Eyewitness to a Genocide_ The United Nations and Rwanda ( PDFDrive )

Preface

Rwanda lives inside o f me. Sometimes I find this lingering obsession bewildering, almost as unexplainable as the genocide itself. I have never set
foot on Rwandan soil. My first sustained images of Rwanda were pictures of the genocide, the same pictures that assaulted millions o f people around the world and came to define much of what they know about the country. At the time of the genocide, however, I knew more than the average viewer
because I was a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. A fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations had funded a year’s leave from academia and placement in government service. I arrived in New York late in the summer of 1993 and was assigned to follow various aspects of the UN operation in Somalia. By early January 1994 my duties had diminished as the United States was preparing to withdraw from Somalia. At that time my superiors asked me to work on various African operations, including the one in Rwanda. I knew very little about the country but quickly came to understand that the peace agreement that was supposed to effect the transition from civil war to multi-ethnic democracy—the Arusha Accords—was at risk. In early April the civil war returned with a vengeance, an outcome many had fearfully predicted, and left thousands upon thousands of Rwandans dead.