, about his view of recent events.
In President Paul Kagame's speech to parliament last week, he seemed to suggest that Rwandan troops were about to enter the DRC. Are there Rwandan troops in the DRC?
They have not yet entered the DRC. We were raising [the issue], hoping that by informing the international community that if nothing is done, we would enter and do something to protect our people. The international community would react - since it does not want us to enter the DRC - [and would] have to develop an appropriate response to the threat represented by the ex-FAR/Interhamwe.
Rwanda seems to be very dissatisfied with the way MONUC peacekeepers have dealt with the ex-FAR/Interhamwe. Does your government expect that the UN will end this problem or do you plan to send troops in the near future?
We have not given up on the United Nations because the UN has demonstrated the capacity to confront such type of forces - you would recall that the RUF in Sierra Leone was forcefully disarmed by the UN. What has been lacking up to this time is the will within the UN to disarm this force that committed genocide in Rwanda. In that, I see a certain consistency.
You would recall that in January 1994, three months before the genocide started, a leader of the infamous militia called the Interhamwe went to see General [Romeo] Dallaire, who was the commander of the UN mission in Rwanda. He informed Dallaire that they have deployed militias, [that] they have arms caches and gave Dallaire the details of where the arms caches were. He told Dallaire that the Interhamwe had the capacity to kill 1,000 Tutsi every twenty minutes. Dallaire sent a cable to the UN asking authorization to use force to collect these arms and disrupt the plans that this militia had.
Unfortunately, the UN responded to that cable forbidding Dallaire from using force to disarm the militias. Three months after that cable, the genocide started and the UN, instead of reinforcing UNAMIR, decided to withdraw UNAMIR and let the plan - this macabre plan they knew of - be implemented. Later on, when these genocidal forces were about to be defeated, the UN sent a mission to come and almost rescue them, [to] organize their orderly withdrawal into the DRC where they have been retraining, reorganizing, rearming and launching attacks on Rwanda.
Rwanda for the last ten years has appealed to the UN to have these forces disarmed. The only response from the UN so far has been a call for voluntary disarmament, which has not worked. We hope that by Rwanda saying that it is ready to reenter Congo to disrupt their plans, this tension is going to awaken the UN, and the UN will give an adequate mandate to MONUC to use force to disarm these forces.
What would your government consider a serious UN effort in terms of the number of troops?
The first thing the UN should have, there or in any mission, is the mandate to use force. The second thing is an assessment of the size and strength of the force to be deployed. I believe a serious committed force, well armed, [of] ten thousand would be fine.
The problem is not that this force is extremely strong. The problem is that so far the international community has never given a strong message to this force that either you voluntarily disarm or we are going to disarm you. That message has never come. Even President Kabila who from time to time goes on the television [and] issues a strong statement calling for the mobilization of human, material, military and diplomatic resources to fight the would-be aggression from Rwanda, he has never made a statement similar to that against the ex-FAR/Interhamwe. If he were to mobilize or threaten to mobilize his forces and his diplomatic, military, and financial resources to fight these forces, they would immediately run. He has never done that.
I thought Kabila said not long ago that he was prepared to send 10,000 of his soldiers up to the east to fight the Interhamwe.
No, people assumed that these would come to fight these Interhamwe, but his address to the nation was to fight the would-be aggression by Rwanda. We are telling him, "why don't you mobilize the forces to go fight the ex-FAR/Interhamwe, because they are the very cause that brings Rwanda into the DRC."
What other complaints has Rwanda had about MONUC?
MONUC shows leniency to these forces. I can tell you of one instance of this leniency. One day, a unit of the Congolese force captured 25 ex-FAR/Interhamwe and brought them to MONUC for repatriation. Then MONUC released them on the pretext that they were not voluntarily disarmed; they were forcefully disarmed. Unfortunately, a week later, the same force were involved in massacring the Congolese refugees in Gatumba. Despite the fact that we give MONUC regular intelligence on the ex-FAR Interhamwe, by giving them the location, the command structure, the armament they have, they have consistently refused to act against them.
What is the number of these Interhamwe?
If one were to judge by the conservative estimate of MONUC, they range between 8,000 and 15,000.
The UN also says it does not have the money, that it is stretched thin as it is.
The mission in DRC is spending $900 million a year. If the UN was an accountable organization, if we, members of the UN, were duly empowered to ask [for] accountability, I think we would be asking why are you spending $900 million, almost 1 billion dollars a year, for what purpose, for what objective, what do you intend to achieve? They are saying they want to help the Congolese government to organize elections, but that is going to be the most expensive election in the world if that I the only objective they are spending $900 million on.
You paint a bleak picture of the possibility for UN action in the present scenario. When does Rwanda say it will not wait any longer for the UN and - if your troops are not in now - we are sending in our own people?
We have told whoever we are meeting that if the ex-FAR/Interhamwe continue to attack us from the DRC, if no substantial effort is deployed to disarm them, we are not going to sit idle and be attacked and be reduced to the role of counting the dead and burying them.
But how much time are you going to give? President Kagame was recently quoted speaking to parliament that "we shall take up arms and pursue them - it is not far from now, it could even be happening today."
He was addressing the parliament in Rwanda. If you translate Kinyarwanda into English, you may have certain figures of speech that might be translated in a manner that would be misconstrued as meaning something else. What you are saying is that, for sure, we will have to fight them. If we are not fighting them today - we will have to fight them. So that is what he was saying. We have reached this point after trying a lot of things. We approached the DRC government sometime last year this time. I went to Kinshasa with a message from my government to have the two governments sit down and develop a strategy to effectively deal with this problem which has been the only stumbling block between us and the DRC.
We went and put on the table several options. We started from the fact that Congo was telling us that it does not have the capacity to disarm and demobilize these forces as it was still building its army. We said why don't we have joint operations against these forces? They said no to that proposal. We then asked them to allow us to pursue these forces the way Uganda is pursuing the Lord's Resistance Army in southern Sudan. They said no to that. We later on offered to give them our forces and to put these forces under Congolese command. Congo refused that. We later on said that why don't we jointly make an appeal to the UN to have MONUC have a mandate to forcefully disarm these ex-FAR/Interhamwe. They refused even that joint appeal to the UN.
Then we came back to them and told them, in the past, when Rwanda entered the DRC, you made an appeal to the SADC countries to come and help you fight an aggression by Rwanda - the way you call it - they came. Although we had a very good relationship with all these countries which were involved in DRC, we ended up fighting each other. Why don't you go now to these same countries and ask them to give you forces to come and disarm these ex-FAR/Interhamwe, instead of going back to them another time and asking them to come and fight Rwanda. They refused to do that. We even went to some countries in SADC to sell this idea and I know for a fact that some countries have been talking to Kabila, telling him that they are ready to provide forces to help Congolese forces to disarm these ex-FAR/Interhamwe. Kabilia has been reluctant all along. So it is as if, on behalf of the international community, there is a strategy to preserve this force and on behalf of the DRC the same strategy exists, and we are only expected to fold our hands and wait for these forces to come and finish the genocide they started. That is not an option we shall contemplate.
The question remains then - what is your time frame?
For the time being, after this new heightened tension, a lot of countries have been appealing to us to exercise restraint, telling us that they are consulting to develop the appropriate response to this problem of ex-FAR/Interhamwe, either by changing the UN mandate and having a stronger mandate that will enable MONUC to disarm these forces forcefully or by creating an African force under chapter 8, that would go there with the blessing of the UN to do the job. We are allowing these consultations to go on with the hope that they will end up providing us a solution, because we do not desire to go into the DRC. We do not desire to have a unilateral operation there. Actually, at one point I told President Kabila and even some of his vice presidents that what we are asking you is to have this problem resolved. I don't care the manner you are going to do it. If you can implore God to send some angels to do it or if you can implore Satan to send a legion of demons to do it, the bottom line is that it has to be done. So that is the situation.
Were you bringing specific proposals or hearing specific proposals from the U.S. government? Who did you meet with?
I met several officials of the U.S. government at the White House and the State Department and they are all telling us that they are discussing internally and externally on proposals to be made that would address the problem of ex-FAR/Interhamwe. I would not discuss the proposals because they are still under discussion internally.
You brought your own proposals?
They are part of these proposals I have just elaborated with you. Honestly we have tabled countless proposals. If there is a will, I think it is wise to pick up one of these proposals or create a mixture of these proposals to have a new proposal. All we have been told is that there is a strong commitment to find a solution so we are going to wait for this strong commitment to be materialized by a concrete proposal.
Is the United States prepared to commit funds for this, since that is one stumbling block to getting enough troops?
I don't think money is the problem. If the $900 million was used intelligently, it would solve the problem. You do not need even more than $300 million a year. If you were even to put up $100 million for three months with a committed force, they can resolve this problem and the world would no longer have to spend $1 billion a year. The way they are handling the situation, they will end up spending a billion a year for the next ten years. Because as long as this problem of ex-FAR/Interhamwe is not addressed, you are assured of having tensions in that region for many years to come.
Do you think the African Union's Peace and Security Council could be part of the solution?
I think they have done well. The Peace and Security Council is a newly established institution. Even the African Union is new, it is still finding its way. I would also add that the countries have not yet contributed the resources that are necessary to have your policy implemented. We were having an extraordinary session of the executive council to discuss next year's budget, so if we don't put in the resources, you can't expect the institution to do what it has to do.
Rwanda and Uganda each recently expelled one of the other's diplomats. What do these expulsions mean and are you worried about Uganda amassing troops on the DRC's border?
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The issue of expulsion of diplomats is an incident. I think countries in their diplomatic relations from time to time do have an exchange of expulsions. I wouldn't call it a very big deal. They expelled a diplomat and as we are duty-bound by the Vienna Convention, we responded and we hope it will end up there
Why was Rwanda's diplomat expelled from Uganda?
They were saying he was spying on their government, [that] he was able to develop a relationship within the Ugandan intelligence and get some of the confidential materials. I don't know the truth in that. We have diplomats from Uganda based in Rwanda who do the same kind of things. Governments do spy on each other. When they don't have a way of exchanging information, they develop ways of obtaining information and to us he has never done anything wrong. Even the diplomat we expelled, he had been doing the same kind of things, but we said it was up to us to develop mechanisms to prevent him from getting our documents.
For the issue of amassing troops along the border, it would worry us if the stated objective is to work with the DRC or to work with these ex-FAR/Interhamwe to destabilize Rwanda. So far they have not stated their objective.
Hasn't Uganda's government accused Rwanda of giving covert support to the PRA?
Unlike the DRC, where we don't even have the framework of intelligence exchange, with Uganda we have a regular intelligence meeting. At one time, they were even facilitated by a third party, whereby we have always been asking them to put on the table evidence of Rwanda supporting PRA. I would even say to you that we learned of the PRA from them. We did not know of the existence of the PRA. But we said please put on the table, in the presence of the UK, evidence you have, because we do not have any interaction or contacts with PRA. The only evidence they say was that some of the people who are suspected of being involved in PRA [are entering Uganda from Rwanda].
We told them if you have someone fleeing, we do not have a way of knowing his long-term or medium-term intent. They come here and they live. We did not know that they were fleeing Uganda to go and fight Uganda. And so you have a framework of exchange on intelligence discussion between our intelligence institutions. You have regular meetings. If they have worries they can table them. Then we will also be tabling some of the things Uganda does, which are not in our liking. But I think the main issue in Uganda is probably the internal difficulties in respect to third term and other things and I would think that they would use that strategy of hoping that this would create a nationalism that would again put the people together and let them forget about the third term or any other internal issues.
Is your government concerned about the potential results of the presence of Ugandan and Rwandan troops nearby or in the DRC?
We are not yet in DRC. When the time comes - and we hope it will never come - if Uganda decides to be in DRC with us, we shall have to sit down and work out a modus vivendi with them. If they come to fight us, we shall also have to also deal with the situation as it arises.
