Rwanda

As we drove slowly down the dirt road and entered the small town of Ntarama three young children ran out from between two houses to the passenger’s side window. They spoke with our interpreter who then passed on that the children wanted us to see the town’s church just up the hill. Not much further down the road we could see the small red brick church at the top of a small hill to the right.

We got out of the vehicle and started walking towards the church. Then, about 20 meters ahead, on the ground to my right, I noticed what looked to be someone laying face down. On closer inspection it was a decomposing body, obviously still there from the time of the genocide. As we started to get closer to the church the number of bodies increased. There were possibly 20 laying about in various stages of decomposition.

Obviously, this was the sight of a massacre that had yet to be cleaned up, for whatever reason. What was to confront me in the church I will never forget.

Peering in through the main door there were hundreds of bodies, still lying strewn all about, over the pews, and each other. There was no way to walk through the church without walking over people so we just stood on the pews closer to the door to inspect the room as best as we could.

The smell is something I hope to never experience again.

Later we were to learn that this church massacre had been preserved by the local people as a reminder of what happened in Rwanda, and would be made into some type of memorial, which it now has.



The story goes that the Tutsis of the area fled to the church in the hope that they would be protected there. Unfortunately, the Priest was a Hutu, and advised the Interahamwe militia that his church was full of Tutsis and that he would keep them there. Late in the evening, the militia came, threw hand grenades into the church, and then proceeded to hack their way through the church with machetes.

Only a couple of people survived.



On 12 March this year, the priest's sentence was increased from 15 years to life in jail. On hearing the news, it brought back some painful memories. Not really of my own experience in Rwanda, but of the atrocities that were committed by human against human, neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend, doctor against patient, and priest against parishioner. The stories are almost too incredible to believe. The women were treated especially brutally prior to being killed, often in front of their husbands and children.

Another perspective

The Church: A sancuary of death

For those who have seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, it's a good way of getting a feeling for what went on, but it concentrates on a personal story, not the real violence, or history.

Putting Rwanda Genocide into Amazon will get you plenty of options for a book. I've read a few but recommend: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, by Philip Gourevitch, with a review here.

The lead up to the genocide is quite complex and I could not cover all the detail but for those interested, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of it here.


In 1994 I deployed to Rwanda as part of UNAMIR II, the UN mission that deployed to stabilise the country after the genocide.

I deployed as the Administration/Operations Officer of the Australian Medical Support Force based in Kigali.

While a life changing event for myself, I can still hardly imagine what both the Hutu and Tutsi has gone through over the past 200 years of continued violence and what must be incredibly deep seeded pain, and hatred.

Probably only to be repeated in the future.


I'm still not sure what I've learnt from this experience, except for how brutal people can be too each other.

East Timor

In 2002 I deployed to East Timor with the United Nations as the Military Assistant to Commander Sector West. Sector West was the area covering the length of the western border of East Timor with West Timor and was manned by two army battalions and ancillary forces such as engineers and aviation. The northern area was manned by an Australian battalion while the southern sector was controlled by a New Zealand composite battalion which included troops from Fiji, Nepal, Ireland, Singapore and later Thailand, who replaced the New Zealanders. Across the border there was a mirror force from the Indonesian Army.


My job was to manage the day to day affairs of the Sector West Commander which included coordinating regular meetings with the Indonesian Army, interpreting, and his close personal protection. A requirement of the job was to be able to speak Indonesian, and I could also speak some Tetum (East Timorese), both of which I studied at the ADF School of Languages in 1997 and 1999 respectively. Having done this study and visited Indonesia many times, I already had a great interest in the country.

So, it’s with great interest that I watch the events unfold in East Timor at the moment, with the President been shot and the Prime Minister also the subject of an assassination attempt, although there are some thoughts that the rebels were attempting to abduct them only. Jose Ramos Horta is still in an induced coma in the Royal Darwin Hospital with bullet wounds to his chest and stomach.

This event is a stark reminder to Australia that we have a country teetering on the edge of disaster and if left to their own devices will almost certainly be a failed State.

However, the issues are not that simple. They are not the product of any recent political events, or even a product of the Portuguese and Indonesian occupations, but are based on long ongoing tribal feuds within the country.

In its early history Timor was populated by people migrating from the north west (Malay-Indochina) and from the south east (Papua-Australia). Due to the rugged terrain of the country the different ethnic groups were separated and rarely came into contact. This resulted in there being as many as 14 different languages spoken on the relatively small island.

As populations grew, the different tribes came into contact with each other and inevitably conflict developed. From the time of Dutch and then Portuguese occupation the development of the country both socially and politically is far too complex to detail here, but suffice to say that the ethnic differences are still in large part the basis for the social divisions within the country.

On the surface of it at the moment, it seems that it is simply political differences that are shaping the country and causing the conflict; however, looking deeper it is clear that the different political parties have been based on different ethnic and social groups. It is also clear that the divisions within the military which resulted in a large part of the Army walking out in 2006, led by Alfredo Reinado, the leader of the assassination attempt on Ramos Horta, were based on cultural divides. The people from the ‘west’ thought that they were been discriminated against in favour of those from the ‘east’.

The problem of East Timor will not be solved until the people become united themselves. This could take a century or more. In the meantime, Australia has a balancing act to perform. East Timor is a sovereign State; however, without a strong hand guiding them, they will continue to go through conflict after conflict, until they are culturally one, accept one another, are controlled by a dictator, or are divided.

Of course, building a stable economy and developing sufficient industry to increase employment should underlie the development of a ‘stable’ country.

I give it a century. And Australia will probably be there for the most of it....

Darfur

I few years ago I was offered a job with International Medical Corps to deploy to Chad to act as their security and logistic coordinator. I ended up not taking the job in favour of selfishly backpacking around the world for a year….

My interest in the unfolding dilemma hasn’t ceased and it’s with some distress that I’ve witnessed the international community been paralysed due to sovereign states self interests and being incapable to provide some meaningful short term support, and a long term foundation for improved security, and life conditions for the people of the region. I’m most abhorred by China’s support to Sudan and delaying any meaningful UN Security Council resolutions due to its oil and arms interests, and the US’s lack leadership due to its oil and arms interests elsewhere.

The UN (particularly the Security Council) has proved itself yet again to be the paper tiger it is, frozen by a lack of will, leadership, and cooperation to put secular human rights above those of economic and military power.

Chad and Darfur are drifting into a proxy war fought by militias backed by each government. This has been developing for some years.

The UN estimates that the conflict has left as many as 200,000 dead from violence and disease while NGOs reckon the number could be as high at 400,000, so far. Each has their own agenda (!) in under and overestimating the deaths, so put the ‘real’ number somewhere in the middle.

While it has been horrible for the world to stand back and watch what has been described as genocide, in my opinion the problem lay in the region, not just the inaction of the west. UN peacekeeping forces, as under manned, equipped, and trained as they are (African Armies are corrupt militias in reality), are but a band aid to the long drawn out civil development of Africa, which has a long, long way to go. Apart from a few small pockets, the entire continent is living in the dark ages. But this cannot just be the responsibility of the west.

In reality, the Darfur conflict is merely a power struggle between interest groups, each using each other in convenience to promote their own agendas, and ultimately their own personal survival.

The conflict has been brought about by numerous factors, each stemming from a single source, one of human nature. The myriad of issues, none really more overwhelming than the other include; overpopulation, early British intervention in Egypt, and Sudan, Islamic versus non Islamic beliefs, and quite possibly, a result of global warming and a lack of rains to establish crops. However, these factors are but contributing factors leading us to the root cause.

This conflict, like all conflict, is about self interest. It is about personal well being; sustenance, shelter, and safety. When these factors are a struggle and life is at risk, humans gather in groups of likeminded (usually cultural) people to achieve their own personal needs. The fight for survival is manifest resulting in the demonstration of all the negative traits of the human species. This is pretty basic stuff.

Solutions?

Based on what I have said, there are no solutions to human conflict, it will always be a factor of our existence. However, we can take steps to mitigate the problems. In the West we have complex laws, judiciously applied to control behaviour, while we also encourage traits such as compassion, loyalty, forgiveness, and moral responsibility. The encouragement and admiration of these traits is a result of the underlying, almost subconscious understanding, that to do ‘good’ results in our own welfare being supported. Obviously, some peoples do not have a social environment that controls and nurtures behaviour in such a way. This takes many years of social and structural development including the understanding of sustainable population growth, secular based laws based on modern moral values, robust and regulated security apparatus, and a balance between social and liberal political and economic systems. Darfur is far from this state, of course.

For Darfur perhaps, the basis for progression must start at the most basic level. While the root cause of this conflict is the human fight for survival, the region where the people want to live should only be occupied by the number of people who are able to be self sustained on the land available. The rule of law is not applied and the people are not secure, or have access to shelter and food. While national sovereignty issues exist it has been quite clear to the world Sudan has been unwilling and/or incapable of providing this. This should have been provided four years ago.

The lessons from places like Rwanda, go unheeded.