Mick Hartley

Interesting article here, about French complicity in the Rwandan genocide:

In the face of overwhelming evidence that France backed the Hutu-dominated Rwandan army responsible for the massacre of some 800,000 people ten years ago, it continues to deny its responsibility in the tragedy.

On the contrary, former minister for foreign affairs Dominique de Villepin claimed three weeks ago that ”French intervention in Rwanda saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

New Rwandan leader Paul Kagamé, a Tutsi, corrected De Villepin. ”Yes, the French saved many lives — of those who committed the genocide.”

De Villepin was referring to Operation Turquoise, a peacekeeping mission launched by the French government with UN authorisation on June 23, 1994 — when the genocide was mostly over.

Experts who have studied the events say Kagamé is right. Operation Turquoise protected Hutu authorities who had led the massacres since April 1994, partly to flee Rwanda and to seek refuge in neighbouring Zaire, then controlled by another Francophile dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. […]

Classified documents and testimonies from international observers confirm that the French government knew of Hutu plans to carry out the massacres.

French military officers posted with the Rwandan army in their headquarters ”necessarily knew what was going on in the Rwanda military structures, they were fully informed that massacres were in preparation,” says Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who headed the UN mission sent to Rwanda in 1993.

French journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupery, author of a book on the Rwandan genocide confirms Dallaire’s accusations against French military advisers.

”French military officers trained the killers in the genocide,” De Saint-Exupéry says in his book ‘L’Inavouable – La France in Ruanda’ (The unspeakable – France in Rwanda). ”They did that on orders, by teaching the Rwandan army counter-insurgency strategies and tactics.”

Dallaire believes that French officers even participated in skirmishes between the Rwandan army and the guerrillas. ”In the days that followed the killing of Habyarimana, we saw Europeans soldiers wearing the Rwandan military uniform, taking part in manoeuvres,” he had said in a statement made following the massacres.

These European soldiers, apparently French nationals, later joined Operation Turquoise. By then most of the massacres had taken place, and the operation served only to protect fleeing Hutu leaders.

A report by a group of independent observers said state-owned French banks delivered about six million dollars to the Hutu army and militias at the time.

All this information has been publicly known for years, but France has refused to accept any responsibility for the Rwandan genocide. A parliamentary assessment of French intervention in Rwanda published in 1998 spoke only of ”institutional dysfunctions” in French aid to the Rwandan army, and called the French policy in Rwanda ”a strategic error.”

But Pierre Banner who headed the parliamentary commission admits now that France was heavily involved in leading the Rwandan army. ”We did support a racist army, and didn’t take the necessary distance at the moment of the genocide. I think France would do a good thing in accepting its responsibility.”

Also (via Roger Simon) here:

Nothing the outside world has learned in the intervening decade dilutes the guilt of those who stood by and allowed the killing to go on, when (as Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire pointed out) 2,000 Western troops could probably have stopped it in its tracks.

Indeed, the two big things we have learned are:

* The Rwanda genocide was no spontaneous outburst of traditional tribal hatred, but a carefully planned mass murder operation. And,

* France played a key role in enabling that operation. […]

What eventually brought the massacres to an end was the victory of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front.

But the killing continued even after the RPF took control of the capital Kigali – thanks to a belated, U.N.-authorized intervention by French troops. One of the most cynical and immoral acts of the 20th century, this French intervention (“Operation Turquoise”) was actually on behalf of the Hutu murderers in the “Interhamwe” militia and the (French trained and equipped) Rwandan army.

The French troops created a “safe area” where the old Hutu government retained control – and there the slaughter of Tutsis continued under the noses of the so-called peacekeepers until July.

Which makes it all the more sickening that the American Left and much of European opinion now hold France up as the bulwark of international law, multilateralism and morality in international politics.