In 1994, Rwandan Hutus killed about 800,000 of their Tutsi compatriots. Before they finished their genocide their government was overthrown by an invading Tutsi army, widely assumed to have been backed by the CIA and British intelligence. The Tutsi invaders set up a new government and told the world that they supported peace and "ethnic reconciliation."
Alas, they have turned out to be monsters. They have fomented a war in eastern Congo that has claimed more than 5 million lives; their stated reason for intervening is to fight the remnants of the genocidal Hutu state, gone into Congolese exile. But it has become clear that they continue to intervene mainly to loot Congo's minerals, which they trade for the weapons they use to strengthen their dictatorship at home and increase their control of eastern Congo.
We would like to think that the victims of horrible crimes will be strengthened in virtue, but it is not so. Instead, what we see again and again is that "those to whom evil is done do evil in return."
Violence, vindictiveness, destructiveness, and greed are not systematic genocide. Systematic genocide is worse.
ReplyDeleteDresden was really nasty. But Auschwitz was worse.
It is also for those who begin a cycle of violence and then lose to end it, by giving up.
I haven't called for the government of Rwanda to be overthrown. And from their perspective it makes perfect sense to want a strong, well-equipped military; after all, they were victims of a genocide attempt just 15 years ago. But I don't think their part in the war that has killed more than 5 million Congolese can be excused by their history. Nobody thinks the Hutu militias in Congo are any threat to Rwanda, and anyway the Rwandan government has devoted much more effort to stealing Col-tan than to fighting Hutus.
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