A Red Cross worker comforts a survivor at ceremonies in Kigali to recall the genocide. Photo by FINBARR O&${esc.hash}39;REILLY
More than 10 years after some 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in just 100 days, we are still coming to terms with what happened, trying to understand it, and why the rest of the world failed to stop it.
"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch questions not only how the genocide happened but how it happened under our noses. Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, condemns the international community&${esc.hash}39;s apathy. The book is eloquently written and vivid, and brings to life the victims, the heroes, and the perpetrators. It has won numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the George Pope Book Award for Foreign Reporting.
"Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda" by Alison Des Forges is widely considered to be the most thorough account of the planning of the genocide, Des Forges, a senior advisor for Human Rights Watch, explores the role of state institutions, policies, and the media, all of which were manipulated for the purposes of the genocide. Des Forges is highly critical of the United States and Belgium for seeking to withdraw U.N. peacekeepers after the genocide began. International censure, when it finally came, shamed Rwandan authorities into ending the genocide, Des Forges says, proving that swift action would have undermined the veneer of legitimacy the organisers relied so heavily upon.
"Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda" by Peter Uvinargues that international aid given to promote development in Rwanda helped to lay the foundation for genocide by contributing to a system of inequality, racism, and oppression. Although "Aiding Violence" is narrowly focused and written for an academic audience, those interested in challenging development strategies in Africa or questioning the structure and effectiveness of development itself will appreciate this provocative analysis by Uvin, a professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University&${esc.hash}39;s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston.
"A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda&${esc.hash}39;s Genocide" by Linda Melvern, a former reporter for the London Sunday Times, condemns the international community, specifically the U.N. Security Council, for failing to intervene in the face of indisputable evidence of genocide. She argues that stubbornness and negligence, in addition to the suppression of information and deliberate distortion of fact, paved the way for three months of unrestrained violence that could have been prevented. Melvern&${esc.hash}39;s second book on the subject, "Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwanda Genocide and the International Community," is a detailed account of the planning of the genocide that reiterates themes found in "A People Betrayed".
"Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda" is a cathartic memoir by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander Romeo Dallaire. The French-Canadian general was sent to preside over the Arusha Accords, the 1993 power-sharing agreement between the Rwandan government and opposition forces and the Tutsi minority. Dallaire, who had sounded the alarm months before the genocide but was forbidden to compromise the "impartiality" of the U.N. mission or to act beyond its narrow mandate, had no choice but to stand by as horrific events unfolded in front of him. This is the consummate insider&${esc.hash}39;s take on why the peacekeepers failed to stop the killing.
Two books offer particularly useful background reading. "The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History", by Jean-Pierre Chretien explores both the pre-colonial kingdoms of the region and the nineteenth and twentieth century colonisation by European nations. Chretien, a French academic, concludes that the Europeans primed the region for violence by driving a wedge between the two main social groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus, by favouring Tutsis as proxy administrators and excluding Hutus from positions of influence and authority.
"The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960", by Catharine Newbury also sheds light on the geographical and political context in which the genocide occurred. Newbury, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writing before 1994, considers the effect of the Europeans&${esc.hash}39; preferential treatment of Tutsis, which led to an explosion of Hutu power at Rwandan independence in 1962.
"When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda" by Mahmood Mandani attempts to explain why "normal" people participated in the slaughter. Mandani, a renowned Ugandan scholar and professor of government at Columbia University in New York, examines the deep-seated Hutu hatred and fear - more powerful than any sense of political identity or "Rwandanness" - that led to the popular uprising against the Tutsi.
"The Rwanda Crisis" by Gerard Prunier is one of the most comprehensive and clinical accounts of the events that led to the genocide. Prunier, a Belgian historian, explains that the genocide was not a spontaneous eruption of frenzied violence but was carefully planned by a small group belonging to the political, military and economic elite. It was carried out by militias comprised mostly of underprivileged Hutus with a social axe to grind. His rather pessimistic conclusion is that genocide - which requires meticulous organisation - is a modern phenomenon, and one that is here to stay.
Katherine Arie is a freelance journalist based in London. She has worked as a public policy case writer for the John F. Kennedy School of Government and has a degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, both in Boston.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
