How The King Of Rwanda Became A Driver For The King Of Morocco

How The King Of Rwanda Became A Driver For The King Of Morocco

The answer is - power and money. Morocco's King Mohammed VI has a lot of cash. Forbes calculated his wealth to be US$5.7 billion, which makes the Moroccan King the 6th richest billionaire in Africa.

Evidently, Morocco is keen to rejoin the African Union, having quit the Organization of African Unity in the 1980s. The Moroccans seem to have settled on Kagame as their frontman in Africa. Kagame has in other words sold Rwanda to another rich buyer in which he gets a cut.

Why do I say that?

Look at these intriguing events between since June 2016:

* June 20, 2016, the Moroccan king decorated Kagame with the Grand Collar of Wissam Al-Mohammadi, Morocco's highest national award of honour.

* October 18-20, 2016, the Moroccan king made a state visit and promised to invest in Rwanda, and to finance Mrs Jeannette Kagame Nyiramongi's Imbuto Foundation.

At the end of his state visit to Rwanda, the Moroccan king was driven to the airport by Kagame himself. There he was - driver Kagame shamelessly becoming an errand boy for another head of state. When Kagame smells money, he will do whatever it takes to have it, no matter how crude and distasteful.

Little wonder that the Moroccan have now become Kagame spokesmen even involving themselves in internal Rwanda politics.

October 28, 2016, Ahmed Charai, publisher of the Moroccan weekly news magazine L'Observateur, published in Huffington Post "Let Kagame Have a Third Term as President."

The Moroccans apparently wish to keep their Rwandan driver in power indefinitely.

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David Himbara

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Mysterious Deaths, Bad Statistics & Showdown With France - Latest From The Kagame Republic

In the past two weeks, two perfectly healthy Rwandans died mysteriously in Kagame's republic. First to perish was Senator Jean de Dieu Mucyo. Mucyo died on October 3, 2016, reportedly after "falling down the stairs" at Parliament.
Then today (October 10), we learnt that businessman Vénuste Rwabukamba also mysteriously died after "shooting himself".
Meanwhile new statistics on Rwanda are equally gloomy. Data from the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) paint the following picture of Rwanda's external trade in first half of 2016:
* Imports - US$1.3 billion;
* Exports - US$325 million;
This disastrous trade imbalance explains why the currency is falling - trading at US$1 = Rwf830.
From the World Bank, we learn that foreign investment into East Africa in 2015 was as follows:
* US$323 million into Rwanda;
* US$1 billion in Uganda;
* US$1.4 billion to Kenya;
* US$1.9 billion for Tanzania.
And then Kagame had a word for France, which has apparently reopened its investigation into the events leading to Rwanda's genocide. Said Kagame:
"If starting all over again is a showdown we will have a showdown, there is no problem about that."
Kagame's republic remains synonymous with mysterious deaths, bad statistics, and showdowns.
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David Himbara

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Ubutumwa bugenewe Nyamwasa, Rudasingwa, Musonera, Ngarambe n’abo muri RNC bose

RNC Logo

Imana ifite umugambi wo kubaka u Rwanda rushya rutarangwamo amabi ayo ariyo yose kandi izawugeraho ntakabuza.

Kubera uwo mugambi w’Imana, niyo mpamvu RNC Imana yayihinduye nka wa munara w’i Babeli kubera ko yifuza ko mwiyeza ikabeza ikabagira bashya kandi beza mu buzima bushya mu Bwami bwayo. Ngo ibyakorewe mu ibanga byose bizamenyekana.

Imana irabasaba kwicuza no kwihana ibyaha byanyu kugirango ibababarire ibone kubaha igihugu cy’isezerano. Muve mu madini y’inzaduka mujye kwa Padiri mupfukame ku ntebe ya penetensiya musabe Yezu imbabazi cyane cyane ibyaha by’ubwicanyi n’ibindi byose, ndetse munirengere ibyaha bya benewanyu bose nabyo mubisabire imbabazi. Niba aribyo biboroheye mujye kumu Padiri w’umunyamahanga utazi i Kinyarwanda maze mubwire Yezu ibyaha byanyu mubimusabire imbabazi mu Kinyarwanda.

Maze ni murangiza gusaba Imana imbabazi muzisabe n’Abanyarwanda muri rusange.

Muvandimwe Kayumba, wisobanuye kenshi ku bwicanyi uregwa kuba warakoreye Abahutu ariko sinari nakumve narimwe ugira icyo uvuga ku bwicanyi bwakorewe abana b’Abatutsi bazaga kurugamba baturutse mu Rwanda, mu Burundi, no muri Congo. Numvse Musonera agushinja ko ari wowe wari ukuriye abakoraga ubwo bwicanyi; ikindi, uruhare rwawe wowe bwite waba waragize mugufasha Kagame kwikiza abasirikare bose bari bamubangamiye n’abataramushakaga, wigeze kutubwira ko ari wowe wagiye kumukura mu rutoki abandi bamutaye ndibwira ko aribwo yahise akugira umutoni? Ibyo aribyo byose ukuri kose kuruhare rwawe urakuzi mumutima wawe. Mperutse kumva usobanura ko FPR yapfuye muri 1998 no muri 2000 birantangaza nyoberwa niba ari ukwigiza nkana cyangwa waba ariko ubyumva koko kubera ko wenda aribwo wowe waba waratangiye kwigizwayo? Ikintera kwibaza ibyo, none se kuri wowe, Nyuma y’iyicwa rya Rwigema yicishijwe na Kagame akamukurikiza bagenzibe bose, n’abandi bose bicirwaga ku rugamba nka babana navugaga hejuru, burya kuri wowe FPR yari iriho ari nzima?

Muvandimwe Musonera, uti Kayumba niwe wayoboraga ubwicanyi, nonese wowe wakoraga iki; waba se wari uri mubahabwaga ayo mabwiriza yo kwicisha abantu b’inzirakarengane udufuni ukabikora? None se wowe wumva udakwiye gusaba Imana n’Abanyarwanda imbabazi?

Muvandimwe Rudasingwa, rwose politike n’irangamuntu y’amoko n’iringaniza uzi aho yagejeje u Rwanda ariko ukabirengaho ukavuga uti nimvuga iringaniza Abahutu barabyumva vuba imisanzu igwire! Imana irasaba Abanyarwanda kuva mu moko.

Muvandimwe Ngarambe, wowe numvise wibereye kwa Roza, iyo myaku ntayo nshaka...

Bavandimwe, mugarukire Imana ibahe umugisha.

Mbaye mbashimiye, Imana ibibafashemo.

Martin Ntiyamira

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Is the UN Security Council Resolution number 2303 - on deployment of a UN Police Force to Burundi - of July 29th, 2016 legally binding or Resolution 2303 is subject to the Government of Burundi's discretion ?

Rwandan American lawyer and former National University of Rwanda professor Dr. Charles Kambanda

France sponsored the UNC Resolution 2303. The Draft came to the UNSC under Chapter 6 Article 36 of the UN Charter.The Resolution passed with 11 countries voting in favor of sending 286 police officers to Burundi. Four ( 4) countries abstained; China, Angola, Venezuela and Egypt. Russia voted for Resolution 2303 after the UNSC agreed to include an explicit phrase; "... in cooperation with the government of Burundi". The government of Burundi is categorical; they will not allow more than 50 unarmed UN police officers.

Resolution 2303 has caused a lot of excitement among regime change campaign quarters. The thinking among Burundi regime change campaign quarters is that the UNSC sanctioned Police Force will probably "cooperate" in bringing down President Nkurunziza's government. The EU and the US, the major Burundi regime change campaign supporters, are expected to pick the bill for the UNS proposed police force. With Resolution 2303 on the table, the question is whather or not the government of Burundi is under legal obligation to let in the 286 UNSC police officers. I answer in the negative.

There is a big difference between UN Charter Chapters 6 and 7. Both UN Charter Chapters touch and concern Dispute Resolution. However, while Chapter 7 Resolutions are legally binding, Chapter 6 UNSC Resolutions are advisory and/or voluntary. Chapter 7 resolutions authorize forceful methods such as economic sanctions and humanitarian intervention ( military attacks) while Chapter 6 resolutions are UNSC proposals. Chapter 6 UN Resolutions/proposals are necessarily subject to the concerned government's consent. There is what is famously known as Chapter 6 and half resolutions. Chapter 6 and half UNSC Resolution cannot go beyond authorizing a UN Peacekeeping force, again subject to the concerned country's explicit consent.

The International Court of Justice ( ICJ), in Namibia case, made it clear that the only legally binding UNSC Resolutions are those taken under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. There is good policy reason for the ICJ's legal reasoning; the UNSC does not replace the Sovereign and, the UN or any organ thereof is not a Sovereign.

France sponsored Resolution 2303 under Chapter 6 Article 36 of the UN Charter. Because Resolution 2303 came to the UNSC under Chapter 6, Resolution 2303, Resolution 2303 explicit language notwithstanding, Burundi government consent to deployment of the 286 UN Police contingent is imperative. The government of Burundi is at liberty to accept the UN force with modification or object the entire UNSC Resolution Police Force deployment proposal.

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Reality Check: Why Rwanda’s un-employment Figures are Misleading

Didas Gasana, a Rwandan journalist who has taken political refuge in Sweden

Much has been discussed after the Rwandan government announced recently that her un-employment rate stands at 13.2%. Many interpreted this to imply that the rest of the working age population- 86.8%- are gainfully employed. Sadly, it is not the case.


According to the government’s own figures, there were 6,611,000 persons 16 years old and over living in regular households in Rwanda in February 2016. About 3,161,000 of them were in the labour force, either employed (2,831,000) or unemployed (430,000). An additional 3,350,000 persons were outside the labour force including some 2,205,000 persons engaged wholly or mostly in subsistence foodstuff production, not classified as employment according to the new international standards on statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization. And remember, a size-able portion of those involved in subsistence farming do not sell their produce for monetary gain.

Thus, the national labour force participation rate, that is the percentage of the working age population engaged in the labour force, was 49.3 percent indicating that slightly less than half of the working age population was either working for pay or profit or seeking employment.

The employment-to-population ratio, i.e., the percentage of the working age population who is employed, is an indicator of the performance of the national economy in providing employment to its growing population. The ratio was 42.8 percent.

The un-employment rate represents the percentage of the labour force that is unemployed, which is at 13.2 percent, indicating that roughly for seven employed persons there was one person unemployed but remember that 3,350,000 persons were outside the labour despite being in the working-age bracket.

The un-employment rate is not the only indicator of the unmet needs for employment. Other indicators combine unemployment and time-related underemployment and potential labour force. The potential labour force includes persons who were available for employment but were not seeking employment during the reference period as well as persons who were indeed seeking employment during the reference period but were not currently available for work.

Thus, by the government’s own estimates, the combined rate of unemployment and time-related underemployment is 34.0 percent more than twice the unemployment rate. The combined rate of unemployment and potential labour force is even higher at 45.4 percent. The composite measure of labour underutilization that combines unemployment, time-related underemployment and potential labour force was 60.3 percent, indicating that more than half of the labour force was affected by some form of labour underutilization.

Verdict: It is false to claim that 86.8% of Rwanda’s working age population is employed.

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words — Here Is Kagame's Kigali Convention Center and Drinking Water Scarcity In Rwanda

Between drinking water and Kagame's Convetion Center, What comes first? In Kagame's Regime things are opposite, !

For eight-year-old Jackson Ngabonziza of Rugarama Cell, Nyamirambo Sector in Nyarugenge District, a one-kilometre trek for water from a drainage system in Rwarutabura Village had become routine, after water taps in his neighbourhood dried up ten months ago. But on October 30, he tripped and drowned in a flooded drainage contrary to earlier reports that he was washed away from home. Timothy Kisambira and John Mbanda visited this treacherous spot and found children fetching water oblivious of the dangers.

Rwanda's FAKE Economic Recovery - Truth Is Scary, take a look at the pictures and remember this ''Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.''

Now lets look at the Kagame's Kigali Convention Center, According to Kagame as the head of Rwanda he has decided to put  Rwanda into a US$300 million debt to build a convention centre. He claims the convention centre will make Rwanda richer by hosting thousands of conferences.

The first major event hosted by the centre was the July 2016 AU Summit. Do you bet the Kagame convention centre will make any CASH before 2016 ends and atleast provide drinking water to Rwandan Citizens?

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Kagame’s Debt — Is it Building Productive Capacity or Delusional Fantasies?

David Himbara The Author of Kagame’s Economic Mirage

Kagame's Ministry of Finance has debt data that goes only up to 2014. In 2014, external debt was US$1.7 billion, while domestic debt was US$562 million. Total public debt in 2014 was in other words US$2.3 billion.

For the year 2015, the Joint Staff Rwanda Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) by the IMF and the World Bank reported Rwanda's external debt to be US$2.1 billion.

I do not have the figure for domestic debt for 2015.

For 2016, we are aware of the African Development Bank loan of US$163 million, World Bank loan of US$90 million, European Union loan of US$20 million, and IMF loan of US$204 million. That is a total of US$477 million loans borrowed in 2016.

I do not have the domestic debt for 2016.

We therefore know for sure that Rwanda debt in July 2016 is US$2.5 billion - excluding domestic borrowing for 2015, and 2016. We nonetheless estimate Rwanda's current total debt to be US$3 billion that would include domestic borrowing for 2015 and 2016 as well as foreign loans we have not capture.

Let us be very clear. Debt in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. True, public debt means a government is spending more than domestic tax revenues combined aid grants in the case of Rwanda. But if debt is not building some kind of productive capacity and is instead building white elephant projects, then we are in trouble.

For those friends who asked me to write this, address this question: is Kagame's US$3 billion debt building productive capacity to render Rwanda prosperous or he is lost in delusional fantasy land?

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David Himbara

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The International Community Should Stop Complicity with RPF- Inkotanyi Hidden agenda of Exterminating Rwandan Hutu People

For two decades the world media have been dominated and intoxicated by the big lies and distractions fabricated by Kagame’s regime which took power in Rwanda after a bloodshed that took lives of millions of innocent Hutus, Tutsis, Twas and foreigners. Since 1994, Kagame and his party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), have turned the “genocide in Rwanda”, the one said to be only against Tutsis into a weapon to silence everybody with different opinions on how things should work in the country and scapegoated all Hutus to be perpetrators of it while it is the other way around.

Rwandan Hutu Refugees in Democratic Republic of Congo

While the world’s attention on Rwanda is only on the artifice commemoration of the 21st genocide, the Hutu refugees are presently being hunted like animals in the jungles of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Both Hutus and Tutsis as well as opposition critics and other human rights activists who oppose the ideology of the RPF are being pursued in different countries around the world by the Rwandan government.



The genocide against the Hutus which started in October 1990 by the RPF is still happening in the dense forests of DRC where Hutu refugees and their resemblance are being hunted like animals, and inside the country a silent carnage is going on: ordinary Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi people are being executed day-to-day and their bodies are being thrown into lakes and rivers. Threats, intimidation, torture, persecution, kidnapping, disappearance and killings are used by Kagame’s secret security services and death squads to eliminate any person with different political opinions from RPF ones.

We recall that in 1990 when the RPF invaded Rwanda was fully backed by Uganda and powerful western countries such as the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Israel, etc. The RPF hidden agenda was (is still) the extermination of Hutu people in Rwanda, the looting of Congolese mineral resources, instigation of chaos in the region and implantation of Tutsi empire based on terror, slavery, and human rights abuses inside Rwanda and in the Great Lakes region as well. But the worst of it, is that the terrorism of RPF Tutsi extremists has gone beyond the Great Lakes region and has been expanded worldwide, and some countries are still conspiring in one way or the other to fuel that state terrorism.
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nabacu.org

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Kwezi - Africa's Cartoon Superhero

Most comic book superheroes are Europeans or white Americans but one artist in South Africa has been trying to change that.
"Kwezi" (star in Xhosa and Zulu) is the brainchild of Loyiso Mkize, who describes it as a coming-of-age story about finding one's heritage.
He's been speaking to the BBC about his work in visual art and why he feels Africa needs to have its own superheroes.

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Constructing the Official “Hutu Extremist” Narrative.

Constructing the Official “Hutu Extremist” Narrative.

Few outsiders understood the lived particularities of Rwanda’s ethnic democracy in the lead up to the genocide (1990­-1994).2 Therefore, when Kagame assassinated President Juvenal Habyarimana (pictured right) on the night of April 6 and 7 and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana the following morning, a narrative centered on a scapegoat, the Hutu extremist, captured the imagination of outsiders who struggled to make sense of the conflict.3

Juvénal Habyarimana

Proponents of the official “Tutsi massacre” narrative argue that a group of ethnic Hutu extremists revengefully assassinated their own president for signing the Arusha peace accords.4 These extremists had a meticulously drawn­-out plan to trigger a coup d’état on the night of April 6 and 7, which would in turn allow them to replace their president with an interim government. Yet, even with the United Nations Assistance for Rwanda (UNAMIR) forces by their side, the interim government was unable to control the ensuing violence in Rwanda. Fed up with the government’s inefficiency, Kagame took up arms to protect the Rwandan population and rid the country of genocidal Hutu extremists.5

Proponents of this narrative also describe Habyarimana’s inner circle of relatives and friends, the Akazu, as a group of violent and racist radicals, often intellectuals, with a ‘zero ethnic Tutsi’ policy. This Hutu extremist faction, a cadre of Habyarimana’s MRND party for which democratization meant a likely loss of power, was labelled extremist because it did not refrain from killing moderates. From 1991 to 1992, numerous indiscriminate attacks (with bombs and grenades, among other weapons) were attributed to this faction’s ethnic hating ‘Hutu power’ ideology. As a result, many believed that the Akazu orchestrated Habyarimana’s assassination in 1994.

Another Hutu extremist faction was the Interahamwe, a militia formed by groups of young people from the MRND party. Supporters of the official narrative tell us it carried out much of the killing in 1994 and founded the RTLM, a radio station accused of hate speech and treason for broadcasting where Tutsis were fleeing during the genocide. Their attacks aggravated ethnic tensions by adding pressures to democratize.6 Ultimately, this violent faction, like the Akazu, provided Kagame with the necessary pretext for engaging in armed conflict: namely, protecting the people from the MRND. As we will see, however, the official narrative oddly ignores the role these extremist factions had after the genocide in providing the ICTR with its incentive to prosecute Hutu extremists at all costs and overlook the RPF’s role in pillaging the African Great Lakes region.

In sum, the official narrative describes the period leading up to the assassination as one of exacerbating ethnic tensions caused by highly violent Hutu extremist factions, many of which the interim government could not put down.7 Kagame and the RPF resumed hostilities against Hutu extremists on the morning after Habyarimana’s assassination in order to protect the Tutsi population. They came out victorious several months later, in July, and have ruled Rwanda ever since.

Contesting the Official Narrative

For a complete historical account of the Rwandan genocide, we cannot omit the lived particularities of Rwanda’s ethnic democracy in the lead up to the massacre. It is therefore necessary to question the validity of the Hutu extremist narrative. A brief overview of the Hourigan, Bruguiere, and Trevidic reports is useful here. The reports were written at different times by judges who sought to revise the official narrative via an examination of Kagame’s role in the shooting down of the Falcon 50.

Paul Kagame

In 1997, the UN tasked the Australian lawyer Michael Hourigan with investigating the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents. While working for the Prosecutor’s Office headed by Louise Arbour, Hourigan found that the assassination was most likely sponsored by Paul Kagame (pictured left) and his RPF. He also found that the RPF received aid from a foreign country. Arbour suppressed the evidence, however, on the grounds that “the event in question” did not clearly constitute “a crime within the tribunal’s jurisdiction.”8 Although the testimonies of some highly ranked RPF officials in the Bruguiere Report confirmed Hourigan’s conclusions, the ICTR nevertheless did not launch a single official inquiry into the assassination. It even prohibited its prosecutors from doing so. For example, Carla Del Ponte, who had just replaced Louise Arbour as Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR, was removed from her position when she relaunched an investigation into the assassination and other related crimes committed by the RPF.9

The UN Security Council denied the existence of the Hourigan Report until Christopher Black, a Canadian lawyer, published it in March 2000. That year, the families of the crew members who perished on the Falcon 50 urged Jean-­Louis Bruguiere, a French judge, to investigate the causes of the assassination.10 Upon his request, in May 2000, the UN Security Council sent Bruguiere a copy of the Hourigan Report (albeit reluctantly). This procurement allowed Bruguiere to add to Hourigan’s conclusions by examining the origins of the missiles used in the assassination and by recording more self­-incriminating testimonies of high-ranking RPF officials. It also forced the UN Security Council to admit that the information had been in the ICTR’s possession the entire time at Arusha.

In hindsight, Hourigan and Bruguiere turned the entire history of the Rwandan Genocide on its head by effectively pointing to the RPF’s complicity in President Habyarimana’s assassination. Their reports paved the way for a revisionist trend in the historical scholarship of the genocide by providing a new generation of historians with the necessary evidence to critically re­examine Kagame’s misleading vision of the Hutu extremist. They also provided the ICTR with the requisite legal documentation to show that the Hutu extremist factions mentioned in the previous chapter, the Interahamwe and the Akazu, were not responsible for the shooting down of the Falcon 50.

The Interahamwe was founded by a Tutsi member of the MRND, Anastase Gasana, in response to the rise of the Inkuba, a youth group of the MDR that had fought against the MRND from July 10 1992 to July 13 1992.11 Bernard Lugan explains that Gasana left the MRND to join the MDR, where he became councilor for the Hutu Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye. By the end of the genocide, in July 1994, he had joined the RPF and was minister for Kagame’s first government.12 In hindsight, the “absence of MRND structural relationships and control over the Interahamwe” may have caused Gasana to change alliances amidst a congenial business environment between Hutu and Tutsi businessmen “who used mass killing to settle political scores.”13 In this context, Tutsis may conceivably have formed an important part of the Interahamwe.14

Unlike the Interahamwe, the Akazu never existed.15 Jean-Marie Vianney Nkezabera and Anastase Munyandekwe, both high-ranking members of the Hutu opposition to Habayarimana, were witnesses before the ICTR in the trials of Habyarimana’s brother-in-law, Protais Zigiranyirazo, who was found guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide; genocide; complicity in genocide; extermination as a crime against humanity; and murder as a crime against humanity.16 In court, John Philpot, the lawyer of the accused, mentioned Nkezabera and Munyandekwe’s sworn testimony that the Akazu never could not have existed because the two witnesses had invented the notion.17 The testimony was based on detailed descriptions of meetings held in 1991, during which the Hutu opposition under Munyandekwe and Nkezabera used the term to discredit Habyarimana by designating his inner circle. This idea confirms the fact that the term Akazu, which in Kinyarwanda means ‘little hut’, was employed in its literal sense by Habyarimana’s opponents to denounce the family clan’s excessive influence over state affairs.18 In hindsight, the court of appeal officially debunked the Akazu myth on November 16, 2009, when it overruled the trial court’s decision to reject Nkezabera and Munyandekweyo’s conspiracy theory back in December 2008. 19

Since 2007, French judges Marc Trevidic and Nathalie Poux (both pictured right) have had authority over Bruguiere’s file. Yet, in contrast to Hourigan, Brugiere, and even the Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles, who indicted 40 members of the RPF in February 2008 for their alleged crimes after the war, Poux and Trevidic have yet to put forward a definitive conclusion. Despite this inconclusiveness, supporters of the official narrative maintain that Trevidic published a “detailed report” in January 2012 containing conclusive “evidence from French experts, including crash investigators, who proved scientifically that the missiles that shot down the plane came from the confines of the government-­run barracks in Kanombe.”20 The problem here is that the report was not written by Trevidic, but rather by five “experts” who did not claim to know who fired the missiles and where the missiles came from.21 As a result, the lawyers tasked with defending the Rwandan individuals indicted by Brugiere in 2006 conveniently argued before the investigating magistrate of the ICTR that the Trevidic Report lacked evidence and should cease to exist. Trevidic refused to dismiss the case in November 2013. 22

The relatively long chronology of the Hourigan, Bruguiere, and Trevidic reports – from 1997 to the present – points to the idea that our international public legal system constantly suppresses people who, in their quest for greater historical accuracy, inadvertently threaten the official narrative. After the 1997 Hourigan report, for instance, the UN mysteriously suppressed all future ICTR investigations into the April 6 assassination, which bought Kagame precious time to uphold victors justice and consolidate his rule via a biased narrative. Today, however, the tide may be turning against Kagame, for Trevidic’s refusal to dismiss the April 6 1994 assassination is testimony to the tremendous evolution of knowledge on the genocide. The ICTR must take this new information into serious consideration if it is to guarantee all of the accused Hutus with a free, fair, and independent trail. Hopefully, with enough popular pressure from dissidents in the international community, the UN will no longer be able use the ICTR and the official narrative to cover up evidence for Kagame’s poor record in the African Great Lakes.

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globalresearch.ca

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Watch President Kagame miserably fail to explain his ICT business plan in Rwanda

Watch President Kagame miserably fail to explain his ICT business plan in Rwanda

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War Criminal Paul Kagame of Rwanda

When Rwandan-backed rebels recently took Goma, the biggest city in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Paul Kagame had every reason to think the world would give him a pass. That, after all, has been the pattern for years.

Frequently lauded by people such as Bono, Tony Blair, and Pastor Rick, the Rwandan president enjoys some extraordinary backing in the West—support that is particularly remarkable given his alleged hand in ongoing regional conflicts believed to have killed more than 5 million people since the mid-’90s.

War criminal Paul Kagame of Rwanda

On the aid and awards circuit, Kagame is known as the man who led Rwanda from the ashes of the 1994 genocide—one of the late 20th century’s greatest atrocities—to hope and prosperity: a land of fast growth and rare good economic governance with enviable advances in health care, education, and women’s rights. Bestowing his foundation’s Global Citizen Award on Kagame three years ago, Bill Clinton said: “From crisis, President Kagame has forged a strong, unified, and growing nation with the potential to become a model for the rest of Africa and the world.”
But that model narrative seems to be shifting in the aftermath of the Goma takeover. After a United Nations report found that Rwanda created and commands the rebel group known as M23, important European friends such as Britain and Belgium partially suspended aid donations to Rwanda, and President Obama called Kagame to warn him against any continued military adventurism.
Leading observers say the reevaluation of Kagame and his legacy is long overdue. Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian scholar whom many consider the world’s foremost expert on Rwanda, describes Kagame as “probably the worst war criminal in office today.” In an interview, Reyntjens told me that Kagame’s crimes rank with those perpetrated by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Washington and London have long supported Kagame as a bulwark of stability in a volatile region. But a recent U.N. report accused his government of instigating trouble across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Meanwhile, specialists in African affairs say a regime like Kagame’s, an ethnic dictatorship built along unusually narrow lines, represents a political dead end. And international human-rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have raised serious questions about violence committed against journalists and opposition figures. Kagame has generally been dismissive of such accusations of abuse.

Tall, gaunt, and almost professorial in manner, Kagame cuts an unusual figure for a former African guerrilla leader. His rise to power began in 1990, when as head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, an exiled movement made up primarily of Tutsis, he launched a war to take over his native country from bases in neighboring Uganda.

Four years later, the course of history took a dramatic turn: on April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was mysteriously shot down on its approach to the capital, Kigali, unleashing the murder spree that became known as the Rwandan genocide. In the space of 100 days, about 800,000 people—most of them members of the Tutsi minority—were killed at the instigation of Hutu extremists. As Kagame and his army gained control of the country, ending the genocide, the Hutu extremists, along with hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, fled to neighboring states, in particular Zaire, as it was then known.

Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, was named president in what seemed an effort at providing representation for the roughly 84 percent Hutu majority in Rwanda’s new national unity government. However, Kagame, a Tutsi and the nominal vice president, kept control of the Rwandan Army, becoming the country’s de facto leader. And by 2000, after numerous cases of forced exiles, disappearances, and assassinations of politicians, Bizimungu resigned the presidency, bringing a definitive end to the illusion of ethnic balance in high office. (The government now prohibits the use of ethnic labels.)

Since then, former Rwandan officials say, almost every position of meaningful power in the country has been held by a Tutsi. In 2001, when Bizimungu began organizing a political party in order to run for president, it was outlawed on charges of being a radical Hutu organization. The following year, Bizimungu was arrested on charges of endangering the state, and later he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

(Bizimungu, whom Amnesty International called a prisoner of conscience, was pardoned by Kagame in 2007, but the methods used to sideline him have been applied broadly ever since, with critics of the regime of all stripes being prosecuted for promoting “genocide ideology,” which has become an all-purpose charge.)

Troubled Neighborhood: For years Rwandan government forces and their proxies have operated in Congo, setting off conflicts that have killed millions.

Theogene Rudasingwa, a Tutsi who was appointed Rwanda’s ambassador to Washington after serving as an officer in Kagame’s army, puts it bluntly: “If you differ strongly with Kagame and make your views known from the inside, you will be made to pay the price, and very often that price is your life.”

Rudasingwa, who now lives in exile in the United States, describes Kagame as an extreme control freak who has concentrated power in the hands of a select group of Tutsis who, like Kagame himself, returned to Rwanda from years of exile in Uganda after the genocide.

“When you look at the structure of key parts of government, leadership is occupied almost entirely by Tutsis from the outside, and this is especially true in the military,” Rudasingwa says. “As for the Hutus, they are completely marginalized, and things [for them] have never been as bad as they are today. Almost the entire Hutu elite that was built up since 1959 is either outside the country or dead. They are marginalized and banished, forced into exile when they haven’t simply been killed.”

Kagame tightly controls the country and its citizens through the Tutsi-
dominated Army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the country’s dominant political party. Throughout Rwanda—in every town and tiny village—the RPF is present, not unlike the Stasi in East Germany during the Cold War. While a town may have a Hutu mayor, under Kagame’s system government officeholders have little authority compared with the RPF representatives who work in parallel to them and often pull rank.

RPF regulations—enforced by local commissars with vigor and steep fines—govern almost every aspect of daily life. There are laws requiring peasants to wear shoes and good clothes when not working their fields and prohibition of drinking banana wine from shared straws—a traditional gesture of reconciliation—and myriad other rules, generally resented as gratuitous and insulting.

“The RPF saturates every aspect of life in Rwanda,” said Susan Thomson, a longtime Rwanda expert at Colgate University. “They know everything: if you’ve been drinking, if you’ve had an affair, if you’ve paid your taxes.” Everything is reported on, Thomson says, and there is no appeal.

From the beginning, Kagame’s legitimacy was founded on his image as the man who had halted the genocide committed by the Hutu-led government and extremist militias. While the vast majority of the 800,000 people killed in the frenzy were Tutsis and moderate Hutus, there are profound flaws in what is usually a rather simplistic telling of the country’s history.

Pointing to the origins of the war and its bloody aftermath, Scott Straus, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said: “An honest analysis ... would show that the reasons for what happened were much more complicated than the idea that the Hutus hate the Tutsis and want to wipe them out.”

For one thing, there is abundant evidence that Kagame’s forces in the early days carried out targeted executions of the Hutu elite, followed later by much larger extermination campaigns that killed tens of thousands of people.

A year after the genocide had ended, blood was still being spilled, recalls Timothy Longman, then the country director for Human Rights Watch. “People would take me around and say, ‘There’s mass grave right over here,’ and you would ask, ‘From when?’ And they would say, ‘Just from a few weeks ago—not from the genocide,’” says Longman, who now directs the African Studies Center at Boston University.

One of the earliest investigations was undertaken by a U.N. team led by the American Robert Gersony in the fall of 1994. The team conducted research by interviewing people in refugee camps and the countryside. In a report later suppressed by the U.N., partly as a result of American political pressure aimed at supporting the new RPF government, Gersony’s team concluded that four provinces had seen “systematic and sustained killing and persecution of their civilian Hutu populations by the RPA,” the armed wing of the RPF.

Furthermore, the report estimated that the RPA killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people in just four of its survey areas in the summer of 1994. Years later a key member of Gersony’s team told me that the real number of Hutus killed during this period was likely much higher, but that a low estimate had been published because of fears of a political backlash within the U.N. so soon after its failure to stop the larger-scale killing of Tutsis. “What we found was a well-organized military-style operation, with military command and control, and these were military-campaign-style mass murders,” the team member told me.

(In one notorious incident in April 1995, the RPA attacked an internally displaced people’s camp in Kibeho using automatic weapons, grenades, and mortars. A team of Australian medics listed more than 4,000 dead when the RPA forced them to stop counting. France’s leading researcher on the region, Gérard Prunier, estimates that at least 20,000 more people from the camp “disappeared” after the massacre.)

Many people inside the country know this history well but have been prevented from talking about it as the political space has narrowed.
In the run-up to the 2010 election in which Kagame was declared the winner, there was widespread violence, with several journalists and figures from the opposition attacked or killed, including a politician who was beheaded. Amnesty International condemned the violence and the “killings, arrests, and the closure of newspapers and broadcasters [which] reinforced a climate of fear.”

The case of Victoire Ingabire, a politician from the opposition, was instructive. When she returned to Rwanda that year, having lived 16 years in exile, to prepare a run for president, her first stop was at the official genocide memorial. “We are here honoring at this memorial the Tutsi victims of the genocide. There are also Hutu who were victims of crimes against humanity and war crimes, not remembered or honored here,” she said in a prepared statement. “Hutu are also suffering. They are wondering when their time will come to remember their people. In order for us to get to that desirable reconciliation, we must be fair and compassionate towards every Rwandan’s suffering.”

Ingabire was promptly arrested and accused of “genocide ideology.” During her trial, President Kagame publicly declared that she was guilty.

Tiny Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills because of its verdant, rolling countryside of strikingly fertile farmland. It is a land of beauty and unrelenting order. But unlike its much larger neighbor Congo, it is not endowed with any mineral wealth to speak of. Yet Rwanda’s economy depends on the exploitation of Congolese resources.

Through mafialike networks reportedly run by the Rwandan Army and the RPF, huge quantities of Congo’s minerals are siphoned out of the country, experts say.

As early as 2000, Rwanda was believed to be making $80 million to $100 million annually from Congolese coltan alone, roughly the equivalent of the entire defense budget, according to Reyntjens, the Belgian expert.

Pillaging the Congo obscures Rwanda’s giant military budget from foreign donors who provide as much as 50 percent of the country’s budget every year. It also provides a rich source of income to the urban elites, especially returnees from Uganda, who form the regime’s core.

“After the first Congo war, money began coming in through military channels and never entered the coffers of the Rwandan state,” says Rudasingwa, Kagame’s former lieutenant. “It is RPF money, and Kagame is the only one who knows how much money it is—or how it is spent. In meetings it was often said, ‘For Rwanda to be strong, Congo must be weak, and the Congolese must be divided.’”

Congo looms large in the story of Kagame in other ways as well. For years Rwandan government forces and their proxies have operated in Congo. Twice Rwanda has invaded the country outright, in September 1996, when with U.S. acquiescence it successfully waged war to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko, and again beginning in August 1998, when it mounted a repeat operation to depose Laurent-Désiré Kabila. This second operation, to replace the very man Kagame installed to replace Mobutu, ended in failure but established a pattern of intervention and meddling aimed at undermining its much larger neighbor. The ensuing war, involving several African nations, is believed to have cost the lives of 5 million people.

As early as 1997, the U.N. estimated that Rwandan forces had caused the deaths of 200,000 Hutus in Congo; Prunier, the French expert, has since estimated that the toll is closer to 300,000. According to the U.N. report, these deaths could not be attributed to the hazards of war or to collateral damage. “The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces.” The report concluded that the systematic and widespread attacks, “if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.”

Two years ago, Kagame delivered a lecture in London on “The Challenges of Nation-Building in Africa: The Case of Rwanda.” When confronted with a U.N. report that was then making headlines with the suggestion that his forces had committed genocide in Congo, he dismissed such allegations as “baseless” and “absurd.” Clearly he was keener to talk about economic indicators and repeat the oft-told success story of his country.

But even that is a truth with modification. Social inequality in Rwanda is high and rising, experts say. Despite an average annual growth rate of about 5 percent since 2005, poverty is soaring in the countryside, where few Western journalists report without official escort.

“The rural sector has suffered enormous extraction under the post-genocide government, far more than what had happened before,” said one longtime researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There is a real increase in misery. When you speak of Rwanda as a volcano, that’s what’s involved.”

Will Rwanda explode again? The big, looming issue is whether Kagame will leave office in 2017, as the Constitution calls for. With so much to answer for, few expect a straightforward exit.

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HOWARD W. FRENCH 

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At the Crossroads? The Scission of FDLR in relation to CNRD-Ubwiyunge

What has for long been a fragile cohabitation full of tension inside FDLR finally seems to have reached an ultimate breaking point. Congruent reports suggest the breakaway of a substantial part of a group that hitherto maintained its position as the single most important non-state armed movement in eastern Congo. What do we know about the scission led by Col. Wilson Irategeka (aka Laurent Ndagijimana)?

Gen. Sylvestre Mudacumura

To start with some background: All through the last months, the FDLR is further losing strength, with their size ranging roughly around an estimated 1500 elements (this figure should be taken as a rough estimate based on various lower and higher numbers mentioned by various sources). Since late 2015, the still ongoing Sukola II operations of the Congolese army have not only dislodged the militia from its former strongholds (around Ihula), it has also shaken up the group’s internal hierarchy and potentially further undermined its fragile cohesion.

It is not entirely clear to which extent Gen. Sylvestre Mudacumura (aka Bernard Mupenzi), the groups overall military head for many years, maintains full commanding power within the organisation. Given chief of staff Gen. Léopold Mujyambere’s (aka Achille Musenyeri) arrest, this points at increasing clout of Gen. Pacifique Ntawunguka (aka Omega/Israel). The recently concluded trial of the FDLR’s political president Ignace Murwanashyaka (together with Straton Musoni) saw Gen. Victor Byringiro (aka Gaston Iyamuremye/Rumuli) emerge as FDLR’s president ad interim, with Wilson as his de facto deputy. Both are believed to entertain lively animosities towards each other for years, and Victor’s relations to Mudacumura and Omega are evenly reported to be tense at best.

Prior to the onset of Sukola II operations by the Congolese army (which, still, are carried out unilaterally after allegations of human rights abuses of Congolese generals that created a friction between MONUSCO and Kinshasa), a series of voluntary demobilisations had made the news. In three waves, the FDLR leadership tried to show its goodwill by handing over a few hundreds of combatants and a number of arms. Victor and Wilson were both involved in these activities, while certain actors in the military leadership are said to have been more reluctant.

Gen. Victor Byringiro

A more hidden contention, however, has been the way FDLR deals with its ‘dependents’, meaning both the actual dependents and the larger Rwandan refugee population that remains in eastern DRC’s forests since the 1994 Genocide. FDLR has been repeatedly accused of using them as ‘human shields’ and ‘recruitment pool’, but certainly also for economic activities which have traditionally linked civilians and combatants (i.e. the organisation of agricultural production and other revenue generating activities including but also beyond their ‘logistique non-conventionnelle’). Within FDLR’s leadership there has been historic disagreement over how to deal with these populations — both in terms of seeing in them a ‘constituency’ but also thinking of them as a strategic asset. Obviously, there is a thin line here.

At the same time, the refugee issue has a larger connotation: 22 years after most of them have arrived in eastern Congo, it becomes nearly impossible for both the UNHCR and the national refugee commission (CNR) of the DRC to exactly identify who is a refugee, who is a ‘refugee secondo’, who is a displaced rwandophone Congolese, and so on. The political solution aimed at resolving this confusion most recently was to run a biometric census. This is highly problematic, since comparative baseline data is not existing. Hence, if feasible at all, it would be an enormous undertaking, giving the logistic challenges, to have a more or less accurate picture. Attempts in 2015 have, in addition, shown a significant amount of suspicion among the target populations — in certain pilot centres in the Kivus almost no one showed up.

Back to FDLR: within this contestation over the role of refugees, the fault lines between Wilson and Victor consistently grew deeper. Sukola II had — despite its consistent challenges to roll out operations more quickly and decisively — achieved rather remarkable progress in military terms and effectively further weakened FDLR-Foca (Forces Combattantes Abacunguzi is the official name of FDLR’s military). It is in this context that we need to situate the comeback of hefty internal discussions over how to deal with the refugees. According to different sources, Wilson was pushing for a more open stance towards identification and census. A possible rationale behind this could be Wilson’s general political strategy towards a ‘decriminalisation’ of FDLR and the attempt of opening up avenues towards a diplomatic solution, incl. potentially third-country resettlement of those leaders not indicted by either ICC or ICTR. Coupled with political ambitions to ‘represent’ the refugees, these dynamics contributed to the most recent internal escalation. This might have been the tipping point having him being suspended by Victor, Omega, Mudacumura, and spokesman LaForge Fils Bazeye, and resulted in Wilson’s defection and the creation of the CNRD-Ubwiyunge under his leadership. In a Kinyarwanda communiqué, FDLR’s South Kivu commander Hamada Habimana is named as the CNRD’s military commander and strong accusations were issued against FDLR’s alleged strategy of ‘human shields’.

 Col. Wilson Irategeka

CNRD-Ubwiyunge would, if confirmed as a politico-military group, be the fourth relevant split-off from FDLR-Foca since its creation in 2000 (following RDR, ALiR I and II) — a meanwhile defunct group called ‘Rastas’ was operating in the early-mid 2000s in South Kivu and FDLR-Soki and RUD-Urunana broke away around 2006/7. While minor remnants of the Soki group still operate in northern Rutshuru territory, only RUD had a larger relevance in the last few years (their military leader Gen. Musare was reported to be killed early 2016 in fighting with, potentially, the NDC-Rénové and UPDI in southern Lubero.

To date, we know little about whether or not Wilson is succeeding to take a considerable number of commanders and troops into his new movement. The (by far smaller) South Kivu branch of FDLR-Foca, according to several sources is, in majority but not wholly, following Wilson. The larger North Kivu branch appears to be more divided. Several important commanders seem to be favourable to Wilson, but key commanders and potentially the groups ‘special forces’ called CRAP are unlikely to turn towards CNRD for their allegiance to Mudacumura and Omega. Voices from within have been stating that ‘a significant part of the combatants and civilians’ were on Wilson’s side, but also that ‘many rank-and-file’ remain ‘highly confused and barely up to date’ regarding the precise fault lines so far.

While international tensions in FDLR are no news anymore, it is surprising (or not) that in a situation of high external pressures to the movement that this scission seems to happen. While that looks logical in the first place, it is interesting to remember that — beyond all dissent — the FDLR had previously often managed to overcome their internal beef whenever the group as such was exposed to existential threats. This time, it might be different.

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What Do you Do When Opposition Dismantles Itself? FDLR, now RNC

"Through the disruptive influence of Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa and his Tutsi military allies, and the acquiescence of Hutu elements in the Bureau of the Executive Committee, a proposal for the reformed statute of the organization was deemed unimportant and shelved, without giving a chance to the Executive Committee, the Political Bureau and RNC members to discuss it, " Dr Theogene Rudasingwa, the embattled leader of Rwandan National Congress (RNC), one of the main Rwandan opposition parties in exile, said in a statement on July 1st, 2016. According to the same statement Major Dr Rudasingwa , his brother Dr. Gerald Gahima, Joseph Ngarambe and Jonathan Musonera have decided to form a new party, "New-RNC".

Former Comrades, Now on Opposing Camps.

Dr Theogene Rudasingwa was distancing himself from the party he co-founded with Lt Gen Karumba Nyamwasa and the late Colonel Patric Karegeya, about five years ago. Lt Gen. Karumba Nyamwasa, Major Dr. Rudasingwa and Colonel Patrick Karegeya were, arguably, the closest aides to the current Rwandan dictator, General Paul Kagame, before fleeing the country. Once in exile, they accused Paul Kagame of being a dictator and an assassin.

 Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa

In good days, Major Dr Rudasnigwa was once Rwandan Ambassador to the United States and the Secretary General of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, Lt. Gen. Nyamwasa was the overall Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Defense Forces, whereas Col Patrick Karegeya was the Intelligence Chief. Over the last 5 years, Lt Gen Nyamwasa, who has been in exile in South Africa, escaped two assassination attempts by Rwandan Intelligence operatives, according to court ruling in South Africa. Col Karegeya was not luck: he was assassinated by Rwandan government operatives in a hotel in an affluent neighbor of Johannesburg, South Africa (see here).

Hence, the disagreement and break-up between Lt General Karumba and Maj Dr Rudasingwa, has sent waves of disappointment across the opposition. On the other side, according to sources close to Rwandan Government, an upbeat sentiment was palpable among the Rwandan ruling party elites, who seemed to predict the end of RNC as a viable opposition movement.

Reacting to Dr Rudasingwa's statement, his former deputy, Jerome Nayigiziki declared himself the new leader of RNC.

FDLR: Another Discord in the Opposition

The dissension with RNC, a civilian opposition party, created by former Rwandan Patriotic Front senior leaders follows another recent break-up within an armed opposition party, the Democratic Liberations Forces of Rwanda, FDLR. FDLR is composed mostly by former Rwandan Army (ex-FAR) soldiers and Hutu refugees. Their headquarter is in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

General Victor Byiringiro

A month ago, FDLR vice-president, Col Wilson Irategeka, decided to break away from the FDLR and created his own political party, CNRD-Ubwiyunge. He accused the FDLR president, General Victor Byiringiro of divisive politics, incompetence, and other misdeeds. In turn, General Byiringiro, in a statement published on June 8, 2016, said that the FDLR leadership had in reality dismissed Col Wilson Irategeka for disregard of orders and protocols, divisive politics, being an agent of foreign forces, and making of false and defamatory statements against the leadership and other misdeeds.

A war of statements and counter-statements has ensued and is still on-going.

Dissensions: A Sign of Major Weaknesses in the Rwandan Opposition

These discords among two of the main political opposition parties in Rwanda could not came at wrong moment. The Rwandan dictator General Paul Kagame has decided to change the constitution of his country and seek a forbidden third term, beginning in 2017. The move was condemned by Rwandan opposition and African Western governments. The condemnation had fueled the momentum of Rwandan political parties as they sought to challenge Paul Kagame's decision in 2017.

In fact, as many observed, "Rwanda today has no civic freedom, no free press or political opposition. It is a small country dominated by one leader," (see our article: Rwanda: What Do you Do When People Dismantle Democracy? NPR Asks of June 2016).

The discords appear to reinforce the points. On the other side, other political observers of the Great Lakes Regions of Africa, in general, and Rwanda, in particular appear to see the upheavals as a good opportunity.

"Perhaps, with the conflicts and dissensions within two of the main Rwandan opposition parties in exile, we may see a consolidation of the various factions of the political organizations around a unified platform, with the aim of challenging the Rwandan dictator, " an RNC leader told AfroAmerica Network.

Maybe, maybe not. Currently, Rwandan opposition in exile is divided into two main camps: armed political opposition and civilian political opposition. The armed political opposition is composed of two major parties: FDLR and National Democratic Congress (NDC), with NDC being a coalition of Rally for Unity and Democracy (RUD-Urunana) and Rally of the Rwandan People (RPR - Inkeragurabara). RPR is mostly compose of former RPF members and leaders.

The main civilian opposition parties are: RNC, FDU - Inkingi, and PS-Imberakuri

Hence, it appears that the Rwandan opposition has reached the crossroads and is facing a critical choice: Will they or will they not succeed to form a unified political opposition capable of challenging Rwandan Paul Kagame?

Paul Kagame has been trying to use the Rwandan people to dismantle democracy. Now, it appears that the opposition is trying to use itself to dismantle itself.

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Watch Kagame and his Ugandan strategist Mwenda clash about Rwandan economic Performance.

Watch Kagame and his Ugandan strategist Mwenda clash about Rwandan economic Performance.

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Rwanda in the top 10 countries that use child soldiers in the world.

(New York) – The Obama administration should require foreign governments receiving United States military aid to immediately end their use of child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 30, 2016, the US State Department issued a new list of countries implicated in the use of child soldiers as part of its annual Trafficking in Persons report. The list of 10 countries includes Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Child soldiers put down their guns in a disarmament and release ceremony in Jonglei state, South Sudan, February 10, 2015. 

© 2015 Sebastian Rich/Corbis/AP Images

The 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act prohibits certain forms of US military assistance to countries that either use child soldiers in their national armed forces or support militias or paramilitaries that recruit and use child soldiers. The president can waive the prohibition for national security reasons. Since the law went into effect in 2010, the Obama administration has issued such waivers in 26 of 33 cases, allowing governments using child soldiers to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid.
“Many of the governments listed by the State Department receive US military aid year after year despite their continued use of children as soldiers,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “President Obama should make clear that countries using child soldiers are going to lose US military support.”

President Obama must decide by the end of September whether to waive the law’s military sanctions for any of the listed governments for fiscal year 2017.

Iraq was added to the list for the first time this year. The Popular Mobilization Forces, a government-recognized paramilitary force under the prime minister’s command, has recruited children as young as 11 to fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Human Rights Watch has documented that children as young as 15 have been killed while fighting with one of the militia forces making up the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Nigeria was included for the second year in a row, based on the use of child soldiers by the Civilian Joint Task Force, a government-allied force used to fight the armed group Boko Haram. Rwanda, which had been included in 2013 and 2014 but removed in 2015, reappeared after officials recruited child soldiers from a refugee camp. The other countries have been included for at least four years in a row. Several – Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen – have been named every year since the list was first published in 2010.

Afghanistan was omitted from this year’s list, despite evidence that the Afghan Local Police, a government-backed militia engaged in combat operations against the Taliban and other insurgents, recruits and uses children as soldiers.

“The United States has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to support an Afghan militia that recruits and uses children to fight the Taliban,” Becker said. “Afghanistan should also be on this list and subject to military sanctions.”

Afghanistan was excluded because the State Department determined that the Afghan Local Police fell into a gray area not covered by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. That decision appears contrary to the plain meaning of the law, Human Rights Watch said. The law covers “governmental armed forces or government-supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces, that recruit and use child soldiers.” The Afghan Local Police was established under the Afghan interior minister by presidential decree in August 2010, and according to the US Defense Department, is an “integral part” of the Afghanistan security forces.

“There’s no gray area concerning children and the Afghan Local Police,” Becker said. “The Afghan government has failed to rein in the militia’s recruitment of children while the US turns a blind eye.”

In 2015, President Obama gave full or partial waivers to four of the five countries listed that were scheduled recipients of US military aid. Withholding at least a portion of US military aid would provide foreign governments with an incentive to curb child recruitment, Human Rights Watch said.

“President Obama should take a much harder line, and insist that countries that receive US military aid end their use of child soldiers,” Becker said. “Unconditional military aid sends a terrible message that the US knowingly supports countries that use children to fight.”

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www.hrw.org

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