Silent Accomplice

The Untold Story of France’s Role in Rwandan Genocide

By Andrew Wallis

242pp. I.B. Tauris 

In the spring of 1994, while the attention of United States was riveted on the O.J. Simpson trial and the rest of the world watched in delight as Nelson Mandela ascended to the presidency of the Republic of South Africa, something much more sinister was developing in Rwanda, a country often dubbed the “Switzerland of Africa.” In just 100 days nearly one million Tutsis were slaughtered in Rwanda.  The killing began when the plane of Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habayarimana – an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler, was blown to pieces by a ground to air missile over the night sky of Kigali on April 4, 1994. Eerily still, the wreckage of the plane fell on the lawn of his presidential mansion. Hutu extremists rushed to the scene of the plane crash, located the president’s body and promptly locked it in a café freezer. The death of the President triggered Hutu activists to begin a pre-meditated genocide of the minority Tutsis. In a further intrigue, the dead president’s wife, Agathe, had been integral in running a secret organization that had planned the genocide which had been triggered by her husbands’ death.

The seeds of the genocide were present in Rwanda’s short history since independence in 1962. The country’s history was pockmarked with periods of intense ethnic violence and killing. The basis for these killings was an artificial ethnic distinction created by the Belgians dividing Rwandans into two, nearly indistinguishable, ethnic groups: the Hutus and the Tutsis. The prevailing logic employed by the Belgians was that such a distinction would make the country easily divided and thus easily ruled.  After independence, the Hutu majority rebelled against their Tutsi overlords in bouts of frenzied ethnic killing. Many Tutsi fled to neighboring Uganda. 

Oddly, after Rwanda’s independence in 1962 from the country’s Belgian colonizers, the state became a French client.  The French, as Wallis so aptly and courageously details, were intent on protecting their francophone friends. It just so happened that Habayarimana spoke French and was friends with French President Francois Mitterand. Mitterand viewed Rwanda as a linguistic and cultural friend of the French state. The Habayarimana government had a powerful protector.

Habayarimana found common cause with the French in opposing British and American interests in Africa- particularly since Anglo influence was especially strong in Uganda. Uganda, home to the Tutsi refugees, also became the home base of Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Colonel Paul Kagame. The goal of the RPF was to return the Tutsis to their homeland and defeat the Habayarimana government that had so bitterly allowed their lives to be destroyed.  The invasion from Uganda began in 1990. 

One of the strongest contributions of Wallis’ book is to set the events of the 1994 genocide firmly in the context of the ongoing civil war between the RPF and the Habayarimana government. Wallis superbly juggles multiple story lines, behind the scenes diplomacy, domestic observations on life in Rwanda and regional geo-political conditions in central Africa in order to keep his narrative moving.

The French rushed to the aid of their client francophone government- flying in arms, troops, advisors and heavy equipment to defeat the RPF invasion.  Each day at Kigali airport tons of ammunition were flown in by the French to support their African allies in resisting the RPF advances.  When Habayarimana was killed, the French panicked as they needed a new government that would be friendly to their interests and they needed it quickly lest the RPF take over the whole country. Inside the French embassy, over drinks and fine dining, a rump interim government was handpicked by the French to run the country. Many of those present at the embassy that night would later be condemned by a UN tribunal for their role in perpetrating the genocide. Outside the embassy the genocide raged on. 

As nations moved to cut off Rwanda from international arms shipments, France took a different tack. They began covertly flying in arms to shore up their new interim government. French speaking Rwanda would not fall to forces of the RPF- Colonel Kagame spoke English not French- and thus, the French were concerned deeply about losing a “franafrique” ally. What message would other French speaking African states take away if the French could not even support their friends?

Instead of bolstering the existing UN forces under the command of General Romeo Dallaire- the French successfully lobbied UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Gali and the Security Council for a special French force to secure the country while the UN dillydallied in their preparations for deploying a larger force. The French desperately wanted a multinational force but instead only signed on troops from Chad and Senegal to participate in the intervention. According to Wallis, from the moment they touched down in Rwanda, the French were more interested in keeping the interim government in power and the RPF out, than stopping the genocide taking place directly in front of them. No consideration was given by the French to the fact that their new interim government was fully participating in the genocide. 

Wallis also draws on first person accounts that detailed French troops participating in the genocide, but here the evidence is much weaker.  Professional historians will clamor for more evidence on this charge and lay readers will be bored by the over use of tediously long first person quotations that seem overly anecdotal. If allegations of direct French participation prove true it may be shocking but, after all, as President Mitterand famously declared about Rwanda “In countries like that, genocide is not so important.”

The picture Wallis paints of French interests is especially tragic. The French had no real strategic interest in Rwanda. Their interest was to preserve the nation as a French speaking one and ensure that this sphere of influence for them would not be lost. Ultimately, Kagame’s forces prevailed, the genocide ended a new Hutu-Tutsi government was formed. This didn’t stop the French from taking action to try to squash a new government that would be less French in orientation: they vetoed a $200 million EU aid program for the new war torn coalition government.   

Wallis’ findings won’t be surprising to many readers. Large, imperial countries often tinker with smaller countries, especially in Africa. Who helped give the Congo Mobutu Sese Sekou? or Uganda Idi Amin? It surely wasn’t solely the Congolese or the Ugandans.

At this point, in the historical investigation of the Rwandan genocide, it is unlikely the French establishment will admit to their role in nurturing a government that allowed for nearly a million people to be hacked up with machetes and shot down in churches, soccer stadiums and community centers.  The darkest days of 1994 were surely as dark as any of the twentieth century. Wallis deserves great credit for taking on such an important yet overlooked subject.