{UAH} Pojim/WBK: When battlegrounds shifted to boardrooms
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When battlegrounds shifted to boardrooms
To mark 25 years since Ugandan soldiers of Rwandan descent attacked Rwanda, former New Vision journalist JUSTUS MUHANGUZI relives a war that changed the region.
In most military conflicts world over, battlegrounds occasionally shift into boardrooms where they are disguised as "peace talks".
This Rwandan war was no exception. Weeks after RPA's October 1, 1990 invasion of Rwanda, the war theatre moved to Mwanza, in Tanzania, after President Habyarimana asked the international community to intervene in the conflict that threatened power that he had captured in a 1973 military coup.
It was on October 17, 1990 when the first round of talks were held, following initiatives of the regional heads of state who included Yoweri Museveni and Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, who were seen as 'a special interest group' of sorts.
Unlike other leaders like Ali Hassan Mwinyi of Tanzania and Pierre Buyoya of Burundi, who were considered neutral, Museveni and Mobutu were seen as partisan.
It should be recalled that immediately after the invasion, President Mobutu sent his troops to fight alongside Habyarimana's. I personally saw many bodies of fallen Zairean soldiers in Rwanda. I also photographed military tanks with Zairean registration number plates which had been destroyed or captured from the enemy by the RPA fighters.
In the case of President Museveni, his government's involvement with the RPA had become an international secret. Still, Museveni and Mobutu attended some of these peace talks convened by regional leaders.
Whether they offered any candid contributions regarding the peaceful end of a war that had claimed many innocent lives and displaced hundreds of thousands is a different matter altogether.
Towards the end of May 1991, I received a handwritten 'press release' from the RPA spokesperson Shaban Ruta in which he listed the different venues where peace talks had been held.
According to that release, the second round of talks on October 26, 1990 took place in President Mobutu's home city of Gbadolite. Then on November 20, 1990, the talks shifted to another Zairean city of Goma in the east.
The fourth round of talks, on February 17, 1991, shifted to Zanzibar while the fifth round was held in another Zairean town of N'sele, where the RPA signed the first peace agreement with the government of Rwanda on March 29, 1991.
The N'sele agreement, according to Ruta, was a 'stillbirth', since it was never respected by the Rwandan government troops. He wrote: "Most of these delegations from the government of Rwanda never had any goodwill for talking peace but used the subsequent ceasefire to attack our positions on the ground."
For instance, he claimed that it was during the ceasefire declared in respect of the first round of talks in Mwanza (October 17, 1990) that the Rwandan government troops attacked the RPA position at Ryabega and killed their leaders.
He, however, mentioned one key achievement on the part of the RPF from the first three rounds of talks: President Mobutu for the first time understood that the war in Rwanda was among the Banyarwanda, and not an invasion from Uganda government forces as he had been convinced.
It later dawned on President Habyarimana that the initiatives by his fellow regional heads of state were not yielding results. He, therefore, started globetrotting, desperately seeking the intervention of American and European leaders.
That is how the American State Department offered to mediate. On July 23, informal talks between the RPF and Irvin Hicks from the State Department began in Gbadolite and dragged on for about a month until they hit a stalemate.
Thereafter, the mediation shifted to France, where President Habyarimana had also sought help. That too failed, before another round resumed in Arusha, Tanzania.
But despite Ruta's claims, RPA also used the peace talks to buy time and reorganize themselves during those short-lived ceasefire intervals.
Still, things did not always go according to plot. It later emerged that towards the end of May 1991, the RPA suffered another setback when the Rwandan troops suddenly gained an upper hand in the conflict. Habyarimana's troops put up a spirited fight that dealt RPA a humiliating blow in terms of deaths and injuries during the latter's botched attack on Byumba town.
NEXT MEETING
A few weeks earlier, when I had visited Capt Sam Byaruhanga in his base, located about 10km from the Uganda border village of Kizinga, he had told me how his troops had dug-in in the areas of Cheru, Chungo, and Kibali as he prepared to command the final battle to capture Byumba town.
He had talked big, about a grand plan to liberate the entire northern strip of Rwanda and how, after capturing Byumba town, RPA would easily 'walk over' to Kigali.
On that day, Capt Byaruhanga, in casual wear, looked cheerful and even offered to escort me back to the border with a walking stick in the company of his uniformed bodyguard.
As Byaruhanga bid me farewell at the border, he asked me to look him up on my next visit as he wanted to give me a message to take back to his relatives in Uganda. When I asked where his relatives lived in Uganda, he simply said: "Don't mind; I will give details when we meet next time."
Sadly, we never met again. A few days later, Byaruhanga was killed as he tried to capture Byumba. The humiliating defeat during the Byumba attack was a rude shock to the RPA, who had hitherto basked in military glory after the Ruhengeri prison attack that precipitated a series of other achievements.
On the other hand, the death of Capt Byaruhanga, like that of Fred Rwigyema, generated a lot of jubilation in Kigali. I personally picked the story from Radio Kigali, which I used to listen to in Mbarara. I initially thought it was another war propaganda gimmick by the Kigali authorities until I talked to my NRA contacts.
It took me time to come to terms with the death of Byaruhanga, a man for whom I had developed great admiration as a dare-devil commander who had won many serious battles since the invasion. But what saddened me most was not knowing the message he planned to give me to take to his relatives back in Uganda – or where his relatives were.
His death was another personal loss to me after that of another longtime friend, Jimmy Karemera, with whom I used to associate in Mbarara where he lived and worked as a cartographer in the Lands department before the RPA invasion. Karemera died at Kagitumba in the early days of the invasion.
After the death of Capt Byaruhanga, I made another reluctant trip to the war zone and looked up the RPA commander, Maj Sam Kaka, who gave me an unusually-lukewarm reception. Although I could not figure out exactly what was disturbing him, I suspected that he could have been nursing the psychological wounds caused by the Byumba battle debacle and the subsequent stalemate.
Aware that I was treading on slippery ground, I had to weigh every word that came out of my mouth, in case I worsened the situation. It took me a lot of time to do some 'ice-breaking' before Maj Kaka started to open up and behave like an old friend.
It was then that I humbled myself and asked him to give me updates of the war. Sounding very guarded and calculative, he said he did not have any useful information to give.
He then said: "As you are aware, we have temporarily shelved our plans of capturing more territory. For now, we want to concentrate on setting up political structures in the liberated zones. We want to create what we shall call safe villages specifically to resettle the local population who have been rendered homeless by the war."
Before I could ask any other question, Kaka excused himself and walked away, saying he was going to attend to something urgent. I picked my bag and started my journey back to the border. When I arrived in Mbarara, it took me two days to write a story. I could hardly find enough words.
muhanguzijust@yahoo.com
0772 504 920
The author is a public relations practitioner.
http://www.observer.ug/special-editions/41017-when-battlegrounds-shifted-to-boardrooms
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