Rwanda became big news in the mid-1990s when we saw on our television sets millions of refugees who had streamed into neighbouring countries Zaire and Tanzania to escape “inter-ethnic conflict”. But Stephen Kinzer in his book A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It points out that what we were told was largely a sanitised lie. The “conflict” was actually a government-planned genocide of a minority ethnic group, the Tutsi, and the “refugees” were predominantly the perpetrators of the genocide.
Shamefully, Kofi Annan and the UN instructed the UN peacekeeping force to stand by and do nothing while the Tutsi were being butchered at the rate of one every ten seconds over a period of 100 days. The slaughtering did not stop until the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces invaded and took over the country. Assisted by French “peacekeeping” forces, the murderous government regime escaped to the “refugee” camps in Zaire along with their weapons, so that they could carry on the war from outside the country for a further decade, resulting in another 5 million deaths.
The book tells the story of Paul Kagame’s leadership of the RPF, and the extraordinary challenges he has subsequently faced as president of Rwanda, an exceptionally difficult task given the complexity of seeking to reconcile murderers and victims, the ever-present threat of re-ignition of hostilities, and the depth of poverty faced by most of the citizens of the country.
I found this to be an intensely moving and engaging book. I was occasionally irritated by some of the author’s opinions, such as the way he criticised Kagame for failing to embrace a UNDP report recommending that the government focus its efforts on agriculture rather than private enterprise, infrastructure and IT. Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems like a really dumb idea for a tiny land-locked overpopulated country to place its hopes for economic development in agriculture. In spite of these minor flaws, this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.