When Rwanda's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, stepped off a plane in
Frankfurt Sunday, she was greeted with an arrest warrant. Kabuye and eight other associates of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame have been indicted by a French court for inciting genocide.
The row between France and Rwanda is about as ugly as a diplomatic feud can get. Rwanda accuses France of supporting the 1994 genocide that left 800,000 dead. France accuses Kagame of inciting the genocide in a bid to win power. Diplomatic ties have been hopelessly severed.
So where does the truth lie?
The timeline looks pretty straightforward: French troops defended and funded the Hutu government of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana in the years leading up to the genocide. In 1993 those troops left, but when the killing of the Tutsi minority spun out of control, the French again sent soldiers. This time the French "Operation Turquoise" carried a U.N. mandate to create safe humanitarian zones meant to guard the civilian population.
But Rwanda's current government begs to rewrite the details. A two-year investigation with hundreds of witnesses released this August found that more than 30 French government officials were involved in arming Hutu militias and planning the genocide. French troops used the safe humanitarian zones to help Hutu genocidaires escape. The French government was allegedly motivated by a near-paranoia about protecting a pro-French Hutu government from a n Anglophone Tutsi regime.
Then there is the French version: Paul Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel group leader, sparked the genocide of his own volition so that he could come to power.
That is all complicated enough, but here's the messy bit: Both sides probably tell some piece of the truth. The Rwandan investigation is robust and damning, and the French at least raise a good point that Kagame has proven something of an authoritarian in office, with a whole list of human rights abuses under his watch.
Think this is all just ancient history? Think again. The conflict following Rwanda's genocide never ended -- it just moved next door.
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