The 1959 social revolution in Rwanda saw the deposition of the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and the freeing of the majority Hutu population from serfdom. Following this, the Rwandan military became a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis.
At the time of the 1959 revolution, however, the Tutsi aristocracy, unable to accept a lesser role, responded by murdering several Hutu local mayors and other Hutu officials. The Hutu government of Rwanda called for help and the Belgians returned with a military force from the Congo to restore order and to pursue the Tutsis involved. Rather than face arrest, the entire Tutsi aristocracy fled the country to Uganda where, from 1961 until 1973, they staged armed raids into Rwanda, slaughtering Hutus until being forced back to their foreign sanctuary.
From 1973 to 1990, there was no further interference in Rwanda from Uganda. But during that time, the Tutsis remaining in Uganda had become one of the main elements of the Ugandan Army of president Yoweri Museveni. Many of these held high office, including Paul Kagame.
Upon the collapse of the USSR in 1989/90, the US and the UK began a general imperialist/militarist expansion, that included the targeting of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Moreover, the US was also tired of president Mobutu of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC), as he was beginning to turn towards China. President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda was approached to allow his country to be used as a staging ground for an attack on Zaire. He refused. This caused the US to look for other agents in furthering their interests, whom they found in the Tutsis residing in Uganda.
On October 1, 1990 the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) launched a surprise attack from Uganda on Rwanda. The RPF’s initial justification was to attain the return of Tutsi refugees from Uganda to Rwanda. This claim, however, was belied by the fact that Rwanda had, under UN auspices, already agreed a few weeks earlier to the return of all Tutsis in Uganda who wished to do so.
The attack by RPF forces killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians -the majority Hutu. These crimes have never been accounted for and, indeed, there was not even a shred of condemnation of the Ugandan-RPF invasion, despite the noise raised only two months earlier when Iraqi forces advanced into Kuwait. In fact, the US and its allies supported the aggression against Rwanda, and US Special Forces operated with the RPF from the beginning. Despite this support, after several weeks of intense fighting, the RPF forces were eventually defeated by the small Rwandan Army, and the RPF remnants fled, on US instructions, back to Uganda to regroup and reorganize.
Following this attempt to overthrow the state by a proxy force, the United States brought political and economic pressure to bear upon Rwanda’s one party socialist state, the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND). Habyarimana, instead of resisting, agreed to a change in the constitution and in 1991, Rwanda became a multi-party democracy. The Rwandan government effected this as an offer of peace. What followed, however, was anything but peace. Rather than work towards reconciliation, the RPF turned from the tactics of open warfare to those of guerrilla terrorism.
In 1992, while RPF forces were busy planting mines and assassinating politicians and blaming it on the MRND, a coalition government was formed with the front parties of the RPF. These agents quickly seized control of key ministries and succeeded in appointing the prime minister. They also gained control of the intelligence services, which they then began to dismantle. The RPF itself, meanwhile, engaged in a “talk and fight” strategy: always agreeing to a ceasefire, then pressing for more power, and launching new attacks on civilians. The most egregious of these assaults was their breaking of the ceasfire and launching of a major offensive in February of 1993, in which they seized the town of Ruhengeri, murdering in the process some 40,000, mostly Hutu, civilians.
The Rwanda Army, even though hamstrung by the civilian ministries, managed, once again, to drive the RPF back. Finally, in August of 1993, the Arusha Accords were signed under pressure from the United States and its allies. The Accords dictated the formation of a broad-based transition government to be followed by general elections. But for the RPF – as, indeed, for the United States – there was a fly in the electoral ointment. The RPF knew that they could not win such elections, because they were not only unpopular with the majority (85%) Hutu population, but were also unpopular with many of Rwanda’s internal Tutsis. Thus, instead of preparing for elections, the RPF prepared, instead, for their final offensive.
