Rwandas Election.

On August 9th 2010 Paul Kagame won a second seven year term as President of Rwanda. This came as no surprise because the people of Rwanda have already allowed Kagame to extend his first seven year term to ten years.

If you are not familiar with Paul Kagame he rose to prominence during Rwandas genocidal civil war during the early 1990's. As commander of Tutsi rebel forces Kagame is widely regarded as the man who ended the war by taking the decision to march his forces out of hiding. Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) then immediately started another war with Hutu rebels in the Congo. This war killed around 4 million people and didn't end until Kagame officially became President in 2000. Although managing to avoid war for a whole ten years Kagame has lost none of his militaristic leadership style in his time as a civilian politician. Under his rule dissent in Rwanda is effectively banned under laws that are supposed to prevent a repeat of ethnic tensions but in reality are used to stop Hutu politicians legitimately criticising the policies of country's Tutsi President.

This culture of violence and intimidation got dramatically worse in the run up to the countries election. Firstly there was the failed assassination attempt on Faustin Kayumba Nyumwasa in South Africa during July's World Cup. The former head of Rwanda's intelligence service had been forced into exile from Rwanda after being accused of setting up a rival faction within Rwandas armed forces. Although the Rwandan government have officially denied any involvement three of the gunmen arrested were Rwandan nationals and the attempt did coincide with a clampdown on senior figures in Rwandas military including two former intelligence officers and the former head of the countries air force who were arrested on charges of corruption.

This was followed by the murder of the deputy leader of the opposition Green Party, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka who was found with his head half hacked off. This prompted the rest of the Green Party leadership to go into hiding overseas effectively withdrawing them from the election. Then a deputy editor at the Umuvuguzi newspaper was shot dead outside him home in Kigali. Finally Victorie Ingabrie, a Hutu politician and one of Kagames main rivals for the Presidency was arrested on hard to support charges of denying the genocide. In the end the only people who were allowed to stand in opposition to Kagame were former coalition partners who owed him all their political successes.

Despite these despotic tendancies Paul Kagame is legitimately very popular with Rwandan voters and is seen as something of a darling of the international development community. Under his leadership Rwanda has developed to boast 100% food security and some of the least corrupt government institutions in East Africa. Great efforts have also been made to boost women's rights in the country with great deal of money being spent to send women to school and changes to the law that allow women to inherit property. Most crucially though Kagame has overseen explosive economic growth. GDP has doubled in the last five years and is expected to grow by a recession busting 6% this year boosting government revenues from an ever developing tax base. However, as with everything else about Kagame, this economic miracle is not all that it seems. A full 50% of government spending does not come from tax revenues but from foreign donors, primarily the United Kingdom. It is these donors not Kagame's government that hold real power in the country and dictate what policies the President will follow.

Obviously Kagame's backers are not spending all this money on Rwanda out of the goodness of their hearts. They expect some return on their investment. Already Britain's involvement has led to Rwanda bucking the international trend by joining the UK Commonwealth. The real prize though lies not in Rwanda but in its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Formally known as Zaire the DRC is hugely important country at the heart of Africa with vast mineral deposits. Apart from the normal treasures like gold and diamonds it also has large deposits of minerals such as cobalt, zinc and nickel which are essential in modern consumer electronics like mobile phones, computers, MP3 players and basically anything with a battery. The problem is that continued rebel violence has led to trade restrictions and instability that is keeping these valuable commodities off the world market.

One of several of these rebel conflicts going on the DRC is the Kivu conflict. Here, in the east of the country, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) who are loyal to Rwanda's Hutu faction are fighting the National Congress for the Reference of the People (CNCP) who are loyal to Rwandas Tutsi faction. Both of these rebel groups are also fighting the official military of the DRC who are totally failing to cope who the mind-boggling array of armed conflicts going on in the country. As is standard practice for rebel wars in Africa both the FDLR and the CNCP are funding their violence through the illegal mining of gold and diamonds. These commodities are smuggled out of the conflict zone into Rwanda where they are sold as legal Rwandan produce. This smuggling is done by senior members of Rwanda military and government and the vast commissions are making these people very rich. Therefore the price that Britain will be demanding for the help its given Rwanda is the expansion and control of the flow of commodities out of the DRC.

There are two ways they are going to go about this. The nice way and the nasty way;

The nice way involves further strengthening Paul Kagame's reputation in order to have Rwanda elected as the de-facto leader of the East African Community. This newly formed alliance is made up of Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda. With the exception of Burundi these are all Commonwealth countries and two of them; Uganda and Rwanda are actively involved in funding conflicts in the DRC. Under Rwanda's leadership the East African Community will highlight the damage that is being done by the illegal trade in gold and the ever fashionable blood diamonds. This outrage will then be used to pressurize the African Union to legalise the export of commodities from the DRC in order to "help" the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo by taking the trade out of the hands of the black-market warlords. Obviously the countries of the East African Community will have to play a key, controlling role in this new legal trade in order to make sure that it is free from corruption.

The nasty way is obviously much more unpleasant. It involves weakening Kagame's government to the point that he needs to fight a war to boost his popularity. Ideally this will be presented as a humanitarian operation where the Rwandan army are sent into the Kivu region in order to keep the peace between the FDLR and the CNCP. Alternatively it will be a Rwandan security operation where Rwandan troops invade the Kivu region to fight the threat of either the FDLR or the CNCP depending on whether Rwanda's Hutus or Tusis are being more critical of their President. Once Rwandas act of "necessary aggression" has taken place Uganda, Kenya or Tanzania will deploy peacekeepers to the region allowing Britain to exercise almost direct control of all DRC territory North-East of the Congo River.

Since the Rwandan election, a little under five weeks ago, there have already been two important scandals about the DRC. The first incident was the mass rape of around 150 women by, I believe, FDLR rebels while UN peacekeepers sat around doing nothing in their camp just over 1 mile away. Obviously this will increase outrage at the situation in the DRC and highlights the apparent need for something to be done while making the UN peacekeeping mission in the country appear incompetent. Then yesterday (16/9), to coincide with Kagame's visit to London, a leaked UN report linked his Tutsi fighters to the genocidal killings of Hutus during the DRC's second civil war. Clearly this is not going to make Kagame popular with Rwanda's Hutu population and increases the pressure on him to take action against the DRC's CNCP rebels.

So it would appear that Britain has already decided to go down the nasty route. This is no great surprise because Britain really only has one negotiating strategy; "Give us want we want or we'll burn down your house!"




In Britain today five men have been arrested for plotting a terrorist attack against the Pope during his state visit to the country. In the original script they were meant to be East African Muslim extremists brought into the UK on Jewish passports. However like all the best religious crime capers this is subject re-writes.