12. Mythology and Reality
The primary aim of this book is to tell the truth about Canada’s historic and current relationship with Africa even if it may seem unfamiliar and challenge some Canadians’ sense of themselves as “good guys on the world stage”.
All too often power defines what is considered reality. Nowhere is this more obvious than Rwanda. Most Canadians have heard this story: Deep-seated ethnic enmity erupted in a 100-day genocidal rampage by Hutus killing Tutsis, only to be stopped by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). A noble Canadian general tried to end the bloodletting but a dysfunctional UN refused resources. Washington was caught off guard by the slaughter, but it has apologized for failing to intervene and has committed to never again avoid its responsibility to protect.
But this widely repeated account is ahistorical, counterintuitive and, in the words of Ed Herman and David Peterson, a “remarkable achievement of a propaganda system sustained by both public and private power.”1
While the official story of the Rwandan genocide begins April 6, 1994, any serious investigation must at least go back to the events of October 1, 1990. On that day, thousands of troops from Uganda’s army, mainly exiled Tutsi elite, invaded Rwanda. The Ugandan government accounted for these events with the explanation that 4,000 of its troops “deserted” to invade. These troops included Uganda’s former deputy defence minister, former head of intelligence and other important military officials.2 This unbelievable explanation has been accepted largely because Washington and London backed Uganda’s aggression, which according to the Nuremberg Principles is the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”3
Much of the Tutsi force that invaded Rwanda in 1990 fought alongside President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) during its six-year quest to capture control of Uganda (the NRM was dominated by the Hima, close relatives of the Tutsi).4 The leader of the force that invaded Rwanda, Paul Kagame, had been head of intelligence for the Ugandan government. He was trained at the US military officer academy in Fort Leavenworth Kansas “where rising stars of the U.S. military and other places go to get training.”5
Applying US training techniques, Kagame’s RPF seized control of Rwanda through force of arms. More than 90% Tutsi, the RPF was unlikely to gain power democratically in a country where less than 15% of the population was Tutsi. In fact, some have speculated that fear of elections — set for the end of 1994 by the Arusha peace accords — may have provided motivation for the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana.6
The assassination of Habyarimana sparked the mass slaughter of spring 1994. The RPF remains the prime suspect in the fatal shooting, but is nevertheless widely celebrated for ending the genocide. Both directly and indirectly, the RPF is implicated in a significant proportion of the bloodshed during the genocide. Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, US academics initially sponsored by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, found a strong correlation between RFP “surges” — advances in April 1994 — and local bloodbaths. In 2009 Davenport and Stam reported: “The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR [Armed Forces of Rwanda] seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased.”7 Somewhere between several hundred thousand and a million Rwandans were killed over 100 days in mid-1994. The US academics concluded that the “majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi.”8
The Rwandan genocide was not a long planned attempt to exterminate all Tutsi. Instead, it was the outgrowth of a serious breakdown in social order that saw hundreds of thousands of Tutsi slaughtered by relatively disorganized local command. But the RPF also killed tens of thousands of Hutu and was likely responsible for shooting down the presidential plane that sparked the mass killing. This makes sense since in April 1994 the RPF was best placed to unleash violence. In The Politics of Genocide Herman and Peterson point out that “the RPF was the only well-organized killing force within Rwanda in 1994, and the only one that planned a major military offensive.”9
The rise of ethnic enmity and breakdown of social order was caused by many factors. The 1990 Uganda/RPF invasion displaced about one million Rwandans, nearly 15% of the population.10 Six months before the spring 1994 bloodletting, Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated army assassinated its first elected Hutu president. The political killings sparked significant violence and the flight of hundreds of thousands of mostly Hutu Burundians into Rwanda. This further destabilized the small country and elevated animosity towards Tutsis, who were accused of refusing to accept majority rule.
(Rwanda’s 1959-61 Hutu revolution saw the majority group gain political control while the Tutsi minority maintained control of Burundi after independence. Historically, the Tutsi, who speak the same language and practice the same religion as the Hutu, were distinguished based upon their proximity to the monarchy. In other words, the Tutsi/Hutu was a class/caste divide.)
The breakdown of social order was also tied to economic hardship brought on by the low price of coffee and foreign-imposed economic adjustments. No longer worried about the prospect of poor coffee producers turning towards the Soviet Union, the US withdrew its support for the International Coffee Agreement in 1989, an accord Ottawa was never enamoured with. The price of coffee tumbled, devastating Rwanda’s main cash crop. Largely because of the reduction in the price of coffee the government’s budget dropped by 40 percent.11 When Rwanda went in search of international support, the IMF used the country’s weakness to push economic reforms at the same time as donors demanded political reforms. The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire notes “political adjustments were pushed on Rwanda at the same time that Canada required Rwanda to adopt a structural adjustment approach to its economy.”12 As in so many other places, structural adjustment brought social instability.
In the years leading to the mass killings, Canada began tying its aid to a “democratization” process, despite the country being under assault from a foreign-supported guerrilla group, the RPF. Ostensibly, because of human rights violations, Ottawa cut millions in aid to Rwanda. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney wrote three letters in the early 1990s to Rwandan President Habyarimana, criticizing his human rights record and his slow pace on peace negotiations with the RPF.13 On December 6, 1991, Foreign Affairs wrote the head of its arm’s-length human rights organization Rights & Democracy, Ed Broadbent, telling him to visit Rwanda and to begin a program in that country.14 After a visit to Rwanda, in January 1993, Broadbent gave a press conference in Brussels claiming Habyarimana was directly responsible for a genocide (more than a year before the mass killings began).15 Rights & Democracy was quick to criticize Habyarimana’s rights record, though it failed to recognize the context: an invasion organized and armed by its much larger neighbour Uganda (with quiet support from Washington, London and Ottawa).16
The RPF benefited from the role Canada played in weakening the Habyarimana government. Ottawa also played a more direct part in Kagame’s rise to power. Taking direction from Washington, Canadian General (later Senator) Romeo Dallaire was the military commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), which was dispatched to oversee the Arusha Accords.
According to numerous accounts, including his civilian commander on the UN mission, Dallaire aided the RPF. Gilbert Ngijo, political assistant to the civilian commander of UNAMIR, summarizes the criticism: “He [Dallaire] let the RPF get arms. He allowed UNAMIR troops to train RPF soldiers. United Nations troops provided the logistics for the RPF. They even fed them.”17
In his book Le Patron de Dallaire Parle (The Boss of Dallaire Speaks), Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, a former Cameroon foreign minister and overall head of UNAMIR, claims Dallaire had little interest in the violence unleashed by the RPF despite reports of summary executions in areas controlled by them.18 RPF soldiers were regularly seen in Dallaire’s office, with the Canadian commander describing the Rwandan army’s position in Kigali. This prompted Booh Booh to wonder if Dallaire “also shared UNAMIR military secrets with the RPF when he invited them to work in his offices.”19 Finally, Booh Booh says Dallaire turned a blind eye to RPF weapons coming across the border from Uganda and he believes the UN forces may have even transported weapons directly to the RPF.20 Dallaire, Booh Booh concludes, “abandoned his role as head of the military to play a political role. He violated the neutrality principle of MINUAR by becoming an objective ally of one of the parties in the conflict.”21
Dallaire doesn’t deny his admiration for Kagame. In Shake Hands with the Devil, published several years after Kagame unleashed unprecedented terror in the Congo, Dallaire wrote: “My guys and the RPF soldiers had a good time together” at a small cantina.22 Dallaire then explained: “It had been amazing to see Kagame with his guard down for a couple of hours, to glimpse the passion that drove this extraordinary man.”23 Dallaire’s interaction with the RPF was not in the spirit of UN guidelines that called on staff to avoid close ties to individuals, organizations, parties or factions of a conflict.24
A witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) actually accused Dallaire of complicity in a massacre. A Rwandan national testifying under the pseudonym T04, reported Tanzania’s Arusha Times, “alleged that in April 1994, Gen. Dallaire allowed members of the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF, now in power in Kigali), to enter the national stadium and organize massacres of Hutus. Several people, including the witness, took refuge there following the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana.”25
Criticisms of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have been almost entirely ignored by Canadian media. Le Patron de Dallaire Parle went largely unnoticed, or at least not commented upon. A Canadian news search found three mentions of the book (a National Post review headlined “Allegations called ‘ridiculous’: UN boss attacks general,” an Ottawa Citizen piece headlined “There are many sides to the Rwanda saga” and a letter by an associate of Dallaire). Other critical assessments of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have fared no better including Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later in which the authors “suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded warnings that might have stopped them.”26
On the other hand, a Canadian news search of “Romeo Dallaire Rwanda” elicited over 6,000 articles that generally provide a positive portrayal of Dallaire. Similarly, a search for mention of Dallaire’s 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil elicited 1,700 articles.
But Dallaire did not support the RPF on a personal whim. Evidence suggests Ottawa backed the US/British position in favour of Uganda/RPF. During the worst of the Rwandan conflict, Canadian military aircraft continued to fly into Rwanda from Uganda, the country that sponsored the RPF.27 In Tested Mettle: Canada’s Peacekeepers at War Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan write: “A sizable contingent of JTF2 [Canadian special forces Joint Task Force 2] had been deployed into Africa. To provide additional ‘security’ for the U.N. mission in Rwanda, MacLean and his team had set up an ‘advanced operational base’ in Uganda. From there they would launch long-range, covert intelligence patrols deep into Rwandan territory.”28
Some commentators have even suggested the UN military force, which was in charge of airport security in Kigali, may have helped the RPF shoot down the plane carrying both Rwandan Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994 as well as the chief of staff of the Rwandan Defence Forces, another official responsible for the “maison militaire” of the Rwandan president as well as the chief of the military cabinet of the Rwandan president and two Burundian ministers. That event triggered mass killing and an environment of deep instability that facilitated the RPF’s rise to power. (According to the official story, Hutu extremists waited until much of the Hutu-led Rwandan military command was physically eliminated and the Hutu were at their weakest point in three decades, before they began a long planned systematic extermination of Tutsi.)
Habyarimana’s assassination ignited a mass killing spree (but no planned genocide, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR]). Five days after Habyarimana’s death, an internal US memorandum warned of “hundreds of thousands of deaths”, but in Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa Robin Philpot notes, “even though they knew that the massacres would occur and that millions would flee to other countries, the Americans devoted all their efforts to forcing the United Nations to withdraw its UNAMIR troops.”29 With RPF forces advancing on Kigali, UN troops would likely have blocked the RPF from capturing the capital. Canada went along with the US position.
Within 24 hours of Habyarimana’s assassination the RPF had doubled the size of the territory it controlled.30 Two weeks later the RPF controlled the north-eastern third of the country with the Rwandan military “running for their lives,” wrote Dallaire in his book.31 Six weeks later the RPF controlled half of Rwanda and a few weeks later they had two thirds of the country, including Kigali.32
Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, who left the bench to head the ICTR, wasn’t interested in evidence suggesting the RPF was responsible for Habyarimana’s assassination. According to French government investigators and the National Post, she refused to investigate evidence implicating the RPF in shooting down Habyarimana’s airplane.33 In 1996 former ICTR investigator Michael Hourigan compiled evidence based on the testimony of three RPF informants who claimed “direct involvement in the 1994 fatal rocket attack upon the President’s aircraft” and “specifically implicated the direct involvement of [Kagame]” and other RPF members.34 But, when Hourigan delivered the evidence to her in early 1997, Arbour was “aggressive” and “hostile,” according to Hourigan. Despite initially supporting the investigation surrounding who shot down the plane, the ICTR’s chief prosecutor now advised Hourigan that the “investigation was at an end because in her view it was not in our [the ICTR’s] mandate.”35
When the ICTR prosecutor who took over from Arbour, Carla del Ponte, began to investigate the RPF’s role in shooting down Habyarimana’s plane the British and Americans had her removed from her position. Del Ponte details her ordeal and the repression of the investigation in The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals.
A French magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who spent eight years investigating the death of the three French nationals operating the presidential jet, issued nine arrest warrants for high-ranking RPF officials (French law prohibits issuing an arrest warrant for a head of state, excluding Kagame from the investigation.) Bruguière concluded that Kagame rejected the August 1993 Arusha Accords and that he needed Habyarimana’s “physical elimination” for the RPF to take power.36 Bruguière’s detailed investigation on behalf of the French family members of the jet’s crew showed that “due to the numerical inferiority of the Tutsi electorate, the political balance of power did not allow [Kagame] to win elections on the basis of the political process set forth by the Arusha Agreements without the support of the opposition parties. … [I]n Paul Kagame’s mind, the physical elimination of President Habyarimana became imperative as early as October 1993 as the sole way of achieving his political aims.”37 In protest of the investigation, Kagame broke off diplomatic relations with France.38
Washington backed the Uganda/RPF takeover of Rwanda for a variety of reasons. US officials saw Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni as an up-and-coming strongman and bulwark of Anglo-Saxon power vis-à-vis Sudan and the Great Lakes region. Similarly, Washington viewed the RPF as a potential proxy force in a French-dominated region. A trio of authors explain in The Congo: Plunder and Resistance: “The plan expressed clearly by the White House at the time was to use the Rwandan army as an instrument of American interests. One American analyst explained how Rwanda could be as important to the USA in Africa as Israel has been in the Middle East.”39
Washington provided diplomatic cover for Uganda’s aggression in Rwanda as part of an effort to undermine French influence in the region. With the end of the Cold War and weakening of Russia’s influence on the continent, Washington decided it would no longer allow the French to dominate large parts of Africa. After a May 1995 Afro-American summit Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown explained: “America is going to be demanding of Africa’s traditional partners, starting with France. We are no longer going to leave Africa to the Europeans.”40 Similarly, on an October 1996 visit to Africa, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher noted: “The time is up when Africa could be divided into spheres of influence, when foreign powers could consider whole groups of countries to be reserved for them. Today Africa needs the support of all its friends rather than the exclusive patronage of a few.”41
Rwanda was viewed as an important staging ground for control over central Africa’s big prize, the Congo’s immense mineral resources (worth up to $24 trillion according to African Business).42 Famous for three decades of corruption and brutality, Zaire (now Congo) dictator Joseph Mobutu was allied with Habyarimana and close to Paris. Mobutu remained in office until May 1997 when a Rwandan/Ugandan invasion pushed him out.
Before the 1996 Rwanda/Uganda invasion of the Congo, officials from Congo pointed out the broader geopolitical dimension of the conflict. A top Mobutu official said Rwanda aimed to “establish the Anglo-American hegemony in the Great Lakes region at the expense of La Francophonie.”43
Rwanda justified its 1996 intervention into the Congo as an effort to protect the Banyamulenge (Congolese Tutsi) living in Eastern Congo from the Hutus who fled the country when the RPF took power. As many as two million, mostly Hutu, refugees fled the RPF takeover of Rwanda.
The US military increased its assistance to Rwanda in the months leading up to its October 1996 invasion of Zaire.44 In The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 Filip Reyntjens explains: “The United States was aware of the intentions of Kagame to attack the refugee camps and probably assisted him in doing so. In addition, they deliberately lied about the number and fate of the refugees remaining in Zaire, in order to avoid the deployment of an international humanitarian force, which could have saved tens of thousands of human lives, but which was resented by Kigali and AFDL [L’Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo, a Rwandan backed rebel force led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila].”45
Ottawa played an important part in this sordid affair. In late 1996, Canada led a short-lived UN force into eastern Zaire, meant to bring food and protection to Hutu refugees. The official story is that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien organized a humanitarian mission into eastern Zaire after his wife saw images of exiled Rwandan refugees on CNN. In fact, Washington proposed that Ottawa, with many French speakers at its disposal, lead the UN mission. The US didn’t want pro-Mobutu France to gain control of the UN force.46
On November 9, 1996, the UN Security Council backed a French resolution to establish a multinational force in eastern Congo. Four days later, French Defence Minister Charles Millon urged Washington to stop stalling on the force. ‘‘Intervention is urgent and procrastination by some countries is intolerable,’’ Millon said in a radio interview. ‘‘The United States must not drag its feet any longer.’’47
Canada’s mission to the Congo was designed to dissipate French pressure and ensure it didn’t take command of a force that could impede Rwanda’s invasion of the eastern Congo. “The United States and Canada did not really intend to support an international force,” writes Reyntjens.48 “Operation Restore Silence” was how Oxfam’s emergencies director Nick Stockton sarcastically described the mission. He says the Anglosphere countries “managed the magical disappearance” of half a million refugees in eastern Zaire.49 In a bid to justify the non-deployment of the UN force, Canadian Defence Minister Doug Young claimed over 700,000 refugees had returned to Rwanda. A December 8 article in Québec City’s Le Soleil pointed out that this was “the highest estimated number of returnees since the October insurrection in Zaire.”50
The RPF dismantled infrastructure and massacred thousands of civilians in the Hutu refugee camps, prompting some 300,000 to flee westward on foot from refugee camp to refugee camp. Dying to Live by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga describes a harrowing personal ordeal of being chased across the Congo by the RPF and its allies.
Ultimately, most of the Canadian-led UN force was not deployed since peacekeepers would have slowed down or prevented Rwanda and its allies from succeeding. But, the initial batch of Canadian soldiers deployed to the staging ground in Uganda left much of the equipment they brought along. In Le Canada dans les guerres en Afrique centrale: génocides et pillages des ressources minières du Congo par le Rwanda interposé Patrick Mbeko suggests the Ugandan Army put the equipment to use in the Congo.51
Prior to deploying the Canadian-led multinational force, Commander General Maurice Baril met with officials in Kigali as well as the director of the joint staff at the Pentagon.52 Hinting at who was in the driver’s seat, the New York Times reported that Baril “cancelled a meeting with United Nations officials and flew instead to Washington for talks.”53 In deference to the Rwandan-backed forces, Baril said he would only deploy UN troops with the rebels’ permission. ‘‘Anything that I do I will coordinate with the one who is tactically holding the ground,’’ Baril noted.54
Much to Mobutu’s dismay, Baril met rebel leader Laurent Kabila who was at that time shunned by most of the international community.55 The meeting took place in a ransacked mansion that had belonged to Zaire’s president and as part of the visit Kabila took Baril on a tour of the area surrounding Goma city.56 Baril justified the meeting, asserting: “I had to reassure the government of Canada that the situation had changed and we could go home.”57
The book Nous étions invincibles, the personal account of Canadian special forces commando Denis Morrisset, provides a harrowing account of the Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) operation to bring Baril to meet Kabila. The convoy came under attack and was only bailed out when US Apache and Blackhawk helicopters retaliated. Some thirty Congolese were killed by a combination of helicopter and JTF2 fire.58 Official Ottawa was happy with Baril’s work, appointing him chief of the defence staff in September 1997.
A number of sources reported on US personnel operating in eastern Congo. The Wall Street Journal quoted “an American pilot flying for the rebels” while African Business reported that “European Intelligence sources also mention the pervasive presence in Goma, of former Pentagon officers acting as military advisers to the [rebel] Alliance.”59 US Ambassador in Kigali Robert E. Gribbin admits that he set up a meeting between Kabila and US officials during his initial incursion into Congo and after he took Kinshasa Gribbin referred to Kabila as someone “we had created”.60
Kabila maintained frequent contact with Richard Orth, former deputy of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency for Africa. Appointed by Clinton, Orth became US military attaché to Kigali shortly before Kabila began his march across the DRC.61
A subsidiary of Halliburton reportedly built a training base for the Rwandan Army on the border.62 With former Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger on its payroll, Bechtel provided the rebels with satellite maps and reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops.63 According to the Wall Street Journal, Bechtel executive Robert Stewart provided Kabila with advice “to help him deal with ethnic uprisings.”64
Alongside tactical intelligence, Bechtel helped the rebels in other ways. The San Francisco-based company drew up a development plan and inventory of the country’s mineralogical and geographical data.65 This information was incredibly valuable to prospective mining firms.
Resources fuelled the Rwandan/Ugandan invasion. Prominent Belgian Great Lakes journalist Colette Brackman produced a map showing that the zigzag progression of Kabila’s rebels was based on the location of minerals.66 Multinationals signed billions of dollars in deals with Kabila before he took office.67 The Wall Street Journal explained: “At a time when rebel forces are threatening to topple dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s vast mineral resources are beckoning foreign companies, prompting a scramble that recalls the grab for wealth 120 years ago in this vast land, once known as the Congo. American, Canadian and South African mining companies are negotiating deals with the rebels controlling eastern Zaire. These companies hope to take advantage of the turmoil and win a piece of what is widely considered Africa’s richest geological prize — and one of the richest in the world.”68 During Mobutu’s reign, locally based Congolese powerbrokers controlled the distribution of resources on the government’s behalf, which limited the scale of mining deals. But, according to The Business of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Who Benefits?, after the AFDL invasion, foreign corporations were able to secure much larger mining concessions.69
A number of Canadian companies signed deals with Kabila before he took Kinshasa in May 1997. In a 2004 Canadian Geographic article Madeleine Drohan explains that “the main shareholder of [Toronto-listed] Adastra minerals, Jean-Raymond Boulle, decided to throw his support behind the rebel leader early on, providing a jet for Kabila’s use and arranging to buy diamonds from the rebel troops long before they reached the Congolese capital of Kinshasa.”70 Infamous Canadian mining executive Robert Friedland was Boulle’s partner in Adastra, which was later taken over by First Quantum Minerals.
Vancouver-based First Quantum signed nearly $1 billion worth of contracts with Kabila before he assumed power. Delphine Abadie explains in Canada and the Geopolitics of Mining Interests: a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo: “One month before capturing Kinshasa, Kabila’s forces signed three contracts with First Quantum Minerals (FQM) for the Kansanshi and Lonshi mines in Katanga, worth $1 billion Can.”71 From 1997 to 2001 First Quantum’s stock value rose from almost nothing to $140 million.72
Partly to facilitate its move into the Congo, First Quantum hired former prime minister and long-time foreign minister Joe Clark. Soon after, reported Canadian Business, “[Clark] paid a couple of visits to Laurent Kabila, the rebel strongman-turned-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”73 Clark became part of what the Christian Science Monitor dubbed Kabila’s “circle of Canadian advisers.”74
With former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, US President George Bush Sr., Tennessee Senator Howard Baker and Bill Clinton’s advisor, Vernon Jordan, on its board, Toronto’s Barrick Gold signed a deal with Kabila for a gold concession in northeast Congo.75 Canadian NGO worker Carole Jerome claims “Barrick made a deal with Kabila in [the eastern Congolese city of] Lubumbashi in February, three months before Kabila came to power in Kinshasa.”76
After taking control of the Congo with their assistance, Kabila turned on his Rwandan and Ugandan allies, demanding they exit the country. This prompted a full-scale invasion by Rwanda in August 1998, which the US backed. In a book titled In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda, former US Ambassador Robert E. Gribbin explained: “The United States accepted Rwanda’s national security rationale as legitimate. We also recognized that the RCD [rebels] was a proxy, directed in many respects from Kigali.”77
According to the UN, the Rwanda/Uganda occupation led to “mass scale looting” in eastern and south-eastern Congo.78 Rwanda used forced labour — generally indentured labourers from Rwandan prisons — to dig colton and other minerals.79 Despite producing no diamonds, Rwandan diamond exports increased from 166 carats in 1998 to 30,000 carats in 2000 while Ugandan colton exports grew from 0 to 69.5 tons.80 The illegally extracted resources paid for a large share of the Rwandan military’s budget and enriched a small group of regime supporters in Kigali.
When Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian troops looked set to take Kinshasa, Angola and Zimbabwe intervened on Kabila’s behalf. Eight nations would ultimately participate in a war that officially lasted five years (and continues to today in parts of eastern Congo). Millions died from the violence largely unleashed by Rwanda in the Congo. A January 2008 study by the International Rescue Committee blamed the conflict and its destabilizing impact for 5.4 million Congolese deaths over a decade.81 In October 2010, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report on the Congo spanning 1993 to 2003 that charged Rwandan troops with engaging in mass killings “that might be classified as crimes of genocide.”82
Despite a trail that left millions dead in the Congo and an appalling domestic human rights record, Ottawa offered assistance and diplomatic support to the RPF. After Rwandan proxies once again displaced hundreds of thousands of people in eastern Congo in late 2008, Sweden and the Netherlands finally suspended some aid to Rwanda (a country dependent on donor support for more than half of its budget).83 Ottawa said and did little about the Rwandan-backed aggression in the Congo. During a flare up of violence in the eastern Congo’s Kivu provinces in November 2008, Foreign Affairs released two statements referencing the situation. Neither mentioned Rwanda or its proxy rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.
In April 2012, Rwanda reasserted its military hold over a large chunk of the Congo. Rwandan troops together with the M23 militia group captured Goma, a city of a million people in the mineral-rich east of the country. The Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York reported, “a [new] layer of administrators, informers, police and other operatives [have been put in place] who will bolster M23’s economic power in the city — including their grip on the trade in ‘blood minerals’.”84 Ottawa remained decidedly ambivalent towards the Rwandan-sponsored violence. When violence resurged in eastern Congo between May and December 2012, Foreign Affairs published four press releases on the matter. Only one sentence mentioned Rwanda, despite UN reports that Rwandan troops were once again involved, with its defence minister commanding the entire operation.85 That sentence read: “We are extremely concerned by continuing allegations of Rwandan support of M23 and urge the immediate cessation of any form of assistance.”86
The four press releases contained more criticism of the relatively powerless Congolese government than of Rwanda. In fact, one release was little more than an attack against the government in Kinshasa. In a statement about “the increasing instability in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Foreign Affairs urged “the Congo to ensure the protection of human rights is central in their daily deliberations.” With no mention of Rwanda or the M23, it goes on to state: “The rapidly rising number of displaced persons and refugees is a troubling trend and needs to be addressed immediately.”87
Between May and December 2012 Ottawa produced more statements and comments critical of Congolese president Joseph Kabila than the foreign sponsored M23. “Canada Concerned by Post-election Situation in Democratic Republic of Congo” and “Minister of State Valcourt Encourages Reforms in Democratic Republic of Congo,” announced two of the statements. During an October trip to the Francophonie summit in Kinshasa, Prime Minister Harper and his staff repeatedly complained about the Kabila government’s human rights record. After meeting representatives of the political opposition, Harper described the “complete unacceptability of failures in the electoral process and the abuse of human rights that are taking place in this country.”88
While major question marks surround the legitimacy of the December 2011 Congolese poll in which Kabila was re-elected, it was certainly as free and fair as the 2010 Rwandan election. After Kagame’s return to power in August 2010, Ottawa noted: “Canada commends the people of Rwanda on participating in their country’s presidential election.”89 The harshest criticism in the statement was that Canada was “concerned” by violence, “intimidation of political opposition” and “restrictions on the media.”90
The Rwandan government ruthlessly suppressed opposition. Political opponents rotted in jail while freedom of assembly and the press were nonexistent. Kagame’s regime is widely suspected of having murdered numerous former allies who fled the country after turning critical. “‘Whoever betrays the country will pay the price, I assure you,’ Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a rally soon after the country’s former intelligence chief, Patrick Karegeya, was found strangled in a South African hotel room last January,” reported Gwynne Dyer in 2014. “Karegeya had quit the government and become a leading opponent of the regime, which President Kagame would certainly see as a betrayal of the country.”91
In 2009, Ottawa supported Rwanda’s entry into the Commonwealth and the next year Canada donated a dozen patrol vehicles to the Rwanda National Police.92 Since 2004, Kagame has visited Canada at least three times. He spoke at the University of Western Ontario that year and received an honorary doctorate and peace medal from the University of Sherbrooke in 2006. At the time, Grands-Lacs Confidentiel criticized the Canadian government for inviting the “African Hitler” to Canada.93
Once again, in September 2013, the Rwandan strongman came to Canada for a public event. “We protest today the Canadian government’s permission for the visit,” Gally Gasana, a Rwandan expatriate told the CBC. “We protest today the war in Congo, the mass murder of hundreds and thousands of people.”94
Kagame often labels his opponents as génocidaires. In 2010, presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, who was not in Rwanda during the war or when the alleged crimes took place, was prosecuted for genocide denial.95 Human Rights Watch Africa Director Daniel Bekele said “the prosecution of Ingabire for ‘genocide ideology’ and ‘divisionism’ illustrates the Rwandan government’s unwillingness to tolerate criticism and to accept the role of opposition parties in a democratic society.”96
Ottawa supported Kagame’s witch-hunt. In Rwanda and the Scramble for Africa Robin Philpot points to the example of a former Rwandan prime minister denied a Canadian visa: “The Prime Minister of the government that supposedly ended the genocide had now become a génocidaire. Canada had already received Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramngu with all honours in December 1994 when he was looking for funding to rebuild Rwanda under the RPF. Either Canada’s institutional memory is short and selective or, more likely, the country has a policy of supporting the RPF government at all costs.”97
Rwandans who’ve sought refuge in Canada have been harassed. After he criticizing the RPF, a human rights organization with close ties to the Rwandan government accused Victor Ndihokubwayo of leading a group of Tutsis seeking sanctuary to their deaths in 1994. In 2002, investigators from the war crimes branch of the Justice Department interviewed a dozen witnesses in Rwanda about Ndihokubwayo, who worked as a lawyer for the federal government. After compiling the testimonies, the investigators decided he would not face charges. Three years later the Canada Border Service tried to extradite Ndihokubwayo. Reflective of the politically motivated nature of the deportation, Canada Border Services officials only submitted the interviews that aided their case. The Globe and Mail reported: “At the hearing, summaries of only three interviews conducted in Rwanda were disclosed — those that helped the government’s case. Mr. Ndihokubwayo’s lawyer knew others had been interviewed, including the senator who’d been saved by Mr. Ndihokubwayo. But when he asked for full disclosure, the investigators said there was nothing more. The summaries that were disclosed were also misleading, having omitted details that would have cast doubt on the case.”98
Once the undisclosed interviews were released, the deportation case was dismissed and the judge denounced the government for “abuse of process”.99
After a 10-year legal battle Québec city-based Léon Mugesera, who left Rwanda in 1993, was extradited in 2012. He purportedly condemned Tutsis in a speech a year and a half before the spring 1994 killings. A 2014 La Presse article headlined “En prison au Rwanda: Léon Mugesera craint pour sa vie” reported accusations that a guard threatened to shoot the former University of Laval professor.100
The extradition of Mugesera and attempt to deport Ndihokubwayo assume that accused génocidaires can receive a fair trial in Rwanda. They can’t. That said, it might not be possible for the defendants to receive a proper trial in Canada, either.
The first individual ever arrested and convicted in Canada on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity was a Rwandan businessman. After a two-year, $4 million trial, Désiré Munyaneza was found guilty of several counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in and around Rwanda’s second-largest city, Butare. The judge surmised: “The accused, an educated and privileged man, chose to kill, rape and pillage, vaunting the superiority of his ethnic group, reminding us again that every time a man claims to be part of a superior race, a chosen people, humanity is in danger.”101 In a highly politicized statement, the judge complained that Munyaneza produced several witnesses who questioned the official story of the Rwandan genocide. “We know that denying a genocide is to kill the victims a second time,” he wrote.102
While Rwanda’s dictatorship has been in Ottawa’s good books, Canadian officials turned critical of Congolese President Joseph Kabila (the son of Laurent Kabila who was assassinated in 2001). Kabila angered Western countries when he signed a $6 billion resource for infrastructure deal with China in 2008. In exchange for the right to extract 11 million tons of copper and 620,000 tons of cobalt from the Congo, China agreed to build 6,000 kilometres of roads and railway track as well as hundreds of schools, airports and clinics.103
More significantly, Ottawa opposed the Congolese government’s (modest) moves to regain some control over the country’s natural resources, including $3 billion in Canadian mining investment.104 In the face of civil society pressure, the government set up a Committee for the Review of Mining Contracts signed during the war.
Claiming Vancouver’s First Quantum Mining violated parts of its contract, in September 2009 the Congolese government withdrew the company’s rights to a copper mine in the eastern part of the country. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives staunchly defended First Quantum.
“Canada to press Congo mining dispute at G20 meeting,” read a headline in London’s Financial Times.105 During the G8/G20 in June 2010, the Conservatives pushed for a declaration in the final communiqué calling on the Congo to “extend urgently the rule of law” and “enhance governance and accountability in the extractive sector.”106 The Financial Post captured the mood: “G8 leaders scold Congo on governance.”107 A First Quantum spokesperson told the paper: “The company is encouraged by the G8’s statement regarding the governance issues challenging the resource sector in the [DRC].”108 But the Conservatives did not stop there. They took the issue to other international forums. The Financial Post reported: “Harper will raise the case of Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals Ltd. with representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other governments that do business in the DRC.”109
As part of this effort, Ottawa obstructed international efforts to reschedule the country’s foreign debt, which was mostly accrued during more than three decades of Joseph Mobuto’s dictatorship and the subsequent multi-country war. “The Canadian government wants to use the Paris Club [of debtor nations] in order to resolve a particular problem [with First Quantum]”, explained Congolese information minister Lambert Mende in November 2009. “This is unacceptable.”110
Ottawa refused to respond directly to allegations that it used Congo’s indebtedness to gain political concessions for Canadian mining companies. But, Conservative government spokesperson Me’shel Gulliver Bélanger told Reuters: “Some Canadian firms have been having significant issues in a challenging investment environment.”111
A Canadian Business article based on a number of access-to- information requests noted that First Quantum hired Daniel Brock, a lawyer who formerly worked in the Finance and Foreign Affairs departments. “Brock met twice with officials, including the international trade minister’s chief of staff, to discuss ‘Canadian foreign policy regarding debt forgiveness package for Democratic Republic of Congo.’”112
After winning concessions that pleased Canada’s many mining companies in the Congo, Ottawa relented on the debt rescheduling. Though largely ignored outside of Canada’s business press, the story received significant attention “in the Congo where newspaper editorial cartoons mocked Canada and First Quantum”, reported the Financial Post.113 Outside of Canadian Business and The Dominion magazine, the Canadian media ignored the circumstances under which First Quantum acquired its concession.
It is key to recall that First Quantum struck its deal with Laurent Kabila when he was fighting the national government in the mid-1990s. One reason First Quantum’s project was nationalized was because the company had rejected the Congolese government’s attempt to renegotiate mining licenses granted during the war. In an article headlined “Canada and the Geopolitics of Mining Interests: A Case Study of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Delpni Abadie writes: “Among the last contracts examined in the 2009 report of the Committee for the Review of Mining Contracts in DRC (2009) was the Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings (KMT) project. The Congolese government was pressured by the Canadian Ambassador in the DRC, Sigrid Anna Johnson, backed up by Hillary Clinton, to review its decision to cancel the contract involving Vancouver’s FQM [First Quantum]. The sovereign conclusion of the Review Committee was decisive on the outcome of this contract: cancellation.”114
In addition to the internal review committee, a 2002 report by the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo accused First Quantum of violating OECD guidelines during the war. The report referred to the “collusion” between foreign mining companies and “highly placed government officials who provide mining licenses and export permits in return for private gain. … For example, in its attempts to buy the Kolwezi Tailings, First Quantum Minerals (FQM) of Canada offered a down payment to the State of $100 million, cash payments and shares held in trust for Government officials. According to documents in the possession of the Panel, the payments list included the National Security Minister, Mwenze Kongolo; the Director of the National Intelligence Agency rights, Didier Kazadi Nyembwe; the Director General of Gécamines, Yumba Monga; and the former Minister of the Presidency, Pierre-Victor Mpoyo. The FQM share offer to those officials was premised on a sharp rise in its share price once it was announced that it had secured some of the most valuable mineral concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”115
Eight Canadian companies were cited in the above-mentioned 2002 UN Security Council investigation on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the Congo. Despite serious allegations levelled against Canadian companies, Ottawa refused to investigate the mining industry’s role in the Congo. In fact, Canada’s UN ambassador defended the companies, saying: “The alleged violations were not specified” and that “the OECD ethical principles are voluntary, not compulsory.”116 Worse still, Ottawa pushed to scrap the report. “Ottawa responded to the report by exercising ‘its clout in the U.N. on behalf of the Canadian companies cited for complicity in human rights violations in the Congo.’ ‘Canada has strong representation in the U.N.. They imposed on the Security Council to review [the 2002] report,’ he said.”117 Reportedly, First Quantum, with long-time Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark as special adviser for African affairs, lobbied Ottawa to demand a review of the UN report.118
Toronto-based Banro was also on the UN list of companies involved in the illegal exploitation of eastern Congo. As one of two international mining companies operating in the border provinces of North and South Kivu, Banro reportedly worked closely with the Rwandan government. Keith Harmon Snow claims that “Canadian Banro Corporation is one of the most secretive corporations operating in Congo, and they have established and maintained their control through very tight relations with the Kagame regime. Banro has taken over thousands of hectares of South Kivu province by manipulating the local mwamis (chiefs), by bribing officials and by infiltrating officials into power who are friendly to Banro and Kagame’s interests.”119
Upon expelling Rwandan troops from the Congo in 1998, Laurent Kabila revoked Banro’s concessions. With all of its business activity in eastern Congo, the company responded by filing a $1 billion “unlawful” expropriation claim at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington.120 In Digging Deeper: How the DR Congo’s Mining Policy is Failing the Country, Dominic Johnson and Aloys Tegera explain: “On 29 July 1998, just before war again started in Congo, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila annulled the Banro deal and gave ex-Sominki to a newly created Congolese state company called Somico (Société Minière du Congo) led by a Kivu traditional leader. Much of the subsequent fighting around Eastern Congo’s mining pitted Banro supporters, mostly supporting the [Rwandan backed] RCD rebels and backed by business interests, against Somico supporters, mostly consisting of Mai-Mai and supported by the Kabila government.”121 Alongside the regional peace accord that officially ended the eight-country war in the Congo, Joseph Kabila returned the concession to Banro in 2003.
All in all, Canada’s role in Rwanda and the Congo is best described as self-serving and certainly not motivated by altruism or human solidarity. Unfortunately this is not the only “case study” illustrating that Canada has not been “a force for good” in Africa.