Rwanda: how Canberra can really help
Canberra's belated decision to spend $10 million for aid to Rwanda, although welcome, is a pittance compared to the amount rich Australia could and should contribute. Putting the figure in proportion, $10 million is less than 10% of the annual federal secret service budget.
Just as importantly, it's not clear how the Keating government views the Rwandan Patriotic Front administration that has taken over in Kigali. Does Foreign Affairs recognise the RPF as the legitimate government of the entire stricken country? Or will Australian troops find themselves part of some UN operation, inevitably driven by France and Zaire, to weaken the RPF and preserve a place in the sun for the defeated remnants of the genocidal regime of former president Juv‚nal Habyarimana?
Here is the acid test of policy integrity on Rwanda. The Australian government should demand that the French foreign legionnaires (lightly camouflaged as UN "blue berets") withdraw from their so-called "safe zone" and cede control of the entire country to the RPF.
That such a move would be highly unlikely to lead to revenge massacres of Hutus is already clear from the practice of the RPF in the rest of Rwanda. Many independent witnesses confirm the account of Belgian journalist Guy Polpoel: "When the RPF saves people they make no distinction between Hutu and Tutsi. I've seen them at work distributing food. They do it in a very professional manner. They set up an administration and ask people to choose representatives with whom they can then negotiate".
The victory of the RPF gives the people of Rwanda their best chance of overcoming the appalling legacy of colonialism since formally winning independence from Belgium in 1959. Since then the country has been run by neo-colonial puppet governments financed and armed along divide-and-rule lines first by Belgium and, from 1975, by France. The "ethnic rivalry" between Tutsis and Hutus is the product of this period alone.
The RPF's eight-point program is aimed at destroying the roots of this deadly neo-colonialist heritage. It stands for an end to ethnic discrimination (including the suppression of the ethnic description on identity cards); agriculture based on satisfying the food needs of the population and not on cash crops for export; the defence of the rights of women; and for priority government spending on health and housing.
The biggest threat to RPF reconstruction plans comes from French imperialism. The French military and secret service armed and trained the defeated Habyarima dictatorship, especially in the last three years of RPF insurrection. France connived in that government's refusal to abide by the 1990 Arusha Accords for an all-party government with the RPF and other opposition forces when implementation might have avoided the present carnage.
The "safe zone" presently being maintained by the French in cahoots with the hyper-corrupt regime of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko will be used as a haven for the Hutu extremist militias guilty of the slaughter of Tutsis and Hutu oppositionists. Now disarmed, they can easily be rearmed as their masters see fit. Moreover, since the RPF victory France has abruptly reversed its policy of pressuring Mobutu to give his regime a democratic facade: an outfit that had become an embarrassment even to Paris is now needed against the RPF.
But the French ruling elite is split on Rwanda. Fearing that France's position in "its" part of Africa may become untenable, some conservative politicians, like former president Giscard d'Estaing, are calling for the withdrawal of French forces. Canberra can hardly do less.