Globalization and international pressure in the 1994 Rwanda genocide

Rwanda Genocide (1994)

The Role of Globalization

We know that the factors which resulted in the Rwanda genocide taking place were the ethnic hatred, ecological pressures and the civil war. However, what we don't know is why the genocide took place at all. Therefore, here we will be talking about the genocide that took place in 1994 only. Here the obvious features of the globalization as well as the international pressures that were faced by Rwanda will be discussed, along with this we will also be looking at the globalized forces that were brought together by the Arusha Accords which ultimately resulted in the happening of genocide. Later on, the Kaldor's 'New War' thesis will be examined in order to understand how Rwanda is a part of a broader 'new war' environment where conflicts are arising among the neo-ethnicities in their efforts to gain power.

International Pressure

Before the 1980's, Rwanda was seen as a very successful non-communist dictatorship by the international donors; however, at the end of the 1980's this perception about Rwanda changed drastically. The main reason behind this change towards Rwanda by the international donors was because that, like many other post-colonial states, Rwanda relied on its mono-cultural exporting of coffee and tea. The export of coffee resulted in about 82% of the export earnings for Rwanda. However, when in the 1980's the international prices of coffee started to increase the demand for it decreased and as a result Rwanda's export of coffee got down by 50% between the years 1987-1991. While Rwanda was suffering from this huge loss of export revenue its external debts were increasing, which affected the economy of Rwanda even more. According to the notes by Chossudovsky (1996), the fact remained that the external debts of Rwanda doubled between the years 1985 and 1989 and between the years 1989 and 1992 these debts further increased by 34%.

The trade relations with other countries were also getting affected as a result of the civil war being fought against the RPF, the trade route was getting affected as well; due to fighting the road to the Kenyan port of Mombassa became unusable. According to Sellstrom and Wohlgemuth (1996), the war did not only affect the industrial sector of the country but also the tourist industry. This affected the economy of the country very badly as, the tourist industry had been earning the third most revenues. All this further affected the food and coffee productions within the country.

Since the Habyarimana regime started to weaken in the late 1980's, they tried to restore their power and as a result of their attempts to do so human rights were greatly abused and the killing of politicians increased a lot (Melvern, 2000).

It was by the end of 1990 that it became very clear that the country was not only economically in a very bad shape but politically as well. Since, it was a common perception among the international community in the globalized, post-cold war era that the loans are taken in order to make the political developments possible, it would promote the multi-part democratization. Therefore, the Habyarimana were forced to share the power with the RPF as it was crucial at the time for the country to avoid famine in order to improve the economic scenario. The implementation of the Arusha Accords in order to stop the civil war with the RPF and the democratic developments were the conditions on which Rwanda was given the loans (Melvern, 2000).

New Wars

It is very clear from the demands for the multi-party democratization and the international market pressures that the globalized factors were exerting their power in Rwanda. This also clearly shows the extent of power that the forces of globalization have. With the help of the Kaldor's 'new war' theory (2001) we can understand the link that was present among these forces and how all this resulted in a terrible conflict.

According to Kaldor, a new kind or organized violence developed during the 1980's and the 1990's especially in places like Eastern Europe and Africa. This was one of the aspects of the globalized era. In his opinion this kind of violence was the 'new war.' The reason why he used the term new here is because this type of war was different from those previous perceptions of war that were concluded from an earlier time period. In his opinion with the help of this 'new war' paradigm we can understand the ethnic cleansing and the genocide (Kaldor, 2001).

According to Kaldor these 'new wars' may be localized in terms of the geographical locations but they are globalized conflicts as the global factors (such as finance, mobilization and support) depend upon the transactional networks. The validity of this aspect of Kaldor's theory can be proved with the genocide in Rwanda (Kaldor, 2001). According to Melvern (2000), the scenario in Rwanda might not have gotten this worse and it might have been easier to heal the violent divisions if there wouldn't have been so much involvement from the outside interests. The affect that the "outside interests" had on the state of affairs of Rwanda with respect to the peace processes and the international trade are very clearly negative.

The importance and the influence of the transnational networks can be estimated from the fact that the World Bank and IMF unintentionally paid for the genocide in Rwanda when they were asked for the funds from the Structural Adjustment Programs. Both Egypt's and France's governments were involved in the genocides in such a way that they were supporting the extremists in Rwanda by supplying them with the weapons and ammunition. The money for these activities was being taken from the funds in the international financial institutions (Melvern, 2000).

The international community showed complete indifference to the fact that the money which was supposed to be used for the aid was being used to buy ammunition to support the genocide. Due to this reaction of the international community, it later on faced a lot criticism. According to Alison Des Forges (2000), after seeing the complete indifference of the international community the Rwandans became totally convinced that the genocide government would win. As a result of this the people who were against the genocide started to slaughter as well whether due to fear or seeing opportunities.

The transactional networks played a huge role in supplying the arms for the genocide. Although, this fact was kept hidden because the civil war against the RPF was continuing as well and it was thought that the arms were coming for it. Countries such as Egypt, France, China and South Africa were responsible for supplying arms from machetes to the rocket launchers. The significance of the import of arms was noted by Klare as well in the 1999 report of the human rights watch, where she asserted that due to the numerous amounts of suppliers it became very easy for the potential belligerents to get their hands on the arms. Before the massacre of 1994 the Rwanda government used to purchase the arms in small quantities from countries like Africa and Egypt. The importance of globalization can also be judged by how the Rwanda government had exploited the multiplicity of the sources to get the arms from.

According to Mcnulty (2000) it is very important to control this militarization as he said that the transformation of Rwanda from a 'hard state' to a 'weapon states' in less than four years would never had been possible if the external forces would not have been providing it with the arms. The importance of the arms that were provided in the genocide has also been talked about by the human rights watch arms project members: Goose and Smyth (1994). They said that the conflict worsened because of the weapons that were being provided to the Rwandans. Majority of the killings were being done by the machetes however, hand grenades and the automatic rifles were being used as well. The number of killings increased to a huge extent due to the availability of the arms to the Hutu extremists. The members of the militia and various other supporters were provided with the firearms by the Rwanda authorities one month before the genocide (Goose and Smyth, 1994).

Globalization and Identity Politics

According to Kaldor (2001) there exists a strong link between the globalization processes and the resulting politics which mainly occur due to the identity politics. He further said that although these war are known as the 'new wars' but their political goals seem to be very traditional as, they all seem to be wanting to increase their power on the basis of their religion, nation or tribe. These new wars and struggles might take the shape of modern phenomenon such as communalism, nationalism or tribalism but these all are basically the modern names that might be showing new characteristics but are based on the old beliefs. Therefore, Kaldor (2001) believed that if we look at the reinvention of the ethnicity from the perspective of the contemporary power struggle going on in Rwanda, we can understand it.

With the implementation of the multi-party democratization and the inevitable advance by the RPF, Akuzu became insecure about losing their political legitimacy and power. It was due to this fear being faced by Akuzu that Hutu and Tutsi emerged again as ethnically different groups of people.

Akuzu was directing the Interahamwe which began a war in the name of maintaining their identity and eradicating anyone who didn't belong to their own identity. According to Kaldor (2001), the main purpose of the wars of this kind was the eviction of the population through mass killings. Akuzu very successfully made the Hutus believe that they were conducting these mass killings in the name of their century old cause, whereas, in truth Akuzu was doing all this to preserve their power and political legacy.

Although over the years some criticism and doubts were directed towards the Tutsi, however, Akuzu managed to maintain their power and their influence. Akuzu had so much influence over the Hutus that they build a fear in the minds of Hutus against RPF to the extent that Hutus were willing to kill any of them even from their own communities (Melvern, 2000).

Forces of fragmentation have risen along with the forces of globalization. According to Smith (1995), even in this era of transcendence and globalization, the nations are still caught up in ethnic fragmentation and conflicts regarding the political identities. The people who feel threatened about losing their power and influence start looking for other options in order to maintain their power and influence as well as to find some identification for themselves.

According to Kaldor (2001), the expansions of extremist networks and mobilization of the people towards the war are some of the aims of the new wars. In these new wars battles aren't very common and civilians are the common targets of the violence. All these activities are done to make the people afraid, defeat tolerance and to repress any moderate voices in order to gain power and influence.

Therefore, with globalization conflicting dynamics arise. This is exactly what happened in Rwanda where the political parties that were thirsty for power didn't want democratization as they were afraid of losing their identity. Hence, they started looking for ways to remain in power which resulted in the formation of extremist groups.

Conclusion

One thing that has to happen with globalization is the de-legitimization of the state, as a result of this new ownership. This is what happened in Rwanda when the Arusha Accords were signed and the government in Rwanda was de-legitimized.

According to Mamdani (2001), in the 1990's the irony of Rwanda was that the democracy and the civil war were taking place at the same time; because of this series of events individuals and freedom seekers rose to support democracy whereas the people who felt loyal to their nation started supporting the civil war. This resulted in great disturbances and political upheavals as these two processes can't go hand in hand which is exactly what was happening in Rwanda. Therefore, Akuzu started making efforts to maintain its power and influence. These efforts made by Akuzu later on led to mobilization and the occurrence of genocide.