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Another African Apocalypse
| Article
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12443 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1994 |
1,214 Words |
| Author
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Michael Johns
Michael Johns is a foreign policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in the
Third World and Africa. |
Imagine if the United States, with a population of 260 million, were divided between a majority "tribe" containing 227 million and a minority "tribe" with 33 million. Because of the assassination of the president, who is from the majority, that group goes on a rampage and kills over 16 million of the minority. Then the minority, with outside help, stages a counterattack that causes over 65 million of the majority to leave the United States. Writ in large scale, this is what has happened since April in Rwanda.
How did this happen, and why? Even now, remarkably, that basic question is not easily answered. What we know is this: The conflict in Rwanda was simultaneously political and ethnic, a product of a deeply rooted and seemingly senseless rivalry between the country's two primary tribes: the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis.
While an isolated case with several unique characteristics, the Rwanda crisis--like that of Biafra in the late 1960s, Ethiopia in 1985, and Somalia in 1991--sheds light on the ongoing dilemma of Africa, where poverty, disease, and war seem the continent's most prominent attributes.
The terror of Rwanda can be linked to a specific date--April 6, 1994, when a rocket attack from an unknown assailant brought down a plane carrying Rwanda's president, Juvenal Habyarimana. This, in turn, sparked a conflict of vengeance in which supporters of the Hutu-dominated government slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and drove many more out of the country.
Fortunate refugees landed in crowded camps where they received short supplies of needed food and medical treatment. The less fortunate were butchered by raging Hutus or collapsed dead of starvation or disease in their attempt to flee the strife. Piled for miles along roads were dead bodies--an image that brought to mind the worst episodes of human history, including Adolf Hitler's Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia--comparisons that cannot be used loosely, but in the case of Rwanda most certainly apply.
Though clearly designed with the political objective of maintaining their fragile grip on power, the Hutu unleashed senseless violence that could snowball only in a society lacking any credible rule of law and filled with a latent strand of hatred toward their fellow man. Seldom mentioned, it also reveals the peculiarity of Africa, where human life--our most important, most fragile global commodity--is devalued in such a way that meaningless violence and death on a
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