How the RPF Inkotanyi stopped the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi

1Why this matters

The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was not stopped by the United Nations or by any foreign power. It was stopped by the RPF Inkotanyi and its army, the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), which defeated the forces carrying it out. Rwanda celebrates that achievement every year on 4 July, Liberation Day (Kwibohora).

2How the campaign unfolded

• 7 April 1994. The RPA battalion stationed at the parliament building (CND) in Kigali left its base to fight the Presidential Guard and rescue people in danger in parts of the city.
• From 8 April. The main RPA forces advanced from the north. Rather than attacking Kigali head-on, they moved east and then south, cutting off the forces carrying out the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and rescuing survivors in each area they reached.
• Late April. The RPA controlled much of the east, including the Rusumo border crossing with Tanzania.
• June. The RPA took Kabgayi, where thousands of displaced people had gathered, and then Gitarama, where the interim government had been based.
• Early July. The RPA took Butare, and on 4 July 1994 it took Kigali.
• Mid-July. It took Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. The fighting ended on 18 July 1994, and the former army, the militias and the interim government fled into Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), forcing large numbers of civilians to go with them.

3Why the RPF succeeded

• A clear purpose: stopping the killing and liberating the country.
• Discipline and leadership under Major General Paul Kagame.
• Strategy: encircling rather than attacking head-on, and protecting survivors as territory was taken.
• Support from Rwandans, including young volunteers who joined its ranks.
• The former army was demoralised and more focused on killing civilians than on fighting.

4Obstacles

• The RPA was outnumbered by the government army and its militias.
• Almost no outside help arrived; the UN force had been cut to a few hundred (lesson 5).
• France's Opération Turquoise (22 June – 21 August 1994) created a "safe humanitarian zone" in the south-west that the RPA could not enter. Killings continued in parts of it, and many organisers of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi escaped through it into Zaire.

5After the fighting

On 19 July 1994 a Government of National Unity was sworn in, with Pasteur Bizimungu as President and Paul Kagame as Vice-President and Minister of Defence. The parties that had organised the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the MRND and the CDR, were excluded. The new government inherited a devastated country: survivors needing care, hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows, destroyed homes, an empty treasury and armed genocidal forces just across the border.

Worked example: explaining a strategy

Question: Why did the RPA move east and south before taking Kigali?

By sweeping east and then south, the RPA cut off the forces carrying out the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi from their supply routes and borders, and it reached and rescued survivors in the countryside instead of waiting for a single decisive battle in the capital. Kigali was then surrounded and fell on 4 July 1994.

Practice

Solution. Kwibohora, Liberation Day, because on 4 July 1994 the RPF Inkotanyi took Kigali.

Solution. Any three of: a clear purpose; discipline; leadership under Paul Kagame; an encircling strategy; support from Rwandan volunteers; a demoralised opponent.

Solution. Its "safe humanitarian zone" kept the RPA out of the south-west, killings continued in parts of it, and many organisers of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi escaped through it into Zaire.

Solution. The MRND and the CDR, because they had organised the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.