France's role in Rwanda and external military intervention: A double discrediting

Abstract

To understand current conflict in the African Great Lakes region, it is necessary to consider the international response to the Rwandan civil war which preceded it, and from which it springs. Recognition of the failure of this response in its most explicit form ‐ foreign and particularly French military intervention ‐ does not preclude other forms of analysis, but does suggest that ethnicity alone is inadequate to explain the continuation of war. It will be argued in this article that France's Rwandan interventions, far from presenting a ‘very positive balance sheet’ as official French discourse still maintains, have been a primary cause of the prolongation and extension of conflict in the region; and the failure of these interventions, while discrediting France's role in particular, has also brought the validity of foreign military intervention in general (humanitarian or otherwise) into question.