How France refused to listen to pleas from Habyarimana for help
Former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana (centre) on a visit to the United States in 1980.
By Richard A Luce
Former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana pleaded to then French President François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand to sell him surface-to-air missile to enable him defend himself against what he believed was a plan by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Rwandan officers then serving in the Ugandan army to harm him.
In a meeting between Gen Habyarimana and the French President, M Mitterrand said some unsavoury remarks about the Ugandan leader but chose not to grant Gen Habyarimana his request. Rwandan intelligence had been told by its informers in Uganda that Museveni and the Rwanda army officers and men, thought by that time to make half of the Uganda army, had bought surface-to-air missile that they were planning to use against Gen Habyarimana. Another request that would have helped Habyarimana repair a field radio that would have intercepted intelligence reports between Rwandan dissidents and their Ugandan hosts, was also turned down by the Mitterrand government. Gen Habyarimana was killed alongside his Burundian counterpart when Habyarimana’s private jet was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. His killing precipitated the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
These revelations are made today by two researchers, Arnaud Siad, an American researcher for the US Holocaust Museum and a PhD student at the Institute of Political Science in Paris, and Christina Graubert, a student at Oxford University here in the United Kingdom. The documents also reveal that the RPF had bought surface-to-air missile from Uganda after Museveni had purchased them from Italy.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, the two were granted declassified documents about what role France played in the events that led to the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Their findings were published Thursday by the National Security Archive (NSA) at the George Washington University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documents trace the alarm felt in Paris over military advances by Tutsi-led rebels and frustration with the Hutu-dominated government of then President Juvénal Habyarimana.
The documents posted in English and French are extracted from hundreds of documents released by aFrench parliamentary commission in 1998 and the so-called “Mitterrand archive,” which was leaked to French researchers from 2005 onwards. While the provenance of the Mitterrand archive remains unclear, the authenticity of the documents has been confirmed by former Mitterrand aides, French researchers, and lawyers involved in a series of cases related to the genocide. Here is a full account of what the two researchers found:
Unwilling to bear the political and economic burden of shoring up a key African ally all by herself, France sought to internationalize a growing political and military crisis in Rwanda by pushing responsibility onto the United Nations in the period leading up to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
At the same time, President Mitterrand remained deeply suspicious of the RPF who invaded Rwanda from Uganda, with what an aide described as “the benevolent complicity of the Anglo-Saxon world.” (Document 15). The contradictions in Mitterrand’s policy toward Rwanda are captured in French government documents, translated into English by the NSA.
Next month, Rwanda celebrates 10 years since the end of the genocide and Rwandan diplomats around the world are busy showing the world how they have made the country better. Today’s postings form part of a detailed documentation of the international response to the genocide that killed between 500,000 and a million Rwandans, predominantly Tutsi, between April and July 1994. Future briefing books will examine events before and after the onset of the genocide, including the Arusha peace negotiations, a growing refugee crisis, and the fateful decision to withdraw the bulk of the United Nations peacekeeping force.
While the documents contained in the Mitterrand archive provide a valuable insight into official French thinking, the unauthorized nature of their release also raises problems for independent researchers. It is impossible to know, for example, how many documents are missing from the archive, and the reasons for their non-disclosure. The motivations of the leaker, or leakers, also remain unclear.
French researchers have noted several glaring gaps in the collection, parts of which have been made available to journalists and other researchers at the Francois Mitterrand Institute in Paris. The documents focus on political developments and offer relatively scant details about the military cooperation between France and Rwanda between 1990 and 1994. Also missing are details of the French decision to accord protection and political asylum to leading members of the Rwandan regime following the assassination of President Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. It is important that the public be given access to these records in order to complete the picture of French decision-making about the Rwandan genocide.
The documents portray France as a reluctant, and somewhat ambiguous, supporter of the Habyarimana regime in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994. On the one hand, Mitterrand viewed Rwanda as an integral part of French-speaking Africa, known as Francophonie, on the edge of what French officials called an “Anglophone front.” (Document 8) On the other hand, he did not want to squander too much French blood and treasure on a former Belgian — not French — colony.
The French role in supporting the Habyarimana government has been the subject of great controversy, with some critics claiming that France was complicit in the actions of future genocidaires. With Belgium assuming a more neutral position, Habyarimana viewed France as his primary international ally, and a military bulwark against the Tutsi-led RPF.
After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Mitterrand called for the creation of multi-party democracies in Africa, and linked French economic assistance to progress toward democratization, as reflected in his address to the Franco-African summit at Le Baule in June 1990. The documents show that he urged Habyarimana to negotiate a compromise deal with political opponents inside the country (largely Hutus, based in the south of the country), as well as the armed opposition outside the country (the RPF).
After dispatching thousands of troops and military advisors to Rwanda between 1990 and 1993, France saw the Arusha peace progress, and the arrival of United Nations peacekeepers, as a way to extricate herself from an increasingly complicated political and military situation.
A recurring theme in the documents is the conviction, shared by Mitterrand and his advisers that the Rwandan Patriotic Front wanted to use its superior military position to restore a Tutsi-dominated regime in Rwanda. French military advisers reported that the rebel movement had acquired surface-to-air missiles from Uganda. When President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by a SAM missile on April 6, 1994, triggering the genocide, French officials immediately suspected the RPF. Other observers, among them Alison Desforges, note that there has never been a full and official investigation into who is responsible for shooting down President Habyarimana’s plane, leaving many possibilities including the RPF, Hutu moderates, the president’s own party, or possibly the presidential guard.
In addition to the documents included in the chronological narrative below, we are also publishing an annex of other French government documents translated into English by the National Security Archive and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. A subsequent posting will focus on French policy toward Rwanda between April and July 1994.
The London Evening Post would like to encourage our readers to read “Document 15” above to see for yourselves what President Mitterrand thought about Gen Yoweri Museveni. THE NSA is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
http://www.thelondoneveningpost.com/how-france-refused-to-listen-to-pleas-from-habyarimana-for-help/