Conflict and Peace in Mountain Societies

Case Study: Ethnic Conflict in Rwanda

In the late 1980s Rwanda, the country of "a thousand hills", was
considered by many Africans, visitors, and development workers to
be the "jewel of East Africa" and "Africa's best kept secret".
Sigourney Weaver and "Gorillas in the Mist" had brought
international attention to the country through a movie filled with
romantic images of Ruhengeri Prefecture's beautiful and forested
landscapes. Volcanoes such as Karisimbi (4,507 m), Bisoke (3,711
m), and Sabinyo (3,674 m) graced the horizons of this seemingly
peaceful and mountainous country.

Curiously out of the camera's field of view, however, was the real
situation that confronted more than 95 per cent of the country's
population of 7.5 million people. The typical steep hillslope up
to the foot of the volcanoes was cleared, under intense
cultivation, and poorly protected with either structural or
biological terracing. The original afromontane forests were long
gone, and more than half of those remaining in protected areas,
such as the Parc National des Volcans, had been cleared in the
1970s and 1980s in the name of "development" and agricultural
expansion. The countryside was one of the most densely populated
in the world, with as many as 760 people per km2 and an annual
growth rate of more than 3 per cent. Hillslope erosion,
landslides, and annual soil loss were among the highest in the
world, seriously threatening food production.

Ethnic tension, primarily between the Hutu and Tutsi groups, was
more than a hundred years old and generally accepted as a fact of
life. Between April and August of 1994, however, more than 1
million people, primarily Tutsi, were killed, and 2 million more
turned into refugees, in one of the most terrible acts of genocide
of the 20th century. As mentioned by Frederick Starr, the reasons
behind this tragedy are extremely complex, widely thought to have
included environmental scarcity, overpopulation, poverty,
victimization, and ineffective, corrupt governmental regimes.
However, the inherited burden of severe ethnic cleavage and
animosity assuredly played important roles that are in need of
much greater attention and analysis.

Pre-colonial differences between the Hutu and Tutsi, for example,
were based primarily on basic distinctions between being an
agriculturalist or pastoralist, and social interchanges between
the two groups remained fluid. The German and Belgian colonial
powers, however, favored the Tutsis for positions of local power
that seriously began the process of thickening the walls of ethnic
distrust, fear, and hatred. The Hutu "revolt" of 1959 led to
Rwandan independence in 1962, which served to further divide and
segregate ethnic categories and discrimination. According to
Percival and Homer-Dixon (1995), these ethnic barriers were then
exacerbated by a number of other significant factors that included
the scarcity of land, the civil war, structural adjustment, the
fall in coffee prices, Rwanda's position as a landlocked country
with little chance for economic diversification, and a threatened
and reactive governmental regime. When President Juvenal
Habyarimana's plane exploded in the skies above Kigali on 6 April
1994, the violence that had gripped the country for the past 40
months, much of it rooted in historic grievances, also exploded.

One of the most important questions that has been asked frequently
since the resultant genocide is, "could this tragedy have been
prevented?" While dozens of international development agencies
conducted business as usual in the very places that witnessed the
most horrific massacres, were there in fact indicators of the
severity of ethnic conflict that could have served as warnings?
Most atrocities seem impossible to imagine until they actually
happen. Nevertheless, are there warning signals that should be
acknowledged and acted upon in the interests of preventing the
eruption of similar conflicts and tragedies in the future?

In addition to the solid list of "best practices" mentioned by
Starr, greater attention to the importance of ethnic grievance,
whether recent or historic, seems long overdue.

References

Byers, A. 1991. "Soil loss and sediment transport during the
storms and landslides of May 1988 in Ruhengeri Prefecture,
Rwanda." Natural Hazards.

Percival, V. and Homer-Dixon, T. 1995. Environmental Scarcity and
Violent Conflict: The Case of Rwanda. Occasional Paper: Project on
Environment, Population and Security. Washington, D.C.: American
Association for the Advancement of Science and the University of
Toronto. June 1995. Parts I and II.

Uvin, P. The Failure of the International Community to Prevent
Genocide in Rwanda. Internet site at:
www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/uvin.htm

Photographs and Maps

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Alton C. Byers, Ph.D.
Director, Research and Education
The Mountain Institute
107 Westridge Drive
Elkins, WV 26241
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email: [email protected]
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