Interviewer: Helen Fein

Recently declassified government documents secured by the National Security Archive (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/; see also New York Times, August 22 and 26, 2001) and a report by Samantha Power ("Bystanders to Genocide," Atlantic, September 2001), based on a remarkable set of interviews with 60 people in the US government and dozens of others, show that high US government officials not only knew of the ongoing genocide begun in Rwanda in April 1994 but were determined not only not to intervene but to deter any timely international action to stop it. The US lobbied to take all UN troops out, to prevent Security Council intervention, rejected a proposed intervention to block hate radio, and stalled on supplying possible African interveners with armored personnel carriers. And the administration refused to label it genocide for 67 days--over two months.

In March 1998, President Clinton in a brief stopover at Kigali airport in Rwanda acknowledged regretfully "that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what has occurred [in Rwanda]" but said that "there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror." In fact, the Clinton Administration never called a high level meeting on what to do, perhaps because all options demanding any cost-- whether US or a multilateral intervention check on the genocide--had been ruled out.

Much of this story--the publicly observable actions and inactions--has been covered in ISG Newsletters from 1994 to 2000 (No. 26, 25, 21, 16, 13) and in an article in the 1994 ISG Working Paper [The Prevention of Genocide: Rwanda and Yugoslavia Reconsidered] by Milton Leitenberg--"US and UN Actions Escalate Genocide and Increase Costs in Rwanda"--and elsewhere.

But the US has never authorized a congressional investigation of its inaction (as occurred in Belgium) and we have had no public explanation by the participants of why they did what they did.

Genocide in Rwanda against Rwandan Tutsis began on April 4, 1994, hours after the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (the latter a guest) had been shot down but was conceived months before (reported in the Dallaire fax later discussed) by extremist "Hutu Power" forces, intent on sabotaging the Arusha accord--a peace agreement between the Rwanda government and the Tutsi-rebel led Rwandan Patriotic Front invading Rwanda. The Hutu Power forces conspired to capture the government, employing the army, youth militias, and local officials to carry out the genocide, using threat, incentive, and warnings of an alleged Tutsi plot to exterminate Hutus. The capture, concentration and execution of the victims (usually by machete) occurred in public space, often accessible to the media.

To the US, Rwanda was just another peacekeeping operation unraveling. After its humiliation following a firefight in October 1993 in Somalia (which was originally a US humanitarian mission to avert starvation) it was determined to avoid involvement in Africa. The US National Security Council (NSC) produced a new doctrine, Presidential Decision Directive 25, listing 16 criteria to pass to support intervention which would satisfy the US desire for a no risk policy. United States State Department (USSD) and NSC officials at the time were focused on Bosnia and Haiti. Rwanda was seen as not affecting the US national interests and the Rwandan genocidaires and victims--Hutus and Tutsis--were virtually unknown by the administration, public, and military. "Lieutenant General Wesley Clark [Pentagon]....remembers, staff officers asked, "Is it Hutu and Tutsi or Tutu and Hutsi?'" (Power, p. 88).

Just one Rwandan was known to the President--Monique Mujawamariya, a human rights activist working with HRW who had been introduced to him in December 1993, targeted by the genocidaires for destruction. The President asked about her repeatedly and directed the administration to help her in every possible way. "`I can't tell you how much time we spent trying to find Monique,' one US official remembers. `Sometimes it felt as though she was the only Rwandan in danger'" (Power, p. 97).  Monique evaded the killers and ultimately reached the US, an event reported in detail in major newspapers. Pres. Clinton then lost interest in Rwanda.

Within the government, the Pentagon was forceful in its objections and there was no countervailing leadership to do something. General Wesley Clark iterated that "'The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene...It is up to the civilians to tell us they want to do something and we'll figure out how to do it'" (Power, p. 102).

The administration could note that there was no public support voiced for intervention. There was no countervailing pressure from the public or nongovernmental organizations which might mobilize constituencies to press the government, such as TransAfrica. 

The US position had enervated earlier UN peacekeeping and its willingness earlier in 1994 to take stronger action against potential genocide. The UN had been handicapped in outfitting the peacekeeping force sent to Rwanda in 1993 by US unwillingness to pay its share of its costs. Thus, UNAMIR, the force sent to monitor the Arusha accords-- was half the size originally recommended, ill-equipped, and composed of many poorly trained and unintegrated troops from different countries. When its able and committed commander, General Romeo Dallaire, faxed the UN in January 1994 information about plans for the impending genocide based on insider information and requested authority to raid the plotters' stores, it was refused; other requests also elicited useless responses. The genocidaires, as Gen. Dallaire's informant had foretold, promptly executed ten Belgian soldiers in UNAMIR, provoking Belgium to withdraw its soldiers as the genocidaires expected. (The director of UN peacekeeping, now Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has since apologized for his and the UN role.)

The interest of the US and other western states was to take out their citizens from Rwanda which demanded military intervention that they organized promptly. Yet these governments refused to let the western soldiers stay to fortify Dallaire's mission.  

The Forbidden "G-word" Put Off for 67 Days

From April 8 onward, media coverage and reports from US personnel in Rwanda told of targeted killings of Tutsis, citing estimates of "`tens of thousands'" on April 10 from the Red Cross. Besides the categorical killing of Tutsis, there were killings of specific Hutu moderates who might have impeded the genocidaires drive for power, such as the new head of state (legally succeeding the dead president), Prime Minister Agatha Uwilingiyimana.

On April 8, Prudence Bushnell, deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (USSD), "spoke gravely [at the departmental press conference] about the mounting violence in Rwanda and the status of Americans there. After she left the podium, Michael McCurry, the department spokesman, took her place and criticized foreign governments for preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List. `This film movingly portrays...the twentieth century's most horrible catastrophe,' he said.`And it shows that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference.' No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's. Neither journalists nor officials in the United States were focused on the Tutsis" (Power, p. 93).

Human Rights Watch, the organization with the best sources on Rwanda, estimated on April 19 that there were 100,000 dead there and labeled it a genocide, disseminating its information to newspapers and the government directly. Within the UN and US administration, similar reports and vivid eye-witness stories were available. But the US did not use its exceptional facilities for assessments--satellite tracking, interception of communications--to find out more. "On April 26 an unattributed [US] intelligence memo titled `Responsibility for Massacres in Rwanda' reported that the ringleaders of the genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora and his crisis committee, were determined to liquidate their opposition and exterminate the Tutsi populace" (Power, 94).

"And even as, on the average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, US officials shunned the term 'genocide,' for fear of being obliged to act" (Power, p. 86). A memorandum dated May 1, 1994 prepared in the Defense Department, said re "Genocide Investigation....Be careful. Legal at State [the Office of Legal Adviser at the State Department] was worried about this yesterday--Genocide finding could commit USG [United States Government] to actually `do something.'" "A May 9 Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] report stated plainly that the Rwandan violence was not spontaneous but was directed by the government, with lists of victims prepared well in advance. The DIA observed that an `organized parallel effort of genocide [was] being implemented by the army to destroy the leadership of the Tutsi community'" (Power, p. 94). During May, there were more intelligence reports and legal analyses within the Administration documenting genocide under the terms of the Genocide Convention (which stated the US had no duty under the Convention to intervene even if it recognized genocide occurring).

Only in June did Secretary of State Warren Christopher direct the State Department spokesperson, Christine Shelly, to tell reporters at a press conference on June 10, that "acts of genocide have occurred in Rwanda." When asked by reporter Alan Elsner (a Reuters correspondent) what was the difference between "acts of genocide" and "genocide" and "How many acts of genocide does it take to make it a genocide?," she replied, "Alan, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer." Secretary of State Christopher changed the line later the same day in Istanbul, responding to a question: "If there is any particular magic in calling it genocide, I have no hesitancy in saying that." Thus, it had taken the State Department 67 days to recognize and go public on genocide in Rwanda.

What alternate framing devices and labels were available? The usual ones are tribal conflict or civil war. The US Ambassador in Rwanda, David Rawson, persisted in labeling the situation there as a conflict to be resolved by negotiations which should be resolved by "`getting Arusha back on track'", implying bilateral responsibility. It could be framed as a civil war or recurrent tribal conflict. Prudence Bushnell (USSD), recalls that she was told "`Look, Pru, these people do this from time to time.'" (Power, p. 93).

Today, few people in the 1994 administration feel and accept any guilt over US policy toward Rwanda in 1994. Among the few who do are Prudence Bushnell (USSD), Susan Rice (NSC) and Donald Steinberg (NSC). Most defend US policy and their role then as moral in terms of saving UN peacekeeping for future missions.

"In other words, Dallaire's peacekeeping mission in Rwanda had to be destroyed so that peacekeeping might be saved for use elsewhere" (Power, p. 104).

But even if the argument is accepted that US armed intervention was politically impossible, Power stresses that "the United States still had a variety of options. Instead of leaving it to mid-level officials to communicate with the Rwandan leadership behind the scenes, senior officials in the Administration could have taken control of the process. They could have publicly and frequently denounced the slaughter. They could have branded the crimes `genocide' at a far earlier stage. They could have called for the expulsion of the Rwandan delegation from the Security Council. On the telephone, at the UN, and on the Voice of America they could have threatened to prosecute those complicit in the genocide, naming names when possible. They could have deployed Pentagon assets to jam--even temporarily--the crucial, deadly radio broadcasts (Power, p.104).

"The story of US policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. US officials did not sit around and allow genocide to happen. But whatever their convictions about `never again,' many of them did sit around, and they most certainly did allow genocide to happen....we see that without strong leadership the system will incline toward risk-aversive policy choices." Power concludes that despite President Clinton's seeming commitment in 1998 "Never again...." that "the incentive structures within the US government have not changed. Officials will still suffer no sanction if they do nothing to curb atrocities" (pp. 86, 106).