New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — Almost two decades after the Clinton administration failed to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda,
the United States is coming under harsh criticism for not moving
forcefully in another African crisis marked by atrocities and brutal
killings, this time in Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have taken some of the blame, critics of the Obama administration’s Africa policy have focused on the role of Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations and a leading contender to succeed Mrs. Clinton, in the administration’s failure to take action against the country they see as a major cause of the Congolese crisis, Rwanda.
Specifically, these critics — who include officials of human rights organizations and United Nations diplomats — say the administration has not put enough pressure on Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame,
to end his support for the rebel movement whose recent capture of the
strategic city of Goma in Congo set off a national crisis in a country
that has already lost more than three million people in more than a
decade of fighting. Rwanda’s support is seen as vital to the rebel
group, known as M23.
Support for Mr. Kagame and
the Rwandan government has been a matter of American foreign policy
since he led the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory over
the incumbent government in July 1994, effectively ending the Rwandan
genocide. But according to rights organizations and diplomats at the
United Nations, Ms. Rice has
been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and
Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several
United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at
Mr. Kagame’s door.
A senior administration official said Saturday that Ms. Rice was not
freelancing, and that the American policy toward Rwanda and Congo was to
work with all the countries in the area for a negotiated settlement to
the conflict.
Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge
that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr. Kagame’s government was
her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm
in Washington. Ms. Rice, who served as the State Department’s top
African affairs expert in the Clinton administration, worked at the firm
with several other former Clinton administration officials, including
David J. Rothkopf, who was an acting under secretary in the Commerce
Department; Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser; and
John M. Deutch, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Payton Knopf, a spokesman for Ms. Rice, initially declined to comment
on whether her work with Rwanda at Intellibridge affected her dealings
with the country in her present job as an ambassador. But on Monday, Mr.
Knopf said: “Ambassador Rice’s brief consultancy at Intellibridge has
had no impact on her work at the United Nations. She implements the
agreed policy of the United States at the U.N.”
Two months ago, at a meeting with her French and British counterparts
at the French Mission to the United Nations, according to a Western
diplomat with knowledge of the meeting, Ms. Rice objected strongly to a
call by the French envoy, Gerard Araud, for explicitly “naming and
shaming” Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government for its support of M23,
and to his proposal to consider sanctions to pressure Rwanda to abandon
the rebel group.
“Listen Gerard,” she said, according to the diplomat. “This is the
D.R.C. If it weren’t the M23 doing this, it would be some other group.”
The exchange was reported in Foreign Policy magazine last week.
A few weeks later, Ms. Rice
again stepped in to protect Mr. Kagame. After delaying for weeks the
publication of a United Nations report denouncing Rwanda’s support for
the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in United Nations
statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened to water
down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23 for
widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers.
The resolution expressed “deep concern” about external actors supporting
the M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from
explicitly naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20.
Mr. Knopf, the spokesman for Ms. Rice, said the view of the United
States was that delicate diplomatic negotiations under way among Rwanda,
Congo and Uganda could have been adversely affected if the Security
Council resolution explicitly named Rwanda. “Working with our colleagues
in the Security Council, the United States helped craft a strong
resolution to reinforce the delicate diplomatic effort then getting
under way in Kampala,” Mr. Knopf said.
The negotiations subsequently fell apart, and the M23 continued to
make gains in eastern Congo. Last week, the M23 withdrew from Goma but
left behind agents and remain in range of the city.
Mr. Knopf declined to confirm or deny the account offered by the
United Nations diplomat about the conversation between Ms. Rice and the
French ambassador. But he said that “Ambassador Rice has frequently and
publicly condemned the heinous abuses perpetrated by the M23 in eastern
Congo,” adding that the United States was “leading efforts to end the
rebellion, including by leveling U.S. and U.N. sanctions against M23
leaders and commanders.”
Ms. Rice’s critics say that is the crux of the problem with the American response to the crisis in Congo: it
ignores, for the most part, the role played by Mr. Kagame in backing
the M23, and, as it happens, risks repeating the mistakes of the
genocide by not erring on the side of aggressive action. “I fear that
our collective regret about not stopping the Rwandan genocide, felt by
all of us who worked for the Clinton administration, led to policies
that overlooked more waves of atrocities in the Congo, which we should
equally regret,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human
Rights Watch, who has worked closely with Ms. Rice both in the Clinton
administration and after.
“For almost 20 years now, the premise of U.S. policy has been that
quiet persuasion is the best way to restrain Rwanda from supporting war
criminals in the Congo,” Mr. Malinowski said. “It might have made sense
once, but after years of Rwanda doing what the U.S. has urged it not to
do, contributing to massive
civilian deaths, and ripping up U.N. resolutions that the U.S.
sponsored, the time to speak plainly and impose penalties has come.”
When Mrs. Clinton appeared before reporters on Nov. 28 to talk about
the M23’s seizure of Goma, she sprinkled her talking points with a
demand that the rebel group withdraw, calling the humanitarian impact
“devastating,” with 285,000 people forced to flee their homes, health
workers abducted and killed, and civil workers under threat of death.
But she made no mention of Rwanda’s role backing the rebel group,
limiting her inclusion of Rwanda to a mention of negotiations with
Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo to try to get a cease-fire.
“The M23 would probably no longer exist today without Rwandan support,” said Jason K. Stearns,
author of “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of Congo and
the Great War of Africa.” “It stepped in to prevent the movement from
collapsing and has been providing critical military support for every
major offensive.”
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| Kagame should not be exception More than 8 millions of mass-slaughtered Congolese and Rwandan Hutus |
Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs,
noted that the United States cut a portion of its military financing
for Rwanda — around $250,000. But the Rwandan military continues to
receive substantial American training, equipment and financial help. In
an interview, he said, “There is not an ounce of difference between
myself and Ambassador Rice on this issue,” adding that quiet diplomacy
was better than publicly calling out Mr. Kagame.
Ms. Rice, who has been at the eye of a political storm over her
portrayal of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Mission in
Benghazi, Libya, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in
recent days, she seems to have tried to publicly distance herself from
the M23 — although still not from Mr. Kagame. On Dec. 3, she posted on
her Facebook page: “The U.S. condemns in the strongest terms horrific
M23 violence. Any and all external support has to stop,” in a reference
to action in the Senate.
Her posting drew immediate responses. “Condemn the rape but don’t
name the rapist?” one of them said. “What kind of Justice is that?”
