Review of: "Rwanda, the Truth about Operation Turquoise–When the Archives Speak"
Rwanda:
The Definitive Book, at Last
Observatoire
Géostratégique, numéro 262 / 23 décembre 2019
by Richard Labévière, December 16,
2019
Translation of Rwanda : le livre definitif, enfin ! Translated
by Dennis Riches
Review
of: Rwanda, the Truth about Operation Turquoise–When the Archives Speak [Rwanda,
la vérité sur l’Opération Turquoise–Quand les archives parlent], by Charles
Onana, Editions L’Artilleur, 2019. https://prochetmoyen-orient.ch/rwanda-le-livre-definitif-enfin/.
Dedicated
to Jean-Claude Lafourcade, Jacques Hogard, Marin Gillier and all the others.
In France,
it is difficult to speak about certain subjects without unleashing the guard
dogs of correct thought and dominant ideology. The sensitive dossiers are
well-known: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil-global war in Syria,
and the Rwandan genocides. Even to speak of “genocides” in the plural is to
take a serious risk, as the guardians of the temple have erected the singular
as a totem of their religion: from April 7, 1994 until July 17, 1994, the “evil”
Hutu massacred the “gentle” Tutsi. Definitively, the morality of it is always
this simple.
And from
then on: spread the word, as there is nothing more to comprehend because it is
a matter of feeling, believing in and celebrating the Rwandan dictator as a
benefactor of humanity. The case is closed.
In a
succession of sleight-of-hand tricks that turned the Rwandan tragedy into a
veritable historic fraud, the French military’s Operation Turquoise deserves
particular attention because it has been the object of fantasy, disinformation,
and deceitful propaganda.
On June
22, 1994, the United Nations Security Council mandated in Resolution 929 the
deployment of a multinational force, under the command of French forces in
Zaire (Congo) and Rwanda, for the protection of thousands of endangered
refugees. However, for over twenty years, journalists, staff of NGO’s,
researchers, and, above all, the Rwandan regime have accused France of having
participated in the preparation, if not the execution of, genocide. How was
such a phantasmagoria imposed to the point that it became an undisputed and
ideologically dominant truth?
Ten
Years of Research
To respond
to this question, this book by Charles Onana reports on more than ten years of
research in the archives of the French Security Council, the executive branch,
the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, and the American administration
of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as numerous
first-hand witnesses’ accounts. His book methodically deconstructs one of the
greatest ideological frauds of contemporary history. It illustrates that the
present rulers of Rwanda impeded intervention by the UN for over two months,
knowingly encouraging massacres instead of acting to stop them, in order to
gain unshared power and then move on to the conquest of Zaire—with the support
of Uganda, the United States, Great Britain, and, to a lesser degree, Belgium.
Born on February
18, 1964, Charles Onana is no dilettante on this subject. With a doctorate in
political science, this French-Cameroonian researcher has become known for
several studies, made in collaboration with our friend Pierre Péan (deceased in
the summer of 2019), on Africa and the Great Lakes region, Palestine, and other
armed conflicts. His milestone was his pioneering work on African sharpshooters
of the French military during WWII. He managed the Pan-African Organization of
Independent Journalists, for which he led an inquiry into the assassination of
Norbert Zongo, a journalist from Burkina Faso. He has authored over twenty
works, among them: The Tutsi Killers at the Heart of the Congolese Tragedy
(2009), Al-Bashir and Darfour: The Couter-Inquiry (2010), Cote d’Ivoire:
the Coup d’Etat (2011), Europe, Crimes and Censure in the Congo
(2012), France in the Rwandan Terror (2014), and Palestine, the
French Malaise (2015).
Prefaced
by Colonel Luc Marchal, former head of the blue helmets of the Kigali sector of
the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda [1993/10-1996/03], this first
scientific study devoted to Operation Turquoise begins by presenting its
sources and its methodology. After coverage of the historic and political
context, Charles Onana explains how the attack of April 6, 1994—on the plane
carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien
Ntaryamira)—ignited the terrible machinery: “the massacres of civilians began
effectively in the capital on April 7, 1994, after the announcement of the
assassination of the Rwandan head of state. They would then spread throughout
the country at the initiative of armed groups against the entire Rwandan
population. Yet the mode for designating victims would never be founded on a
detailed and deep inquiry, but rather done in haste under the emotions of the
time.”
The
Assumption of Power
At the
time of the massacres, many journalists reported that the presidential guard
and elements of FAR (Forces Armées Rwandaise) were committing atrocities
against Tutsis and Hutus. Certainly, a few witnessed equally criminal acts
committed by rebels of the RPA/RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Army/Rwandan Patriotic
Front) during the same period. Among the few rare journals that were paying
attention to the advance of the RPF was Liberation, on May 19, 1994
(editor’s note: Liberation’s objective reporting did not last long)
which evoked “bloody reprisals by the Rwandan guerrilla forces” before adding, “contrary
to what they always promised, soldiers of the RPF had themselves begun to
target civilian populations that had not succeeded in fleeing from the
conflict.”
Charles
Onana refocuses as well on this question, writing, “Far from the purely ethnic
question that all journals refer to, it is rather the ‘sharing of power’
required by the Arusha Accords, or the non-sharing of power, that seems to be
the heart of the problem. In other words, was the RPF disposed to share power
with Hutus of the interim government at the moment it had a military advantage
and preferred to fight until it could totally dominate?”
The
testimony of the special representative of the UN Secretary General in Rwanda
was along the same lines: “Considering that victory was within reach, the RPF
proved itself to be unreceptive to having informal contact with organizers of a
meeting between the parties. It insisted on the dissolution of the interim
government and the presidential guard… The special representative of the UN,
the secretary general of the OUA, and the international community were accused
of doing nothing to stop the massacres and being complicit with the interim
government. These excessive assertions led to the abandonment of the Arusha
Accords by everyone targeted by the RPF, including Western diplomats.” [See
translator’s note 1 about the special representative, Jacques-Roger Booh Booh.]
The
attitude of the RPF in the massacres of civilians in 1994 remains a great
taboo. No one has the right to speak of it, even the dissidents of this
movement. If the image of the RPF has long been one of a “sympathetic national
liberation movement opposed to the Habyarimana dictatorship, its positions and behavior
during the massacres finished by revealing its Machiavellian and criminal side,”
write Charles Onana. He sets out as rationally as possible the Rwandan and
French context at the time the decision was made to undertake Operation
Turqoise—a context of political “co-existence” within the country and of
hostility outside of it. Clearly, when the French Prime Minister Edouard
Balladur saw what was at stake from the point of view of domestic politics,
President François Mitterrand saw what was at stake geopolitically.
The author
of these lines above remembers having covered the OAU summit (at the time the
African Union was still called the “Organization” of African Unity) in Tunis
from June 13-15, 1994. The delegation was concerned mainly with the big issue
at the summit: Nelson Mandela himself was ceaselessly imploring François
Mitterrand to do something to attempt to staunch the massacres that were
continuing against the Rwandan refugees heading for Zaire. The former oldest
prisoner in the world—then having been president of South Africa for one
month—estimated that the needed operation by the UN would take months and that
only France, with its prepositioned forces in Africa, could intervene.
From
Genocide to Accusations Against Turquoise
The term “genocide”
was not applied at first because neither the United Nations nor the OAU, nor
the Red Cross used this term. Its use, initiated with the help and support of
the permanent delegation of the Czech Republic and the United States,
encountered numerous opponents at the UN. It was then the close contacts
undertaken by Colin Keating—ambassador for New Zealand and president of the
Security Council—with the RPF which led to the first use of the term, relaying
it officially within the United Nations and its technical agencies. [See
translator’s note 2 below on why the term “genocide” was thought to be
problematic.]
The US
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, did the rest, and the United States
validated, without the least reservation, and very officially, the pressing
demand of the RPF to retain the term “genocide” and to qualify the massacres in
Rwanda as such. This qualification was thus retained without prior examination
or inquiry. Its validation would never be submitted to review by professional
magistrates, nor by any international jurisdiction.
Charles
Onana writes, “The French Minister of Cooperation, Bernard Debre, would say
with notable courage: two genocides had been committed, and the leading power
of the world wanted that there should only be one because that suited its
interests.” Thus the foundation of an emotional ideological reconstruction was
assured for the “genocides” and the attacks that were going to follow. The
first accusations launched against Operation Turquoise were not initiated by
French journalists or media. It was the American press that took a position and
fired the first shot. From the month of April, shortly after the attack on
President Habyarimana’s plane, several American newspapers blamed France. It
was notably the International Herald Tribune, distributed in close to
180 countries around the world, that on April 14th published an article by “journalist”
Frank Smyth entitled “French money is behind the over-arming of Rwanda.”
From then
on the parrots of the Parisian press—in a permanent state of admiration and a
quasi-colonial intellectual dependence on the American press—would relay a
dossier cleverly promoted by the American NGO Human Rights Watch. It was taken
up in Belgium and France by a very strange and shady organization named “Survie,”
which was literally obsessed with “Françafrique” [see translator’s note
3]. It operated on the premise that the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Israel had no idea where Africa was and that only France had any influence on
the continent. This organization would never cease to incriminate French
authorities and Operation Turquoise.
In this “journalistic”
affiliation a number of “useful idiots” would flourish—self-proclaimed
prosecutors, if not obsessed neurotics, who would peddle the fraudulent
narrative. Charles Onana writes, “In invoking regularly and uniquely the
support, as a real presence, of France to the Rwandan regime ‘before’ the massacres
(until 1993), and in revealing only the actions of Rwandan government troops
during the long civil and international war, but not describing in parallel
those of the rebels and not mentioning the origin of their arms and their
support, the French press, in quasi-totality, played a role in dismissing an
essential part of the reality and presenting facts in a partial or incomplete
way. The treatment of information thus, from the start, was unbalanced and
truncated. This asymmetry would necessarily affect the intelligibility of the
conflict and have consequences for the image of all actors in the conflict.”
Fear Changed
Sides
The most
violent attacks on Operation Turquoise appeared in the daily L’Humanité,
which were then relayed by Le Figaro, which pounded—from the beginning—the administration of
President Mitterand and Prime Minister Balladur. In this context, Liberation
and L’Express would definitively take up the role of scandalmongers,
while Le Monde—under the influence of the anti-militarism left over from
1968—would specialize in systematically denigrating the French military. In
some cases it was the officers of Operation Turquoise themselves who were
copiously dragged through the mud and personally slandered, as if it was a
matter of establishing a supposed continuity with the Algerian war, in order to
perpetrate bad conscience and tenacious hatred toward a France that remained “colonial”
in its essence. While he was chief editor of Radio France International,
the author was able to see the power of this ideological machinery: the
political commissars of the organization Survie called directly to
editors of “Service Afrique,” certain members of which were in permanent
contact with the Embassy of Israel in Paris.
In effect, the other great trait of the mythology of the “singular” Rwandan genocide consisted of comparing it—stricto sensu—to the holocaust of WWII. Even if in the study of history comparison seldom rhymes with reason, there was suddenly a surge of all the water carriers of the Israeli cause, even launching defamation suits against free thinkers who disagreed with the dominant view. One must not forget also that in the context of a dreadful intellectual terrorism, inviting the investigator Pierre Péan had become a cause for termination!
It is some of the persons in this study—and the author of the book reviewed here is one of them—to whom we are indebted for a gradual re-establishment of the truth, notably concerning Operation Turquoise. At the time, the author reported on Swiss television (TSR), on many occasions, about the much decried Operation Turquoise. Based on his first-hand experience, he told how French soldiers assisted refugees, bringing them medical care, water and food; how in Goa, Congo, they had buried victims of cholera in order to stop the spread of the epidemic, how they had saved thousands of refugees who would have certainly died otherwise.
In paying
homage to these soldiers—most of them very young, and who were then the face of
France—I could not help but recall the words of Nelson Mandela to François
Mitterrand: “Do something!”
Yes, this
book by Charles Onana is “definitive” because, illuminated by undisputable
multiple sources and testimonies, not only does he restore the historical truth
(without closing the field to further research) but he also makes fear and
indignation change sides. This book leads to an inescapable conclusion: from
the common soldier to the highest military and political officials, Operation
Turquoise saved—yes, saved!—thousands of lives. From the common soldier to
those with the highest responsibility, this overseas deployment of French armed
forces deserves our respect and admiration.
A Question
of Honor
And if
fear has thus changed sides and made it possible today to finally give much
deserved honor to all the men and women of Operation Turquoise, it is also
because its commander—General Jean-Claude Lafourcade—battled relentlessly to
defend the honor of the mission accomplished.
When he
was named as the head of the operation in June 1994, he was a brigade general
of the 11th parachute division in Toulouse. Named as commander of the Legion of
Honor in 2000, he would become successively deputy chief of staff of ground
forces, chief commander of the armed forces of New Caledonia, then commander of
ground forces (CFAT) in Lille.
How could
such a man, supposedly so tarnished, have had such a career path? Yet
Jean-Claude Lafourcade would also preside over the France-Turquoise Association
which fought step by step against all the calumnies hurled against the actions
of our country in Rwanda. Ignored by the Parisian press, his book Operation
Turquoise-Rwanda 1994, written with journalist Guillaume Riffaud, cleared
the way. In January 2016, General Lafourcade was a witness (témoin assisté)
[Translator’s note 4] in a judicial inquiry pertaining (information
judiciaire) to “complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity” that
targeted French military personnel. These procedures all failed abruptly, not
interfering with his ability to pursue the fight necessary to re-establish “honor”
during a time when there was so little of it.
Other
honorable men should be mentioned here: Admiral Marin Gillier, whose career was
distinguished by an assignment in the Special Forces, in particular with the
French Combat Swimmers.
His
knowledge of Arabic led him to counter-terrorism activities and the fight
against radical Islamic fighters. Duties at the Ministry of Defense led him to
work in establishing rule of law in different national and international
formats. Out of uniform, he took on several private duties: l’association
Nazaréens au Cœur (NauC) which welcomed families having fled Iraq and Syria
after the rise of Dae’ch [ISIS] there. Another was Night of the Handicapped, a
gathering in public places, once a year, for passersby, organizations, and institutions
involved with vulnerable and handicapped people to share a moment of
conviviality and brotherhood.
On this
horizon line of restored honor, a third musketeer stands out among many others:
Colonel Jacques Hogard, who was a commander of the Foreign Legion at the time of
Operation Turquoise. In 2005, his testimony about his participation—Tears of
Honor: Sixty Days in the Torment of Rwanda—was published by Hugo. It
asserts that the person responsible for the attack of April 6, 1994, which
killed the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, was indeed Paul Kagame. He accuses
American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright of having delayed the deployment
of an international force to end the massacres. On May 13, 2009, with a number
of other former officers of the French Army that served in Rwanda between 1990
and 1994, he was distinguished with a decree from the President of the Republic
and promoted to officer of the Legion of Honor. He is appreciated for other
books revealing other truths, such as Europe Died in Pristina: War in Kosovo
(two editions, 1999, 2014).
It is in
such good company that Charles Onana concludes his book by writing, “Even in
the present day, French political leaders, almost apathetic and resigned, are
always little inclined to effectively and courageously defend their soldiers,
in particular those of Operation Turquoise, in the face of endless ignominious
and defamatory accusations, a situation that would be totally unimaginable in
the United States if it were a matter concerning American soldiers.”
Translator’s
Notes
1.
Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, Special representative of the UN Secretary General, Chief
of UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) during the genocide
Booh Booh, Jacques-Roger, Le Patron de
Dallaire parle. Editions Duboiris, janvier 2005, [Dallaire’s
Boss Speaks]. Publisher’s summary:
Eleven
years after the genocide in Rwanda, Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, the special
representative of the UN Secretary General, delivers his testimony on the
mission and on General Dallaire.
Chief of UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) during the genocide, Mr. Booh Booh reveals that General Dallaire organized the sabotage of diplomatic work by clandestinely placing microphones in his office in order to listen to the confidential and official conversations of his superior. Dallaire closed his eyes to arms convoys destined for the RPF while he more strictly controlled those of the Habyarimana regime. He sided with the rebels when he decided to live under their roofs. This frivolous behavior damaged the reputation of UNAMIR and discredited the work of the blue helmets [UN peacekeepers]. The special representative of the UN affirms that Dallaire never delivered any report on the attack of April 6, 1994 that unleashed the genocide the same day. Nor did he report on the assassination of Belgian UN soldiers. Mr. Booh Booh goes further in revealing that Dallaire outright invited FPR rebels to the headquarters on UNAMIR in Kigali in order to give them information on the positions of the Hutu army.
The
special representative of the UN affirms that the French military’s Operation
Turquoise saved numerous lives. Without this intervention, there would have
been more deaths in Rwanda in 1994. Mr. Booh Booh does not comprehend the
accusations that are made today against France. He stresses that the mission
that he managed did not have the means to prevent the massacres.
In staying
silent for ten years, Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, the former minister and
ambassador from Cameroon, chose discretion and humility in facing the Rwandan
genocide. Now, “The Boss of Dallaire” speaks in order to denounce the
megalomania and deceptions of a UN general who presented himself as a sort of
General McArthur while the tragedy was taking place.
2. Political
bias and lack of information create difficulty in defining genocide and
determining intent to commit genocide; genocide in contrast with crimes against
humanity, mass atrocities, and war crimes
It may
seem that by questioning the use of the word “genocide,” the reviewer is
denying the extreme and horrific acts of violence committed by Hutus against
their Tutsi fellow citizens. No researcher that I have encountered has denied
the reality of the Hutu-on-Tutsi violence of the April to July 1994 period. They
are not “genocide deniers” or apologists for mass murderers. The problem arises
from the haste in which the term was applied before the outbreak of mass
violence was understood in its full context. Comparisons to the European
Holocaust were made but were inappropriate, as in that case there had been no
army of exiled Jewish warriors attacking Germany for four years before the
genocide began. In the Rwandan case, Tutsi forces based in Uganda had committed
atrocities against Hutus and terrorized the population for several years before
the decapitation of the Rwandan government in April 1994. At that time, Rwanda
was a gasoline-soaked pile of timber ready to be set alight. See the definition
of genocide below, and the following comment by Philippe Sands on the
long-debated problems involved in readily applying the term “genocide” to any situation
where mass atrocities have occurred. The politicization of genocide is evident
in the fact that the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994 received far more
attention and concern at the UN and in the “international” press and academia than
the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965-66, even though the number of victims
was similar.
|
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court -
Article 6 (genocide), Adopted on 17 July 1998
For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide”
means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Article I: The Contracting Parties confirm
that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a
crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Article II: In the present Convention,
genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm
to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be
punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit
genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.
|
Philippe Sands author of
Lawless
World: The Whistle-Blowing Account of How Bush and Blair Are Taking the Law
into Their Own Hands, (Penguin, 2005):
“I think
that… the concept of genocide… requires the person claiming that a genocide has
taken place to show that the person who did the act intended to destroy a
group. Since the person proving this is often from the group that is the victim
group, what it tends to do, I think, is create the sort of condition in which
you associate with the alleged perpetrator a sort of bad intent toward another
group and it tends to pit the victim group against the perpetrator group. I
think the danger is it tends to reinforce the very conditions that it seeks to
prevent. It reinforces the sense that one group is against another group... On
the other hand, … people are not killed only because they are individuals.”
- quoted in Robert Coalson, “What’s the Difference Between ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ and ‘Genocide’? “Interview with lawyer and author Philippe Sands,” The Atlantic, March 19, 2013.
3. Françafrique
Françafrique
is a term used to refer to the former French African colonies where France
retained a strong neo-colonial influence in the post-colonial period. Rwanda
had been a Belgian and German colony, but never a French colony, so the term
does not apply. Nonetheless, because French was widely spoken in Rwanda after
it gained independence in 1959, Francophone nations such as Canada, Belgium,
and France developed strong cultural ties with Rwanda and gave developmental
assistance. In the early 1990s, France was reluctantly drawn into supporting
Rwanda in its defense against armies of Tutsi exiles that were attacking from
their bases in Uganda and supported by the United States. Behind the semblance
of a regional ethnic conflict in a small corner of Africa, this war across
international boundaries was a post-cold war conflict between France and the Anglo-American
axis for the future of Central Africa. Military aggression from Uganda into
Rwanda provoked no “international” outrage similar to the Iraqi incursion into
Kuwait that occurred during the same period. The long “African World War”
ensued and lasted until 2007, involving Congo, Sudan, Angola, Uganda, Zimbabwe,
Rwanda, and other nations. The “international community” paid scant attention in
spite of the tremendous levels of violence.
4. Témoin
assisté
There is
no precise equivalent for this term in other legal systems. In French courts, a
témoin assisté is a witness who appears to be circumstantially involved
in the crime being investigated but has not been not indicted. He or she may or
may not be indicted at a later time.
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