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Rwanda must not happen again
Tuesday, January 4, 2000
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
The United Nations is still trying to come to terms with the fact that it stood by and let 800,000 Rwandans be killed in 1994.
Ultimately, there is no coming to terms with such a cowardly outrage. The only thing that can be hoped is that the United Nations has learned how to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
That means member nations must take the necessary steps to prepare the U.N. peacekeeping forces to do their jobs.
The dawning century will likely see more, rather than less, tribal and ethnic civil warfare. Only one instrument exists to cope with such conflicts, and that's the United Nations.
Serious reforms must allow the United Nations to function as a rapid-response peackekeeping force. Rwanda's grim example shows why U.N. troops are needed and why they must have clear rules of engagement to prevent attacks on civilains.
An independent report requested by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan blames him -- he was then head of the U.N. peacekeeping apparatus -- his precedessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Madeleine Albright, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Belgian government -- which fled the scene -- and the U.N. Security Council as most prominent among those bearing major responsibility for failing to stop the killings.
The United States, which did not send troops, refused to make available to the U.N. investigators any of the officials responsible for this nation's decisions about Rwanda. The investigators found that the United States persistently played down the problem and, in effect, blocked efforts to beef up the peacekeeping force there.
The United States sent the wrong message to the killers, and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians paid the price of that act of political cowardice.
Meanwhile, U.N. officials made weak and equivocal decisions when it received reports from the field that indicated imminent danger to Rwandan civilians. Canada's Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who was saddled with ineffectual troops, pleaded for help to prevent the bloodbath, but was ignored.
No U.N. commander must ever be put in such a hopelessly untenable position again. The world cannot stand by and, in effect, sanction such slaughter anywhere, ever.
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