Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [197]
Within six weeks, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing about three-quarters of the Tutsi then remaining in Rwanda, or 11% of Rwanda’s total population, had been killed. A Tutsi-led rebel army termed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) began military operations against the government within a day of the start of the genocide. The genocide ended in each part of Rwanda only with the arrival of that RPF army, which declared complete victory on July 18, 1994. It is generally agreed that the RPF army was disciplined and did not enlist civilians to murder, but it did carry out reprisal killings on a much smaller scale than the genocide to which it was responding (estimated number of reprisal victims, “only” 25,000 to 60,000). The RPF set up a new government, emphasized national conciliation and unity, and urged Rwandans to think of themselves as Rwandans rather than as Hutu or Tutsi. About 135,000 Rwandans were eventually imprisoned on suspicion of being guilty of genocide, but few of the prisoners have been tried or convicted. After the RPF victory, about 2,000,000 people (mostly Hutu) fled into exile in neighboring countries (especially the Congo and Tanzania), while about 750,000 former exiles (mostly Tutsi) returned to Rwanda from neighboring countries to which they had fled (Plate 22).
The usual accounts of the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi portray them as the result of pre-existing ethnic hatreds fanned by cynical politicians for their own ends. As summed up in the book Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, published by the organization Human Rights Watch, “this genocide was not an uncontrollable outburst of rage by a people consumed by ‘ancient tribal hatreds.’ . . . This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This small, privileged group first set the majority against the minority to counter a growing political opposition within Rwanda. Then, faced with RPF success on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, these few powerholders transformed the strategy of ethnic division into genocide. They believed that the extermination campaign would restore the solidarity of the Hutu under their leadership and help them win the war . . .” The evidence is overwhelming that this view is correct and accounts in large degree for Rwanda’s tragedy.
But there is also evidence that other considerations contributed as well. Rwanda contained a third ethnic group, variously known as the Twa or pygmies, who numbered only 1% of the population, were at the bottom of the social scale and power structure, and did not constitute a threat to anybody—yet most of them, too, were massacred in the 1994 killings. The 1994 explosion was not just Hutu versus Tutsi, but the competing factions were in reality more complex: there were three rival factions composed predominantly or solely of Hutu, one of which may have been the one to trigger the explosion by killing the Hutu president from another faction; and the invading RPF army of exiles, though led by Tutsi, also contained Hutu. The distinction between Hutu and Tutsi is not nearly as sharp as often portrayed. The two groups speak the same language, attended the same churches and schools and bars, lived together in the same village under the same chiefs, and worked together in the same offices. Hutu and Tutsi intermarried, and (before Belgians introduced identity cards) sometimes switched their ethnic identity. While Hutu and Tutsi look different on the average, many individuals are impossible to assign to either of the two groups based on appearance. About one-quarter of all Rwandans have both Hutu and Tutsi among their great-grandparents. (In fact, there is some question whether the traditional account of the Hutu and Tutsi having different origins is correct, or whether instead the