The Campaign against Genocide War in Kigali

Abstract for: Military Strategies During the Genocide Against the Tutsis in Rwanda

This is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research grant (AH/W001217/1) focusing on how the Campaign against Genocide War, known outside Rwanda as the Civil War, was fought in Kigali. Below is the research grant’s abstract (Link) and insights into the project.

Rwanda has been a primary location site for conducting genocide studies ever since the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, also referred to as the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Over the past thirty years, academic researchers and journalists have conducted in-depth research and analysis of the genocidal massacres. Much of this research focuses on the events during the genocide between genocide perpetrators, Hutu extremists known as the Interahamwe, and the Tutsi victims. During a one-hundred-day period, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, with this critical event only ending with the removal of genocidal forces by the mostly Tutsi rebel group, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). Its military wing, the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), was militarily responsible for combating Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) in the larger conflict of the Rwandan Civil War (1990-1994), which had raged on since October 1990. However, the final months of the conflict witnessed not only military confrontations between the two military actors but also the addition of genocide forces wishing to kill Tutsis and any Hutus who defied their extremist Hutu supremacy beliefs. Numerous cease-fires accumulated into the 1993 Arusha Accords, which provided hope for Tutsis and moderate Hutu groups for political reforms and a secure civil society. However, the assassination of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana on the night of April 6th began a new dynamic within the conflict of genocidal massacres that complicated terms of peace and would reignite the Civil War within days. While the genocide is well researched within scholarly and journalistic publications, there is a significant gap in how the military campaigns between the opposing military forces of the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) against the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) impacted the rate of killings.