Dear All,
I have not read yet this new book about President KAGAME.The briefing about
it seem to be nice.But I am puzzled to see an article which appeared in
newspapers recentely from the same author treating H.E excellency for a
quasi-dictator.
Sharangabo Rufagar
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A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (Hardcover)
by Stephen Kinzer (Author)
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THE ARTICLE IN NEWSPAPER.
Worlds apart The current wave of violence in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo has its roots in the Rwandan genocide
Stephen Kinzer
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December 13, 2007 6:00 PM | Printable version
Horrifying news is once again emerging from the eastern Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Bands of heavily armed criminals are rampaging through the
region, carrying out massacres and raping women by the thousands. By some
standards their terror campaign is worse than the one being waged in Darfur.
This violence can only be understood against the background of the civil war
that was fought in neighbouring Rwanda during the 1990s and culminated in the
1994 genocide there.
Much of the looting, killing and raping now afflicting the eastern Congo is
being carried out by men who helped perpetrate the Rwandan genocide. They
should be terrorising Rwanda, not the Congo. The reason they are not doing so
is that Rwanda has chased them out, recovered from the horror of the 1990s and,
amazingly, become peaceful and secure.
Few neighbouring countries in the world pose as stark a contrast as these
two. The Congo is huge, nearly 100 times larger than Rwanda. Its natural
wealth, concentrated in eastern provinces near the Rwandan border, is
spectacular. Yet these provinces live in chaos and anarchy. Warlords and
looters of all sorts, including the kind that wear suits and work for
multinational corporations, plunder its mineral riches while huge populations
live miserably and die pitifully.
Rwanda, by contrast, is tiny, about the size of Belgium or Maryland. It is
landlocked, has few natural resources and lived through a horrific spasm of
mass murder barely more than a decade ago. Yet it is at peace and full of hope.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who led the army that deposed the genocidal
regime in 1994, is a controversial figure. Many development specialists deeply
admire him, and consider Rwanda one of the most promising poor countries on
earth. Western human rights groups, however, portray him as a quasi-dictator.
What is certain is that he has stabilised a country that not long ago seemed
headed for endless war.
When people in the eastern Congo go to sleep at night, they cannot know
whether they will be murdered before sunrise. Rwandans, however, walk their
streets without fear. Violent crime is rare. The capital, Kigali, is among the
safest cities in Africa. In Rwanda there are no warlords, rebels or insurgents.
President Kagame did not achieve this miracle peacefully. In the late 1990s
he crushed a brutal insurgency with tactics that were often themselves brutal.
Twice he sent Rwandan soldiers to invade the Congo and kill soldiers from the
defeated genocidal army who were encamped there. They also killed many
civilians.
With a combination of military force and domestic development, Rwandan
leaders have brought peace to their country. One result of their success,
though, is that since thousands of unrepentant Rwandan exiles who participated
in the genocide have no hope of invading their homeland, they have taken
instead to terrorising the eastern Congo.
President Kagame is an authoritarian leader. He won election to the
presidency in 2003 with a reported 95% of the vote. Directly criticising him,
his regime or his army can be dangerous, and appealing to ethnic identity is a
strict taboo. Yet Kagame has brought his country something that few expected it
would ever have: security.
For miserably poor people like Rwandans, whose average annual income is less
than $500, what matters most after food and water is security. The regime has
given them that. Few specialists were surprised when the recently announced
Index of African Governance, which seeks to quantify the performance of African
governments, named Rwanda as the continent's most improved country over the
last five years.
To find out why Rwanda was singled out for this recognition, it is only
necessary to look across the border to the heart-rending brutality plaguing the
Congo. The contrast reflects a truism that idealists in western countries often
ignore. Security is the essential factor in nation-building. It cannot be an
end in itself, nor should it be so overbearing that people feel repressed.
Without security, though, there can be no development and no progress. Nowhere
on earth is this clearer than on the two sides of the Congo-Rwanda border.
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Sharangabo Rufagari
Montreal
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