Chapter 15: Watch out for Africa!”Closing in on the Congo
“American domination – the only domination from which one never recovers.
I mean from which one never recovers unscarred.’
Aimé Césaire, Discouse on colonialism
“France our most inveterate enemy.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1747
One Friday November evening 1996, the 8th to be exact, Jean and Aline Chrétien were quietly watching the CNN news at their Lake Harrington cottage just north of Ottawa. The non-stop images of people suffering near Goma in Eastern Zaire were so stirring that the Prime Minister decided Canada should mobilize and lead a multinational force to protect Rwandan refugees whose camps were being mercilessly bombed.
Instead of taking a well deserved prime ministerial rest, the PM first bounced the idea off his closest advisors, his wife Aline and his nephew Raymond Chrétien, who was then Canada’s Ambassador to Washington and who had just been appointed as the special UN envoy to the African Great Lakes region. He then picked up the phone to build up a “good head of steam” among other middle powers like Canada before approaching Washington. He lined up the presidents of Brazil and Argentina who agreed to participate in the planned Canadian-led force. With them on side, Jean Chrétien was ready to call Clinton and persuade him to support the Canadian initiative. The week’s work ended happily with a Security Council resolution on Thursday November 14 establishing a multinational force with 10 000 troops that would be led by the Canadian General Maurice Baril. This force to be immediately deployed was to enable the 1,300,000 Rwandan refugees to return home.
Surprise! The very next day, with the cameras of the world well focussed, thousands of Rwandan refugees started crossing the border from the Congo into Rwanda. Then two weeks later, another huge group returned from Tanzania. On December 12, the UN special envoy Raymond Chrétien informed the Security Council that it was no longer necessary to deploy the multinational force since the refugee problem was being settled by itself. “As soon as the Security Council resolution was adopted, Kigali activate the rebels in Eastern Zaire who then attacked the refugee camps. The militias fled thereby liberating the refugees to go home,” Raymond Chrétien told the United Nations press corps. At the very same time, General Maurice Baril, who headed the multinational force, declared: “I must now recommend that my government terminate the mission.”
Mission accomplished! Applause please!
That is how the “right and proper tale” would have it, but what really happened. 132
“General Baril was a damned liar when he said there was no longer a refugee problem in the Congo and that the troops in the multinational force could go home,” a humanitarian worker with a major NGO told me. “He’s a murderer!” The Montreal-based humanitarian worker who asked not to be named, was working in Kigali and Goma during this period and was posted at the Rwanda-Congo border when the refugees were forced to return to Rwanda. “When the city of Goma fell, the troops divided the refugee camp in two,” he added. “Some 300,000 or 400,000 refugees fled toward the forests to the west, whereas between 250,000 and 300,000 refugees headed towards Rwanda. Everybody knew that it happened that way. Satellite photos showed it clearly. Those photos were sent to all humanitarian groups and to General Baril. He had the same photos we had.”
Another eyewitness described the events in exactly the same way. The French daily Libération published his description on March 10, 1997. “Can we believe General Baril when he declared in mid-December that there were no refugees left in Zaire. After all he had spent only half a day on the road to Masisi in the vehicle of a rebel Tutsi army officer and had not seen any refugees. That declaration which officially terminated the multinational force caused the death of thousands of refugees. There’s no way he could be unaware of their presence.” 133
Six years later, Ambassador Raymond Chrétien, interviewed at the Canadian Embassy in Paris, admits that the refugee problem in the Congo only appeared to be settled when his mandate ended in December 1996.
“A bit of the problem was settled. It was the tip of the humanitarian iceberg, but a huge part of the problem was not solved. Many refugees headed for the forest and have probably been killed since then. A million people dead! Not much has been said about that. But there was an international consensus that 500,000 refugees returned to Rwanda. After that, there was no political will to deploy the multinational force.” 134
Though Raymond Chrétien could be congratulated for being so honest about the failure of the mission, it is much too little and much too late. Moreover his excuse about a so-called “international consensus” does not hold water, because that so-called consensus was totally fabricated.
Léon Kengo Wa Dondo was Prime Minister of Zaire between 1994 and 1997. According to him, “Zaire’s 1995 census established that there were 1,300,000 Rwandan refugees in Zaire. Only a very small number of refugees returned to Rwanda in November 1996. The idea of taking advantage of the presence in Zaire of Rwandan refugees accused of genocide to justify military intervention by Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda and then to transform the invasion into what appeared to be a civil war in Zaire was well planned in advance.” 135
According to eyewitnesses, all the pieces were in place to film the refugees’ return and broadcast it around the world – the refugees’ return should more accurately be called “refoulement” or “forced repatriation”. Here’s the spin that was planned. “The refugees were being freed from the yoke of the genocidal Hutu militias and returning happily to their homes in Rwanda.”
Forced repatriation is specifically prohibited by the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees. All countries involved in the November 1996 operation signed that Convention. 136 But who really cares about the rule of law anyway?
Reporters were lined up at the Rwanda-Zaire border well before the refugees were forced to return. Until then they had very little freedom of movement – reporters had been prevented from going near Goma when that city was taken a few weeks earlier – but now they were given full access to observe and film the whole operation. Their total freedom to cover the operation contrasted with the way they were corralled like cattle before the operation, and after it was over. “Obviously, we used the media,” recalled Raymond Chrétien in reference to his 1996 United Nations mission to Central Africa.
“CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was particularly well informed about the operation before it began,” observed the humanitarian worker who was at the border. “She obviously had access to privileged information. She was not interested in any of the less glamorous aspects of the operation. Her work was frankly dishonest.” He pointed out cases of refugees being tortured by the RPF army and the fact that the RPF formally prohibited anybody from providing water to refugees for the first twenty-five kilometres on the Rwandan side of the border. The goal was to dehydrate and eliminate all refugees who had cholera.
It is not surprising that the biased behaviour of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was noticeable to people present. Shortly after the events took place, Ms Amanpour married Jamie Rubin, Madeleine Albright’s mover and shaker and press attaché. Jamie Rubin is the man who leaked the so-called genocide fax to his brother-in-law Philip Gourevitch. The promoters of the “right and proper tale” inevitably refer to the very sinister “akazu” or “little house” to describe the Habyarimana family and entourage who are supposedly responsible for everything that happened in Rwanda. It would seem however that the United States can still teach the “akazus” of the world a few things, namely how to stage events and not be seen thanks to family ties.
At the very moment the tragic refugee operation was underway, French journalist Jean Daniel was meeting the assistant Secretary of State, John Kornblum, in his Washington office. His account of that meeting is hair-raising.
“France? We want to get along with France. Chirac? A man of good will. We like him. But: (1) no question of keeping Boutros-Ghali; (2) no question of keeping Mobutu in power… … Let’s get together again in six months time. We’ll see if I am mistaken. Watch out for Africa: France has it all wrong. The strong man is in Uganda, not in Kinshasa.” 137
In his own words, Jean Daniel left that meeting “dumbfounded by the cynical detailing of events to come, and the arrogance of the vocabulary used”.
The United States’ offensive against France in French-speaking Africa underlies the destruction of refugee camps in eastern Zaire and explains why the ephemeral Canadian-led multinational force that was supposed to protect the refugees was sent home so soon.
“Who bombed the Sake and Mugunga refugee camps near Goma?” asks former Prime Minister Kengo Wa Dondo, even though he leaves little doubt that he thinks the United States was directly implicated. Eyewitness accounts of the taking of the city of Goma on November 1, 1996, emphasize the speed of the operation which relied on heavy military materiel, the simultaneous attacks from different points and rockets launched from gunboats on Lake Kivu. Zaire army troops panicked. Another witness tells of the arrival of heavy American cargo planes in Kigali every night during the last two weeks of October 1996. The arms were apparently being delivered to the war in eastern Zaire.
Many sources point to elite US troops, including African Americans, and US weapons in eastern Zaire. According to the French daily Le Monde, French intelligence sources claim that American soldiers were secretly buried in that area of Zaire. 138
Marie Béatrice Umutesi wrote a moving account of her life as a refugee, first in Rwanda and then in Zaire, in a book eloquently titled Fuir ou mourir au Zaïre (To flee or to die in Zaire). She clearly shows that the operation was coordinated and that the return was illegally forced upon the refugees. At the end of October 1996, conditions in the huge Mugunga refugee camp had become unliveable. The population had tripled and the RPF army allied with Zaire rebels were closing in on the camp.
“A few days before the Mugunga camp was destroyed, an American military mission came through the camp. Speaking with megaphones, they asked refugees to take advantage of their presence in the camp to return to Rwanda. After that it would be too late. The refugees only began to return massively after that event. The only exit from the camp that was not blocked was the one leading to Rwanda… With the only alternatives being to return to Rwanda or be killed by the armed rebels surrounding the camp, many people chose to return.” 139
These observations are revealing. What is equally revealing is the unbending US opposition to efforts by France and the European Union to establish a multinational force for Zaire at the end of October and early November 1996. From November 4 through November 8, the headlines basically resembled this headline from Le Monde: “La France a du mal à convaincre l’ONU de l’urgence d’une intervention au Zaïre.” 140 (France is unable to convince the UN that intervention in Zaire is urgent).
The “right and proper tale” would have us believe that, unlike France, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien easily convinced the UN to intervene. He even managed to do it while resting and relaxing at his Harrington Lake cottage. Talk about being gullible!
If Jean Chrétien succeeded in mobilizing the UN so easily, it was simply because Washington told him to do it to block France. And of course the Canadian Prime Minister went along. The CBC Fifth Estate program on November 18, 1997, reaches exactly the same conclusion: the operation was orchestrated by Washington to make it look as though Canada was leading. To say he “succeeded in mobilizing the UN” is a gross exaggeration. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to kill the hopes of a real multinational intervention at a time when the refugee crisis made it absolutely crucial.
The same reasoning applies to Raymond Chrétien’s nomination as special envoy of the UN secretary general and to Maurice Baril’s appointment to command the still-born multinational force. That reasoning also helps us to understand their behaviour. Jean Chrétien, Raymond Chrétien and Maurice Baril were little more than operatives in a major American initiative aimed at knocking Mobutu out of power in Zaire and replacing France as the main foreign power operating in that country. Moreover, for services rendered – more accurately, for services that were not rendered – Maurice Baril was appointed Chief of Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces a few months later and was appointed UN envoy to the Congo in 2003.
As of late October 1996, Emma Bonino, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Action, and Aldo Ajello, special European Envoy in the African Great Lakes region, were both calling desperately for the establishment of a multinational force to be led by France, Belgium and South Africa. Each call was bluntly rejected by the United States. “I see no usefulness in external military intervention in Zaire”, repeated the United States’ Ambassador to Rwanda, Robert Gribbin. 141
Raymond Chrétien acknowledges that he was called on to be the UN special envoy to make the Americans happy. “When Boutros Boutros-Ghali appointed me, he wanted someone who could work with the Americans.” Raymond Chrétien added that he “insisted that all other international envoys be pulled out. I didn’t want Ms Emma Bonino or anybody else circulating there while I was carrying out my mandate.” 142 In other words, Raymond Chrétien did not want any other official representatives such as the ones sent by the European Union to appear to have any power to settle the problem. France was therefore effectively sidelined since its voice was being heard through the European Union.
Maurice Baril played exactly the same role as commander of the still-born force. Here is how the Québec City daily, Le Soleil, reported the dealings that preceded Baril’s appointment as commander. “United States’ and Canadian government and military officials met at the White House to discuss the multinational force, but Washington still had reservations about the chain of command of the force and had no intention of seeing the United Nations lead it. The principle of a Canadian command corresponded to the American wishes that France would only have a secondary role in the international force to be set up.” 143
Former Prime Minister Kengo of Zaire points out that the Security Council resolution adopted on November 14, 1996, called for the deployment of a multinational force to enable the refugees to “return to their country peacefully, safely and with dignity”. The force was mainly made up of American, Canadian and British troops with a small French contingent. “But Paul Kagame never wanted the refugees to return to Rwanda peacefully, safely and with dignity,” Kengo insists. “He wanted them to return to Rwanda as stragglers, one by one, at his mercy. The international community just let him do as he liked.”
The safe and peaceful corridor was never set up, and it is easy to understand why not. If the refugees had returned “safely, peacefully and with dignity”, they would have been able to demand that their property and belongings be returned to them, but most of all they could have demanded free democratic elections. They would also have been in a position to demand a place at an international negotiating table aimed to promote Rwandan national reconciliation after six years of war. That would have complied with the second point in Raymond Chrétien’s UN mandate, which was to organize an international conference.
Democratic elections – one man, one vote – would have been the death knell of the RPF regime and of Paul Kagame. From the moment the Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda on October 1, 1990, everybody knew that the RPF, which was more than 90 percent Tutsi, could never win elections in Rwanda where only 15 percent of the population were Tutsis. Furthermore, national reconciliation would also have meant the end of the hunt for “génocidaires” in Zaire, and thereby eliminate the main pretext used to justify the military intervention in Zaire of the Ugandan, Burundian and Rwandan armies with US backing.
How could the policy that was so clearly and cynically described to Jean Daniel in November 1996 – “France has it all wrong, no question of keeping Mobutu, the strongman is in Uganda, not Kinshasa” – be implemented if Paul Kagame were to be voted out of power and if there were no more “génocidaires” to send the armies after.
Former Prime Minister Kengo made an understatement when he said “Paul Kagame never wanted the refugees to return to Rwanda peacefully, safely and with dignity, and the international community let him do as he liked”. Would it not be more accurate to say: as self-proclaimed leader of the international community, the United States, with the support of Canada and the United Kingdom, told Paul Kagame to invade Zaire, to attack and bomb the refugee camps and force some of them to regurn to Rwanda? Paul Kagame of course willingly followed orders. It should be remembered that the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom were to provide ninety percent of the 10,000 troops in the ill-famed still-born multinational force that would have had the power to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees and of Congolese people.
As is too often the case in major humanitarian crises, there are always some so-called humanitarian professionals who, for reasons that are hard to grasp, to everything in their power to see that the maximum number of people die. The ubiquitous Belgian Senator Alain Destexhe, who is a former secretary general of Doctors Without Borders, is a perfect example. Destexhe fought hard against deployment of a multinational force in Eastern Zaire. The terms used in his article published on November 14, 1996, are staggering, especially coming from a doctor and an organization whose founder, Bernard Kouchner, was soon to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The humanitarian Destexhe wrote in Le Monde that the refugees would never return to Rwanda “unless they are forced or are starved into doing so”. He also proposed forcible return saying that “sometimes a painful political solution is preferable to a policy of compassion”.
Philip Gourevitch, who also favoured the “painful political solution”, managed to present the bombing of the refugee camps and the forced return as a humanitarian military operation because all the refugees are basically, in his opinion, “génocidaires”. He describes refugee camp life as a sort of Eden in Africa and belittles the tragedy of the refugees most of whom are probably dead now: “living in a refugee camp was not a bad economic proposition for a Rwandan (…) Food was not only free, but ample; malnutrition rates in the camps were far lower than anywhere else in the region, on a par, in fact with those of Western Europe. General medical care was also as good as it got in central Africa (…) The birth rate in the camps was close to the limit of human possibility.” 144 In short, they were multiplying like rabbits!
The demonization of Hutu refugees was central to the United States’ plan to remove Mobutu from power in Kinshasa. On May 5, 1998, in Washington, the House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee held hearings to find out why the Clinton Administration had done so little to prevent the massacres in Rwanda in 1994 and later in the Congo. Neither the State Department nor the Defense Department appeared at the hearings even though they had received formal requests. Only the chief of staff of USAID, Richard McCall, testified. When he was asked why the United States was not pushing for negotiations between Hutu rebels in the Congo and Paul Kagame’s government in Kigali, McCall replied angrily: “They’re not ‘rebels’ … They’re génocidaires. It would be totally offensive to negotiate with them. I would blow the roof of any building I was sitting in if that were suggested to me.” 145
Starting in 1995, recalls former Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo, the government of Zaire was getting messages from Washington demanding that Mobutu anounce his decision to leave. “Essentially the message went like this. If President Mobutu were to announce on his own that he was stepping down, the United States promised to grant him all the honours due to a veteran head of state. If not, his body would dragged through the streets of Kinshasa.” In April 1997, when it became obvious that Mobutu was not about to obey Washington’s ultimatum, President Clinton personally wrote to Mobutu and threatened to let the “rebels” led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila and the Rwandans take power in Kinshasa. Mobutu still refused to obey and so he was removed, according to plan, on May 17, 1997. 146
The other feature of the cynical plan unveiled to Jean Daniel in November 1996 by Assistant Secretary of State Kornblum was the removal of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as UN Secretary General. On November 19, 1996, in New York, while the refugee crisis raged, the US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, vetoed the renewal of Boutros-Ghali’s mandate, the man she liked to call “Frenchie”. 147 Here is how the former secretary general described US behaviour. “They didn’t want someone who would question their decisions. They wanted everything, and everything at once! You know, when people have power… I have worked with absolute rulers all my life. They cannot accept discussion, they cannot accept even a minimum of contradiction. I want that! And that’s all. What? You want to discuss the issue? I am the God of Gods, and I will have what I want. And you’re saying that you would like to think about it for a while?” 148
Washington offered Boutros Boutros-Ghali the same honours it offered Mobutu. He would be received by President Clinton at the White House, get honorary doctorates from American Universities, and more, but he had to step down of his own volition. Boutros-Ghali replied that he did not accept tips.
Under President Juvénal Habyarimana, Britain had no diplomatic representation in Kigali. In 2002, London’s Ambassador to Rwanda was the most important diplomat in the country according to former Rwandan Prime Minister Twagiramungu and 2003 presidential candidate.
Raymond Chrétien returned to Rwanda as UN special envoy twenty years after having been Canadian Ambassador to the region. He noted that one of the main differences in Kigali was that English had taken over from French, and his negotiations with the Rwandan Government were conducted in English. Rwanda had adopted English as the official language along with Kinyarwanda and French as early as January 1996. That decision also shows whom the new government wanted to please.
Before, during and after the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 and its continuation in the Congo, the media in English-speaking countries loudly denounced France’s guilt and established a sinister “French Connection” by dishonestly using grisly pictures, sensational headlines combined with innuendo and direct accusations. With its imperialist motives, undercover actions and basically fascist goals, France was made to be the overseer of a genocidal state. Worst of all, it continued to honour bilateral agreements it had signed with Rwanda. In the name of noble and just causes such as human rights and anti-colonialism, everything had to be done to get France out of Rwanda and, for that matter, out of Central Africa. Certain NGOs with their customary dubious neutrality jumped into the fray and launched their own attacks against iniquitous France. If ever a French official or journalist dared to speak publicly about the existence of an English-speaking plot and offensive conducted through a Tutsi rebel front, they were ridiculed. It was as if France was the only country to have a vested interest in this part of the world that supposedly was of no interest to anyone.
All the while France was being made to look so bad, it was no secret that the United States was conducting a major offensive in French-speaking Africa following the demise of the Soviet Union. American officials made no bones about it. In March 1993, Under Secretary of State George Moose declared to the Senate that “we have to ensure that we have access to the tremendous natural resources in Africa, a continent that accounts for 78 percent of the world’s chrome reserves, 89 percent of platinum reserves and 59 percent of cobalt reserves.” 149 After the Afro-American summit in Dakar in May 1995, the late Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce, made the following challenge: “America is going to be demanding of Africa’s traditional partners, starting with France. We are no longer going to leave Africa to the Europeans.” 150 And when Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited Africa in October 1996, he clarified United States’ political goals in Africa: “The time is up when Africa could be divided into spheres of influence, when foreign powers could consider whole groups of countries to be reserved for them. Today Africa needs the support of all its friends rather than the exclusive patronage of a few.”
For a big power, even if it is the biggest and most influential in the world, it is by no means a minor undertaking to bring another country to break long-standing ties with others, to replace the official language that has been in use for nearly a century, to reject administrative, educational and military structures adopted since independence or earlier and to start doing business in a different way. In fact, it is a major and difficult shake-up that effects all aspects of the country, of neighbouring countries and of groups of countries. That is basically the shake-up that the United States planned and announced for Africa. It was also a warning to all the French-speaking countries that were part of an organization created thanks to the vision of an eminent African poet and political leader, Léopold Sédar Senghor.
The American offensive against France in Africa explains why an unusual number of Canadians were appointed to important positions in the central African crisis. Roméo Dallaire, Maurice Baril, Louise Arbour and Raymond Chrétien are the best known. Rarely have we seen so many in a major international crisis. Many Canadian nationalists like to credit Canada’s lack of a colonial history, the country’s peace-keeping experience, or its enhanced international role. All three reasons are far-fetched.
The image of an innocent Canada unsullied by its colonial past, in addition to being inexact and overdone, should have been relegated to the story books after what the Canadian army did in Somalia in 1992 and 1993. As for peace-keeping, aside from Roméo Dallaire and Brent Beardsley, no members of the Canadian Forces were in Rwanda before August 1994, because Canada did not want to send troops there. Those who on the other hand try to defend the idea of Canada’s enhanced international prestige have been left out in the cold at least since September 11, 2002, and the antics of George W. Bush.
The United States whose citizens are strangely proud to speak only one language desperately needed a loyal French-speaking country. In the 1960s, James Minnifie wrote a searing attack on Canada and its role as a front for the American empire in his book entitled Peacekeeper or Powdermonkey. Add a French-speaking veneer and a deep-set distrust of France, and Washington had exactly the wolf in sheep’s clothing it needed.
Though distrust of France in English-speaking Canada is nearly 250 years old, it reached new summits during the political reign of Pierre Trudeau, especially as the Québec independence movement gained ground. Distrust of France in fact became an integral part of Canada’s foreign policy. On the other hand, Quebecers committed to a strong French-speaking Quebec know that their future is intimately linked to the international prestige of France and the French-speaking world. Solid and trusting relations with France are therefore crucial.
Need we recall that the Francophonie Summit, which Senghor the President of Senegal had envisioned in the early 1960s, became a reality only in 1986 because of Ottawa’s profound suspicions about France’s motives. Ottawa politicians perceived France as a hostile and irredentist empire at work in Quebec. The Canadian Government, for its part, likes to treat Quebec as little more than a large municipality. A whole generation of Canadians, especially in the armed forces, foreign affairs and the federal judicial apparatus, have been raised and trained to distrust everything that is French. To reach the top in any of these fields, Francophones are expected to toe the line, not once, not twice, but continually, failing which suspicion is immediately cast upon them especially by the media.
Louise Arbour, Raymond Chrétien, Maurice Baril and Roméo Dallaire are all products of these Canadian institutions. While carrying out their respective mandates, each one succeeded in provoking France, blocking it or keeping that country on the sidelines. Each time France proposed a solution to the Rwandan crisis and its sequel in the Congo, the United States and the United Kingdom opposed it. And each time a Canadian was standing on the front line doing the dirty work.
Senghor saw the group of French-speaking countries as a way to counter the cultural and economic domination by English-speaking countries, and mainly the United States, that he saw developing in the 1960s. He would surely have seen that whenever the French-speaking world suffers a setback, French speakers throughout the world, and not only in France, lose ground.
Despite appearances and Canada’s superficial bilingualism adopted in order to block the Quebec independence movement, Canada has always fought tooth and nail against the French language both within the country and in foreign affairs. Hence when the tally is taken of Canada’s “successes” in beating back the French language, it will be important to include the country’s efforts in central Africa that started with the war in Rwanda in the early 1990s.
132 See a very good example of the “decent and likeable tale” in The Toronto Star, November 15, 1996, p. A24. “How the PM stirred state heads. Middle powers’ backing gave him key momentum to persuade US.”
133 Libération, March 10, 1997, pp 2 to 6.
134 Interview with Raymond Chrétien in Paris, November 22, 2002.
135 Interview with the former Prime Minister of Zaire, Léon Kengo Wa Dondo, December 5, 2002.
136 “Article 33: Prohibition of expulsion or return (“refoulement”). (1) No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
137 Jean Daniel, Avec le temps. Carnets 1970-1998, Paris Grasset, 1998, p. 578.
138 US implication in military operations in eastern Zaire in November 1996 that marked the beginning of a prolonged and murderous war is widely documented. See Jacques Isnard, “Des ‘conseillers’ américains auraient été tués aux côtés des rebelles.”, Le Monde, March 29, 1997; “Des ‘conseillers” américains ont aidé à renverser le régime de M. Mobutu”, Le Monde, August 28, 1997. See also Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africah, 1993-1999, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. Madsen also points to the deployment to Rwanda and eastern Zaire of American information officials specialized in propaganda.
139 Marie Béatrice Umutesi, “Fuir ou mourir au Zaïre. Le vécu d’une réfugiée rwandaise”, preface by Catherine Newbury, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2000, p. 29.
140 Le Monde, November 8, 1996.
141 Le Monde, November 6, 1996, p. 5.
142 Interview with Raymond Chrétien.
143 “Ottawa maître d’œuvre au Zaïre”, “Jean Chrétien fustige l’inertie de la communauté internationale”, and “Le général Maurice Baril dirigerait une force humanitaire de 10 000 soldats”, with files from CP, AFP, and AP, Le Soleil, November 13, 1996.
144 Gourevitch, op. cit. p. 269-270.
145 Wayne Madsen, op. cit. p. 221.
146 Interview with Léon Kengo wa Dondo.
147 Roula MOUAFFAK, “Boutros Boutros-Ghali : itinéraire du ‘frenchie’” (“Frenchie’s plan”), Magazine, Beirut, May 1, 1998, in Wayne Madsen, op. cit., p. 238.
148 Interview with Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
149 Declaration made on March 29, 1993, quoted in Africa International, No. 299, p. 31.
150 Le Monde, May 9, 1995, p.8.
Criminal Paul Kagame