Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Rwanda-Ukraine: so far apart geographically but so close geopolitically!

By Emmanuel Neretse
Brussels, Belgium
March 09, 2022

Autopsy of a unidimensional world and parallelism between the war of conquest of Rwanda by the Tutsi elements of the Regular Army of Uganda (1990-1994) and the military intervention of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022.

The news at the beginning of 2022 is dominated and even saturated by the military operation that the Russian Army is conducting in Ukraine. But for those who lived the war of conquest of Rwanda by the Tutsi elements of the Ugandan Army from 1990 to 1994, they can be struck by the similarity in the diplomatic management, and in their interpretation according to the International Law and especially in the treatment of the information concerning these two conflicts. It is this parallelism that we will attempt to establish.

The geopolitical context of the current conflict

This conflict is in line with the post-World War II Cold War, which resulted in the existence of two military alliances that looked at each other like earthenware dogs.

NATO and Warsaw Pact military alliances

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the political-military organization established by the signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty to fulfill their collective security and defense obligations. It is most often referred to by its acronym NATO. The text of this treaty was signed on April 4, 1949.

The Alliance was created in the general context of the beginning of the Cold War and more specifically during the Soviet blockade of Berlin. Its initial vocation was to ensure the security of Western Europe by establishing a strong coupling with the United States, the only way in the eyes of Europeans after the Second World War to protect themselves against any expansionist attempt by the USSR.

Between 1955 and 1991, NATO's designated adversary was the Warsaw Pact formed by the Soviets following the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) to the Atlantic Alliance and its rearmament.

Since the dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in 1991, NATO has endured despite the disappearance of its original main purpose. It has even expanded to include former Eastern Bloc countries and former republics of the Soviet Union.

The Warsaw Pact is a former military alliance grouping the countries of Eastern Europe with the USSR in a vast economic, political, and military bloc. It was concluded on May 14, 1955, between most of the communist countries of the Soviet bloc by a treaty of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance. Nikita Kroutchev, who was the architect of the Warsaw Pact, had conceived it within the framework of the cold war as a counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been created in April 1949, thus 6 years before.

The Warsaw Pact alliance was dissolved in July 1991.

The collapse of the USSR

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the USSR collapsed and the republics that made it up became independent states in their own right, to the great satisfaction of the Western camp dominated by the United States of America, which had thus won the "cold war" without having fired a single shot. Russia weakened and humiliated, turned inward, and accepted its status as a Third World country, executing the political will to the letter and swallowing Washington's vision of the world without question. But this submission was to start being questioned by some Russians after the accession to power of a certain Vladimir Putin in 2000.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia will gradually begin to emancipate itself from the world order imposed by the West, despite the fact that it had thrown itself into it with its eyes closed with globalization. It is this awareness of its power (Russia, even weakened, remains the 2nd nuclear power in the world), coupled with the arrogance and control of the West (USA) over the world through the trap of globalization, that has led to the current crisis.

The situation of Ukraine in relation to Russia

Ukraine was one of the Soviet republics that made up the USSR. It became an autonomous state after the collapse of the USSR. But Ukraine, unlike other former Soviet republics, is coupled with Russia in its eastern part. Moreover, it is inhabited by a large community of Russian-speaking people who feel first of all as Russians and not as Ukrainians, a nation that does not exist because it was created from scratch. In addition, some regions of Russia (like Crimea) had been administratively attached to Ukraine during the USSR for administrative convenience.

But the Ukrainian regime that took power after the collapse of the USSR, to please the new masters of the world (the West-USA), annexed these regions and relegated the Russian speakers to second-class citizens, and persecuted them to the point that some analysts dare to speak of "genocide" against the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine.

Russia's concerns

And as if this persecution of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine was not enough, a comedian and clown who became president of this country, hastened to ask that his country be admitted into the European Union, but especially, into NATO.

This last request, which was to be granted (as a member of NATO), would mean that American nuclear missiles would be installed in Ukraine, thus on the border with Russia, towards which they would be pointed. When one remembers that in 1961 when the USSR wanted to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, which was located hundreds of kilometers from the US nearest state, Florida, the same USA declared this act a "casus belli" and that everyone understood this and the sites were withdrawn, one can understand the emotion of Russia, which sees the same United States coming to install nuclear warheads on its doorstep. It is for any Russian an existential threat and the red line had been crossed.

The conflict in Ukraine is a good illustration of the consequences of economic and media globalization since February 2022

To illustrate the situation in the light of the globalization that has ruled the world for three decades, we will be brief at the risk of appearing caricatural since a long development would require entire books.

-On the media front

The Western media say nothing about the reasons for the war as put forward by both sides. And it seems that the Russian version is systematically censored and that even the media that could relay it are banned in the West: TV channel RT.

As for the balance of losses, while claiming that the Russian Army is superior in numbers and equipment, the Western media only announce Russian losses, minimizing those of the Ukrainian Army.

The government of Ukraine is distributing weapons to the civilian population and its army is training ordinary citizens to handle devices normally used by terrorists such as Molotov cocktails. The Western press is ecstatic, shouting about the "heroism and patriotism" of the Ukrainians.

This campaign is called "self-defense measures of the population" and is highly publicized as a campaign to support.

Even more, when these fighters die in combat with weapons in hand, for the same Western media, they become again "civilians, women and children..." executed by the Russian Army!

Non-Ukrainian foreigners (French, Swedes, and other Europeans...) enlist in Ukraine supposedly as fighters of the "International Brigades" who went there to defend Ukraine. The Western press presents them as "heroes and freedom fighters" while legally they are only mercenaries to be denounced as they do for the Russian group Wagner.

-On the economic level

The economic world under the domination of the USA through globalization has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia, but their justification is not obvious for those who follow the situation. But with regards to the banking system, since all the means of payment have been centralized in the hands of the Super-Power through globalization, into which the countries have thrown themselves with closed eyes after 1989, this Super-Power brandishes and uses this weapon at will.

-On the diplomatic front

All diplomatic levers were activated to condemn Russia. Given the fact that at the UN Security Council no resolution condemning Russia can pass because Russia has the right of veto, the Western powers resorted to the UN General Assembly (over 180 states) to vote to condemn Russia. Even if the resolutions of the General Assembly are not binding, the Western powers wanted to show the world opinion that Russia was isolated and had become a pariah in the world, while some states (banana republics in Africa, Asia, or Latin America) voted for the resolution unwillingly, not even daring to abstain.

The specter of the 1990-1994 war of conquest in Rwanda

For anyone who has lived through the situation in Rwanda since 1990, the similarity with what is happening between Ukraine and Russia is striking and even disturbing.

-On the media front

On October 1, 1990, when the Tutsi elements of the regular army of Uganda under the command of the Deputy Minister of Defense of that country, General Fred Rwigyema, invaded Rwanda, the world press, relaying the theses of the powers that incited this aggression, vied with one another to justify this aggression. The word of the Gospel to be proclaimed was that they were refugees returning to their country of origin. Even the UNHCR was instructed to admit that a member of a country's government or an officer in its army still enjoyed the status of "refugee" in relation to the country of origin of his parents. Moreover, the same UNHCR admitted that in the case of Rwanda a Tutsi element of the Ugandan Army remained a "refugee" and that he could return to the country of origin of his parents or great-grandparents, by force, while remaining under the protection of the same UNHCR according to the 1951 Convention!

When in 1992-93 the command of the FAR, seeing the infiltrations of the RPF through the zones not held by the military units, suggested distributing weapons to some inhabitants to launch alerts in case of enemy infiltration, the world press, and later the accusers before the ICTR presented this fact as a proof of "planning and execution of the genocide plan"! The same measures applied today in Ukraine are qualified by the same press and the same justice as "just and heroic" while in Rwanda the same measures of civil self-defense were and still are qualified as "genocidal".

-On the diplomatic front

Since the first day of the war in Ukraine, these same powers have been taking action almost daily in international bodies to have Russia condemned. Some initiatives succeeded (UN General Assembly) while others failed (Security Council). On the other hand, in Rwanda, which was attacked in October 1990, enormous pressure was exerted by these same powers on the legitimate government of Rwanda to dissuade it from lodging a complaint against the invader, namely Uganda, whose Tutsi elements of its Army were invading the sovereign and neighboring country of Rwanda. This pressure was to intensify until the Arusha Agreements, which granted the invaders almost all the political and military power in the country.

Currently, all the Western powers are competing to provide Ukraine with weapons and other military materials. When we remember that from the first day of the invasion of Rwanda by the Tutsi elements of the regular army of Uganda on October 01, 1990, these same powers have not only hastened to impose an embargo on the arms to the attacked Rwanda but also refused to deliver the equipment that was already ordered and paid.  We can only be surprised by the duplicity of these powers.

Conclusion

-This conflict in Ukraine marks, without a doubt, the end of an era and the beginning of a new era that puts an end to the order established in 1989.

-This new era holds for Africa in general, and Rwanda in particular, an uncertain future for those who were and still are the fruit of this old order that is coming to an end, including the RPF of Kagame in Rwanda.

-The era that is beginning will be marked mainly by the questioning of the globalization that was established after the end of the Cold War. The powers that threw themselves into it with their eyes closed are beginning to see its effects, particularly that they are at the mercy of the Super-Power that can asphyxiate them economically and financially without any further effort but simply by signing a decree imposing its sanctions, sitting in the Oval Office.

From the same series:

Ukraine, everything was written in the Rand Corporation's plan

Donbass by Anne-Laure Bonnel (2015): "What the media won't show you."

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 10:41 PM