Genocide and Mass Atrocities

On May 17, twenty-six years after the Rwandan genocide, Félicien Kabuga was finally arrested outside of Paris. A wanted man for decades, he was the most notorious architect of the 1994 atrocities still at large. Kabuga bankrolled the massacre, financing the Interahamwe militias and importing to Rwanda an astounding number of the machetes that were then used to slaughter men, women, and children. He co-founded and co-owned the hate-radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which repeatedly and expressly urged listeners to participate in mass murder. Kabuga then devoted the same resources and connections he had used to fuel the genocide to protecting himself and evading justice. Although he was indicted in 1997 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, he found safe harbor in various African and European countries over the years, purchasing enough complicity to ensure he would not be held accountable for his actions. Of course, no arrest or prosecution can erase the trauma of the genocide. But the apprehension of Kabuga does bring a measure of relief to some survivors and to those who worked for years to bring him to justice. It should also strike some fear in the hearts of those responsible for atrocities; clearly justice does not simply give up over time. But the Kabuga saga also raises important questions. Who helped him live in freedom for so many years? Who facilitated his movements across borders and his financial transactions? Who tipped him off when the law got too close? Will those complicit parties be held accountable? Kabuga’s story also sheds some light on the pathologies of the Rwandan government today. Critics of the government—and its problematic human rights record—are by no means all sympathetic to the perpetrators of the genocide. Some of those critics were victims of the genocide themselves, while others came to care passionately about Rwanda because they were so horrified by what unfolded in the spring of 1994. When these critics are smeared as enemies of peace, genocide deniers, or worse, it is a grotesque distortion of reality. Yet for years some small and twisted circles of humanity continued to protect the likes of Félicien Kabuga, which helped feed the conflation of honest dissent with the darkest of motives. It’s easier, after all, to imagine that all opponents are part of a vast and evil conspiracy when there is evidence that a conspiracy somewhere—even one with the reduced aims of simply evading arrest—is still afoot. Leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of those who perpetrated the genocide, and those who protected them, remains essential for Rwanda’s future.

The ICC appeals chamber’s decision to move ahead on an investigation of grave abuses by combatants in Afghanistan, including U.S. forces, marks an unprecedented move that is likely to arouse intensive pushback from Washington.

Last month, the United Nations released a scathing report about the organization’s own actions in Myanmar over the past ten years. The report, written by an independent investigator, but commissioned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, lambasted the UN for a “systemic failure” by UN agencies to find any common strategy toward the Myanmar government. This strategic failure, it noted, continued even as abuses escalated in the past five years against the Rohingya, and ultimately resulted in such atrocities that the UN’s own fact finding mission has called for Myanmar’s top military leaders to be investigated on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The fact the UN was willing to investigate and criticize its own actions might offer some hope for change. For more on the UN’s approach to Myanmar, and whether it might shift, see my new World Politics Review article.

The history of the Genocide Convention stretches back more than seventy years, yet much work remains to be done to prevent and respond to atrocities. 

The Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Egypt top the list of countries most likely to experience a new mass killing in 2018 or 2019, according to a new forecast. 

Last week, the research and advocacy group Fortify Rights, which has amassed considerable expertise on the situation in Rakhine State and the abuses perpetrated by the Myanmar armed forces, released probably its most comprehensive report yet. The report [PDF], based on interviews with more than two hundred survivors of the killings in Rakhine State and some two years of research, strongly suggests that the Myanmar military carefully laid the plans for massive crimes against Rohingya in Rakhine State in late 2017. In fact, some of the evidence collected in the report makes the situation in Myanmar seem reminiscent of the type of planning that occurred in Rwanda, prior to the genocide against Tutsis there in 1994. The Myanmar military has denied any and all allegations that it planned atrocities in Rakhine State. As the Guardian notes, “A military inquiry into the conduct of soldiers released its findings in November 2017, exonerating the army.” As the Fortify Rights report shows, however, the killings of Rohingya in late 2017 were not just an outpouring of violence or some kind of inter-ethnic bloodletting that happened in the heat of Rakhine State political tensions. Its evidence shows that, well before an attack by a shadowy Rohingya insurgent group on police posts in western Myanmar in August 2017 which the Myanmar government claims supposedly triggered the violence, the Myanmar military had apparently launched a concerted effort to prepare for the killings of Rohingya that came after August. Fortify Rights reveals that, nearly a year before, the military had begun stripping Rohingya areas of possible defenses against violence, including confiscating makeshift weapons and removing Rohingya’s fences. The report also shows that the army trained Rakhine Buddhist vigilante groups, and armed them as well, and that in 2016 and 2017 the military moved new detachments of troops into northern Rakhine State, which would be the epicenter of the violence. All this , it shows, was in preparation for 2017, and these preparations allowed Rakhine Buddhists, and security forces, to go on a rampage in late 2017 against Rohingya, with the Rohingya fully unable to defend themselves. Perhaps more than any other piece of evidence yet unveiled about the situation in Rakhine State, the report demonstrates the need for international actors to take action against senior leaders of the Myanmar military responsible for the atrocities. There is no hope that the most senior army leaders will face any reckoning within Myanmar, given the army’s continuing dominance of many facets of Myanmar politics, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s weakness, as well as the weaknesses of the civilian government. The Myanmar government has not even allowed the top UN human rights official focused on Myanmar into the country to investigate the situation in Rakhine State. But the international community should take stronger action against the top levels of the Myanmar military—even if doing so, as some analysts predict, would alienate the majority of Myanmar citizens (at least Buddhist Burmans), who have rallied around the armed forces in the past two years. Top Myanmar leaders could, for instance, be referred to the International Criminal Court, or the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) could create a framework for investigating alleged crimes in Myanmar; the Security Council will not do so, since any proposal would be blocked by China and Russia, so a UNGA framework would be a possibility. Without some kind of accountability for the Myanmar armed forces’ top leadership, the prospect of the army committing similar abuses in the future is high. And future crimes, in Rakhine, or in other ethnic minority areas, could not only bring more suffering but also further set back Myanmar’s peace process, and further undermine the country’s already-shaky political stability.

Despite evidence of systematic violence against the Rohingya, countries remain reluctant to classify the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as genocide.

In what is often called the twentieth century’s first genocide, the German colonial authorities, from 1904 to 1906, set out systematically to exterminate two ethnic groups, the Herero and the Nama, following an uprising in what was then German South West Africa and what is now Namibia. The Namibian government is currently in talks with the German government to demand that Berlin officially acknowledge that the genocide took place, issue an apology, and pay reparations. While Germany has already acknowledged the genocide occurred, it rejects any legal responsibility. International law did not address genocide at the time, argue the Germans. According to the Wall Street Journal, a German diplomat said, “The German government uses this term (of genocide) in a historical-political sense, not in a legal sense.” Germany also opposes reparations, which legally “implies liability.”  Apologies and reparations for atrocities in the colonial past are complicated. The post-World War II German government has apologized and paid reparations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust—but not to their descendants. French president Francois Hollande has acknowledged the suffering caused by the Algerian war, but did not formally apologize. Nor did UK Prime Minister Tony Blair fully apologize for British participation in the slave trade. Instead, he expressed “deep sorrow.” The Belgian government apologized for its complicity in the death of President Patrice Lumumba of Congo. In 2015, Japan reached a settlement with South Korea in which the Prime Minister formally apologized for the Japanese army’s use of Korean “comfort women” during World War II. Japan agreed to pay $9.5 million to the women who have survived. However, in the case of Namibia, after a century, there are no survivors, only descendants, so German authorities are unsure about what they might pay and to whom. It is difficult to know how to acknowledge past atrocities, especially those that happened long ago. Yet the wounds continue, right up to the present time, and not just in Africa. The potato famine in Ireland and the highland clearances in Scotland still resonate today.   

For nearly five years, the UN Security Council has failed to end Syria’s suffering. The numbers are numbing: The war has claimed 250,000 lives and displaced over 50 percent of Syria’s prewar population of twenty-two million. The grinding conflict has deepened sectarian turmoil in the region and created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe. The tragedy has also laid bare an inconvenient truth about the inherent limits of the Security Council in an era of great power rivalry. Because in Syria, the system worked—just not for the Syrian people. By "system" I refer to the rules of the international game set out in the United Nations Charter. At the San Francisco conference of 1945, world leaders established a new instrument to preserve international peace and security. The UN Security Council was empowered to pass resolutions legally binding on the entire UN membership. But its five permanent members (the “P5”) exacted a heavy price in accepting their responsibilities as guarantors of the postwar order. They insisted on the right to block any Council enforcement action that ran counter to their national interests. The rationale for the veto was plain: no structure of peace could be viable if war could be authorized contrary to the expressed wishes of one of the world’s policemen. Throughout the Syrian conflict, many Americans have bemoaned Russian and Chinese vetoes—both actual and threatened—for blocking Security Council action. But it is worth recalling that seven decades ago the United States and the Soviet Union were equally insistent in demanding a veto for the P5. During the Dumbarton Oaks conference of 1944, a U.S. senator complained to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the emerging blueprint for the UN Security Council constituted "a discrimination against small nations.” Hull replied bluntly that the United States "would not remain there for a day without retaining its veto power." That provision was "in the document primarily on account of the Unites States. It is a necessary safeguard in dealing with a new and untried arrangement." Indeed, the veto enjoyed strong bipartisan backing in the United States, including from Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On February 16, 1946, the Soviet Union cast the first-ever Security Council veto (in an effort, as coincidence would have it, to hasten the removal of French forces from Syria and Lebanon). “The system worked," Vandenberg told his Senate colleagues, by making great power consensus a requirement for Security Council action. In the ensuing decades, the United States itself would have more recourse to the veto. In the wake of decolonization, it often found itself on the defensive—particularly in safeguarding Israel from what U.S. officials considered one-sided resolutions. Since 1975, the United States has used the veto seventy-three times, more than other member of the P5. What the Syria conflict lays bare, however, is that the "system" is amoral, even when it "works." It is rigged to advance the interests of the great powers—and to reduce the likelihood that major war will break out among them. The system provides a baseline order. That is nothing to sneeze at, given the horrors of the First and Second World Wars. But such an order is a far cry from justice and—as we have seen in Syria—it often fails to deliver peace. Short of an overhaul of the UN Charter to eliminate the veto—a wholly implausible scenario—it is unclear what can be done to ameliorate this situation. The French have proposed a new international norm—the "responsibility not to veto." This would take the form of a voluntary (thus non–legally binding) commitment by each of the P5 not to veto resolutions designed to prevent or end large-scale atrocities, with the exception of when the resolution would run counter to a permanent member’s "vital national interests." And therein lies the rub. For that loophole is one that is broad enough, as the saying goes, to drive a truck through. Indeed, one could make the case that this proposed caveat is already in operation. It’s just that the great powers—being great powers, after all—have expansive views of their vital national interests. To be sure, the average number of vetoes cast each year has declined markedly since the Cold War—a promising sign. But the veto remains a non-negotiable symbol of P5 privilege, employed when core interests are perceived to be at stake, a situation more likely if great power tensions are high. The upshot is that enforcement action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter will remain highly selective—focused on those crises and conflicts where P5 interests converge or, conversely, are absent. It is in the interest of all P5 members that additional states not acquire nuclear weapons—and thus they are relatively in agreement on the importance of nuclear nonproliferation. The Security Council has also vigorously expanded peacekeeping missions in recent years (though the results have been far from perfect) in countries where none of the members perceive a vital national interest, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The tough situations will be those like Syria where the P5 are divided, and where advocates of enforcement action will continue to confront an uncomfortable choice of either staying on the sidelines or intervening with an ad hoc coalition that may provide a surrogate—if lesser—form of legitimacy. For these reasons, it’s not surprising that the Security Council has failed for the last five years to restore peace and a political solution in Syria. That’s not likely to change. Syria underscores the futility of attempting to force agreement within a bitterly divided Security Council. Indeed, turning repeatedly to the same body and expecting a different result approaches the colloquial definition of insanity. The Security Council is effective at protecting and advancing the interests of the P5. But, intended to provide order over justice, it fails those caught in the middle of great power conflict. That’s not just a failure of performance. It’s a failure by design.

Along with presidential campaigns comes an array of what candidates deem the greatest threat to the United States. Senator Ted Cruz said in July, “The single greatest threat to the United States, if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, is that of an electromagnetic pulse,” while Dr. Ben Carson during September’s presidential debate referred to “global jihadists” as an “existential threat to our nation.” U.S. officials have a different outlook. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said in July, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.” Last October, Vice President Joe Biden said, “We face no existential threat—none—to our way of life or our ultimate security.” Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listed cyber as the top threat to the United States for the past three years. Among many, these are several challenges that threaten global security. What is more concerning, as echoed by FBI Director James Comey earlier this year, are developing or unforeseen threats. “If you imagine a nationwide haystack, we are trying to find needles in that haystack”, Comey said. “And knowing there are needles out there that you can’t see is worrisome.” To successfully address threats, U.S. policymakers must first understand which of these potential contingencies they should focus their finite time and resources on most directly. For the past eight years, to assist policymakers in anticipating and planning for international crises that threaten U.S. national interests, CFR’s Center for Preventive Action have conducted a Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS). The annual PPS evaluates ongoing and potential violent conflicts and sources of instability based on two factors: 1) the impact they would have on U.S. interests and 2) their likelihood of occurring in the coming year. What threats and conflicts are you worried will emerge or escalate in 2016? Please tell us your suggestions in this survey by Wednesday, October 14. Keep your responses short and to the point, but feel free to explain why the contingency is important. Compelling suggestions will again be included in this year’s survey, which will be published in December. Take the survey here: http://svy.mk/1Q4EyCy.