A review of:
A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
By Stephen Kinzer, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Inc, 2008.
Reviewed by:
Thomas (Tom) P. Odom
LTC US Army (ret)
Author,
Journey Into Darkness: Genocide In Rwanda
President Paul Kagame is a man who inspires a wide range of emotions in those who meet him. Some like me admire him. Others despise him. A former US Ambassador to Burundi described him as "Svengali or perhaps Mephistopheles--some magician or sorcerer."[1] Certainly many in French diplomatic circles see him as the devil clothed in Anglophone robes. In the Africanist analytical world, he is either Rwanda's greatest hope or its mortal danger. Certainly his enemies have reason to fear him even as his friends love him. Both enemy and friend know that the wise respect him.
I first met then Vice President and Defense Minister Major General Paul Kagame in the fall of 1994 when he was struggling to put the shattered country of Rwanda back together. Some were want to describe him as a "war lord" even as one could buy T-shirts with his picture on them with the phrase "Free at Last!" at Kigali's international airport. General Kagame was serious, determined, and it was clear that he was a strong man. What remained to be seen was whether he would become another "Big Man" in African politics or rise above that label to be a truly great African leader.
Like no other author so far, Stephen Kinzer offered us a peek inside the complexity named Paul Kagame. Kinzer enjoyed unprecedented access to the President of Rwanda and provided a colorful and insightful biography of the man. Like any good interlocutor, Kinzer understands that listening is best technique for the interviewer. He offers Kagame's own words to the reader allowing the subject of this biography to speak on his own behalf. That is not only fair, it is probably critical to understand this man who spent much of his life fighting the status quo--and ultimately winning.
According to Kinzer, Kagame's early life as a refugee in Uganda hardened him into the typical angry young man found in a life surrounded by poverty. Early on in his youth he became friends with Fred Rwigyema. Together they later would become co-founders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. But first they would join Museveni's 40-man National Resistance Army in Uganda and overthrow Obote. When Rwigyema fell in the first few days of the RPF's 1990 invasion of Rwanda, Kagame resigned from the US Army Command and General Staff College to take command and reorganize the RPF. He and the RPF went on to win a military victory they did not really desire, sparking a genocide for which they could not be blamed.
Despite Kagame's military prowess, I found Kinzer's chapters on the post-war period from 2000 on to be the most illuminating because they concentrate on Kagame's role as President of Rwanda. At the same time, they provide great hope for the country's future and portents of possible disaster. President Kagame is indeed Rwanda's greatest hope. At the same time, he is his own greatest nemesis.
With a view to balance, I would offer a few criticisms. First in describing the Goma portion of Operation SUPPORT HOPE, Kinzer echoes Major General Dallaire in saying that the US put 4,000 troops on the ground in a matter of days. Fewer than 200 US personnel ever landed at Goma, including but a single platoon of airborne infantry. The remainder of the troops under then Brigadier General Jack Nix focused on water purification and transport.
Secondly I would say that Kinzer downplays or misses three key events in 1995 that drove the Rwandan invasions of Zaire in 1996 and 1997. Kinzer does mention the disastrous camp clearing operation at Kibeho in April 1995. My RPA counterparts warned me clearly they would do the same in Goma. Kagame said the same thing. I wished that Kinzer had questioned him more closely about the decision to clear the camp at Kibeho. Next I would say was the expansion of Hutu extremist attacks against Tutsis living in Zaire; I have long looked at that as a trigger event for the decision to go into Zaire in the next year. Again, I would have liked to hear from Kagame in that regard. Finally, Kinzer misses the Iwawa Island operation. The senior leaders of the RPA saw the clearing of the militia base as proof that their enemies were rearming. Kagame must have seen it as the final opportunity for the world to do something about the camps.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Africa, small wars, reconciliation, and development. Kinzer's prose is easy to read and entertaining. His narrative is insightful. The Paul Kagame I knew came to life when I read this book.
, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2007,
page 109.
