Genocide: The Dark Side of Being Human

Genocide is a word used to describe when human beings kill one another en masse, often in gruesome and terrifying displays of territorial strength and power. The overt reasons for this sort of behavior are usually based on racial, ethnic, or class differences, but the underlying reasons are often linked to poverty, social unrest, and political upheaval. Genocide can either happen in a systematic campaign to eliminate a race of people, as it did in Hitler’s Germany, with his efforts to kill all the Jews behind razor wire and in the confinement of camps, or it can happen under the guise of a formally declared war of one group of people against another where efforts are made to completely eradicate a population in order to celebrate triumph. Warring clans, not only in Africa, but also in Asia and the Americas, often engaged in this sort of warfare. Genghis Khan is a good example of a warlord who conquered territory to completely wipe out other clans from the landscape, taking their women to be assimilated into his clan, and making children into slaves.

As was demonstrated in the book by Scott Peterson, Me Against My Brother, in the country of Somalia, this sort of clan warfare had historically been limited by the tools of warfare that were available to the people. Without motorized vehicles and guns, they were limited to single combat with spears and knives and couldn’t cover large amounts of territory in short amounts of time in order to engage with the enemy. Peace existed mainly due to a lack of resources for making war, as exercising power and authority in brutal and violent terms was otherwise respected and revered in Somali culture. The same was true in Sudan, evidenced by the ethnic conflicts within the ranks of the southern rebels at various points in their fighting with the north. Peterson writes, “The 1991 Bor Massacre revived an antagonism that, for many southerners, completely overshadowed their fear of the Islamic north. Suddenly the enemy was inescapable and coming from within the south. Only decades before, this had been the norm, though the reason for war was always to acquire the enemy's revered cattle” (Peterson 218). In the modern conflicts in Africa, the fierce warrior ethic was now accompanied by advanced weaponry, which dramatically changed the nature of the conflict as well as the outcome.

That modern genocide occurred in Rwanda is undeniable, whereas in Somalia and Sudan, the conflicts certainly included acts of ethnic cleansing and fratricide but weren’t conducted as a systematic and well-ordered campaign of one ethnic group against another. The scale of the slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus was unbelievable and happened in a short span of time. Peterson writes, “The genocide that afflicted Rwanda for three months in 1994 was the bloodiest episode recorded in modern African history and was more ruthlessly efficient in causing death than were Nazi Germany’s gas chambers. Some 800,000 died, most of them in the first month of the bloodletting, through some estimate the death toll at greater than 1 million” (Peterson 252). The campaign was also extremely well organized, being spurred on by radio announcements. The movie Hotel Rwanda shows how the radio broadcasts by the Hutu government helped to inflame the Hutu people into action against the Tutsis. In Me Against My Brother, Peterson explains, “In a country where illiteracy was rife and radios were plentiful, the extremist mouthpiece Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (1,000 Hills Free Radio, RTLM) was a constant reminder of the Hutu imperative to kill or be killed. In the first days of April 1994, the radio broadcast the names and addresses of Tutsi and moderate Hutu politicians on the primary death list. Its infamous message was simple: “The grave is only half-full; who will help us fill it?” Militiamen went to “work”-often observing normal office hours- with a machete in one hand and transistor radio in the other” (Peterson 256) The authority of the Hutu government to call for ethnic cleansing was unquestionable in the minds of the Hutus who carried out the murders, and committing genocide was considered part of their moral imperative as Hutus.

The role of foreign players in Africa added an element of instability to the internal conflicts that, in most cases, caused greater pain and suffering. Unfortunately, this was true not only of political interventions, but also in the case of aid intervention on behalf of the civilian populations. In Sudan, the religious conflict between Muslims and Christians became a political play between countries wanting to support the Muslim fighters in the north, and countries who wanted to support the Christian fighters in the south. Aid in the form of weaponry was given to each side by the countries who felt they had a geopolitical stake in the outcome. The aid that came in from humanitarian organizations only seemed to fuel the conflict, giving rise to greater death tolls as the conflict raged on. Peterson writes, “Nowhere else in Africa has food so directly contributed to the continuation of war. In Sudan, it has become the most powerful weapon, as so afflicting hunger has been the key military strategy for both sides” (Peterson 230). This was also true in the Rwandan conflict, where food aid often served to refuel the genocide’s worst perpetrators, “In Rwanda, food aid to the refugees who committed the 1994 genocide enabled them to rise and fight again” (Peterson 236). Although aid in the form of food was always meant to be a gesture of goodwill and common humanity, it often just fueled further atrocities.

In Somalia, the presence of foreign intervention in the name of peacekeeping, became a tragic series of political errors that led to an escalation of the conflicts, as warring factions turned their attention to the foreigners and a heated campaign of hatred against the Americans and United Nations forces became the focus of the aggression. As United Nations peacekeeping forces were killed, political policy began to shift to more violent tactics, and the United States got involved under the guise of protecting the aid mission. Unfortunately, the foreign politicians didn’t understand the nature of the conflict, or how to enter into it without fueling the clan mentality that would eventually turn them into enemies rather than saviors. When the United States orchestrated the bombing of a roomful of tribal elders that were later claimed to have been meeting in order to negotiate a peace deal, on a day that came to be known as “Bloody Monday”, the Somali people rose up against the US and all foreigners in total outrage. In reference to Bloody Monday, Peterson writes, “This moment inflicted murder in the service, unbelievably, of a sad oxymoron: peace enforcement” (Peterson 117). The role of the United Nations as a peacekeeping presence had already been destroyed by their acts of retaliatory violence. Rather than being mandated to use only non-violent methods, instead the “UN was to demonstrate how to apply force correctly, to right the wrongs of regional and civil disputes” (Peterson 75). Unfortunately, the justification of violence by the United Nations just led to an escalation of the bloodshed. Peterson writes, “the UN victory began to take on a hue and logic similar to that applied to Vietnam: unjustifiable acts were justified” (Peterson 91). Once this line had been crossed into using aggression in order to keep peace, there was no stopping the violence, as the Somali culture was oriented toward triumphing with any means against an aggressor, even if it meant death and suffering to its people.

As the movie Hotel Rwanda demonstrated, the protection of the international community was always assumed, as historically foreigners were a source of cash and other forms of aid, and therefore they were considered untouchable. This was a relationship that had been cultivated over time through colonialism, and often the political tensions between ethnic groups in Africa was only exacerbated by foreign intervention. In Rwanda, this was characterized by the support of the Tutsi by the Belgians, who brought the Tutsi to leadership even though they were a minority group, through a campaign asserting their supremacy as a race ( Peterson 259). Philip Gourevitch writes of the Belgian colonialist influence, “Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the precolonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made “ethnicity” the defining feature of Rwandan existence (Gourevitch 57). Before Belgian intervention in the politics of Rwanda, there had been a relatively peaceful coexistence between Tutsi and Hutu. During the actual genocide, the support of the Hutu establishment by the French government continued the divisive dynamic, “To the French, the battle being waged was all-important and on a different plane: to preserve the gains of French culture and language against what were seen as threats from Anglo-Saxons. French conspiracy theorists saw the ghosts of a past world, believing that France was losing ground in Africa to English-speaking Rwandans, backed by Uganda and ultimately by Britain and America” (Peterson 280). In Sudan, the tensions between the north and south were originally set into place by the British (Peterson 178). And in Somalia, the US’s initial support of the clan leader Aidid, just led to further ethnic tensions amongst the different clans.

In some cases, this sort of political unrest served to benefit foreign economic interests as is portrayed by the film Blood Diamond. The mining and sales of diamonds in order to buy weapons was what fueled the civil war conflict in Sierra Leone. This film helped to bring more consciousness to the global trade of diamonds, and the concept of buying “conflict free” diamonds was born. But more often, foreign interventions wasted huge amounts of money and resources to only exacerbate conflicts. Millions of dollars were spent on aid efforts in Somalia, in the form of food convoys that were appropriated by militias, huge embassies built in luxurious style that were eventually looted and destroyed, military bases that were built in high American style, replete with swimming pools and golf courses, and all of this display of wealth and power was ultimately useless. In fact, the gaudy display of wealth probably only served to fuel one of the main reasons for the internal conflicts: poverty.

In Africa, poverty is a terrible affliction. It causes widespread famine, lawlessness in the face of trying to acquire food and resources, and a culture of violence born out of hopelessness and despair. During the conflict in Sudan, Peterson writes about his friend’s commentary on the hopelessness in the country, “Sudan has nothing,” declared my friend and informant, toying with his whiskey glass and staring at its emptiness. His aging arm tattoo was almost lost between over tanned skin and sun-bleached arm hair. “Sudan can offer nothing, except a base for fundamentalism”(Peterson 184). This sort of poverty was also prevalent in Rwanda prior to the genocide. Peterson reported, “People were starving, and growing desperate. Compounded by the fluctuating tension between Hutu and Tutsi tribes, it seemed that these “peaceful people” were on the verge of a Malthusian war for land and food. One report at the time noted then that “there is a large majority who have nothing to eat for one, two, three, even seven days successively.” People were selling the windows and doors from their houses to buy food, and children were too exhausted to stay awake in class” (Peterson 249) Historically, these were the very conditions which would fuel tribal and ethnic conflicts in order to lower populations and reclaim territory for food production that would be funneled toward the survival of one clan over another. In conditions of poverty and widespread death due to famine, the quality of life became diminished to the point that the value of life became so low that murder no longer seemed such an atrocity. This created the conditions that made killing seem almost merciful and lowered the appreciation for life to a place where lives were worth little more than a struggle for some kernels of rice in the sand.

The other condition that Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda all had in common, was a lack of education. Phillip Gourevitch, in his book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda, writes about a Rwandan who says, when asked about the reason for the genocide, ““Conformity is very deep, very developed here,” he told me. “In Rwandan history, everyone obeys authority. People revere power, and there isn’t enough education. You take a poor, ignorant population, and give them arms, and say, ‘It’s yours. Kill.’ They’ll obey (Gourevitch 23).” In Rwanda, the source of news and therefore education about what to think, was the radio, which was operated by the Hutu forces. This made the Hutu population easy to influence and control. In Sudan, the same was true. Often children were taken into the army as soon as they were old enough to hold a gun and were raised to tow the official party line. This sort of power that uses propaganda to brainwash a whole generation of children is shown in bleak terms in the movie Blood Diamond, when Solomon’s sun Dia is turned into a killing machine for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Scott Peterson’s book further highlights how children raised in refugee camps are practically bred for revenge, as their lives are so miserable and the reason for their suffering is the oppression by their rivals. Education is a luxury in many African countries, and becoming a warrior is more often the future role that children aspire to.

In the film Hotel Rwanda, there is a scene where an aid worker is forced to watch the slaughter of children in an orphanage. She says that the Hutu militias were trying to wipe out all Tutsi children in order to keep them from rising up in the future. Later in the film, when the foreigners are evacuated, orphaned children are forcibly pulled from their benefactors and left behind to die. This is perhaps the most heart-wrenching aspect of the foreign unwillingness to engage in conflict in Rwanda. Because the Rwandan genocide followed so quickly on the heels of the conflict in Somalia, the role of foreign aid in Rwanda was largely influenced by what had been in many ways a humiliating and futile defeat on the part of the United States and the United Nations in Somalia. Where a lot of money and effort went into the foreign intervention in Somalia, the foreign effort in Rwanda was noticeably absent, and because the Rwandan genocide happened so quickly and efficiently, foreign attention came too late. The film Hotel Rwanda exposes the way in which the international community turned a blind eye to the Rwandan genocide, even when the fact that the atrocities were occurring was well revealed by the press, and even when the United Nations envoy was clearly being threatened. The movie highlights the disregard that the international community held for the Rwandan people, and their willingness to leave them to be killed, when it pulled all of the foreigners out of the country, even the soldiers who had been stationed there to keep the peace. In a pivotal scene, the UN general is clear that he believes the decision was made out of racism when he says to Paul, the hotel manager, that, “you aren’t even niggers, you’re Africans”.

This idea that foreign politicians were disregarding the plight of Tutsis in Rwanda due to racist ideologies is one that may or may not be true, as the inept conduct and therefore the failure of the United States and the United Nations in Somalia may simply have led to a political climate that no longer supported foreign intervention, given the political and financial resources required to enter Rwanda and engage in a fight. Peterson writes, “as the genocide surged ahead, a dangerous and telling link between Somalia and Rwanda appeared all too obvious. Their equation was simple: UN peacekeepers to Somalia in crisis equaled failure. Therefore, UN peacekeepers to Rwanda in crisis would also equal failure. Then add another political dimension unique to Washington: never mind the “We hate genocide” platitudes, at stake also was losing no more face after Somalia, and even how action or not might play in upcoming midterm elections” (Peterson 293). Although it may have been difficult for American leaders to rally support for an intervention because of the racism endemic to American culture, it is more likely that the political will was simply not there, because of the recent events in Somalia.

It was easier to rally support for the conflict in Sudan because of its links to Muslim fundamentalism and terrorist ideologies. The United States and Israel were particularly concerned about how the defeat of the Christian dominated south might affect their geopolitical power in the region, and therefore spent a lot of money funding the southern fighters. While religion may have been a driving force for the northern Muslim population, religion was not a factor that played as strongly in the minds of the soldiers from the south. Their interest in fighting was mainly to exact revenge for their continuous and systematic persecution by the ruling north, which had been institutionalized by the British occupation and division of the country into northern and southern interests (Peterson 178). Peterson points out the historical tensions as the primary fuel for the fighting when he writes, “One who lived long among both tribes saw the same simple tactic from Somalia to Sarajevo: “If you ask these people to fight for democracy, that is too much,” said Bernadette Kumar, of UNICEF. “The way to make them fight is to revive the old differences. There is nothing like a line of ancestral murders to motivate a fighter” (Peterson 219). By engaging in support for one side or the other, the international community was just building on conflicts that had been in place for centuries. The same was true in Rwanda and Somalia.

Both Scott Peterson and Philip Gourevitch wonder aloud about what would make a people kill one another so brutally. In Me Against My Brother, Peterson posits the problem of over-population in Rwanda as what may have spurred the genocidal tendency, by writing, “One cynical analyst ominously explained the Malthusian dynamic at work in Rwanda: ‘When you put two rats in a cage, they go to separate corners and leave each other in peace. But when you put 30 rats into the same cage, they eat each other.’” (Peterson 249). Peterson doesn’t endorse this idea, but it is worth noting as a theory, as it is something demonstrated in many different animal populations, and while it cannot be pointed to as a definitive cause, piled up with poverty, ignorance and hunger, over-population might indeed have had some psychological influence on the Rwandan psyche. Historically, many tribal people would fight over territory and cattle when there were shortages in land and food. In the case of Rwanda, the institutionalized way in which the conflict was built up to and orchestrated on the ground wouldn’t match this sort of pattern. It held a much more sinister objective than just acquiring property or economic gain for the Hutus.

In the movies and books about these war torn countries, there is an overarching question of the moral implications of aiding or abetting a conflict in a foreign country, and whether or not there is an obligation on the part of the international community to act, either for or against either side. While there is an honest and commendable impulse by foreigners to want to help people in need, people who are starving and being murdered en masse, there is also a feeling that the aid, whether it be in the form of guns for the “good guys” or food for the “innocent” civilian populations, there is no way to involve the international community without also causing interference and therefore potentially escalating the problem. The moral question becomes muddied by the dilemma of trying to understand what aid will do in the short run, which could be to simply save lives, versus what will happen to those lives in the long run. Countries who are torn by internal conflicts are often fated to continue their conflicts into the future, as they are often entrenched in a long history of fighting. Does this mean that the international community should mind its own business and risk being accused of careless negligence when droves of people are dying? The political climate is such that this would practically be considered a crime, especially in the case of the United Nations, whose sole purpose is to intervene when there are conflicts around the globe. Yet, the question remains, what is an appropriate amount of intervention, and at what point does it become harmful?

In regard to the ongoing conflict in Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch tells of a Rwandan Minister of Health, who says to him, “When the people receiving humanitarian assistance in those camps come and kill us, what will the international community do -- send more humanitarian assistance?” (Gourevitch 292). As a citizen of one of these African countries, as a politician involved in foreign intervention, or as a humanitarian aid worker, it would be hard to know exactly what the right solution is. It would also be hard not to become hardened and cynical about how the distribution of wealth and power in the world only seems to perpetuate conflict. In the end, the question of whether human beings will ever evolve out of a will to murder one another in conflicts spurred by one reason or another, is the question that becomes most poignant. Is the “Dark Side”, as Scott Peterson calls it, a fundamental part of human nature? The stories of human suffering are coupled with stories of compassion and love, and the enduring strength of communities that have seen terrible atrocities. Their ability to revive and to grow past their historical conflicts, while it is very much hidden in the shadows of these stories, is still there, and it is a reason to keep going.

As the twenty-year anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda arrives, it is important to recognize the lack of action on the part of the international community, and to look toward a future where people have learned from the mistakes of the past. In some ways, each individual could ask themselves whether, if they saw a murder taking place, would they intervene? Would it depend on whether they had a weapon big enough, and whether they felt they knew the person being victimized? There are a lot of philosophical questions about humanity at the root of the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust and the Inquisition. It is hard to answer them without some significant soul searching. In Blood Diamond, we see the transition of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from someone who is clearly hardened to the plight of Africans, to someone who tries to do the right thing. This gave the movie a feeling of redemption, even though the tale was otherwise so gruesome and horrifying. Ultimately, we are left with a feeling of hope that if an individual can change, then maybe a people can change.

Works Cited

Blood Diamond. Dir. Edward Zwick. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounson. Warner Brothers 2006.

Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1998.

Hotel Rwanda. Dir. Terry George. Perf. Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolte. United Artists 2004.

Peterson, Scott. Me Against My Brother: At War In Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda: A Journalist Reports From The Battlefields of Africa. Routledge, New York: 2000.