TheReligionofPeace - French Imperialism

TheReligionofPeace.com

A TROP Exclusive:

What's the French word for "Imperialism?"

Despite all of the posturing and lofty rhetoric coming out of France and Belgium these days against supposed American imperialism, these two nations are hardly in a position to lecture anyone on foreign policy given their own abysmal record in that arena - and it is not just the colonial past of which they should be ashamed. Less than 10 years ago, about 800,000 black Africans were, quite literally, hacked to death with the aid and abetment of the French government in the former Belgian colony of Rwanda. These victims deserve to have their story understood and remembered, especially given the self-righteousness and short memories of the European accomplices.

The deep hatred in Rwanda, which culminated in a nearly unfathomable level of genocide, was forged by the Belgians shortly after the League of Nations awarded the tiny country to them following Germany’s defeat in WWI. In order to maintain vast colonial empires, most European nations actively factionalized the native populations and played them against each other. The French-speaking Belgians determined that 99% of Rwanda was composed of just two main ethnic groups, Tutsi and Hutu. Employing racist genetic theories, they concluded that Tutsis, having the more Caucasian-like features, were the superior of the two. For decades the Tutsis, who made up only 14% of the population, were granted special status over the Hutus, receiving education and privilege that were harder for their Hutu neighbors to come by.

By the time independence was granted in 1962, the Belgians had turned Rwanda into a seething cauldron of ethnic tension and fear. Beginning in 1959, massacres by the Hutu majority forced many Tutsis into exile and made life difficult for those remaining. The Hutu government retained the policy established by the Belgians of requiring ethnic identification cards, which often became the difference between life and death for many Tutsis. When the French began exercising influence in the region, following independence, they exhibited no interest in challenging the Hutu government on this issue. In fact, a U.S. ambassador’s suggestion in 1991, that this method of ethnic categorization be dismantled, was met with resistance by the French.

The cozy relationship between France and the Hutu government enabled a series of massacres to take place in the early 1990’s, prior to the genocide of 1994, whose death toll can be counted in the thousands. For their part the Tutsis exiled in neighboring Uganda formed the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), a military effort to take control of the country from the murderous Hutu government, which had ruled since independence without the burden of free elections. After a 1991 invasion, the RPF was well positioned and very close to achieving victory over the French-backed Hutus. Despite having signed a 1975 agreement with Rwanda disallowing the introduction of French troops in the country for combat or military support purposes, France did indeed send paratroopers to beat back the resistance and secure the country for the very people who would be responsible for the deaths of so many.

France’s intervention in Rwanda was never in pursuit of noble principles. Ostensibly it was about protecting the people in francophone (French-speaking) Africa. The RPF was operating out of Uganda, where English is spoken, and France feared an erosion of influence in the francophone countries. It is inconceivable, however, (even for the French) that cultural bigotry would be worth the blood of so many innocents. Yet, further speculation, over economic interests perhaps, raises the specter of imperialism – certainly at odds with the sanctimonious rhetoric coming out of Paris these days.

Regardless of motive, direct French support in the early 1990s enabled the radical Hutu movement to become more powerful and better organized. A grassroots network developed as a prelude to genocide, sponsored by the government, which was in turn sponsored by the French. Radio stations broadcast anti-Tutsi propaganda and local militias brazenly trained for the killing that would take place with machetes and French-supplied arms. In April of 1994 the President of Rwanda was killed in a plane crash just outside the capitol, most likely caused by a deliberate missile attack by radical Hutus to establish a pretense of retaliation against the Tutsis. The RPF was immediately blamed and the massive, well-planned effort to exterminate all trace of Tutsi existence was launched.

Over the next three months hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus civilians were butchered to death by the extremists as the RPF fought desperately to rescue the victims, who included women, children and whole families. Anyone seen as a sympathizer of the victims was forced either to kill or be killed.

Shamefully, the international community chose to stand back and watch, with plenty of guilt to go around. The UN, in fact, had received detailed instructions on how the genocide would take place from a top-level informant in the Rwandan government three months before the human disaster. Instead of acting preemptively on the information however, Kofi Annan, the future Secretary-General, ordered that it be made available to the government, which only served the purpose of letting the Hutus know they had a security leak.

For his part, U.S. President Bill Clinton did his best to suppress military intervention in Rwanda, even by non-U.S. forces. At a time when the UN’s top man on the ground, Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, openly estimated that it would take only a force of 5,000 decently armed men to stop the killing, Clinton and his State Department pressured the UN to not only refuse the request, but to pull out the few UN troops that remained. Clinton, who was struggling with his popularity at the time, apparently feared that he would be taking too large of a political risk, after the botched military operation in Somalia six months earlier. Part of his strategy even involved prohibiting government spokespersons from using the word “genocide,” since it would have obligated the Americans to intervene under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention Agreement, structured in response to the Nazi holocaust.

Belgium quickly pulled its troops out of Rwanda after losing ten of its own in despicable fashion to murderous Hutus. So disgusted were the Belgian troops at such cowardice that they deliberately left parts of their uniforms on the airport tarmac in protest.

In the competition to see which country could sink lowest, however, no one had anything on the French, who, fearing the English-speaking RPF, actually supported the Hutus even in the midst of the genocide. This included at least two arms shipments in June to the very people spearheading the horrific massacre, as well as diplomatic support. French troops were also sent from Zaire to establish a “safe zone” in the northwestern part of the country to try and protect the fleeing Hutu killers from the RPF advance. As journalist Philip Gourevitch described the scene:

…French troops…were welcomed by enthralled bands of Interahamwe [Hutu extremists responsible for the killing] singing, waving French tricolor flags, and carrying signs with slogans like “Welcome French Hutus” – while a disc jockey [on a Hutu radio station] advised Hutu women to gussy themselves up for the white men, taunting, “Now that the Tutsi girls are dead, it’s you chance.”

The net result of the French military effort was to extend the killing an extra month, virtually ensuring the extermination of Tutsis unlucky enough to be trapped in the “safe zone” while providing refuge for their killers as the RPF was rapidly taking the rest of the country and bringing an end to the genocide. Ironically those Hutu refugees not responsible for the killing would have been better off remaining in Rwanda. As the French withdrew, most of these people were forced across the border into hastily constructed refugee camps in Zaire where many perished from disease.

The French were able to evacuate the President’s widow to Paris in the early days of April, a woman known to have been behind the organization of Hutu violence and widely thought to have ordered her husband’s assassination. Perhaps the French government hoped to add to their proud tradition of providing refuge to famous dictators with blood on their hands, from the Haitian, “Baby Doc” Duvalier, to the self-anointed Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, who killed and cannibalized schoolchildren in the 1970s. France is also renown as a safe harbor and training ground for those who went on to establish some of the most brutal regimes of the 20^th Century, including Pol Pot, Ho Chi, Min, Vladimir Lenin and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

When Hutu casualties in the Zairian refugee camps (mostly from cholera) are included, the death tolls from 1994 soar to over one million. The massacre also played a major role in destabilizing Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), setting off a chain of atrocities and war that may have claimed the lives of up to three million black Africans. The blame for this disaster can be laid squarely at the feet of the same French and Belgians who are now whipping themselves into a frenzy of self-righteousness over the possibility that America may act to remove a brutal Iraqi dictator who is a credible threat to the rest of the world.

At best the French seem to have a highly subjective definition of imperialism. It somehow excludes, for example, the way in which they are currently meddling with the Ivory Coast by coercing an appeasement-based, power-sharing agreement onto the government that is almost certain to be both unsuccessful and fatal. We are also meant to believe that French Europe’s complicity in the deaths of more than a million Rwandans was simply about protecting these citizens of francophone Africa from English influence, rather than imperialism. But, as Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who led the RPF to victory in those desperate months of 1994, put it “If they wanted people here to speak French, they shouldn’t have helped to kill people here who spoke French.”