Taking sides on genocide
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, made a hurried and unexpected visit to Kigali last week to persuade Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, not to carry out a threat to withdraw all Rwandan peacekeepers from UN duty – including troops protecting civilians in Darfur. The UN delegation would be well aware of the security council's shameful decision to pull its peacekeepers out of Rwanda in 1994, at the height of the genocide of the Tutsi people. It was Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front that eventually brought the genocide to an end.
A withdrawal of Rwandan troops would cripple UN efforts in Darfur. But it would be wrong to underestimate the Kagame threat, for it comes in a furious response to a leaked UN draft report that suggests that this same Rwandan army may itself have committed genocide in the course of a "relentless pursuit" of Hutu refugees in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo from 1996 to 1998.… Seguir leyendo »