Intrigue and Murder - What is Rwanda up to?

 

A review of Do Not Disturb – The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad by Michela Wrong, Public Affairs, NY, 2021.

 This is a critical expose of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his iron rule of his nation. The departure point for the critique is the 2014 murder of Patrick Karegeya in a Johannesburg Hotel.  Karegeya was a Kagame’s former colleague and chief of external security for Rwanda. But like several other of the regime’s founding fathers, Karegeya ran afoul of strong man Kagame. Patrick was imprisoned, humiliated, and fled into exile where he was executed by agents of the Rwandan regime.

The thrust of the book is to document how it all came to happen. Author Wrong earned investigative journalism stars by interviewing hundreds of Rwandans and Ugandans who were intimately connected to the story. They praised the personality, the ebullience and intelligence of Karegeya and detailed his slowly simmering disenchantment with the Tutsi regime that he helped construct.  Ultimately, Karegeya fell victim to the type of extrajudicial killing that he himself had once supervised. It was an ironic end.

Author Wrong digs deep into various personages involved, especially focusing on current president Paul Kagame. He is portrayed as cunning, vindictive, callous, and aloof. And he was like that from his youth. As president he fed on suspicions and rumors and then ordered actions to demean, imprison or kill his supposed adversaries. It is a troubling portrait of a man with too much unbridled power.

In contrast to Kagame was Fred Rwigyema, the initial leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Army who died during the first days of the invasion in 1990. Fred is portrayed as a uniter, a commander beloved by his troops. A martyr to the Tutsi cause, in speculative retrospect Rwigyema would have been a different type of president.

I found the history of how the various RPA stalwarts grew up in Uganda and how they interacted with each other from an early age to be instructive. Particularly pertinent was their various roles during their adhesion to Museveni’s National Resistance Army and their relationships to Ugandan heavyweights. 

Author Wrong marshals her anti-Kagame denunciation with statements from other once prominent Rwandans who too were chased away by Kagame.  Some like Hutu politician Seth Sendashonga (and presumably Karegeya who organized an exiled political party) were murdered because they posed a legitimate threat.  Others, however, became disenchanted with the direction Kagame was taking the nation, were associated with real dissenters or just ran afoul of Kagame’s intolerance for views other than his own.  The totality of the accusations reveals a policy of carefully choreographed – but often inane - plots designed to kill exiled opponents.   It is a stinging indictment of Kagame and of his ruling style.  

Disclaimer. I was the U.S. Ambassador in Rwanda during the early years of renewed Tutsi rule just after the genocide. I knew Patrick Karegeya, then-Vice President Paul Kagame, and many of those whose stories and comments also appear in the book. I understood at the time that Rwandans could be duplicitous and that they valued an ability to obfuscate, for example regarding Rwanda’s heavy handedness in quashing the northern insurgency or involvement in neighboring Zaire (now Congo). Although during my time strains were evident with regard to Hutu political personages and Tutsi survivors, the core Rwandan Patriotic Army team appeared to be solid. They adhered unwaveringly to the established party line.  The sorts of internal fallings-out that Michela Wrong reports did not reveal themselves until later.

Patrick Karegeya was head of the External Security Service. In that capacity I had dealings with him. He was most helpful on August 7, 1998 the day the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were blown up. We in Kigali feared that we might too be on a terrorist list. In addition to a quick response from the military to safeguard our premises, Patrick assured me that no Al Qaeda operatives were in Rwanda.

 Comment: This book is quite critical of Paul Kagame in both a personal and policy sense. It is accurate, at least in the sense that it sums up the experience of those who fell afoul of the regime and were/are pursued for it. The indictment is overwhelming. As is probably obvious (and footnoted), many comments were made anonymously.  Such information strengthens the argument, but anonymity undermines it at the same time.  I am not sure what the other side of the coin is but would urge readers to reflect that there might be one.

Error:  In the chapter on genocide, Wrong writes that “French, Belgian and American nationals were airlifted to safety…” True most French and Belgians flew out, but the Americans left via an overland convoy to Burundi.

Omission: I am sorry that Author Wrong did not consult my book In the Aftermath of Genocide – The U.S. Role in Rwanda. There are several tidbits in there such as the saga of how Rwigyema’s assignment to the U.S. Command General Staff College was swapped to Kagame or more on how ADFL leader Laurent Kabila came to U.S. attention.  

Final comment: State ordered extrajudicial killings have become all too common, viz in addition to Rwanda, add Saudi Arabia, Russia, Israel and unfortunately the United States.  Aside from highlighting the issue, what can be done to halt the practice?