rwandan civil war

[nokhor]

anyone know of any good links or books on the military history of the civil war when kagame overran rwanda? i am looking for primarily military history or strategy. all of what i've found is shadowed by the concurrent genocide so much so that i've been unable to see how exactly the rebels managed to take over the country.

[orangat]

I recommend Dallaire's book which I've read. Its quite a hefty read though and goes into the futility of humanitarian missions.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/078...lance&n=283155

[Avicenna]

One of these books should be correct, but most seem to be about the genocide rather than the military tactics/strategy.

[Aenlic]

I also recommend General Dallaire's book. As the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, he knows the details. I'm not sure you'll find as much military tactics and strategy in there as you'll like; but the closest you'll come is likely to be Dallaire.

[econ21]

It's an interesting question, how a small bunch of external rebels of one minority ethnic group can overrun a country where most of the population appeared to have been organised to slaughter that group. To an outsider, it is almost like a group of expatriate German Jews toppling Hitler in the 1930s.

I suspect part of the answer is that the Rwandan army was not very large. The following link is probably very biased (seems to be some kind of Marxist website):

http://www.libcom.org/history/articl...1994/index.php

But it does say the Rwandan army was increased from 5,000 to 30,000 in the run up to 1994. That means the army was pretty small and probably 25,000 were not very well trained. It was probably also dissipated by its involvement in the genocide going on around the country - and by the associated looting. By contrast, the RPF were very concentrated and focused in their desperate advance to stop the genocide.

Another part of the answer is that the RPF probably got a lot of support from the Ugandan army. There was talk of Ugandan soldiers fighting with the RPF, whether they were just exiled Tutsis or also other Ugandans, I don't know. There was apparently a bond of sorts between some of Museveni's own ethnic group and the Tutsi. I think some of the RPF people had campaigned with Museveni in his own successful guerilla campaign in Uganda, so they were both battle tried and had ex-comrades as well-placed allies. The involvement of the Ugandan army in the RPFs later incursion into Zaire supports the idea of a strong link, although they did ultimately fall out over the division of the spoils.

Ultimately, this kind of small civil war is probably decided by the extent of external support and "intangibles" such as morale and determination. I suspect the genocide had the effect of propelling the RPF on (think Israel in 1948), but had a corrosive impact on the Rwandan army.

[Aenlic]

(seems to be some kind of Marxist website):

http://www.libcom.org/history/articl...1994/index.php

Shame on you, econ21! Those aren't Marxists. That's a libertarian communist web site. You know them better as anarchists, or anarcho-communists. The black and red is a clear giveaway. Black flags and half-black/half-red flags sort of like a diver's flag are the colors of the anarchists. The thought of anarchist communists being called Marxists just made Mikhail Bakunin roll over in his grave. He was kicked out of the First International by Marx for opposing Marx's insistence that communism required a ruling state of some kind, in particular a People's State.