Rwandan Genocide/Civil War

The Hutu-Tutsi feud, which escalated after the Belgians left the nations surrounding the Great Lakes in the post WW2 decolonization period. The Belgian colonizers used the animosity between the Hutus and the Tusis to their advantage, and used the ethnicity card to separate those groups. Several African nations, like Burundi, Zarie (renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo after the AFDL takeover), and most infamously Rwanda was devastated by the feuds between the rival ethnicity. That is why all the civil wars surrounding the great lakes, like the Congo Wars, Burundi Civil War, and the Rwandan Civil War are all tied together. However, I will cover the Rwandan Civil War in these post. In the 60s, the Hutus and the Tutsis had a power-struggle over the control of the government after the Belgians had left. This period of Rwandan history is known as the Rwandan Revolution. The Hutus emerged victorious, and they purged out the Tutsis elite. The Tutsis then organized groups with the dehumanizing name given by the Hutu government as "inyenzi" (cockroaches). These "cockroaches" launched border attacks on Rwanda, until they were gradually defeated. During the early 90s, a Tusti dissident group known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched its insurgency against the Hutu Government,  and within two years a lose peace treaty occurred between the RPF and the government. However this "peace treaty" failed after an unidentified group (mostly likely the RPF) shot down the plane with the Rwandan president was in, killing the Rwandan President. This gave a convenient excuse for its planed genocide of the Tutsis. Soon the radical Hutus assassinated the moderate prime minster Agathe Uwilingiyimania, and horrifically slaughtered her Dutch Peacekeeper bodyguards at the hands of the presidential guards. The Peacekeepers unwisely surrendered to the Presidential guards, and they were killed with their genitals used as gags. The gruesome killing of the peacekeepers gave the outside world a message to stay out and foreshadowed the horrific methods of killing in the genocide. Then once with the moderates out of the government, the Extremists with the help of the civilian militia Interahamwe. Using popular radio stations to dehumanize the Tutsis. Tutsis were portrayed as parasites, and needed to be killed and raped.  The result ended with 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed and 200,000 women raped and their genitals mutilated in just 100 days. The killings stopped when the RPF toppled the Hutu government, and several of the Hutus fled to neighboring Zarie. The Hutu refugees started to form their own groups like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in order to topple the new RPF government. Mobutu's regime in Zarie supported those Hutu groups, and in retaliation the RPF government backed an anti Mobutu group known as the Alliance Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (AFDL) led by Laurent Kabila. The ADFL quickly conquered Zaire and renamed it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However critics of the Kabila's AFDL regime accused it of being a Rwandan puppet, so  Kabila expelled his backers from his government.  This angered Rwanda, and Rwanda created rebel groups like the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) against the Kabila regime. So in retaliation, Kabila supported his former enemies in the exiled Hutu refugees. This started the 2nd Congo War. Just a year after the 1st Congo War ended.

The victims of the Rwandan Genocide have to live with literally having their next door neighbors being the ones that raped them or killed their entire families. It was an embarrassment for Western governments for not intervening in the killings. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the genocide was the fact that many of the perpetrators were literally random civilians attacking their neighbors with machetes or sticks. This genocide leaves a chilling reminder of the dark side of human nature.