June 25, 2009, Search for Funding
Posted on 7/15/2009
Reporting from Rwanda Dispatch #10
June 25, 2009
By Samuel Totten
On my last day in Rwanda, I decided to try to meet with officials of the United States Agency for International Development about obtaining external funding for the master's degree program in genocide studies and prevention. When I got to the embassy and put in a call, no one was available. I called the director of education, whom I had briefly met with two days earlier, and asked her if she knew of any funding opportunities at all that USAID or the American Embassy had that could possibly provide funding for the National University of Rwanda's new master's degree in genocide studies and prevention. She stated that she was not aware of any.
Out of curiosity, I asked her how much money the U.S. Embassy was providing Rwanda on an annual basis – one million, tens of millions, hundreds of millions? She said she thought it came to about $136 million. In one sense, that was heartening; in another, it wasn't. It was heartening in the sense that badly needed money was going into efforts to help educate young Rwandans, prevent AIDs and/or assist the victims of AIDS, and to the agriculture sector to help Rwanda increase its productivity and wherewithal to both feed its own population and export goods.
At one and the same time, it seemed odd that, out of $135 million, several hundred thousand dollars, or even better, a million dollars, could not be reallocated to assist the Rwandans to implement a program that was so significant to their society – the study of genocide and the prevention of such. After all, it was only 15 years ago that Rwanda suffered one of the fastest genocides in recent history – the mass slaughter of between 500,000 and 1 million people in some 100 days during the spring and summer of 1994. I also thought this would be another way – over and above the financial assistance the U.S. has given Rwanda over the past 15 years – to show that it is genuinely sorry for leaving Rwanda in the lurch during the genocide.
The U.S. response to the mass killing of Tutsi and moderate Hutus in 1994 was not one of its brighter moments, and that is a gross understatement. What follows are simply six examples – though they constitute "classic examples" – of how the Clinton administration reacted to the news that mass killing was engulfing Rwanda in April and May 1994:
- Secretary of State Warren Christopher knew little about Africa. At one meeting with his top advisers, several weeks after the plane crash (of Rwandan President Habyarmian's plane that was shot down and triggered the mass killing) he pulled an atlas off his shelf to help him locate the country. Belgian foreign minister Willie Claes recalls trying to discuss Rwanda with his American counterpart and being told, "I have other responsibilities" (From Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 2002, p. 352).
- "I don't think we have any national interest there," said Bob Dole, the Republican Senate minority Leader, on April 10, three days into the mass killing. "The Americans are out, and as far as I'm concerned in, in Rwanda, that ought to be the end of it." (Power, p. 352).
- "As they had done in Bosnia, American officials again shunned the g-word (genocide). They were afraid that using it would have obliged the United States to act under the terms of the 1948 genocide convention. A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking: Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday – Genocide finding could commit (the U.S. government) to actually 'do something.'" (italics in original) (Power, p. 352).
- "On April 28 (at which time tens of thousands of people had already been slaughtered, most by being hacked to death with machetes), Christine Shelly, the (U.S.) State Department spokesperson, began what would be a two-month dance to avoid the g-word. … When a reporter asked her for comment on whether Rwanda was genocide, she said:
Well, as I think you know, the use of the term "genocide" has a very precise legal meaning. … Before we begin to use [the] term, we have to know as much as possible about the facts of the situation, particularly about the intentions of those who are committing the crimes. … I'm not an expert on this area, but generally speaking there – my under- standing is that there are three types of elements that we look at in order to make that kind of a determination. … (As for the third element, the intent of the perpetrators and whether they are trying to eliminate a group in whole or in part), "This one is one which we have to undertake a very careful study before we can make a final kind of determination" (Power, pp. 359-360).
- "Madeleine Albright, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, and Sir David Hannay, her British counterpart, had for some time resisted the use of the term genocide in U.N. debates, but now (May 17, 1994, by which time hundreds of thousands of Tutsis had been slain by extremist Hutus) that their objections had been swamped in a deluge of factual reports out of Rwanda, the United States fell back on the argument that African security problems would be solved by African troops" (in Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003, p. 374).
- Speaking to Frontline ("Ghosts of Rwanda") on Feb. 25, 2004, about her role as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the period of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Madeleine Albright had the following to say: "The secretary-general basically came to the Security Council with three options: whether to reinforce this UNAMIR group (the United Nations military mission in Rwanda), which really was inadequate; to withdraw it completely; or to have a kind of medium option of some reinforcement of it. My instructions were to support full withdrawal. I listened to the discussion very carefully in the Security Council. I could see that our position was wrong, and especially in listening to the African delegate, Ambassador Gambari from Nigeria, (who) was very moving on this.
"(So) I had these instructions which made no sense at all. These were in informal meetings of the Security Council, where the real discussion goes on. I asked my deputy to take my seat while I left, and went out into the hall into these phone booths and called Washington. I decided not to call the State Department from whence my instructions really came, but the National Security Council, because they were dealing with it on a very imminent basis. Tony Lake, the national security adviser, was somebody that certainly knew a lot about Africa. He was the great expert.
"I felt that I would get a better hearing if I called the National Security Council, and they said, 'Well, no, we're worrying about this, and these are your instructions.' I actually screamed into the phone. I said, 'They're unacceptable. I want them changed." So they told me to chill out and calm down."
In my mind, the U.S. cannot do enough to express, in concrete terms, what we, and the rest of the world, virtually allowed to happen in Rwanda during those blood-soaked months of April, May, June and early July 1994. And to my way of thinking, biased as it is, it seems that anything that the Rwandans undertake to try to understand genocide with the aim and hope to prevent it in the future the United States ought to support. I mean, out of the millions and billions its spends for this, that and the other, what harm would it do to provide the National University of Rwanda with a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand or a million dollars in order to help solidify the master's degree program in genocide studies and prevention?
This is particularly true in light of the fact that a goal of the program is to offer the master's degree to those residing in other African countries, many of whom they hope will be leaders within their nations. For now, some lower level bureaucrats at the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda have handled the request with a nice but ultimately perfunctory, "Sorry, but we don't have discretionary funds for such projects, but we'll keep you in mind."
One has to wonder if they really have any idea what took place in Rwanda in 1994; and if they do, whether they have any idea as to how valuable such a course of study could prove to be in Rwanda and beyond.
Late that same afternoon, I returned to my office at the Commission for the Fight Against Genocide. I met briefly with the staff from the Centre for Conflict management, the group overseeing the genocide studies program, and I was asked how soon I could return to Rwanda. They informed me that they wanted me to teach another course and continue with my assistance in implementing the program. I said that I could possibly make it back in December, but certainly by March. Both the director and coordinator said they had hoped I could return in August and if not then, October at the latest. I said that August was definitely out since I am scheduled to move to New Jersey in August in order to serve as the Ida King Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Ultimately, we agreed that I would try to return in October, and if that was impossible then I would return in March.
My job now is to line up international scholars to help teach the courses in the master's degree program, attract genocide institutes from around the globe to sign memoranda of understanding with the new genocide studies program, help build a genocide studies library, and secure funding for the online program we wish to offer as well as other adjunct programs.
We want to hear from you. Please e-mail comments and feedback to Heidi Stambuck at stambuck@uark.edu.