Deja Vu

Aftermath

Tags:

Africa,

Belgium,

child soldiers,

Congo,

genocide,

Rwanda

“Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,” The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2008.

KIGALI, Rwanda — There is a general rule in Africa, if not across the world: Behind any rebellion with legs is usually a meddling neighbor. And whether the rebellion in eastern Congo explodes into another full-fledged war, and drags a large chunk of central Africa with it, seems likely to depend on the involvement of Rwanda, Congo’s tiny but disproportionately mighty neighbor.

There is a long and bloody history here, and this time around the evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congo’s troubles; at a minimum, the interference is on the part of many Rwandans. As before, Rwanda’s stake in Congo is a complex mix of strategic interest, business opportunity and the real fears of a nation that has heroically rebuilt itself after near obliteration by ethnic hatred….

There seems to be a reinvigorated sense of the longstanding brotherhood between the Congolese rebels, who are mostly ethnic Tutsi, and the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda, which has supported these same rebels in the past.

The brotherhood is relatively secret for now, just as it was in the late 1990s when Rwanda denied being involved in Congo, only to later admit that it was occupying a vast section of the country. Rwanda’s leaders are vigilant about not endangering their carefully crafted reputation as responsible, development-oriented friends of the West.

Rwandan “Carte d’ identité,” 1994.
The notion of separate “Hutu” and “Tutsi” identities was formally crystallized in 1933, when the Belgian colonial government began issuing identity cards to subjects living in the League of Nations Mandate of Ruanda-Urundi. Originally, the Belgians construed the minority Tutsi “ethnicity” to imply a pastoral lifestyle and elite economic and political status; majority Hutu “ethnicity” implied a cultivator lifestyle and commoner status. When Rwanda and Burundi achieved independence as separate, sovereign nations in 1962, Rwandan authorities decided to keep ethnicity listed on the ID cards. During the Genocide of 1994, the cards were used by Hutu genocidaires to determine who would be killed.

The “Hutu Manifesto,” issued March 24, 1957, stated,

“We are opposed vigorously, at least for the moment, to the suppression in the official or private identity papers of the mentions 'muhutu', 'mututsi', 'mutwa'. Their suppression would create a risk of preventing the statistical law from establishing the reality of facts.”

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