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Roland Hodler Roland Hodler. Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen, Bodanstrasse 8, CH St. Gallen, Switzerland. Corresponding author: Department of Economics, University of St. E-mail: roland. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Revision received:. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Abstract Cross-country studies on the economic consequences of internal political violence typically find short-run effects that are not very large, and no evidence for full economic recovery.
The open border programme was actually part of his own ruthless counter-strategy. Every person inside Rwanda visited by a Tutsi refugee would be followed by state agents and automatically branded an RPF sympathiser; many were arrested, tortured, and killed by Rwandan government operatives. Five years later, they would be crushed altogether in one of the worst genocides ever recorded.
O n the morning of 1 October , thousands of RPF fighters gathered in a football stadium in western Uganda about 20 miles from the Rwandan border. Two nearby hospitals were readied for casualties.
They crossed into Rwanda that afternoon. The Rwandan army, with help from French and Zairean commandos, stopped their advance and the rebels retreated back into Uganda. But a few days after that, he quietly requested France and Belgium not to assist the Rwandan government in repelling the invasion. Cohen writes that he now believes that Museveni must have been feigning shock, when he knew what was going on all along.
Museveni had already issued a statement promising to seal all Uganda—Rwanda border crossings, provide no assistance to the RPF and arrest any rebels who tried to return to Uganda.
But he proceeded to do none of those things and the Americans appear to have made no objection. But after four RPF commanders were killed, he told his American instructors that he was dropping out to join the Rwandan invasion.
The Americans apparently supported this decision and Kagame flew into Entebbe airport, travelled to the Rwandan border by road, and crossed over to take command of the rebels. When a Ugandan journalist published an article in the government-owned New Vision newspaper revealing the existence of these bases, Museveni threatened to charge the journalist and his editor with sedition. The entire border area was cordoned off.
Even a French and Italian military inspection team was denied access. In October , the UN security council authorised a peacekeeping force to ensure no weapons crossed the border. Dallaire protested: the element of surprise is crucial for such monitoring missions. But the Ugandans insisted and eventually, Dallaire, who was much more concerned about developments inside Rwanda, gave up. The border was a sieve anyway, as Dallaire later wrote. There were five official crossing sites and countless unmapped mountain trails.
It was impossible to monitor. Dallaire had also heard that an arsenal in Mbarara, a Ugandan town about 80 miles from the Rwanda border, was being used to supply the RPF. In , Dallaire told a US congressional hearing that Museveni had laughed in his face when they met at a gathering to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide. In , Uganda purchased 10 times more US weapons than in the preceding 40 years combined. But negotiations appear to have been abandoned abruptly in favour of war.
At least one American was concerned about this. After the invasion, hundreds of thousands of mostly Hutu villagers fled RPF-held areas, saying they had seen abductions and killings. We encouraged nascent democratic initiatives.
We supported a full range of economic reforms. But the US was not fostering nascent democratic initiatives inside Uganda. And far from seeking stability, the US, by allowing Uganda to arm the RPF, was setting the stage for what would turn out to be the worst outbreak of violence ever recorded on the African continent.
Years later, Cohen expressed regret for failing to pressure Uganda to stop supporting the RPF, but by then it was far too late. For Habyarimana and his circle of Hutu elites, the RPF invasion seemed to have a silver lining, at least at first. Habyarimana had sought reconciliation with the Tutsis still living in Rwanda by reserving civil service jobs and university places for them in proportion to their share of the population.
This programme was modestly successful, and the greatest tensions in the country now lay along class, not ethnic, lines. International aid donors had pressured Habyarimana to allow opposition political parties to operate, and many new ones had sprung up.
Shortly after the invasion, all Tutsis — whether RPF supporters or not — became targets of a vicious propaganda campaign that would bear hideous fruit in April Chauvinist Hutu newspapers, magazines and radio programmes began reminding Hutu audiences that they were the original occupants of the Great Lakes region and that Tutsis were Nilotics — supposedly warlike pastoralists from Ethiopia who had conquered and enslaved them in the 17th century.
In , the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries, including Uganda. A group of Tutsi exiles formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front RPF , which invaded Rwanda in and fighting continued until a peace deal was agreed. On the night of 6 April a plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi - both Hutus - was shot down, killing everyone on board.
Hutu extremists blamed the RPF and immediately started a well-organised campaign of slaughter. The RPF said the plane had been shot down by Hutus to provide an excuse for the genocide.
With meticulous organisation. Lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who went and killed them, along with all of their families. Neighbours killed neighbours and some husbands even killed their Tutsi wives, saying they would be killed if they refused. At the time, ID cards had people's ethnic group on them, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered, often with machetes which most Rwandans kept around the house.
Thousands of Tutsi women were taken away and kept as sex slaves. Rwanda has always been a tightly controlled society, organised like a pyramid from each district up to the top of government. The then-governing party, MRND, had a youth wing called the Interahamwe, which was turned into a militia to carry out the slaughter. Weapons and hit-lists were handed out to local groups, who knew exactly where to find their targets. The Hutu extremists set up a radio station, RTLM, and newspapers which circulated hate propaganda, urging people to "weed out the cockroaches" meaning kill the Tutsis.
The names of prominent people to be killed were read out on radio. Even priests and nuns have been convicted of killing people, including some who sought shelter in churches. By the end of the day killing spree, around , Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been killed. The Belgians and most UN peacekeepers pulled out after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed.
The French, who were allies of the Hutu government, sent a special force to evacuate their citizens and later set up a supposedly safe zone but were accused of not doing enough to stop the slaughter in that area. Paul Kagame, Rwanda's current president, has accused France of backing those who carried out the massacres - a charge denied by Paris.
The well-organised RPF, backed by Uganda's army, gradually seized more territory, until 4 July , when its forces marched into the capital, Kigali. Some two million Hutus - both civilians and some of those involved in the genocide - then fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the time called Zaire, fearing revenge attacks.
Others went to neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi. Human rights groups say RPF fighters killed thousands of Hutu civilians as they took power - and more after they went into DR Congo to pursue the Interahamwe. The RPF denies this. In DR Congo, thousands died from cholera, while aid groups were accused of letting much of their assistance fall into the hands of the Hutu militias.
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