SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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93–231PDF
2004
RWANDA'S GENOCIDE: LOOKING BACK
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
APRIL 22, 2004
Serial No. 108–96
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey,
Vice Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
RON PAUL, Texas
NICK SMITH, Michigan
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JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
JERRY WELLER, Illinois
MIKE PENCE, Indiana
THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
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SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM SMITH, Washington
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel
ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Africa
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
THOMAS P. SHEEHY, Subcommittee Staff Director
NOELLE LUSANE, Democratic Professional Staff Member
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MALIK M. CHAKA, Professional Staff Member
GREG GALVIN, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, Canadian Army, retired
Samantha Power, Lecturer in Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Louise Mushikiwabo, International Coordinator, Remembering Rwanda
Alison Des Forges, Senior Advisor to Africa Division, Human Rights Watch
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Edward R. Royce, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa: Prepared statement
Samantha Power: Prepared statement
Louise Mushikiwabo: Prepared statement
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Alison Des Forges: Prepared statement
APPENDIX
The Honorable Betty McCollum, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota: Prepared statement
Anthony D. Marley, former Political-Military Advisor, Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State: Prepared statement
RWANDA'S GENOCIDE: LOOKING BACK
THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:10 p.m. in Room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Royce (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. ROYCE. This meeting of the Subcommittee on Africa will come to order.
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We will never know the exact toll of Rwanda's genocide, 3 months of systematic slaughter of Tutsis and of those Hutus who would not participate in the drive to kill their neighbors when called upon.
We do know that 937,000 people—we know because ID cards were issued by the government to divide people along ethnic lines. We know that in the aftermath, those are the numbers of missing Tutsis, along with a number of Hutus who, because the radio broadcast told people as you are committing these killings if you find a Hutu who will not participate, kill them as well.
There were a number of Hutus caught up who, because of conscience or because of principle, were on the streets and refused to participate. They lost their lives as well. Those Rwandans who took shelter in churches were slaughtered, as were pregnant women in maternity clinics.
The international response and the U.S. response was feeble. We should be honest and recognize that at the time few were calling for United States military intervention in Rwanda. We had recently suffered a failed mission in Somalia. U.N. peacekeeping operations commanded little confidence.
But, faced with a genocide today I would hope that all options would be on the table. I would hope that the United States and the world community would take action this time to prevent such a genocide.
I had the opportunity to stop over in Rwanda with President Clinton in 1998. Expressions of regret are fine, but words without action are worse than useless. There were steps besides military intervention many were calling for. The United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda should have been supported. It should not have been undermined.
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Undermanned and under equipped as it was, this force under the command of our first witness today still managed to save lives. We should have checked the vile hate radio broadcasts that drove the killing by exhorting with such language as: The grave is half full. Who can help fill it up by morning?
One of our witnesses will testify that the genocidaires killed with radios in one hand and machetes in the other. One testimony notes that the hate radio was being broadcast from across the street of the U.S. Embassy in Kigali. During this hearing, we will look at efforts or suggestions to silence that radio and how that was treated by the U.S. Government.
The killings should have been called genocide early on, and loudly. In fact, signs of the ethnic killing to come were evident before April 7, 1994. A couple of our witnesses were in fact pulling the alarm before the world wanted to hear. The world never seemed to want to hear.
The pressing issue today is whether the world is better prepared to respond to genocidal killings in Africa and elsewhere. This hearing is a chance to help determine if the U.S. and the U.N. are better prepared to respond to genocide.
Ten years ago, political concerns paralyzed any effective action. The system failed miserably in responding to this genocide of the Rwandan people. This hearing, timed with the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, comes, as some observed, some of our witnesses to come, are raising concerns about the Government of Sudan and its militia and what exactly those militias are committing. They appear to be committing genocidal killings in the Darfur region.
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I think all of us on the Subcommittee are very concerned about reports out of Darfur. I see troubling parallels between Rwanda and Sudan, and I believe what is being done right now in western Sudan, from the reports that we have received, is genocide.
In Rwanda, our commitment to the peace process that was underway, our wishful thinking, dulled awareness of the signs pointing to a looming calamity. I have supported the peace process in Sudan, but we cannot let it discount the Government of Sudan's brutal attacks against men, women and children in Darfur. We will be, by the way, marking a resolution condemning the Sudanese Government for its vicious attacks at the conclusion of this hearing.
The Rwandan people are trying to recover. They have made great strides in a short period. We should realize, though, that their climb is steep, and we should be doing more to help with their recovery.
I will turn to our Ranking Member, Mr. Don Payne from New Jersey, for his comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Royce follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE EDWARD R. ROYCE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The following is the opening statement of Africa Subcommittee Chairman Ed Royce (R–CA–40) at this afternoon's hearing the genocide in Rwanda:
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''Eight hundred thousand . . . probably closer to a million. We'll never know the exact death toll of Rwanda's genocide—three months of systematic slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus driven by Hutu extremists that began ten years ago this month. Neighbors killed neighbors. Rwandans taking shelter in churches were slaughtered, as were pregnant women in maternity clinics. The international response, the U.S. response, was feeble.
''We should be honest and recognize that at the time, few were calling for U.S. military intervention in Rwanda. We had recently suffered a failed mission in Somalia. U.N. peacekeeping operations commanded little confidence. But faced with genocide today, I'd hope that all options would be on the table. I had the opportunity to stopover in Rwanda with President Clinton in 1998. Expressions of regret are fine—but words without action are worse than useless.
''There were steps besides military intervention many were calling for. The U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda should have been supported, not undermined. Under-manned and under-equipped as it was, this force, under command of our first witness today, still managed to save lives. We should have checked the vile hate radio broadcasts that drove the killing by exhorting, ''The grave is half full, who can help us fill it up by morning?'' One of today's witnesses will testify that the genocidaires ''killed with radios in one hand and machetes in the other.'' One testimony notes that the hate radio was being broadcast from across the street of the U.S. Embassy in Kigali. The killing should have been called ''genocide'' early on, and loudly. In fact, signs of the ethnic killing to come were evident before April 7, 1994. A couple of our witnesses were in fact pulling the alarm . . . before the world wanted to hear.
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''The pressing issue today is whether the world is better prepared to respond to genocidal killing in Africa, or elsewhere. This hearing is a chance to help determine if the U.S. and the U.N. are better prepared to respond to genocide. Ten years ago, political concerns paralyzed any effective action. The system failed miserably in responding to the decimation of the Rwandan people.
''This hearing, timed with the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, comes as some observers—some of our witnesses to come—are raising concerns that the Government of Sudan and its militias are committing genocidal killings in the Darfur region. I think all of us on the Subcommittee are very concerned about reports out of Darfur. I see troubling parallels between Rwanda and Sudan. In Rwanda, our commitment to the peace process that was underway—our wishful thinking—dulled awareness of the signs pointing to a looming calamity. I've supported the Sudan peace process, but we can't let it discount the Government of Sudan's brutal attacks against men, women and children in Darfur. We'll be marking a resolution condemning the Sudanese Government for its vicious attacks at the conclusion of this hearing.
''The Rwandan people are trying to recover. They've made great strides in a short period. We should realize though that their climb is steep, and we should be doing more to help with their recovery.''
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank you for calling this very timely hearing as we commemorate the 10th commemoration of the tragedy that happened in Rwanda, the genocide that occurred, a tragedy that has destroyed countless lives and almost succeeded in exterminating a whole population. I am glad to see General Dallaire here, who was a voice we should have listened to.
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I do recall those hearing, when the word genocide would not be used at the hearings of this Subcommittee, at that time chaired by Congressman Johnson from Florida, when we attempted to get our State Department to tell us what was going on and we heard every other word except genocide. However, we saw hundreds of thousands of bodies floating down the rivers, but no one knew what to call it.
The Rwandan genocide is unique in many ways. Close to one million people were brutally murdered before our own eyes, which made the last holocaust in Nazi Germany different because we did not see it on television. We heard about it, but this one we saw it.
It is unique because we did not even try to prevent it while we watched for 90 days the mayhem and suffering of innocent people, innocent civilians. Many of us attempted to have our voices heard, but we were certainly not strong enough, not powerful enough to get the word to the proper people in our government at the time.
This genocide is unique because we did not only watch with indifference; we even prevented others from helping. Recently, President Clinton wrote that the death and destruction that began in April 1994 still haunts Rwanda and all of us who failed to respond. It is important to remember the horrors of that period with clarity and honesty, both to benefit from the lessons learned and to honor the memory of those who perished.
I, too, was privileged to be on the trip with Chairman Royce with President Clinton when we had to actually demand that the State Department include Rwanda on President Clinton's trip. It was felt that perhaps we should fly over Rwanda and not stop there, but I am glad that voices prevailed and at least we had a stop in Rwanda to pay tribute to the unfortunate people who lost their lives.
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President Clinton gave a very emotional speech as he went off from his prepared comments and spoke from the heart where it said it was unfortunate what happened and that he was sorry for the inaction.
Unfortunately, though, we have yet to learn from the Rwanda tragedy. As was the case back in 1994 when courageous people like General Dallaire and others who warned us about the plan of genocide, we are witnessing another genocide as it was mentioned earlier by the Chairman in Darfur in western Sudan.
Like Rwanda, the warning signs were obvious. They still are. Yet, the international community is watching once again with indifference. What is stunning and very disappointing about the whole affair is that as we speak here and now the U.N. Human Rights Commission has been actively trying to protect the Government of Sudan by glossing over the Darfur atrocities. However, if you had BBC on your television this morning, you would have seen the accounts by BBC of what happened on yesterday and the refugees there.
The European Union has struck a deal with the Government of Sudan to issue a meaningless Chair statement instead of a resolution calling for the appointment of a Special Rapporteur. Let me just read to you what the Chair statement that is going to be voted on in a day or two is proposing to do as the government continues to kill and maim innocent civilians in Darfur. I quote. Unbelievable.
''The Commission expresses its solidarity with the Sudan . . .''
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I will read it again:
''The Commission . . .''
This is the Human Rights Commission in Geneva:
''The Commission expresses solidarity with the Sudan to overcome the current situation.''
To overcome what situation and by whom? This is not a situation going on. It is ethnic cleansing going on. How do you express solidarity with the Government of Sudan? Is this the best that we can do to help the innocent by expressing solidarity with those carrying out the crime?
This absolutely makes no sense at all. Not even a single sentence in the Chair's statement condemns what we already know of the atrocities in Darfur. As I mentioned, on BBC we saw before our eyes this morning 100,000 displaced people, limbs cut off, rape occurring, intentional displacing of over a million people.
It is very disappointing that the history of Rwanda, my friends, still may see itself repeating. I may not have the influence or power to stop this tragedy, but I am not going to sit idly by and watch another tragedy continue to unfold before our eyes.
As was the case in 1994 when our government and the international community refused to use the word genocide, we are once again witnessing the same duplicity and lies about the tragedy in Darfur.
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It is very disturbing because there are a number of African countries that we fought to have their lives made better; Nigeria when we forced Abacha, the brutal dictator, out of power, now President Obasanjo and democratic elections. They are on the Human Rights Commission. Not a word. They are going to support the solidarity with Sudan when we fought against the brutal dictatorships of Abacha?
Sierra Leone. If it was not for the support to push out the RUF, there would not even be a President sitting who is now presiding over Sierra Leone, and we have a special court to prosecute people. Foday Sankoh is dead, but Sierra Leone is free because of the activities of the world and pushing, yet still they are going to sit idly by with this Chair's statement?
South Africa where we fought to get the racial apartheid government out and where we have had presidential elections just a few days ago. One of the supposedly outstanding leaders in Africa, Thabo Mbeki. How can they sit by and actually watch this happen in Darfur where the whole world community fought to end apartheid in South Africa?
The other major country, Uganda, where we saw the brutal Idi Amin finally thrust from power where today they are trying to become one of the MCCs to get the millennium challenge account to view them in a positive sense. They too sit there and allow Sudan, a government—not a government—to allow this to happen.
It is a shame, and it is a pity, and I hope these leaders hear what I have to say, and I hope that they will take some reflection on people who have fought so that their people could be free as they look the other way when other people are being killed.
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Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to the marking up of our Rwanda resolution. I was looking forward at the hearing, but because there is a disagreement in the resolution I have asked that it not be presented at this time.
I think that it is critically important for us to find out what our government did or failed to do during the Rwanda genocide if we are to learn from our mistakes. The creation of a Commission of Inquiry on Rwanda with a clear mandate and subpoena power is critical in order for us to find the truth.
Even the French conducted their own inquiries even as they went in with the operation to protect the genocidaires. They even had an inquiry, and there are many reports and books about the Rwanda genocide, but none have had full access to our government files.
Even though it was an Administration I supported 100 percent, I think that this transcends Administration, and I think that there should be an inquiry like other European countries have done, and I might even ask the members of the panel if you may comment at the end of your remarks as to whether you feel that an inquiry from this government is warranted.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Payne. I agree with your assessment. Part of our effort here today is to begin an examination 10 years later with these two panels that we have before us. I am going to work with you and attempt to get a resolution that we can get support for.
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I also want to endorse your comments about the U.N. Commission vote on Sudan, which should occur tomorrow. Between now and tomorrow, we are hoping that the State Department is listening, and we are hoping that the other nation representatives today are listening because there is an opportunity at the United Nations to take a decided stand on the slaughter that is going on right now in Darfur.
Let me now turn to our first panel and introduce Romeo A. Dallaire, who served in the Canadian Army from 1964 until April 2000, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant General. On July 1, 1993, he took command of the United Nations Observer Mission for Uganda and Rwanda and the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
General Dallaire commanded the U.N. peacekeeping force before, during and after the Rwandan genocide broke out in early April 1994. He is currently the Special Advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency on matters relating to war affected children around the world.
In February, General Dallaire testified against Colonel Bagasura at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. General Dallaire is the author of a new book, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.
General, I know you have expressed reservations about being commended, but the record shows that your actions did save thousands of lives in Rwanda, and I do want to thank you for coming to Washington, DC, to be with us to speak about this horrific chapter in world history.
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Thank you, sir.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL ROMEO DALLAIRE, CANADIAN ARMY, RETIRED
General DALLAIRE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Payne and the panel for demonstrating I believe enormous courage in opening up this subject and in fact wishing to pursue the different dimension of which, not only your country, but in fact how the international community did not respond to that genocide and how to prevent it into the future, so thank you very much for inviting me to participate.
Secondly, as I know, I only have 5 minutes or 4 1/2 minutes now. As a graduate of the U.S. Marine Corps Staff College, I will power talk my way through this and try to get as much in as I can.
Mr. ROYCE. General, in order to be of assistance, why do I not suggest that you not limit yourself to 5 minutes and take what time you need in order to state your case? I appreciate it.
General DALLAIRE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A very high risk position you have taken. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the 1993–1994 timeframe we were reeling under a period of the new world disorder, and in that new world disorder a number of nations that had been kept quiet throughout the Cold War by the influence of both our side and the other in order not to commence World War III over a Tanzania or a Rwanda, these nations finally did implode and in too many cases with catastrophic failures either generated by security problems or in fact humanitarian problems that ultimately brought forward security problems.
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In that timeframe, there were 16 U.N. missions ongoing throughout the world, some of the classic ones of the Middle East, others—Cambodia, Mozambique that was just starting up, but certainly the one that dominated the world interest and the world resources was ex Yugoslavia. As many efforts both from media to political to military to humanitarian were focused on ex Yugoslavia, a small country within the heart of Africa was going through its traumas and essentially was forgotten to its own devices.
Rwanda essentially did not count, and one would question whether or not it does today. Rwanda simply had no strategic value with its geography, no strategic value in its resources as it just has coffee and tea, and those economies are already overstocked, and, as one interlocutor who came in the first day to do an assessment of whether or not they would send troops to support me said, the only thing they have here in Rwanda is a lot of people, and they have too much of it. However, that was not sufficient enough to influence that power and many others to actually come and intervene and stop what had become the start of a genocide within a civil war.
Now, with the U.N. over or peacekeeping'd out at the time and the emphasis going to different areas, one could sit back and say that it was possibly just a happenstance that Rwanda did not get the attention, even though the information was being provided. The information was being provided not only from us in the field, but also through different military attaches, Ambassadors, electronic systems and the whole panoply of NGOs and concerned persons.
It did not scratch the surface of interest because it was simply not on the radar screen of the world powers. At the time, only the French demonstrated any interest in that, and that more than likely was because they had over 400 troops deployed, and they wanted to pull out as soon as possible.
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In the months that led to ultimately the genocide, the peace agreement fell into dire times because of political stagnation and ultimately insecurity due to assassinations, small massacres and riots and riots by the general population, most of it motivated by a third force that was in fact the expression of the extremists within the political structures and also within the military and security structures.
In those months, although many countries were represented and certainly the Special Representative of the Secretary General who was perceived as the lead or should have been the lead in the evolving political situation, evolving in the sense that it was bringing forward some potential new ideas and solutions to the impasse between the hardliners, extremists and the moderates and the RPF. These Ambassadors and the political structure demonstrated to be ineffective.
Although we conversed continuously with the Ambassadors of Belgium, Germany, France and United States, there was no concerted effort to really fundamentally come in to Rwanda to try to break that Gordian knot that had been created politically and in fact move them to the broad based transitional government that was supposed to be established within months.
That, not only from the U.N. side, but from the contributing nations and the nations who were represented there, became the weakness of the pre-genocide timeframe, and it permitted the extremists and in fact permitted all those who wished to see the undermining of the peace agreement to flourish.
In that circumstance, the force on the ground, which was a very basic on-the-cheap peacekeeping force of 2,600, was deployed with its rules of engagement of purely self-protection. In so doing, it was using and had assets that would meet only that requirement, for the Security Council made it very clear in my mandate of 5 October 1993 that I was from the start considered a reduction of the forces, and in fact I was to stay within the minimum, strict minimum, of capabilities in the field.
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Rwanda not only was not a priority as it was 16th out of 16 missions, but it was treated as such by all the world nations who could have or did contribute troops and assets to the mission, be they civilian staff through many of the military structures. We were there on the cheap with people who were on job training in accomplishing the mission.
It is during that timeframe, particularly the months of January and February and March, where the requirement for not only the innovative political injection was so critical, but also the potential changing of the mandate and of troop capabilities would have prevented the escalating insecurity and potentially permitted us to if not defer the genocide, at least project a will that such an option that was being maneuvered behind the scenes could even be considered.
With no one interested, no media interested, in fact one of the great shocking things of even the genocide as we move into that phase was the fact that on NBC, ABC and CBS there was more air time given to Tonya Harding kneecapping her colleague than there was to the genocide in Rwanda. It was not for a lack of journalists on the ground who were trying to get their product to the editors, but in fact a concerted effort by the editors that this subject was simply not of interest.
I take this position as I have absolutely no belief that the Administration in any way, shape or form wanted that subject to remain very low key in order to prevent another involvement in South Saharan Africa by United States forces and particularly in a situation that seemed to be degenerating very rapidly.
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Between Tonya Harding and O.J. Simpson, this enormously powerful nation and a nation that believes in the democracies and the advancement of human rights was wrapped up in some of the most induline activities in regard to its interest in the news and influencing its people.
The genocide commenced on the night of the 6th to 7th of April, and in the Security Council on the morning of the 7th it was made quite clear by the U.S. Representative that with Proposition No. 225 that had been introduced weeks before that the United States was not only not getting involved in Rwanda, but it was going to support no one who was interested in doing so.
As the bodies continued to mount and information kept flowing either through the U.N. or media, there was still a passivity by the world powers to the extent in fact that not only were the cries for support to try to stop or stymie the massacres were left ignored, but in fact the option of withdrawing the forces not to put more troops in danger was tabled and in fact implemented, and on the 21st of April, 2 weeks within the genocide, I received orders from the Secretary General to evacuate all my force, to which I refused on two occasions.
But, ultimately the nations that made up the force who have the over arching responsibility on their troops because those troops are loaned to the U.N. commander had ordered their troops to withdraw. Between the Belgian influence and the fear of casualties and the fact that also ultimately I agreed to the withdrawal for none of those troops were providing me with any capability except the Guineans and the Tunisians, they were eating the few rations and drinking the water and using up the medical supplies and taking casualties, but essentially staying behind our trenches and waiting for the evacuation order.
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It made sense on both sides that they pull out. What did not make sense was the fact that the option of reinforcement never really got to the table. It made it in reports from me and also from DBKO, but really never made it to the table of the Security Council.
Mr. ROYCE. You are speaking of just the Belgian contingent at this point?
General DALLAIRE. That is to say the Belgian contingent within the first 3 days after they sustained the casualties.
Mr. ROYCE. Right.
General DALLAIRE. But in fact their Foreign Minister actually met with Boutros-Ghali, who then subsequently gave me the orders to evacuate, which I refused.
The argument was that Africans, when they have a very traumatic experience, lose all sense and all logic, and everyone is at risk and so the argument that was used was that if we do not pull everybody out we will all be massacred and so that made just that much more, nations who had sent troops there on a mandate of peacekeeping and were absolutely not prepared to take any casualties for anything else than in fact peacekeeping.
This of course, sir, is the result, as you clearly identified, of the Mogadishu scenario in which the United States, although it had gone to Somalia to save hundreds of thousands of people who were suffering and dying of lack of food, water and medical supplies and the like, took 18 casualties dead and 72 injured and turned and left the U.N. and others facing the warlords, and ultimately those hundreds of thousands of people did die.
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In the situation then as I am moving from late April into early May, the toll argument, the whole argument of genocide came to the fore. In fact, for me it took until the 26th of April to use the word. I had in fact been seeing it as a political decapitation, which literally did happen within the first week of all moderate Hutus and Tutsi leaders, and then it moved into what had been coined out of Yugoslavia as ethnic cleansing.
It is rather interesting that in Yugoslavia we were using sophisticated terms as such in a sophisticated problem within Europe. However, very rapidly, because of lack of depth or disinterest, what was happening in Rwanda was banalized as purely tribal problems.
The tribal problems in Rwanda go far deeper in fact than the simplicity of tribal. It was power sharing. It was access to resources. It was fear of a minority coming back to take over against a majority, and all these different factors were in place, and it was not ethnic tribalism. It was a nation trying to come to grips with democracy, of getting rid of a dictator and ultimately bringing in multiparty systems in a fair and equitable way under a human rights position.
There were more people killed, injured, internally displaced and refugeed in less than 100 days in Rwanda than the whole of the Yugoslavian campaign that lasted 6 or 7 years, depending on who you meet. However, as we poured tens of thousands of troops into Yugoslavia and billions of dollars of resources and assets, as the whole world was concerned about Yugoslavia and in fact the whole NGO and media dimension was concentrating on Yugoslavia, they were pulling out the few troops I had out of Rwanda.
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The question then is raised how come there was a difference? Are all humans human or some more human than others? Do some humans count more than others? Do Yugoslavs, Europeans, whites count more than a whole bunch of black Africans in central Africa who are simply slaughtering themselves?
Ethnic cleansing is just as brutal and as disgusting as was outright genocide and destruction. There is no difference. However, the perception and the response was enormously different, totally different in such circumstance, and so from the actual use of the term genocide by myself it was accepted by Boutros-Ghali on the 29th of April.
We entered into a very interesting debate on genocide in the different power structures of the world and particularly here, which was rather interesting, of the spokesman of the President trying to describe acts of genocide as different than genocide.
It took another week or so before people actually were courageous enough to use the term genocide. The downside of that is that it did absolutely nothing. There was no difference. There was still no response. Not one person was more interested in the genocide before the term was used than after, and so the term, although significant in legal and diplomatic and legislative venues, actually on the ground in its application was seen to be simply another word and brought nothing.
On the 17th of May, I finally got approval by the Security Council to bring in 5,500 troops as in fact the Security Council and the impression I was left with from the reading of the notes and the discussions were hoping that the genocide would end after they pulled out the troops, but only for me to continue to report as others that the genocide was escalating and so we were forced to agree that ultimately I had a plan. It may not have been the plan that was favored, particularly by the Pentagon who fought it for over 2 1/2 weeks. They agreed to send me troops.
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Now, in my request, and the relevancy of those troops came from the fact that I needed them in less than 2 weeks to be effective, on the ground, not to stop the war—if they want to fight, let them fight—but to stop the massacring behind the lines. That was crucial. If I was able to stop the fighting behind the lines, then the RPF did not have an argument to not negotiate a cease fire, and ultimately we would have probably brought that about.
So instead of giving me what obviously was required of NATO type troops to come in rapidly and to establish that atmosphere of security and stop the killing behind the lines, none of the NATO countries and none of the members in the Security Council Permanent Five offered any troops.
Not only that, but the decision or the omission in the mandate was in regards to timeframe. There was no timeframe given in the mandate and so the first troops actually arrived in the end of July. The war and the genocide had already been over by 2 to 3 weeks.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the question that does remain is if in fact you are not in somebody's genre, in somebody's radar scope, if you do not have a historic reference as possibly the British in Sierra Leone or the French of Cote d'Ivoire and if it is not in your national interest to spill blood in the world because of the place where such traumas are happening and have nothing to offer back to you, then is it fair to take the decision not to intervene?
In fact, is it fair to say listen, this is not our fight. Humans are slaughtering each other. Let them do that. Once they are ended, then we will pick up some of the pieces. We will throw some cash at it, Pontius Pilate ourselves out of the moral responsibility toward humanity.
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Ladies and gentlemen, all humans are human. On one experience, as I was moving between the lines there was a 3-year-old boy in the middle of the road. The extremists would use children to stop convoys. If the children did not stay in the road, they would shoot them.
The child was there. I stopped with a couple soldiers. We expected an ambush. There was no ambush. As we looked through the huts looking for his parents, all we saw were decaying bodies, bodies eaten by dogs and so on. We lost the child, so we went back and looked for the child. I found him and brought him in front of my vehicle. As I looked at this child, whose stomach was bloated and he was dirty and flies all around him and barely no clothes and had scabs all over him, I all of a sudden concentrated on his eyes.
What I saw in those eyes was exactly what I saw in my 3-year-old boy's eyes. They were both human children. There is no difference between them. The bottom line is they are both members of humanity and deserve that humanity be participant in maintaining their ability to be considered as humans and that the response be at that level. Not national interest level, but at a humanitarian level.
Well, sir, we are 10 years later, and again I applaud this Committee, this panel, for in fact looking at even potentially an investigation on the actions by the United States at the time.
I am, however, although an optimist, led to believe that we have not solved the problem. We have put a face to genocide. At the time, to me genocide was equal to holocaust, and I could not imagine anything being like the holocaust and so it took time for me to grasp genocide.
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In so doing, however, now we have, as we let it happen, we now have a face to genocide, and it is a Rwandan face. That face is a face of enormous suffering and a face that is pleading to be treated as human beings and that that face deter others from in fact looking and pondering that option.
Some deterrent actions are in vogue at this time. I do not agree with single nation led coalitions outside of the U.N. in any way, shape or form. I certainly do not agree with nations who are responding because they have some sort of colonial guilt trip and are helping. What happens if Indonesia goes up in smoke? Will the Dutch be able to go and respond to that?
I think that all humanitarian or human related operations in which you have a security problem that creates a humanitarian catastrophe or you have a humanitarian catastrophe that rolls into a security problem that they must all be perceived as solutions that the U.N. in its transparency and impartiality has as credibility more than single nation led coalitions.
However, I am fearful because the nature of the political interplay in the world has not fundamentally changed. What I mean by that, sir, is that the problems of the 80 percent of humanity that is still in the blood and the mud and the suffering, that are treated as subhuman with no dignity and no hope, I fear that that still is considered a residual problem. It is something that if you got cash left over you throw at and you encapsulate.
Until that 80 percent is considered as a mainstream activity by world powers and the advancement of humanity, I do not care if we go to Mars and beyond. Humanity will not have advanced when 80 percent of it is still sitting and treated as animals and not as human beings.
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Diane Fosse a few years before the genocide died in the northwest part of Rwanda in the Virunga Mountains. She died to protect an endangered species, these great mountain gorillas of which there are about 320. It is rather interesting that when the genocide started, the first phone call I got was from some British anthropologist to tell me that I had to send a battalion up there to protect the gorillas, even though I did not have the assets to protect human beings.
However, I still think today that if it would start to happen again, and the Sudan is a perfect example, I think today there would be more of a harush and an involvement purely by environmentalists, let alone others, that if some outfit decided it was going to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas they would come faster than if somebody decided to continue to wipe out tens of thousands of human beings in that country.
I am not pessimistic. I believe that the way to bring the solutions is to attrit this philosophy of national interest and to move particularly the big powers by a far more strident and actively middle power involvement through the U.N. and the international community to move them toward the level of humanity, human rights and the rights of the individual.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you very much, General.
There were a couple of questions I wanted to ask you. One had to do with those radio broadcasts that I mentioned that were urging the Hutu to take up machetes and kill their neighbors. One of the issues is whether we could have taken action against the radio, that constant drumbeat, that constant message telling people what to do, how to do it, where to get the weapons.
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Did you speak out at the time, or did you call attention to people in the government? Did you have maybe a concept about how to silence those broadcasts, because that is an area where you go to the source of where people are getting the information.
General DALLAIRE. Absolutely, sir. In fact, I had called for a radio station before the war started in order to just explain what was going on and in fact explain what we were doing there, for the hardline government was doing nothing to explain to the people, and also explain our limitations in regards to protection of people versus purely self-defense, which was the mandate that we were given.
I had asked, as that radio station became more and more virulent and became in fact absolutely criminal with the genocide, to either jam it or to tell me where it is so we could take it out. A number of nations through the U.N. were requested to provide those assets, and the response came in near unison that Rwanda is a sovereign state, and as a sovereign state we have no right to interfere.
They ended up in fact, one country said we will do it, but we need $8,000 an hour to do it. The U.N. turned to me and said you do not have a budget for it.
Mr. ROYCE. And that was the United States?
General DALLAIRE. I am afraid so, sir.
Mr. ROYCE. Yes.
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General DALLAIRE. But there were other electronic warfare aircraft in the air hovering over the region.
Mr. ROYCE. I assumed that was because I read some of the memos myself. What struck me about the memos were the legal arguments. Well, there are international covenants on broadcasting that everyone has signed, and if we attempt to jam this broadcast we are violating that convention and then the arguments of well, it may not be that effective anyway.
The fact that we have for the record Anthony Marley's testimony that we are going to submit later, the fact that the broadcasts were being made across from the Embassy—did they ever give you the location of the main broadcast site? There were other broadcast sites, but that was apparently the most powerful antenna which was up.
General DALLAIRE. Sir, they operated from also the national radio station.
Mr. ROYCE. I see.
General DALLAIRE. What they had was a mobile unit, and so that mobile unit continued to move around. Its emitter was within the mobile unit, and so you needed somebody who could fix it at one time in order to take it out.
Mr. ROYCE. And I guess the government said it is out of the question to actually take out the broadcasting station. You cannot do that, but here you are just asking at this point can you jam these broadcasts.
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General DALLAIRE. Yes, sir. In fact, it is rather interesting that one of the arguments within the extremists or the hardliners when I told them that we have to stop this thing because a radio station in Rwanda has a different connotation from here inasmuch as it is sort of a radio culture. It is the means of communication, and in some villages it was even perceived as the voice of God nearly.
If you have a very powerful radio station that plays excellent rock music, that attracts the population to it and then expounds this then you have an outright weapon of genocide. This thing was not a radio station. This thing was a weapon of genocide.
One of the arguments they used is they said well, it is a private radio station. That is true. It was funded by private extremists, and so even the government in itself was arguing that it could not do anything because it was private.
Mr. ROYCE. I ran into the same argument with Shariah Radio in Afghanistan for a period of 4 years why we could not jam that, why we could not silence that station.
The other question I wanted to ask you about was your testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. I wanted to get your assessment of the efforts there to obtain justice.
Given the enormity of the undertaking here, how would you assess that effort?
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General DALLAIRE. I think that we could assess it as being fair, fair in a variety of definitions. Fair in its processes, fair in its performance and hopefully fair in its results. However, that tribunal is sort of on-the-job training to the real International Criminal Court, and so it is building the jurisprudence for that future court.
It has been getting a real bum rap because people are saying it is so expensive. Well, if you are going to set up an international body that we want it to achieve the standards of international justice and you set up in a hick town that is on the border of all the safari areas and you start from scratch, of course it is going to be expensive and of course you are not going to attract the best people to work there.
If you want a pencil in Arusha, you have to really search for it. If you are in Den Hague, there is no problem getting a pencil. All the arguments that are used about the slowness of it, the expenses of it, I believe are absolutely irresponsible because what is taken for granted in Den Hague is nirvana for them in Arusha.
Why should the tribunal in Arusha operate from substandard conditions, yet the one in Den Hague not? How come that in Arusha we did not have a witness protection program and witnesses were being slaughtered outside of the town? I would have liked to seen a few witnesses die in Den Hague to see what reaction that would have created.
Sir, it is transcendent to our rethinking. These countries are a residual. They are not mainstream. If they are that way, then we are reflecting it in so many other endeavors.
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Mr. ROYCE. My last question is did the genocide plotters in your view receive any foreign support?
General DALLAIRE. It is my estimation, even though with the arms embargo that was imposed to which, interesting enough, the U.N. did not permit me to apply—I was not allowed to apply the arms embargo as it was only for outside the country—that weapons were reported by observers that were coming in.
The weapons used by the hardline extremist units were weapons of Belgian and French structure. Previous to the genocide, weapons and ammunition that were coming in were coming in from, as I saw the way bills, financed and maneuvered, money laundered and bought from France, Belgium, the U.K., Egypt, Israel and South Africa.
Mr. ROYCE. And the machetes from China, I guess three quarters of a million?
General DALLAIRE. The machetes from China, yes, was a given I am afraid from China.
Mr. ROYCE. Yes.
General DALLAIRE. So weapons did continue to come in through Lake Kivu and through the Congo. However, I must say that also the RPF were getting weapons through Uganda, and recently as I was in Kigali at the 10th anniversary and President Museveni quite right up in front of everybody said oh, yes. I remember that U.N. mission on the border that was supposed to monitor. He said we maneuvered ways to get around it, and of course we did support the movement.
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That is rather ironic that I was putting my troops' lives at risk running through mine fields and so on to at least try to argue that arms were coming in and that in fact the guy who asked for it 10 years later says it was nothing but a ploy.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, General.
General DALLAIRE. Thank you, sir.
Mr. ROYCE. We are going to go to Congressman Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your line of questioning. I think it is very appropriate, especially with the question of the radio station.
I think even at the hearing Ms. Des Forges mentioned that the radio stationed belonged to the son-in-law of the President of Rwanda at the time, Mr. Habyarimana. That was a question that we continued to talk about. Why can we not silence the radio station? They said well, it is mobile, and we do not have the equipment. This was our government when we asked them questions.
They have been flying over Russia for 60 years seeing everything they had with U–2. They brought power down in the 1950s, and they said they had no equipment down in 2000 and something to monitor or 1999, whenever it was, to monitor, 1994, to locate this mobile radio station. It is just absurd.
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In that meeting/hearing that we had on May 4, 1994, the lack of any clear answers from our State Department, as you mentioned, it sounds like it could be genocide, but we do not know. You know, anything but calling it what it was was the mission of the day, one of the most frustrating hearings that we had.
I recall a request for some vehicles. Do you remember that?
General DALLAIRE. Yes, sir.
Mr. PAYNE. What was that vehicle? I thought we had it approved. What was that?
General DALLAIRE. Well, the British were involved with providing me with trucks too, and that went nowhere, nowhere fast because of the state of the vehicles and so on. However, as I was preparing for UNAMIR II, which was in fact the planning for the reinforcements that I was hoping to come in earlier, but, as I described earlier on were tardy, part of it was to get two battalions on EPCs. The mechanized ones, the M–113s, were preferred because of the fact of the shock action that it provided.
Now, there were nations that were queried, and very few nations came forward. One solution that we proposed from DPKO to the nations was why do you not adopt a battalion like what happened in fact was the United States adopted a Guinean battalion, so equip that battalion so when it comes in it is ready to go. That battalion would be equipped with M–113s.
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Nobody wanted to give me M–113s. The argument went on in DPKO and from the field, and ultimately there was a decision that the U.S. would consider a loan of 50 EPCs to the mission for the duration of the mission.
Now, I understand that on the security side people were very fearful of arming presidential guards; that is to say you equip that battalion with all this military capability, and it destabilizes the region when they go home. However, in essence the plan was to loan me those and pay for them. In fact, the figure at one point was $14 million.
The vehicles were not moving even when there was a tacit agreement after a lot of time because they never arrived until June-ish. It ultimately ended up a staff sergeant in the Pentagon and my staff officer, a major, discussing how to get the vehicles there, and that staff sergeant actually moved the vehicles to Rwanda. He is the guy who signed off on all the stuff and got them there.
They were supposed to arrive painted with radios, weapons, spare parts and mechanics in order to help us maintain them. They came half painted, no weapons, many missing radios and just right out of long-term storage in Europe. As such, we ended up with a whole bunch of maintenance problems on hydraulics and things of that nature.
Mr. PAYNE. Since the bell is ringing I am going to end my questioning. Just the last question I might ask is what is your opinion of having an inquiry in the United States, as other countries have done and the U.N. did also?
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General DALLAIRE. Yes, sir. I would like to caution such an action in the following way. I believe that two of the inquiries at least, the Belgian one and the French one, as I look at the results, have some pretty heavy political motivations behind them.
In my belief and knowledge, I know of the results and also what was on the ground is that there were some political agendas being fiddled within these studies. I think that it would behoove that yes, that be done. I think it would clear the air for so many, and the transparency of this powerful nation is crucial to the rest of us in what it does and how it is guiding us and working us with this powerful nation to the betterment of humanity, but be most conscious that this cannot be used as a political instrument.
It must be used at the higher plain of looking for the absolute of truth and justice and humanity, and if it is going to be done that way then it will be better than a lot of the stuff that has been produced so far.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. It would certainly be to get to see what lessons are learned so that we could hopefully avoid the same thing from occurring again, and that would be the main purpose for that.
I appreciate your comments, and I will yield back the balance of my time so others might ask since we are under a time constraint, although we will be coming back.
Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you. General Dallaire, your hope and inspirations in terms of any sort of process around here that can avoid political implications of a commission we establish or any kind of inquiry, a panel of inquiry, I do not care what you want to call it.
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I mean, we have tried to come up with different names to think about how that might affect the outcome and make it a more objective analysis, but it is an enormously difficult thing to do, as you can imagine.
General DALLAIRE. Yes, sir.
Mr. TANCREDO. What implications do you think we should draw, other than the most obvious, from the fact that the world was able to respond, even though the United Nations was not inclined to participate; in fact, they opposed it. The world was able to respond certainly more quickly to the problems in Yugoslavia of a similar nature than they were able to respond to problems in Africa.
General DALLAIRE. Right.
Mr. TANCREDO. What other implication except for the most obvious can we possibly draw here? What is it that allowed us to do one and prevents us from doing the other?
General DALLAIRE. National interest and a lack of voice of humanity, of human rights and the rights of the individual. It is overridden by the national self-interest commitment and as such precludes places like Rwanda to get the attention.
However, if I may say, I speak to many of your staff colleagues and war colleges here in the United States and other countries, and here in the States I tend to tell them. I say the last people I want on a U.N. peacekeeping mission with me are you Americans because often you are a liability to the mission.
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However, what is absolutely crucial is that the political will of the United States be behind the efforts that are being done in the U.N. Two, that in fact the United States involved in every fashion it can the middle power to take up the slack of getting the United States involved in police work where in fact it ultimately finds itself being attrited in its power in the world and as such puts the whole bunch of us at risk.
I think that what is absolutely critical at this time is that the United States back off from the use of force and in fact inject capabilities into the U.N. by supporting, involving and forcing middle powers to present options, more flexibility and in fact ultimate commitment to do that police work and that as with the Rwandan catastrophe in the first week of the Rwandan catastrophe what I needed was the 82nd Airborne, and it should be available to do that for a short period of time.
Before that, I needed more Canadians, and I needed more Dutch, and I needed more Germans as I consider them in the international sphere of humanitarian middle powers or Japanese. That is what we needed, and that did not come. Then when the 82nd Airborne or the Para Brigade of the British was required, they did not come.
At times I wonder if the United States is not getting sucked into these activities of peacekeeping where in fact this world power should be held in reserve; that its political will, its humanitarian dimension and ultimately some resources be put to best effort in reinforcing the U.N., but in so doing involving categorically the middle powers into the option analysis, into the solution and into the implementation of these mandates out there.
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Mr. TANCREDO. Although not a perfect model for what you just described, certainly something that has a lot of parts of that seems to me to be the situation in Sudan, and yet I cannot tell you that I feel terribly secure in the knowledge that all will be well in the Sudan.
Certainly so far it has not prevented another outbreak—Darfur, of course, which I am sure you talked about even before I was able to get here—but it has all the earmarkings of everything that you have said. I mean, as I read through your testimony everything keeps jumping off the page to me. Darfur, Darfur, Darfur.
Every single thing here says that, and yet it does seem that we have used exactly the strategy you have just laid out for us. Try to use the middle countries. Not get involved, but really do push through the United Nations. Do all the things that you say we should do. We have done a lot there, and it certainly does not seem to change the situation.
General DALLAIRE. I think, sir, you cannot look at near term. It is my belief that in three centuries from now or four we will not have conflicts because of our differences. Millions of people are going to die between now and then before we achieve that level; however, the perseverance in continuing to work that route in bringing innovative diplomatic and political solutions to it, in fact assessing the absolute of sovereignty.
Right now, sovereignty is a great impediment in advancing some of the solutions that we think are obvious. How do you work then with the belief of sovereignty, particularly in the developed worlds? The developing countries are very sensitive on sovereignty. However, sovereignty is precluding some of the solutions that are required and so between sovereignty and a responsibility of humanity to act, how do you bridge that?
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Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you.
General DALLAIRE. That bridge is where we need far more work and efforts, and I think the bridge is not by the United States or Brits or the French getting intimately involved. It is by in fact maneuvering with those middle powers to get them involved and let them build their capabilities and be committed and you stand over and watch.
If the poor guy on the ground says that is it, the genocide is starting, then that 82nd Airborne better be on the ground within 24 hours. That is where you come in.
Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you.
Mr. ROYCE. Last questions, Mr. Meeks?
Mr. MEEKS. I am sorry I missed most of the testimony running around. I hope I am not being repetitive. If I am, just tell me, and I will just get the record and look.
My question is just as a military professional what do you believe that the United States and other developed countries should be doing to train African military forces to respond to crises such as the Rwanda genocide, and should there be a freestanding, rapid intervention force established? What are your thoughts on the Administration's desire to train more Africans for peacekeeping?
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General DALLAIRE. Yes, sir. If I humbly may offer something Canadian, and I am not sure I am entitled to do that here, but anyway in 1995 Canada tabled at the General Assembly in September 1995 a document called Rapid Reaction Capability.
In that it says not only our forces, but it spoke of humanitarians, politicals, nation building and all these components. What it says was create regional capabilities and so as an example in Africa we had the Mombassa and we had Dakar. What you do is those institutions or those places do contingency planning. They also train battalions both in situ and in their nations and as such infiltrate human rights.
There were some countries that sent troops to me that do not even believe in human rights in their country. Infiltrate gender respect, the classic peacekeeping methodologies and advanced methodologies in regards to these complex missions.
I totally agree with setting up capabilities there of which, although regional, has out-of-region capabilities. That is to say that it is not just the African region as long as you have people from Europe, the E.U., Canada and so on that are also there working with them. You rotate the people through and build that up.
Now, in the Rwanda scenario I have 26 nations ultimately that sent troops to me. I had contacted most of the African nations to see whether or not their Presidents were willing to send troops. Four guaranteed me battalions. There was one small problem. They do not have the strategic lift.
Two, they do not have the equipment, the basic trucks and radios to do it, and so although these forces had been trained by the French and the British to be effective—I mean, the Guineans are effective and the Senegalese are effective and others like that. They just could not get there, and nobody wanted to provide them that.
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In the end, I ended up with the French, which was a French Franco-African coalition, but it was only a front for actually French intervention in preventing the RPF from taking over the whole country, which ultimately they were not able to prevent.
A hundred percent, sir, but build the capability there and make it a permanent fixture in the advancement of the EU's capability of its region. It cannot be done only by EU people. We must support it. Not take over. Support it.
Mr. ROYCE. That is an initiative, General, that we will follow up on.
I want to thank you for your very excellent testimony here. It is very important to us what you have given us today. We have a lot to consider.
I want to make sure that my colleague, Mr. Meeks, has made this vote. Greg, have you already——
Mr. MEEKS. Thank you.
Mr. ROYCE. Okay. Just a reminder.
What I am going to suggest is we have a series of votes, and we do have a film that many of us have seen called The Ghosts of Rwanda. I thought, given the timing, I have asked the staff if they could put up on the screen that film while we go through this series of votes. Then when we come back, as a panel we can have our second panel of witnesses at that time.
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We will basically adjourn for 10 or 15 minutes. Well, it is going to be longer than 10 or 15. It is going to be an adjournment I would honestly have to say for 25 minutes, a recess basically. We will have a recess for 25 minutes because of this series of votes. Then we will come back with our second panel if it is all right.
I again appreciate, General, very much. Do you have anything you would like to say in closing?
General DALLAIRE. Just I take for granted I am excused with this.
Mr. ROYCE. Absolutely.
General DALLAIRE. The only thing may I state in regards to the U.S. forces and forces that are committed to missions like we are doing these days is that the men and women in uniform—two things, generally speaking.
One is that once they are committed, the nation is behind them and their families. Two, when they come back in body bags or injured that they be treated with respect, dignity, and they do not have to fight another battle to live decently.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, General. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
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Mr. ROYCE. We will stand in recess.
General DALLAIRE. Thank you, sir.
[Recess.]
Mr. ROYCE. If everyone would take their seats?
Let me first mention that on our second panel we have Louise Mushikiwabo. She is a native of Rwanda who lost several family members in the genocide, including her brother, a prominent Tutsi political leader. She is the international coordinator for Remembering Rwanda, a worldwide organization to sustain the memory and the lessons of the Rwandan genocide.
Ms. Mushikiwabo works as an editor at the International Monetary Fund and is the co-author of an upcoming book, King Solomon's Crimes, a multigenerational memoir set against the backdrop of Rwanda's society and history.
Alison DesForges is a senior advisor to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. She has 40 years' experience in the Great Lakes region of Africa and directs research on Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ms. DesForges has served as an expert witness in genocide proceedings at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in the U.S. Federal Court and in Belgian and Swiss courts. Ms. DesForges testified to the Africa Subcommittee in May 1994 when she showed great insight and presence at that hearing. I would like to note that you rhetorically asked: ''Many people care, but nothing happens. Why is that?''.
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Samantha Power is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and from 1993 to 1996 she covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia as a reporter for U.S. News and World Report, The Economist and The Boston Globe.
She has recently written a book titled A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide that was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Ms. Power was just named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.
We are going to start with Samantha Power, and we will ask you to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF SAMANTHA POWER, LECTURER IN PUBLIC POLICY, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Ms. POWER. Thank you for starting with me and for appreciating the time constraint I have. I think the test of Time Magazine's anointment will be what comes out of this hearing and what the United States Government does about Sudan. I do not see any influence thus far that my book has had, but I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
I think the great fear that all of us have is that 10 years from now we will be sitting on a similar panel discussing Sudan's genocide looking back. I have submitted a testimony in written form which contains 10 italicized points, which will spare you busy Members of Congress the necessity of reading my 600-page tome on the mechanics of how the United States Government allowed the major genocides of the twentieth century, including Rwanda.
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The book is very dependent on declassified documents that were accessed by the National Security Archive. With the restrictions on FOIA that have occurred, I think that it will be much more difficult to get those documents declassified, and it is something that this Committee should I think keep in mind.
I am just going to run through five lessons quickly from Rwanda and apply them to Sudan and to use my time here for that purpose.
First of all, the U.S. and the U.N. system is not a broken system. I think it is important to stress that it is one that is working. It worked in Rwanda. The U.S. Government responds to top-down leadership from the President—which was not forthcoming—and it responds to domestic political pressure and the appearance that there will be domestic political cost to doing nothing about a particular crisis. There was no appearance that there would be political costs.
The U.N., similarly, responds when states want to do something. No single state and no group of states wanted to act to send reinforcements to Rwanda. Thus, we should not be surprised that no peacekeepers were sent.
Sudan today. Similarly, we are all lamenting the atrocities being carried out, the deportations, the danger now that people who are housed in concentration camps will actually be murdered as Sudan rushes to cover up the evidence of previous atrocities, but the reality is that we do not want to do what is required to suppress the atrocities. We just do not. We do not want to imperil the north-south peace process that is already underway, a very worthy effort. We do not, of course, want to deploy United States troops because of our overstretch and our difficulties in Iraq.
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More crucially, we do not really want to Americanize the killings going on there by taking steps short of U.S. military involvement. When U.S. officials start denouncing in a regular way, start using high level U.S. resources, start applying what exists within the toolbox, then when things continue to proceed and atrocities continue to occur it becomes our problem.
We do not want it to become our problem, and we also do not really want to put that much pressure on Khartoum, which is seen to be an ally in the war on terrorism. Again, our inaction thus far is not a coincidence.
The second point is that in Rwanda, as all of you know, the toolbox that is at the disposal of U.S. policymakers remained closed. The issue is not, ''Why did the United States not send its troops?''. That is a question we could debate. The bigger question is, ''Why did the United States do virtually nothing along a continuum of intervention ranging from radio jamming to using the term genocide to rallying troops from other countries to denouncing to threatening prosecution?''. So many steps could have been taken.
If you take nothing else away from my testimony, please remember that the United States Government did not even convene a Cabinet level meeting while 800,000 people were being murdered. Not once was the Cabinet convened to roll up its sleeves and decide which of these tools should be employed. Thus, again, it is not a coincidence that none of the tools were deployed.
In Sudan, similarly, such a meeting has not occurred. High-level resources have not been deployed to ask, ''What is it that we can do within this toolbox to try to deter Khartoum from carrying out its atrocities?''.
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The third point is that the Executive Branch response to genocide in Rwanda or ethnic cleansing or genocide in Sudan cannot be looked at in a vacuum. It was a society-wide failure of which we were all a part.
Letters were sent, of course, from this Committee to the President, but the U.S. Congress did not respond to the Rwandan genocide with the alacrity or the verve that I think that many of us in retrospect wish it had. Similarly, people in my business, either in academia or in the press, were not where they should have been. Editorial boards, which were urging intervention in Bosnia, were mute when it came to Rwanda.
In Sudan, we have an earlier set of murmurings and an apparent interest in the press among editorial writers, and certainly in the Congress as has been heard today. The question is: Can we harness these diffuse bouts of interest and make the Executive Branch feel as if there actually may in fact be a political price to be paid for not acting or that there is a domestic political interest in being much more responsive than it has been so far?
Fourth, it is crucial and damaging that policymakers do not fear that there will be accountability for their inaction in the face of genocide. Congressman Payne and I were just discussing this. The fact is that there are no congressional investigations for sins of omission and barely—and only after fierce pressure—hearings for sins of commission. We should remember that the United States mistake during the Rwandan genocide was not merely non-involvement, but it was going to the United Nations and insisting that the troops that were there be withdrawn, so it was actually a sin of commission.
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Nonetheless, the failure of this body to hold the Executive Branch accountable is not only a failure to ascertain who knew what, when, where and why, and who did what, when, where and why, but most crucially it is a failure to create a kind of footstep effect so that all of us feel that we will be remembered if in fact we do allow another genocide in Sudan. The importance of accountability is to actually influence events today as well as to better understand the crimes and the responses to crimes of the past.
The fifth and final point is constructive. Congress is now on the verge I think of busying itself appropriately with the events in Sudan. I am very encouraged. I thought I was going to have to smuggle in a discussion of Sudan, but people here seem really committed to discussing it and to asking what can be done.
One of the things I think we might learn from the congressional response to Rwanda is that letters tend to disappear across town. Merely sending a letter urging a particular response tends not to generate the response that we wish, and the prescriptions within the letters tend not to be acted upon.
The question is whether we can harness the interest and energy of people here—Senator Leahy, Senator Kennedy, Congressman Meehan, Congressman Smith, Congressman Wolf. There are many people who have already begun to speak out about Sudan.
Can this be harnessed such that we can do more than send a letter, but actually get Secretary of State Powell on the phone, figure out how to energize U.S./U.N., Ambassador Negroponte. Obviously he has been busy preparing to become Ambassador to Iraq, but where is the leadership at a senior level?
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The United States gave a distinctly low-level and mid-level response to Rwanda, mid-level at its best. At the height of the genocide there was no Cabinet-level meeting. Let us this time think about individual actors within the Bush Administration who might actually be serious about responding.
Congress has a unique agenda-setting capacity. By forcing members of the Executive Branch here to discuss the tools in the toolbox, that is of course a way to get tools taken out of the toolbox as people want to come here and be able to claim that they are doing something.
Second, Congress of course controls the purse strings, and a commitment here or the beginnings anyway of a discussion about whether this Congress would be willing to foot a quarter of the bill for a U.N. peacekeeping force in Sudan has to be part of this dialogue. It is not enough to say, ''We should do something.'' The question is: Is Congress prepared to pay for something to be done?
Crucially, congressional trips can be made to the Chad/Sudan border. Congressman Payne has done this many times in the past. The media has been quite deficient in responding to Sudan over the course of the last few months. One way to get media excited and interested is to trail prominent United States officials like yourselves.
I am running out of time, but just final bullet points in terms of what the Bush Administration should be doing if in fact we are able to get the attention again of officials within the Executive Branch.
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Bilateral pressure on Khartoum is indispensable. When President Bush issued a sharp and very impressive denunciation on April 8, 2004, it was not a coincidence that Khartoum announced a humanitarian cease fire within 24 hours.
Our words matter. We are signaling and more often we are heard. Unfortunately, after that denunciation, which coincided, of course, with the Rwanda anniversary, nothing else has been forthcoming from the President's office. There have been no words beyond that single, again important, statement. As a result I do not think it is a coincidence that the humanitarian cease fire has broken down and that the killings have resumed.
Second, intelligence assets. Why are we not deploying our intelligence assets if, in fact, we want to ascertain what is becoming of the refugees who are in flight? Are there mass graves that have been already created? Are bodies being moved?
There are preliminary reports in the last 48 hours that heavy military transport equipment is being deployed in Darfur perhaps as a way of removing some of the evidence of the crimes that have been carried out. Perversely, pressure increases the fear and the desire to cover one's own tracks. Again, intelligence assets can be of tremendous use.
The issue of certification. There is, of course, an important peace process underway between the south and Khartoum that the Bush Administration has been so pivotal in brokering. Surely certification of Sudan and the lifting of sanctions should be tied not merely to compliance with that peace process, but also with a cessation of atrocities in Darfur.
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Second, a word about what the United Nations can do. In New York the Secretary-General has deployed two teams—human rights and humanitarian teams—to Sudan. Fact finding is important, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for action that is actually going to bring about a meaningful change in people's lives.
The Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, had mentioned peacekeepers the same day President Bush himself issued his strong statement, but there has been no mention of peacekeepers from the Secretary-General since, and I think we need to be putting pressure behind the scenes on the Secretary-General himself, who is inexplicably mute on this question.
Thirdly and finally, the Europeans, unfortunately quite characteristically, have taken no leadership themselves. So, part of our bilateral effort—given that we have troops that are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan and are thus unlikely to be supplying troops ourselves—is actually to use bilateral diplomacy behind the scenes both to ensure that such pathetic statements as came out of the commission or the Chairman today in Geneva, that those statements do not come out again. And to ask Europeans who are, of course, fond of critiquing United States foreign policy whether in fact they would be prepared to put anything on the line on behalf of genocide prevention (in lieu of just blaming the United States for what it is doing).
The Europeans have a unique opportunity to do something that the United States unfortunately does not, which is actually to press for a referral of Sudan to the International Criminal Court and demand the beginnings of an investigation. You may argue about what deterrent effect that Court will have, but there is no way to determine that without actually trying it.
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It is already investigating atrocities in Uganda and in Congo, and this is a golden opportunity to get it in operation and beginning its investigations in a prospective fashion and not merely once the bodies have already been buried.
The time has come to harness a lot of the remorse that most of us feel. It is incredibly important that this Committee has chosen to remember Rwanda, and the question is whether or not we are going to show that we have actually learned the lessons that have been so well laid out by General Dallaire and by my two colleagues here today.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Power follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SAMANTHA POWER, LECTURER IN PUBLIC POLICY, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Good afternoon, thank you for holding a hearing on a subject that could not be more intrinsically important and one that—in light of the atrocities currently being carried out in Darfur, Sudan—could not be more timely. I only hope that, ten years from now, we do not have to gather again for a subcommittee hearing entitled: ''Sudan's Genocide: Looking Back.''
I will offer a brief overview of the genocide, will discuss the lessons learned by a multi-year study of the U.S. response to the Rwandan genocide, and will apply these lessons to the contemporary horrors in Sudan
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I. THE GENOCIDE
In three short, cruel months, between April and July 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide more efficient than that carried out by the Nazis in the Second World War. The killers were a varied bunch: drunk extremists chanting ''Hutu power, Hutu power;'' uniformed soldiers and militia men intent on wiping out the Tutsi inyenzi, or ''cockroaches;'' and ordinary villagers who had never themselves contemplated killing before, but who decided to join the frenzy.
The murderers, and their ebullient abettors, were turned into ghastly marionettes, consumed by a manic wrath. Men and women, young and old, religious and agnostic, became killers. They killed with radios in one hand and machetes in the other. They killed in churches, at traffic lights, in supermarkets, and in homes. They killed after taunting, after savage beating, and, often, after raping.
The Clinton administration's response was best captured by a State Department press conference two days into the slaughter. Prudence Bushnell, the mid-level official who had been put in charge of managing the evacuation of (only) Americans from Rwanda, spoke with journalists about the Rwandan horrors. After she left the podium, State Department spokesman Michael McCurry took her place and seamlessly turned to the next item on the day's agenda: U.S. criticism of foreign governments that were preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List.
''This film movingly portrays the twentieth century's most horrible catastrophe,'' McCurry said. ''And it shows that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference.'' McCurry urged that the film be shown worldwide. ''The most effective way to avoid the recurrence of genocidal tragedy,'' he declared, ''is to ensure that past acts of genocide are never forgotten.'' No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's, between Rwanda and the Holocaust. Neither journalists nor officials in the United States were focused then—or in the ensuing three months—on the fate of Rwanda's Tutsi.
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By July 1994, when Tutsi rebels took control of the country, the killers had accomplished much of what they set out to achieve. Eight hundred thousand people—half of the Tutsis who had lived in Rwanda three months earlier—had been eliminated.
The United States and its allies on the UN Security Council did not simply watch. They voted to withdraw the UN peacekeepers who were in Rwanda, abandoning Rwandans who had relied upon the blue helmets for their protection.
II. THE LESSONS
1) The U.S. response to a particular genocide is shaped by U.S. decisions made prior to the outbreak of killing, which have profound bearing on how future perpetrators, America's allies, international institutions, and U.S. officials will act.
In October 1993, two events occurred that helped dictate future interpretations and reactions. Some 50,000 Burundians were murdered in ethnically-motivated massacres, generating no foreign intervention, scant press coverage, and no retrospective introspection or outrage. In addition, 18 U.S. soldiers sent into Somalia to rescue an ailing UN peacekeeping mission were killed in a Mogadishu fire-fight, prompting President Clinton to announce the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Somalia. Both events emboldened the would-be perpetrators, and demoralized those U.S. and UN officials who were concerned about Rwanda. These individuals concluded: 1) the United States and its allies would allow systematic slaughter that did not implicate national interests [a view reinforced by the Western powers' refusal to take meaningful military action in Bosnia], and 2) the United States would henceforth be extremely wary of non-military involvement in humanitarian crises and of peacekeeping missions undertaken by other countries—because these could lead to eventual U.S. entanglement. In order to avoid mission creep, it would often be better to avoid U.S. or UN involvement.
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Quite apart from these two events, the President had made plain more generally—in his words and his deeds—that U.S. foreign policy would advance U.S. national interests—defined in economic and security terms. This had always been the default presumption regarding foreign policy, and it signaled U.S. and UN officials that ''mere'' humanitarian suffering would not suffice to override the default and spur risky action. The Congress had also communicated its reluctance to fund UN peacekeeping missions, and its skepticism that such missions could succeed in quelling violence. Officials in the Clinton Administration and the UN Secretariat internalized this skepticism.
2) The United States and other states ignore the warning signs that would enable them to act early. Although small, stern steps taken in the preventive phase can have a profound effect, the early warnings rarely rise within the bureaucracy and command high-level attention. They remain relegated to—and are often internalized by—regional- or country specialists who do not have the instinct or the clout to force the information up the chain.
In the months preceding the slaughter, the Rwandan killers staged a number of mini-massacres in order to gauge international reaction. Indeed, by January 1994, Rwanda had become so militarized—and imported machetes had becomes so omnipresent—that the UN commander in Rwanda, Major General Romeo Dallaire, urgently cabled Kofi Annan, the UN peacekeeping, in New York. Dallaire warned that militia could exterminate ''up to 1,000'' Tutsi ''in 20 minutes.''
Annan, believing the United States and its allies were unwilling to confront the militants so soon after the Somalia fire-fight, opted not to cross what became known as ''the Mogadishu line.'' He buried what has become known as the ''genocide fax,'' and the militia-members took their cue. Kofi Annan was wrong not to blast an alarm, but he accurately predicted the U.S. attitude: stopping Rwanda's massacres was not in the U.S. national interest. CIA and U.S. embassy warnings of large-scale arms imports, periodic ethnic massacres, and radical propaganda likewise went unheeded.
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3) Regimes intent on wiping out an inconvenient minority often pursue bad-faith negotiations, but Western diplomats typically invest their authority and time into these negotiations or cease-fire pursuits, mustering only conventional [and inappropriate] responses to an unconventional crisis. Western powers cling to their neutrality rather than ''take sides.''
Once the genocide started, the Clinton Administration urged an immediate cease fire and a ''return to the Arusha peace process.'' Those U.S. officials who reached out to the Rwandan militants [they were reachable by telephone for much of the genocide] stressed the importance of negotiations and re-establishment of the terms of the Arusha accord. Yet perpetrators of genocide intent on exterminating the entire Tutsi populace only maintained the fiction of a peace process in order to buy time for their slaughter. In New York, too, UN officials maintained diplomatic courtesy, politely allowing the Rwandan ambassador to the UN to speak, never considering urging the closing of a mission comprised of representatives of a genocidal regime.
4) Once the massacres have begun [in countries that do not implicate traditional economic or security interests] ''mere genocide'' does not command high-level attention or resources.
More shocking than the U.S. avoidance of military intervention in Rwanda was the fact that President Clinton never even convened his Cabinet to discuss what might be done about the murder of nearly a million human beings. The response was low-level, and the Africa specialists [mostly career bureaucrats] who were most aghast by the killings did not have—or did not imagine they could have—the clout needed to move the machinery of a risk-averse system in time to save lives.
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5) The United States takes an all-or-nothing approach: if it does not send troops, it tends to foreclose other policy options.
In Rwanda, the United States not only failed to intervene: with two mild exceptions, the President failed even to publicly mention the massacres. The United States also failed to denounce the ''genocide,'' use its technology to jam the ''hate radio,'' freeze the financial assets of the killers, expel the Rwandan ambassador from Washington, or rally additional UN troops from other countries. The Rwandan killers went utterly unchallenged.
6) U.S. officials and non-governmental actors alike spend precious time and energy debating whether to apply the label of ''genocide'' to ethnic slaughter.
Unwilling to be seen to allow ''genocide,'' Clinton administration officials spent nearly as much time maneuvering to avoid using the term than it did using its resources to save lives. In May 1994, an internal Pentagon memo warned against using the term ''genocide'' because it could commit the United States ''to actually do something.'' After considerable internal debate, instructions on semantics were finalized, and sent out to U.S. diplomatic posts, authorizing U.S. officials to acknowledge ''acts of genocide,'' but not genocide.
7) Even when the United States decides not to respond militarily, American leadership is indispensable. This is especially true because Europe continues to avoid intervening in violent humanitarian crises. And it remains true irrespective of American unpopularity abroad.
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The Clinton Administration, tied up with crises in Haiti and Bosnia, and grappling with whether to grant most favored nation trading status to China, believed that Belgium and France were best suited to take the lead on Rwanda. But Belgium withdrew its peacekeepers, and France often sided with the Francophone Hutu authorities responsible for the genocide. Other African countries did not step forward themselves to volunteer for service. The United States did not exert leadership during the Rwanda genocide; the rest of the world, conveniently, saw leadership not to act.
8) The Executive branch's passivity in the face of genocide is affirmed by a society-wide silence.
President Clinton's administration was one that responded to ''noise,'' and the rest of us failed to generate the political pressure that would have commanded the President's attention. Editorial writers at the major papers who pushed for intervention in Bosnia made no such appeals on behalf of the Rwandans. The Congressional Black Caucus was consumed with the refugee crisis in Haiti. And we voters never picked up our telephones, so the Congressional and White House switchboards did not ring. Representative Patricia Schroeder (D–Colo.) described the relative silence in her district. ''There are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas,'' she said, noting that Colorado was home to a research organization that studied Rwanda's imperiled gorilla population. ''But—it sounds terrible—people just don't know what can be done about the people.'' The Clinton administration did not help inform Americans—indeed it distorted the facts, deliberately avoiding use of the word ''genocide''—and then it invoked the public and Congressional indifference as yet one more alibi for its inaction.
9) And domestically, U.S. leaders do not fear they will pay a political price for being bystanders to genocide.
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Voters do not judge a President on the basis of how he responds to a distant genocide. Yet they often do penalize a President for foreign interventions that go badly or cost U.S. lives. Other forms of accountability have also been absent. No Congressional investigation has ever been held inquiring into Washington's response to the genocide in Rwanda. Thus, our institutional capacities and political predispositions remain similar to those that yielded a non-response in 1994.
10) Genocide stains an era and a presidency.
President Clinton has said that Rwanda is his greatest regret.
III. SUDAN
All over the world, hearings like this one are being held, appropriately, to reflect upon the ''lessons of Rwanda.'' But as we meet and remember, the Sudanese government is teaming up with Arab Muslim militias in a campaign of ethnic slaughter and deportation that has already left nearly a million Africans displaced and more than 30,000 dead.
The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has armed nomadic Arab herdsmen, or Janjaweed, against rival African tribes. The government is using aerial bombardment to strafe villages and terrorize civilians into flight. And it is denying humanitarian access to more than 700,000 people who are trapped in Darfur.
The Arab Muslim marauders and their government sponsors do not yet seem intent on exterminating every last African Muslim in their midst. But they do seem determined to wipe out black life in the region. The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur, said Mukesh Kapila, the former United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, ''is the numbers of dead, murdered, tortured, raped.''
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The United States has no intention to send its over-stretched troops to Sudan. Yet it if it waits for European countries or Sudan's African neighbors to take a stand, it will be waiting a long time. Just because the United States will not send its troops, does not mean its leadership will not be required to rally troops from other countries or to take bilateral steps in order to influence Khartoum's behavior.
In Sudan, the all-or-nothing approach has been compounded by the administration's reluctance to risk undermining the peace process it has spearheaded between Sudan's government and the rebels in the south. While President Bush should be applauded for his leadership in attempting to broker peace in Sudan's civil war, he must stand up to Khartoum during these difficult negotiations.
What would standing up to Sudan entail? The administration has several options:
On the economic and diplomatic front, the United States has already demonstrated its clout in Sudan, which is desperate to see American sanctions lifted. So far, Secretary of State Colin Powell has rightly described the humanitarian crisis as a ''catastrophe.'' But the White House and the Pentagon have been mostly mute. President Bush must use American leverage to demand that the government in Khartoum cease its aerial attacks, terminate its arms supplies to the Janjaweed and punish those militia accused of looting, rape and murder. The president made a phone call to Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, and issued a strong public denunciation of the Darfur killings on April 7, 2004, and this pressure yielded the immediate announcement of a cease-fire. But as soon as U.S. attention waned, the killings resumed. Mr. Bush should keep calling until humanitarian workers and investigators are permitted free movement in the region, a no-fly zone is declared and the killings are stopped, and he should dispatch Mr. Powell to the Chad-Sudan border to signal America's resolve.
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The Bush administration cannot do this alone. Ten thousand international peacekeepers are needed in Darfur. President Bush will have to press Sudan to agree to a United Nations mission—and he will also need United Nations member states to sign on. The Europeans can help by urging the Security Council to refer the killings to the newly created International Criminal Court. Though the United States has been hostile to the court, this is one move it should not veto, as an investigation by the court could deter future massacres.
IV. CONCLUSION
On this historic ten-year anniversary, we must try not to allow 800,000 to become a faceless statistic. Each Rwandan lived a precious life and died a horrible death. And if we are serious about learning the ''lessons of Rwanda,'' we must do more than remember and regret; we must press our leaders to make genocide prevention and suppression the foreign policy priority it has never been. Otherwise, when we pledge ''never again Rwanda,'' what we will really be saying is ''never again will Rwandan Hutu kill 800,000 Tutsi between April and July 1994.''
Mr. ROYCE. Ms. Power, those lessons are also well laid out in your recent analysis, the rather detailed analysis on the systematic failure in Rwanda. I would suggest I am going to send a copy of that to all the Members as well as to the media because it really I think evidences or gives an account which we can follow week by week in terms of the breakdown of the whole situation on the ground in Rwanda.
We are going to go to Ms. Mushikiwabo now for her testimony, and we will ask you to keep it to 5 minutes and we will continue.
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STATEMENT OF LOUISE MUSHIKIWABO, INTERNATIONAL COORDINATOR, REMEMBERING RWANDA
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress. I am very pleased that 10 years after the Rwandan genocide we are sitting here engaging in a dialogue on what can be done in the international community from lessons we have learned from Rwanda.
I was born and raised in Rwanda. I came to this country 18 years ago to pursue higher education that my own country was denying me, so I am very pleased to be talking to you this afternoon.
It is very difficult being Rwandan and talking to so many non-Rwandan, although very knowledgeable people, about the Rwandan genocide, in the sense that I do not know what not to say. There is a lot to say about the genocide and what could have been done.
I will give my thoughts from the perspective of a Rwandan, even though I guess I am part of the international community. From the way of thinking and the way of acting of my fellow Rwandans, I will tell you what I think could have been done and also, if you allow me, what should be done now.
I think both General Dallaire and Samantha have made it very clear that what should have been done by the international community was a show of political will, and so, we know what should have been done. What we do not know is how to get it done.
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I am here this afternoon to ask you, Mr. Chairman and Members of Congress, that Rwanda, 10 years after the genocide, should definitely be used as a lesson, and I am very confident that many Rwandans, especially genocide survivors, would be comforted if their suffering were used to help other people.
I was in Kigali the first 2 weeks of April for the 10th anniversary commemoration, and there was talk in Rwanda of President Bashir of Sudan attending the 10th anniversary commemoration. Although many Rwandans do not know who President Bashir is, the word got out, and by April 6 everybody was worried about the President of Sudan coming here in Rwanda. You know, what does that mean?
I thought that was a very interesting sign in that, Rwandans, with their own problems, with their own issues, were very concerned that some leader in a bigger country in Africa not too far, but not too near, was coming and that was not a good thing.
I have two points to make. One is that I would urge you again to use Rwanda for other parts of the world where trouble is brewing. Also, my second point would be to go through some of the steps that I think were missed in 1994, especially by the United States Government represented by its Embassy in Kigali.
I think it is very fair to say that not much was needed from the U.S. Government back in 1994. I think had Ambassador Rawson in Kigali back then gone to Radio Rwanda or even Radio RTLM and said that the violence had to stop, that would have been a major, major threat to the killers.
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You have to understand that Rwanda is not complicated. The killing is chilling, and the level of planning and organization is quite sophisticated, but I truly believe that the fact that the killers were reading signs, were waiting for a signal and saw nothing coming was a sign of encouragement to them.
I think verbal threats, for example, from a U.S. Ambassador in Rwanda in 1994 would have gone a long way to tell the planners of the killings that America would not support and America would punish such violence. I think it was very easy for the United States Government to withhold aid to Rwanda. Rwanda is a country to this day that very heavily depends on foreign aid and so that was a very precious tool that could have been used in 1994.
We have talked about jamming Radio RTLM. That radio obviously was one of the tools of genocide. Radio is critical as the preferred means of communication in a country where most people cannot read and write.
I also think that this Congress should keep a close look at the United Nations. I am sorry to say something about General Dallaire when he has already left, but my family was killed under the watch of General Dallaire's troops in 1994.
General Dallaire's office had received warning about the killing of my brother, who was one of the pro democracy leaders in Rwanda, and he was guarded by General Dallaire's troops. General Dallaire had received warning from his intelligence of the murder of my brother. He was never warned, and when the killers came to his house the U.N. troops simply left.
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I think it is important that there be some kind of control, if not supervision, of what happens especially at the level of the Security Council. However, I also think it was a major failure on the part of the United States and other powerful countries to allow Rwanda, the Government of Rwanda in 1994, which was committing genocide against its own citizens, to be sitting as a rotating member on the Security Council, and nobody said anything.
I am reminded, back in 1994, of some Members of Congress who showed a lot of courage, and that is Congressman Payne and Congressman I think Jim Jeffords, who had the courage to tell the Ambassador of Rwanda back in 1994 to leave the room. I thought that was an important gesture, and I am sure the Ambassador did not take it lightly.
At this point, I think most things I have to say have been said or will be complemented by Alison DesForges, who knows my country and the genocide very well. Mr. Chairman and Members of Congress, I would like to appeal to you this afternoon for one very special situation stemming from the Rwandan genocide.
Mr. Chairman, you asked General Dallaire about the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, his assessment of the tribunal. The Tribunal, in my view as a Rwandan, is dysfunctional. It is very far away from Rwanda and Rwandans, the trials are conducted in languages that Rwandans do not understand. I do not see why General Dallaire said his assessment was fair. I do not think it is fair.
The international community, through the United Nations, is supporting detainees at the Tribunal, many of them accused of raping Rwandan women in 1994. Now, under, I guess the international system, these detainees are receiving the very latest antiretroviral treatment for AIDS, while their victims back in Rwanda have no support whatsoever. This is a situation that I very much ask you to look at.
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I think it is not a question of health. It is also a question of justice. It is a question of basic fairness. I would like this Congress to take that issue very seriously and look at this group of women as a special group of survivors among other survivors.
Mr. ROYCE. We will, Ms. Mushikiwabo.
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. I guess I am running out of time. I would, again, like to thank you for finding this time, as many people around the world in our network of Remembering Rwanda are commemorating the 10th anniversary of the genocide. I am happy that the million Rwandan lives that were lost in 1994 were not lost in vain, and you will not prove me wrong.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Mushikiwabo follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF LOUISE MUSHIKIWABO, INTERNATIONAL COORDINATOR, REMEMBERING RWANDA
My name is Louise Mushikiwabo. I was born and raised in Kigali, Rwanda. I came to the United States in 1986 to pursue graduate studies when I received a scholarship from the University of Delaware. After graduation, I moved to the Washington area where I have been working in public relations and writing. Currently, I am an editor in the African department of the International Monetary Fund. I am also an international coordinator for Remembering Rwanda, a worldwide network whose objective is to sustain the memory and lessons of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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I came from a middle-class Tutsi family with no political ties until 1990, when my sister, her husband and two of my brothers were arrested and jailed. Like many Tutsi living in Rwanda at that time, they had to pay the price for allegedly being accomplices of the Rwanda Patriotic Front that had just launched an attack in Northern Rwanda. I was finishing school then and did not go back for fear of persecution.
After prison, my brother Lando Ndasingwa, a former University of Rwanda professor decided to join the pro-democracy movement. Eventually he became the government's Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, and was the only Tutsi in the cabinet when the genocide started. He had been very vocal about equal treatment for the country's minority groups living in exile who had been denied basic rights, including the right to Rwandan citizenship. Thus, my entire family became a priority target of genocide planners and perpetrators.
In the early morning of April 7, 1994, members of the Rwandan army and the Hutu militia, the Interahamwe, went on a deadly rampage across the country, starting in Kigali, the capital, where most of my family lived. As news reports trickled in that the Interahamwe were hacking people to death with machetes, I feared the worst. I was on the phone day and night, desperately trying to get news. In the early morning, Washington time, of April 7, the phone lines to all of my relatives in Rwanda went dead. The following day I read in a wire story that my brother was missing and presumed dead. I was devastated. What I did not know was that my brother was not the only one I had lost.
Knowing the sensitive position my brother and other moderate politicians were in, the UN Mission in Rwanda had provided them with armed guards around the clock. But, on the morning of April 7, as elements of the Presidential Guard approached, the blue helmets stationed at my brother's house fled. Within the hour, the soldiers entered the house and murdered everyone inside: my brother, his wife, their seventeen year-old daughter, fifteen year-old son, our mother and another nephew who was visiting. My life was turned upside down. Faced with the enormous challenge of ''doing something'', I decided to speak out then and pursue justice for my family and my country. That is why I stand before you this afternoon.
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Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, the real tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is that it was easily preventable. Ten years on, it is critical that lessons drawn from Rwanda are learned. It would be comforting to many Rwandan survivors today to know that their misery is serving to save other people's lives.
From the perspective of Rwandans and many foreign observers, the Rwanda situation was easy to handle because warnings had been given in time and that an international military force was in place early enough. To answer the question at the heart of this hearing, i.e. what the international community could have done, I say with confidence that all that was needed was a clear and unequivocal signal to the government of Rwanda back then, that violence will not be tolerated any longer, and that the Arusha Peace Accord had to be implemented. It was easy to do simply because the state of Rwanda depended very heavily on foreign aid, therefore the international community had an easy and sure tool to use with a government that no longer did its primary job, protecting its people. The planners of the Rwandan genocide were intelligent and world savvy, and there is no doubt that they could have taken the clue from the international community's words if not actions.
The United States should not have refused to jam Radio RTLM, known as hate radio, because of the hourly cost of the operation or the blind belief in free speech. By the time the genocide started, RTLM had prepared Rwandans and told them who the enemy was, assured them that it was not a bad thing to ring their neighbor's neck, and identified opposition leaders as sell-outs and unpatriotic. My brother's name was heard on that radio many times, calling him a traitor that deserved to die. At the height of the killings, it is hate radio that revealed where people were hiding, who was still alive, who to continue hunting in what neighborhood, and it succeeded. I was told that there was even reference made to me on RTLM after my family was killed: ''even the little Lando sister cockroach in America should not feel safe, we should go there and find her.'' Specific targeted responses such as taking RTLM off the air would have had a positive impact.
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Two international actors in particular were capable of stopping the death machine before it got into motion; i.e. France and the Catholic Church. I single them out because of the level of influence they had with the genocidal government and their thorough understanding of the situation. Those two actors alone, with a bit of good will could have frustrated the genocidal plans and Rwanda's history would have followed a different course.
Rwanda, in April 1994, should never have been allowed to sit on the Security Council as a rotating member, while committing genocide against its own citizens.
Once the killings started, it was difficult but not impossible to stop the massacres. At that point, the United States, Britain, Belgium and other countries should not have discouraged and lobbied against General Dallaire's efforts to save lives. It would have been too late for my own family but not for many other Rwandan families.
Conflict and large-scale massacres occur in different manners and within different contexts, but I strongly believe that the lack of political will in the face of the Rwandan evil was a terrible mistake and a lesson not lost on governments or groups intent on committing atrocities. Understanding that no one is willing to take a stand against the extermination of an entire people is a green light to corrupt and violent states. The same logic is what fueled the continuation of anti-Tutsi propaganda in the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) right after the genocide. Even after committing horrendous crimes, it was clear to the Rwandan killers that nobody was coming to the rescue of the Tutsis and as a consequence, the same hate machine and the same brainwashing of the average Hutu went on in a neighboring country, unabated. With the support of world relief agencies and our tax dollars, the hardliners within the refugee population were given yet another signal that they are too many to be bothered by the international community. In the aftermath of the genocide, much more international money was being spent on the refugees in Zaire than on the survivors of the genocide. That situation was the second betrayal of Rwanda and its consequences of serious regional instability are still sucking Rwanda's resources and energy to this day. The unwillingness on the part of the international community to separate genuine refugees from killers was a terrible mistake that signaled to the genocidal forces on the run that the world doesn't care. They then proceeded to launch attacks inside Rwanda's borders to kill yet more Tutsis, including targeting school children. As a result, Rwanda's new and struggling leadership was drawn into a war of somebody else's making and the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa will feel the effects of that mistake for a very long time. There is no doubt in my mind that Sierra Leone, East Timor, CoAE3te d'Ivoire and Sudan today, are a result of the blatant indifference on the part of powerful countries.
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Permanent members of the Security Council, especially France and the United States wielded enormous power over the fate of Rwanda in 1994. Congress should set up an accountability mechanism for such powerful countries that fail to stop mass killing, if not, I am afraid it will happen time and again.
The United Nations Secretariat and Department of Peacekeeping Operations should also be held accountable for not even trying to stop the killing, despite ample and accurate warnings. I am convinced that if no international civil servant pays the price for Rwanda there is no hope of change in the response to genocide.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, I stand before you this afternoon to ask for two things:
Ensure that there is no other massive loss of life by mustering the political will that poor, non-white regions of the world don't seem to merit in the western political mind
Pay attention to the plight of Rwandan genocide survivors; it has been ten years of pain and poverty, and they desperately need assistance
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, it goes without saying that Rwanda's new leadership in the summer of 1994 was faced with a challenge of unprecedented dimensions. The business of surviving became a priority over justice and reparation for the victims of the genocide. Territorial security became a top priority for Rwanda's leadership because, after all, one has to be alive first before making any other claims. In the last ten years, the international community has shown a lot of interest in reconciliation at the expense of reparation. Survivors of the Rwanda genocide have come to accept that there can really be no justice for them but they do expect some measure of fairness, not just from their government but from the international community. In that regard, I have a special request to make about a situation that defies human decency, that is the abandonment of Rwandan women who were raped during the genocide and infected with AIDS. The Rwandan government simply does not have enough resources to satisfy the needs of genocide survivors, even though it has done its best under very difficult circumstances. What is outrageous about this situation is that detainees in the hands of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda have access to the latest antiretroviral treatment, while their surviving rape victims, back in Rwanda, are getting very little medical attention. This is a question of fairness and urgency. These women do need your help. I urge you to send the right signal this time.
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Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, much more needs to be done in Rwanda today; allow me to name some specific areas where you can help:
Help the country's economic recovery
Send a message of hope and support to survivors
Support justice initiatives and an adequate judicial system in Rwanda
Denounce the revisionism of Hutu extremists and their supporters
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, it is my sincere hope that, under your careful watch, the world can begin to send a strong message to mass murderers, that their barbarism will be confronted with severe punishment. It is equally important that victims be heard and helped.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Committee, at this time of the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Rwandan genocide, I ask you to show Rwandans and the world, that a million Rwandan lives were not lost in vain.
Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Members of the Sub-Committee.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony here today.
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I am going to go to Ms. DesForges.
STATEMENT OF ALISON DES FORGES, SENIOR ADVISOR TO AFRICA DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. DESFORGES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We have already explored somewhat this afternoon the response of the international community and of the United States Government in particular.
What I would like to add is the way this response of the international community did or did not have an impact inside Rwanda because a genocide is stopped not just by military action. It can also be stopped by a number of other measures, which also need to be thought about. This requires a knowledge of the circumstances on the ground because it requires thinking about it from the inside out to understand who in the society is likely to resist and how they can be supported in their resistance.
The image of the Rwandan genocide is so often that of an eruption of enormous violence, as if somebody all of a sudden pressed the button and genocide happened. That is not the case. It was a crime, but it was also a historical event. Like any historical event, it is very complicated.
We know that there are many Rwandans who resisted, and particularly in the center and the southern part of the country the killing was very, very, very limited for the first 10 to 12 days. Then what happened? The Security Council met on a Friday afternoon, the 15th, and although it did not take a vote the consensus at the end of the day was that all U.N. troops were going to be pulled out.
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The next morning, on Saturday morning, the 16th, when the Rwandan Government met, it decided to invest the national resources needed to extend the genocide into those parts of the country that had resisted up until that point, so you can see a fairly clear link there.
Another example in a positive sense. When the hotel in Kigali, which was a place of shelter for hundreds of Tutsi and some Hutu refugees, was surrounded by a military unit and militia, the manager of the hotel, who did not want to see his hotel shot to pieces, called Europe and got the Sabina Airlines, which owned the hotel, to call the French. The French then telephoned Rwandan military leaders, and those units were pulled back, and the people in that hotel were safe.
You can see from those kinds of connections. There is another example: When the Rwandan military went to France for some new military assistance in the middle of May and brought back the answer that the French were going to be willing to do that provided the image of the genocide were cleaned up a little bit.
The next day, Radio RTLM carried the message: Rejoice, friends. The French are going to help us, but for that to happen, please, no more bodies on the road. Please, no more people standing at the barrier laughing while someone's throat is cut.
You have referred to the May 4, 1994 meeting here in Congress when we talked about that radio. I remember Mr. Moose making the statement on May 4 that the radio was no longer functioning and I contradicted him, and that radio did continue to function. The United States Government decided to do nothing about it.
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Now, one of the reasons it would have been important for there to be a response for that radio to be cut off, first of all, it would have interrupted the flow not just of incitements to violence, but direct orders about whom to kill, where the person could be located and so on.
In addition, it would have carried a much more powerful added message questioning the legitimacy of the entire government because, as Mr. Royce mentioned, one of the arguments that was used at the State Department for not jamming the radio was that this would violate Rwandan sovereignty, and it would be exactly by taking that action, by demonstrating that this government had no sovereignty because it was illegitimate that the jamming of the radio could have carried additional impact.
Now, the Rwandan genocide was peculiar, as every genocide is, because it was one that involved the mobilization of a large number of ordinary citizens. That made it particularly likely to be able to influence the course of those events by reaching those citizens and persuading them that the authorities giving the orders were illegitimate.
Jamming the radio would have helped to serve that purpose. A strong statement from Washington would have served that purpose or from the Secretary General or from other European heads of state, so that is one reason why failure to call the killing genocide was so terribly tragic because it could have made a difference in the minds of ordinary people who were deciding, some of them day by day, to what extent to participate in this killing campaign.
I would like to make a couple of quick comments. Mr. Payne asked us to express our opinion on the holding of a hearing. Of course, that would be a wonderful thing to do. We have been asking for that hearing for 10 years now. Human Rights Watch was active in lobbying for a hearing for at least 2 or 3 years after the genocide, and then I have to say we got a little discouraged, so I am enormously satisfied to see that the idea has come back again and that there might be a possibility.
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Let me stress that this is an important opportunity for creating a documentary record which can help people to understand exactly how decisions are made and to avoid mistakes being made in the future.
Let me also say the question that Louise raised of the antiretrovirals for AIDS victims. I believe 2 days ago an agreement was finally reached to provide each and every one of those women with that medicine, so I think that that problem may have been resolved, but if this proves not to be the case then it would, of course, be appropriate for this Committee perhaps to express an interest because USAID does fund a considerable program in Rwanda.
It has designated a number of target groups to receive the medicine. Victims of rape during the genocide are not among the target groups, so if there is not some mechanism already functioning by the time the Committee directs its attention to that issue, it would be appropriate to ask USAID to designate these women as a special target group to receive the medication.
On the question of jamming the radio, because I was asked also to comment on that in terms of U.S. policy, it is true that at the time there were legal justifications given and financial justifications given, but later, subsequent to this, after the genocide finished, the Clinton Administration did in fact adopt a new policy on jamming radios.
I believe it is now policy, unless it has since been changed, to allow the U.S. Government to interrupt broadcasts, provided they call for direct violence, direct incitement to violence, so I believe that that is something, one of the small measures, that indicates a greater willingness to act in similar cases in the future.
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Like the other panelists, I am extremely satisfied to see the attention that has been directed to Darfur today. I would like to ask that the Committee also extend its concern to Burundi, which is a nation that has undergone 10 years of punishing civil war and, because it is close to Rwanda, is a country which has enormous importance on the subsequent developments in Rwanda.
There has been an African union peacekeeping force in Burundi, and the United Nations is currently considering adopting that force to the extent of transforming it into a U.N. peacekeeping force. It is extremely important that it do so. South Africa has been the mainstay of that force, and can no longer afford to do that.
The peace negotiations have produced agreements with all except one of the rebel groups, and yesterday they announced the cease fire, so it is indeed within the possibility. We are perhaps seeing a realistic peace arrangement in Burundi, but it will need an implementing force in the period particularly leading up to elections.
At last count, in the Security Council there were 14 voices in favor of this Burundi peacekeeping force and one opposed. The one opposed was the United States Government, and I would ask you to direct your attention to that. I believe the U.S. is not fundamentally opposed to the peacekeeping force, but has reservations about certain aspects of it, and one of the aspects that it has reservations about is the question of numbers. It wants a smaller force.
Let me just remind you, as General Dallaire said, in the Rwandan case it was the hope to do it on-the-cheap that led to a great many of the subsequent problems for a failed peacekeeping operation in Rwanda.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. DesForges follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALISON DES FORGES, SENIOR ADVISOR TO AFRICA DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
In the ten years since the Rwandan genocide, leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged the shame of having failed to stop the slaughter of the Tutsi population. In this period of remembrance, many renewed their commitment to halting any future genocide. Honoring that pledge will require not just exerting greater political will than seen in the past, but also developing a strategy built on the lessons of 1994, such as those given below.
LESSON ONE: STOP THE GENOCIDE BEFORE IT BECOMES A GENOCIDE.
The genocide in Rwanda began suddenly after the killing of the president, but the attitudes and practices that made it possible developed over a period of years.
During the three years before the 1994 genocide, government officials, soldiers, national police, and leaders of political parties incited and directed sixteen massacres of Tutsi, each of which killed hundreds of unarmed civilians. The army also killed hundreds of Hima, a people related to Tutsi, during a military operation in 1990. In addition, authorities permitted—and in some cases encouraged—violence against supporters of rival political parties.
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Killers and other assailants went unpunished if their victims were Tutsi or members of parties opposed to the authorities.
The international community, including national and multinational donors, occasionally expressed concern about the human rights situation but failed to effectively press for an end to abuses or for punishment of the guilty. Even the slaughter of hundreds drew little or at most short-lived criticism.
The systematic and widespread slaughter of civilians is a crime against humanity; deliberate killing of civilians during war is a war crime. These crimes demand decisive action when they occur—because they violate international humanitarian law—and because they can lead to genocide.
LESSON TWO: REACT PROMPTLY AND FIRMLY TO PREPARATIONS FOR THE MASS SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS.
Many Rwandans, diplomats in Rwanda, and United Nations officials knew that militia were being recruited and trained to kill, but even when an informant told U.N. peacekeepers that the militia were meant to attack Tutsi civilians, there was no effective intervention to halt militia activities. During the genocide, the militia mobilized and led the general population in killing Tutsi, often carrying out orders given them by soldiers and national policemen.
The distribution of arms to the civilian population was widely known and elicited no effective international reaction.
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LESSON THREE: PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE MEDIA IN SITUATIONS OF POTENTIAL ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS, OR RACIAL CONFLICT. IN CASES OF IMPENDING GENOCIDE, BE PREPARED TO SILENCE BROADCASTS THAT INCITE OR PROVIDE DIRECTIONS FOR VIOLENCE.
For three years before the genocide, newspapers like Kangura had identified Tutsi as ''enemies of the nation'' to be scorned and feared. A private radio station, supported by many influential government, military, and political figures, broadcast the same message with increasing virulence and effect in the nine months before the genocide was launched. The media went so far as to name individuals to be eliminated, including the prime minister.
A year before the genocide, leading Rwandans and international observers all deplored the media campaign against Tutsi and members of opposition parties. But no one intervened to actually stop the calls to hatred or to promote the broadcast of countervailing messages of tolerance.
Having had months to build a listening audience, the private radio station was well-placed to contribute to the killing campaign once it began. The radio station incited listeners to violence against Tutsi and others opposed to the genocide, and gave specific orders on how to carry out the killing, including identifying individuals to be attacked and specifying where they could be found.
Silencing the radio broadcasts would not only have ended this particularly effective form of incitement and the delivery of specific orders; it would also have shown that the international community rejected the legitimacy of the genocidal message and those who were delivering it. The United States considered jamming the broadcasts from an airplane, but found the cost—about $8,000 an hour—too high. After the genocide was over, the White House instituted a policy that would in future permit more active U. S. intervention in cases where media incited to violence.
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LESSON FOUR: BE ALERT TO THE IMPACT OF NEGATIVE MODELS IN NEARBY REGIONS.
In late 1993 and early 1994, tens of thousands of Hutu and Tutsi were slain in neighboring Burundi, a country demographically similar to Rwanda. These killings, skillfully exploited by Rwandan propagandists, significantly increased tensions in Rwanda. Both the slaughter and the absence of international reaction to it encouraged the planners of genocide to proceed with the attempt to eliminate Tutsi in Rwanda. Propagandists on the radio frequently spoke of the Burundian example, enhancing the impact of this negative model on Rwandans.
LESSON FIVE: OBTAIN ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND.
In 1994, the governments most involved in Rwanda—France, Belgium, and the United States—had substantial information about the situation on the ground but they shared this information with only a few others. Non-permanent members of the Security Council—with the exception of Rwanda, itself a non-permanent member in 1994—depended for information on the U.N. Secretariat. From the field, the head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, and the representative of the U.N. Secretary-General, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, sent very different descriptions of events to the Secretariat in New York.
In preparing briefings for the Security Council, the Secretariat favored Booh-Booh's interpretation, which gave no sense of the systematic and ethnically based nature of the killing. Relying initially on this information, the non-permanent members agreed to withdraw most of the peacekeepers. But when they later learned of the extent and genocidal nature of the slaughter from Human Rights Watch and others, they pushed the Security Council to send a second and stronger U.N. force to Rwanda. Their efforts produced results, although not in time to influence the course of the genocide.
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Accurate, impartial, and analytical reporting of the Rwandan genocide could have helped build a public demand for more forceful government action in halting the slaughter. But press coverage was limited, superficial, and often sensationalistic. Journalists usually portrayed the killing as the result of ancient, tribal hatreds rather than as a state-directed attempt to exterminate the Tutsi. Major media outlets gave more attention the problems of sports stars O.J. Simpson and Tonya Harding than to the deliberate slaughter of more than half a million people.
LESSON SIX: IDENTIFY AND SUPPORT OPPONENTS OF THE GENOCIDE.
At the beginning, a vast number of Rwandans opposed the genocide. When potential leaders of resistance, including military officers, appealed for foreign support in the first days of the killings, they were refused. The people of central and southern Rwanda nonetheless continued opposing the genocide for ten days to two weeks. Instead of supporting these resisters, the Security Council undermined them by reducing the already inadequate number of peacekeepers.
The organizers of the genocide then gained confidence and decided to push the killing campaign into the regions that had thus far remained relatively peaceful. They stepped up pressure on the resisters by sending in militia from other areas where the killing was well advanced, by mocking them on the radio, and by removing key local officials who opposed the killing. Faced with this overwhelming pressure and feeling abandoned by the international community, the resisters either went into hiding or became active participants in the genocide.
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LESSON SEVEN: CALL THE GENOCIDE BY ITS RIGHTFUL NAME AND VIGOROUSLY CONDEMN IT. COMMIT TO PERMANENTLY OPPOSING ANY GOVERNMENT INVOLVED IN GENOCIDE, INCLUDING BY REFUSING IT ASSISTANCE IN THE FUTURE.
Rwandan government officials, military officers, and political leaders who directed the genocide claimed to be legitimate authorities giving appropriate orders for the self-defense of the population. This pretext of legitimacy made it easier for them to persuade people to violate usual moral and legal prohibitions. By remaining silent during the first part of the genocide and by taking no effective action to stop the killing throughout the period, the international community appeared to acquiesce in these claims to legitimacy. The government exploited every apparent demonstration of international acceptance—every time Rwandan government representatives were received abroad, the event was fully publicized on the radio.
Rwandan officials and political leaders understood how dependent their government was on international assistance: they knew that no government could operate for long without such support. Even ordinary Rwandans who lived out on the hills knew the importance of international aid since they or their families benefited from schools or clinics supported by partnerships with foreign communities.
States and other international actors must send clear condemnations of the genocidal government and announce that direct foreign assistance will forever be denied to such a government. Doing so in Rwanda would have called into question not just the legitimacy of the government but also its long-term viability. Rwandans might well have been less inclined to follow the directives of a government that had little chance of continuing to hold power.
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LESSON EIGHT: IMPOSE AN ARMS EMBARGO ON THE GENOCIDAL GOVERNMENT.
Many killers used machetes or homemade weapons, but soldiers, national police, and thousands of militia used firearms in launching attacks on churches, schools, hospitals and other sites where thousands of Tutsi had gathered. A first wave of assailants, relatively few in number, killed thousands of civilians by using small arms, grenades, and mortars. They left the survivors of such attacks terrorized and vulnerable to assault by a second wave of killers wielding machetes and homemade weapons. The U.N. Security Council established an arms embargo, but only late in the genocide. Had the embargo been imposed earlier, the killers would have had fewer arms at their disposal and would have been less effective in their attacks.
LESSON NINE: PRESS ANY GOVERNMENT SEEMING TO SUPPORT THE GENOCIDAL GOVERNMENT TO CHANGE ITS POLICY.
Some governments, particularly France and several African governments, continued to support the Rwandan government throughout the genocide. This limited the impact of condemnation by those other governments that did finally take a stand against the slaughter. As official documents show, some French officials were concerned that continuing support for Rwanda was damaging their own international standing, but other governments with potential influence on France, like the United States and the United Kingdom, failed to press the French effectively enough to produce a change in policy.
LESSON TEN: BE PREPARED TO INTERVENE WITH ARMED FORCE.
The organizers of the Rwandan genocide were relatively few in number, but they controlled three elite military units. Backed by these forces, they were able to assert control first over other units of the army and national police and then over the administrative system.
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When the crisis began, the U.N. peacekeepers had neither the mandate nor the numbers needed for effective action. Had their mandate been broadened to allow offensive action and had they received support from the elite French, Belgian, and Italian troops sent in to evacuate their own citizens, the combined forces could have blocked the effort of the genocidal organizers to extend their control to other parts of the armed forces and administration. Intervention later would have required a larger force and would have saved fewer lives, but intervention at any point would have limited the number of civilians killed.
French troops, sent some ten weeks after the start of the genocide, saved at least ten thousand lives. Although meant to serve political as well as humanitarian objectives—they intended to support the faltering Rwandan army as well as to save lives—they did end up protecting Tutsi at risk of imminent slaughter.
Genocides are complex phenomena, each with its own peculiar configuration and dynamics. These ten lessons will not provide the full answer to stopping the next genocide, but they do provide a starting point for those who are determined to act in defense of our common humanity.
Mr. TANCREDO [presiding]. Thank you very much. I was unfortunately unable to hear all of the testimony other than Ms. Power, and so let me ask the other two witnesses if they would reflect upon the situation in Darfur in terms of the way in which it has the potential for being to some extent hidden as a result of the ongoing peace process and our unwillingness to push whatever levers or use whatever tools may be in the toolbox as has been referred to several times here because of our fear of upsetting the peace process.
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For one thing, is it possible that what is happening in Darfur is happening in order to upset the peace process? Hence, it leaves us in quite a dilemma. I just wonder if you would both, if you could, reflect upon that?
Ms. DESFORGES. Well, this particular set of attacks by the militia and the government in Darfur have been going on for a number of months, but I think the suspicion that there may be some attempt to use them to slow down the peace process is not a misplaced suspicion.
Diplomacy is always complicated and particularly if what you are trying to achieve is peace. It is one of those goals that you think anything else must be subordinate to so that the temptation to ignore the widespread crimes in Darfur in order to keep the peace process moving along I am sure is a very tempting one in the same way that we face continually the problem of justice being set against peace and the idea that you cannot have prosecution because that also might impede peace.
I think what is crucial here is to keep a vision of the future which is long enough to understand that peace that is achieved without dealing with the Darfur killings is a peace that is certainly not going to last long or be worth very much, so the problem can resolve itself in that perspective. You do not want to trade short-term gains which are probably not going to be permanent and at the same time sacrifice thousands of lives.
Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you. I am going to yield my time to the Chairman, who may want to get comments from Ms. Power or whatever he would like to do, as a matter of fact.
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Mr. ROYCE [presiding]. The one thing I was going to do is, I know Ms. Power has to leave, and I was going to allow her to make any concluding observations she would like to make at this moment and then catch her flight up to New York because I know you are going to do some important work this afternoon with regard to Darfur
Ms. POWER. One hopes. I guess all I would say is something to follow up on Alison's comment.
It is very tempting to believe that the way a regime treats its own people in one part of a country is separable from its role in servicing a war on terrorism or, in the case of Sudan, in being part of a long-term peace, which we are all strongly in favor of.
I think as Alison alluded to, one of the lessons of Saddam Hussein, among others, is that the way a regime treats it citizens is a very good predictor of the kind of long-term threat that regime will constitute to U.S. interests.
When Saddam was gassing the Kurds, there were a lot of memos circulating through the halls of power and even votes taken in the Senate on the possibility of sanctioning and punishing him for the gassing of the Kurds, but it was tempting to say, ''Well, no. He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.'' Or, ''The enemy of our enemy is our friend.'' The spuriousness and hollowness and again, as Alison suggested, short-term appeal of that mantra has I think been exposed by history.
Rwanda deserves so much attention in and of itself and it has been left, as Louise alluded to in the context of antiretrovirals, living with its ghosts still in place without the resources it needs to generate a national conversation and to undertake proper judicial proceedings against the perpetrators who remain at large, without the resources it needs to rebuild its education system and its health system. One does not want to hijack a day like today where Rwanda deserves its day.
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But, I want to commend Louise and many Rwandans for their generosity of spirit for looking out for others, and for asking that we not put the seduction of peace in the short-term, which is likely, as Alison said, to be indeed a short-term peace, above the long-term interests in deterring and indeed suppressing atrocities of this nature.
My final point is that America has the tendency to take an all-or-nothing approach to areas around the world, especially now with so many of its resources consumed by the war on terrorism. I think a central lesson of Rwanda, a case where the United States never even considered deploying U.S. troops into the Great Lakes region, is that not deploying its troops became a recipe for the President never considering the vast array of other options on the table.
In Sudan as well, today because of our over-stretch in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I mentioned, it is unlikely that United States troops will comprise or spearhead a peacekeeping mission, but that does not mean that the United States should lose sight of the tremendous leverage it has. Whatever the anti-Americanism around the world, the United States still has the ability to force middle-tier countries to step up at a time when troops probably will be needed in Darfur to deter these atrocities.
Thank you.
Mr. ROYCE. Ms. Power, thanks for your testimony. We will let you take your leave now to catch that plane.
Ms. Mushikiwabo, I wanted to ask you about something in your written testimony, something you referred to as extreme Hutu revisionism. What is going on? Does this refer to textbooks?
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We have had this problem in other societies. My father was present at the liberation of a war camp, a Nazi war camp, and we have that problem arguably right here today, as Mr. Tancredo just reminded us, in terms of what is happening in Darfur and what we are hearing from the Sudanese Government about it.
What particularly with respect to revisionism is underway?
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. This is an issue that I think is very important, especially to Rwandan survivors. When I was in Rwanda last week and we went through the country visiting with people, attending the commemoration events, many of the survivors were asking us, those who do not live in Rwanda, why it is that so many people out of Rwanda are still denying that there is a genocide, that there was a genocide?
They were pointing to the fact that people 10 years after the genocide were still finding mass graves. When I was in Kigali last week, three mass graves with about 300 to a few thousand bodies were found in neighborhoods of Kigali. People were very, very sensitive to that issue.
I think it is more of an issue in Europe than it is in the United States. I think basically because of the role that governments such as the Government of France played in support of the genocidal government and, therefore, members of the government and some of the exiled Hutus in Europe denying the genocide, but I think it is important somehow from this Congress, probably talking to the Executive Branch of this government to talk to their European partners about this issue.
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Mr. ROYCE. Are there examples in Europe of individuals saying well, this did not really happen this way. This was a civil war. It was not a genocide.
My father runs into this quite often. He does rebuttals, and he goes out and debates in classrooms and takes his photographs that he took there that day in order to confront those who deny what happened in the second world war.
You are saying that what is happening right now in France is that some political leaders——
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. I am singling out France I guess.
Mr. ROYCE. Well, anywhere in the world where this is happening.
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. On April 6 of this year, the day before the actual commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, there was a rally held in Paris with members of the Habyarimana government that are now in exile in France, and I think actually even an ex-Member of this Congress was asked to go and talk at that rally, give a speech. I believe it was Congresswoman McKinney.
The purpose of this rally was not very clear, but of the many speeches that were made and the postures that were shown, it looked like this group was trying to come up before the 10th anniversary, the following day, to sort of deny that there was a genocide through the people that were selected to speak, attacks against the Tutsi in the current government, as the accusations by a French newspaper, for example, of President Kagame, who is a Tutsi, being the one who triggered the genocide.
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Mr. ROYCE. Okay. I know the reference you are making. Yes.
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. Yes. It is part of a sort of effort, and I guess because of the anniversary——
Mr. ROYCE. To rationalize what happened.
Ms. MUSHIKIWABO. It is very hurtful to a lot of people in Rwanda.
Mr. ROYCE. I understand your point. Yes.
Ms. DesForges, the last question I would have is whether there is evidence of hate radio. We talked about how that was such a key ingredient to preparing people to commit these atrocities. Do you see evidence of that anywhere else in the world today?
Ms. DESFORGES. Mr. Chairman, I have to say that I have a very narrow focus to my interests, and to speak about the whole world leaves me somewhat speechless.
I know in my own little area where I work, which is the Great Lakes of Africa, that this is not currently an issue. While you were out at the vote, I mentioned that I believe the U.S. now has a policy for interrupting broadcasts that are actively inciting to violence.
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If I might take the liberty of adding a couple of concluding remarks, one on the issue of revisionism? That is a serious problem and one which needs to be addressed through careful historical scholarship and through personal testimony. As you mentioned, your father and people being able to describe what they saw with their own eyes is a very important counter force to that kind of revisionism.
It is important to separate revisionists thinking, though, from judicial proceedings, and I believe it is probably inaccurate to attribute the 6 year judicial investigation in France to a revisionist impetus. I certainly agree that the release of the report, which actually was not released. It was leaked, but the leak to the press at that time shortly before the 10th anniversary was perhaps politically motivated.
Whether or not the judicial inquiry was a serious one is something we will know only when the issue is brought to court and the evidence is laid before the judge.
Speaking in a final word on the situation of international justice, I think it is important to realize that we are both building the house and trying to live in it at the same time, and that is always a complicated situation.
Creating an international institution to make functional those ideals that we have talked about for 50 years is obviously slow and complicated, and I have to say, as one who was enthusiastic about this at the start, it is far more slow and complicated than I had thought. Having spent 13 weeks last year sitting in Arusha as a witness, it is very slow and very complicated.
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Structurally it has some design problems, and they cannot be remedied. It also had some oversight problems. Nobody paid attention for the first couple of years. There was no money given to it for the first couple of years. Then too much money was given to it. It is a case of a number of institutional problems that need to be worked out, but that we can probably understand in a historical perspective, even if in the perspective of activism we find it very, very annoying and unsatisfactory.
The Tribunal is improving in part because of some changes in personnel and part because of some changes in the structure. I would just make one remark which I would like to draw your attention to the importance of the Tribunal implementing in full its mandate. It was established to contribute to justice and reconciliation by dealing with complaints of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Until this point, it has dealt only with cases of genocide.
Accusations against the Rwandan Patriotic Front for war crimes and crimes against humanity have not been dealt with. If the Tribunal concludes its work as it is scheduled to do very shortly without having done a single case on the other side, this will undermine its credibility as a legitimate institution of justice.
This is not a case of any form of equivalence between genocide and any other crime. That is not what this is about.
Mr. ROYCE. Certainly. We understand your point.
Ms. DESFORGES. It is about the equivalence of the right of the victim to justice regardless of the crime and regardless of the perpetrator.
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Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Ms. DesForges.
Ms. DESFORGES. Thank you.
Mr. ROYCE. There have been a number of suggestions made today which we will follow up, including Burundi and the suggestion of seeking a program for antiviral treatment for HIV positive rape victims in Rwanda. Our Committee will attempt to follow up on each of these points.
Again, we thank you very much for appearing as witnesses here today. We are going to adjourn this hearing, and we are going to do it for the purpose now of moving to a mark up on a resolution on Darfur in Sudan at this time.
Again, thank you. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:41 p.m. the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BETTY MCCOLLUM, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA
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Good afternoon.
General Dallaire, thank you for your joining us today and sharing your insights and experiences with us.
For myself, the Rwandan genocide was an event I glanced at on the nightly news and read about in newspapers. It was a news story of such staggering proportion and horror to be completely beyond my comprehension—intellectually as well as emotionally. The tragic fact that I was watching those images from thousands of kilometers away—at a very safe distance—made it all too much like a drama, not reality.
In fact, as we all know the genocide in Rwanda was real, it was predicted by U.S. intelligence sources and it was allowed to take place by the world community. Any legitimate global response to the Rwandan genocide was non-existent—and that is not to diminish the bravery and determination of Gen. Dallaire and those soldiers under his command. And the only conclusion I can arrive at as to why the world did not act in Rwanda is because the lives of the 800,000 children, women and men murdered—who we all knew were being murdered—those lives were not of sufficient value to merit our collective response.
How can the world watch a horror like Rwanda take place and do so little to stop it?
The world—the United States included—looked upon the victims of this crime against humanity not unlike the perpetrators of the genocide looked upon them—their lives were not worth the cost of action, intervention—even condemnation.
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In this regard, genocide may in fact be the perfect crime against humanity. It is not spontaneous—it wasn't in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leon—but genocide is a strategic campaign that is planned for, prepared for, proclaimed publicly and then carried out in the bright sunshine by politicians, soldiers, and civilians. What makes it the perfect crime is that it is then ignored and allowed to take place by the world community until thousands or millions human beings are dead, hacked, raped, displaced and destroyed.
If I may quote from an essay from Ms. Power,
''Genocide has occurred so often and so uncontested in the last fifty years that an epithet more apt in describing recent events that the oft-chanted 'Never Again' is in fact 'Again and Again.' ''
An attempt at genocide somewhere on this planet will come again and simply chanting the mantra ''never again'' is not good enough. I hope the lessons we learn today will give Congress insights to help us have the courage and conviction to stand with the world to act to prevent and, if need be, intervene to make ''never again'' a reality, not an empty promise.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF ANTHONY D. MARLEY, FORMER POLITICAL-MILITARY ADVISOR, BUREAU OF AFRICAN AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
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During the period August 1992–June 1995, I was assigned to the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State as the Political-Military Advisor. I was a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army at the time. The Rwandan genocide occurred during my assignment to the Africa Bureau, and I was a participant in many of the policy debates/meetings concerning the U.S. response to events in Rwanda.
The Rwandan genocide took place after the painful U.S. military intervention in Somalia. This unfortunate Department of Defense experience in Somalia resulted in great, even extreme, reluctance on the part of the Pentagon, and on some elements within the Department of State and the National Security Council, to again become involved in peace making or peace enforcement activities in sub-Saharan Africa. The phrase used was ''slippery slope,'' and these elements wanted to avoid any U.S. military participation in, or support for, a humanitarian operation in Rwanda during the genocide to prevent the possibility of then being drug deeper into the conflict. The Executive Branch felt that it could to a great degree ignore crises in Africa since the U.S. National Security Strategy at that time did not identify any ''vital'' American interests in Africa.
It should also be remembered that the U.S. public did not clamor for an intervention in Rwanda (humanitarian or otherwise) until the televised scenes of the refugees pouring into Goma in July. In the absence of calls from their constituents, the U.S. Congress did not act to pressure the Executive Branch to respond to the situation in Rwanda until the final days of the genocide.
In late April 1994, when groups of refugees began arriving in Tanzania along the shores of Lake Victoria, one of the concerns was the possibility of water contamination in Lake Victoria affecting the health of the refugees. The contamination stemmed from the large numbers of bodies of murdered Rwandans that had been thrown into the river and had floated into Lake Victoria, as well as the wastes generated by the impromptu refugee camps along the lake's shoreline. At my suggestion, during one of the regular teleconference inter-agency policy meetings, the State Department Africa Bureau (Reed Fendrick) asked whether DoD could provide water purification equipment to help address this problem. The major general representing the Joint Staff responded that DoD had no such water purification capabilities. I quickly jotted a note to Reed Fendrick, from which he read to ask, ''What about Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units, known as ROWPU, which are found in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps?'' Rather than address the issue of water purification capabilities, several days later the Pentagon produced a medical report that stated that the bodies of the dead floating in the lake did not pose a health hazard to refugees. Several months later, DoD did provide water purification capacity in (then) Zaire in response to the flood of Hutu refugees to Goma and Bukavu. In many cases, these refugees that we were now helping had been active participants in the genocide.
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During this same period, the State Department's Africa Bureau, at my recommendation, asked if the Pentagon could provide small ''Zodiac'' type inflatable boats, with boat motors and boat hooks to organizations in Uganda and/or Tanzania which could be used to recover the bodies of genocide victims from Lake Victoria, reducing the possible contamination that they might cause. The representative of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Africa derided this suggestion, and the Pentagon refused to provide the equipment, which was readily available in the U.S. Navy. Several weeks later a European government (the Dutch, I believe) did provide such equipment to Uganda and Tanzania and cleanup efforts in Lake Victoria took place.
In May, I suggested to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell, and to the Director of the Office for Central African Affairs, Ambassador Arlene Render, that it might be possible to counter the effects of the hate radio broadcasts inside Rwanda. U.S. Special Operations aircraft could jam the frequencies being used for the hate radio broadcasts and/or broadcast counter messages condemning the genocide and calling on the populace to stop the killings. This would be relatively easy to accomplish since the primary broadcast facility was located in Kigali immediately across the street from the U.S. Embassy, and the other broadcast facilities were much weaker in power output. (In fact, I even pointed out that the U.S. Air Force could destroy the broadcast facilities by means of a radio homing missile that would track directly to the transmitting antenna(s). I knew that this was not a policy option, but considered the other possibilities to be viable options to do something constructive to counter the genocide.) Due to the small size of Rwanda, these missions could be successfully completed from Tanzanian, Burundi, or Ugandan airspace, precluding the need for U.S. military aircraft to operate over Rwanda itself. Again, the Department of Defense refused to provide such support.
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From mid-April 1994 until the end of the genocide in July, the problem confronting the Executive branch of the U.S. Government was not a lack of adequate intelligence as to what was transpiring in Rwanda. Rather, it was a lack of political will stemming from the desire to avoid ''another Somalia.''
Could such a situation occur again in the future? Possibly. The Western governments were shamed when their intentional inaction during the Rwandan genocide became public knowledge. But if, in the future, there were a comparatively disastrous military intervention on the part of the U.S. military in a given region of the world, the Pentagon might again seek to obstruct a later humanitarian response or intervention elsewhere in that same region of the world. The issue, as always, will hinge on the moral fiber of those United States officials empowered to make the nation's key decisions.
I retired from the U.S. Army in 1995, and am currently working in Lagos, Nigeria as the Security Advisor for ExxonMobil.