Rwanda Threatens to Pull Peacekeepers from Darfur by Jeffrey Gettleman and Josh Kron

Rwanda Threatens to Pull Peacekeepers From Darfur
by Jeffrey Gettleman and Josh Kron, The New York Times
31 August 2010

NAIROBI, Kenya — Rwanda stepped up its threats on Tuesday to withdraw thousands of peacekeepers from Sudan if the United Nations published a report that accused Rwandan forces of massacring civilians and possibly committing genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo years ago.

Rwanda appears to be trying to play hardball with the United Nations and is using the fact that the country plays a linchpin role in the troubled Darfur region, in western Sudan, for maximum leverage. Rwanda has 3,300 peacekeepers in Darfur, and a Rwandan general is in charge of the entire 21,800-strong United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission there.

The United Nations report that Rwanda is trying to block, which was leaked last week to several news organizations in draft form, charges that in the mid-1990s invading troops from Rwanda and their rebel allies killed tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, including many civilians.

The report presents repeated examples in which squads of Rwandan soldiers, led by Tutsi commanders, and their Congolese rebel allies lured Hutu refugees with promises they would be repatriated to Rwanda, only to massacre them.

Until recently, Rwanda had been celebrated as one of the most promising success stories in Africa, a nation that had rebuilt itself after genocide in 1994, boasting impressive economic growth rates, low crime and innovative ways of fighting poverty.

But donor nations have steadily increased their criticism of Rwanda’s brand of democracy, especially after the country’s president, Paul Kagame, won re-election in August with 93 percent of the vote. Rwandan officials have been trying in private to persuade the United Nations not to publish the Congo report — or at least to take out the most damning accusations. But now it seems the pressure has spilled out into the open.

Jill Rutaremara, a Rwandan military spokesman, said in a statement that the Rwandan army “has finalized a contingency withdrawal plan for its peacekeepers deployed in Sudan in response to a government directive in case the U.N. publishes its outrageous and damaging report.”

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Josh Kron from Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 1, 2010, on page A7 of the New York edition.