The dramatic collapse of Paul Kagame's image

President Paul Kagame, pictured on July 28, 2010.

The Rwandan government has announced its intention to withdraw its troops from the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The warning came after it appeared that the UN will go ahead and publishes a leaked report on the events in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. The report details grizzly massacres allegedly by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), later re-named the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF). This report, leaked last week, goes even further: it starts to ask fundamental questions about the whole narrative of Rwandan history between 1993 and 2003 that the world has come to believe. "The forthcoming UN report, which according to [the French newspaper] Le Monde will accuse Rwandese Patriotic Front forces of committing genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1996 and 1998, has been strongly refuted by the authorities in Kigali. Not surprising – the legitimacy of the RPF government derives from their role in stopping the genocide in their own country in 1994. Any suggestion that they might be 'just as bad' as the forces which carried out mass murder of the Tutsis dents their image as the saviours of Rwanda," commented the international editor of Britain's Channel 4 news channel on Aug. 27, 2010.Read More