britain's hidden role in the rwandan genocide: the cat's paw
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This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice University ]On: 20 November 2014, At: 02:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Britain's Hidden Role in the RwandanGenocide: The Cat's PawDean White aa Independent ScholarPublished online: 07 Aug 2013.
To cite this article: Dean White (2013) Britain's Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide: The Cat'sPaw, Contemporary British History, 27:3, 386-388, DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2013.823703
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2013.823703
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punks’ philosophies and aesthetics. As shown by Guy Lawley’s article in Roger Sabin’sPunk Rock: So What?, the relationship between comics and punk does not end there.
Given that the correlations between music and comic popular youth cultures (forexample) have been underplayed, the five pages dedicated to 1995’s flop Hollywood
adaptation of Judge Dredd seems excessive.Eager for comics to be taken more seriously, the strips Chapman praises most are
those that prove ‘psychologically complex’ (p. 130), exhibiting ‘psychological realism’(pp. 134, 191) and ‘psychological depth’ (p. 243). He makes it clear that readers have
often (though not always) responded positively to such weightier narrative techniques,yet Chapman risks advocating that the most creatively successful type of comic art—and perhaps art in a more general sense—should possess such psychological depth/
realism/complexity. With many of these ‘deep’ strips being distinguished exceptionsrather than more generally representative, does Chapman, who is eager to
demonstrate the parallels between graphic fiction and social reality, overlook therole of comics as a deliberately fantasist means of escapism?
Chapman has covered a lot of ground, surveying more than 150 years of Britishcomics history in fewer than 300 pages. He has consulted a vast array of titles, not
merely the most obvious ones, and has conducted significant and often enlightening, ifnot completely comprehensive, primary and secondary textual research.Even if someof the contextualisation remains fairly general, and certain avenues appear
underexplored, the book is an excellent introduction to the subject, with the potential toinspire future research in all kinds of directions. Although less coherent or explicit on
comics’ role in ‘constructing social values’ (p. 12), the work’smajor thesis, that comics areuseful, overlooked sources of cultural and social history, is persuasive and important.
Reference
Sabin, Roger, ed. Punk Rock: So What? London: Routledge, 1999.
John Richard Moores
University of Yorkq 2013, John Richard Moores
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2013.823702
Britain’s Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide: The Cat’s PawHAZEL CAMERON
Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2012xiv þ146 pp., ISBN 978-0-415-61960-8 (hbk) (£75.00)
Nearly 20 years on, there remains so much that is not fully understood about the
terrible events in Rwanda in 1994. Despite the deaths of what is generally accepted to
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be at least three quarters of a million people, the Rwandan genocide has, to date,received limited attention from academic scholars. Instead, most of the existing
literature has been written by people with first-hand experience of the crisis—
journalists and NGO workers. Hazel Cameron’s book, a work based on her PhD thesis,is therefore a welcome addition to the limited academic literature on this subject. This
is doubly the case as Cameron addresses an aspect of the genocide that has receivedalmost no attention, namely the role of the British government. Whilst there are a
limited number of books covering the US and French involvement in the crisis,Cameron’s is the first monograph to specifically look at the British response. That said
it is not until chapter 6, of what is a relatively short book, that Cameron begins to
concentrate on Britain’s involvement.Cameron’s background is as a criminologist and therefore the first part of the book
looks at the legal responsibilities of what she calls the ‘external global elite bystanders’(p. 11), a category in which she includes Britain. Cameron, based on her interpretation
of the United Nations Genocide Convention, concludes that elite bystanders are liableto charges of complicity in genocide if they fail to undertake ‘their positive obligations,
such as the prevention and suppression of genocide’ (p. 24). Britain, she suggests, istherefore complicit as it failed to stop the genocide when it had clear evidence of what
was happening. It should be noted that this conclusion is at odds with many, including
at least three foreign secretaries I have interviewed, who interpret the GenocideConvention as placing very few positive obligations on individual countries.
Cameron then moves on to address the history of pre-genocide Rwanda. In truth,these two chapters add little to the existing literature on Rwanda but are necessarily
included for those unfamiliar with the background to the genocide. Those alreadyfamiliar with Rwanda, however, will be interested to see that Cameron suggests that
Rwandan Tutsis, generally portrayed as the victims of genocide, were in many waysresponsible for the violence that swept the country. Cameron suggests that the
genocide was not pre-planned and that authors such as Linda Melvern, Philip
Gourevitch and Fergal Keane have been fooled by the post-genocide government intopeddling ‘politically correct’ versions of history (p. 29). For many this is like blaming
the Jews for the Holocaust; for me it is a claim that possibly has some merit but here itis inadequately evidenced and unconvincingly argued.
After a brief, and unnecessary, review of French involvement in the crisis, Cameronfinally moves on to what should be the meat of the book, the British involvement. Key
to Cameron’s argument is that British officials in Uganda were closely connected withthe Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the force that would invade Rwanda in 1990
thereby setting in motion the chain of events that ended with the genocide. The
relationship between the RPF andMI6 was, she argues, so close that ‘it is inconceivablethat the order for the . . . invasion of Rwanda was given without their approval and
active assistance’ (p. 81). Throughout the period of civil war and genocide, Britain,Cameron argues, actively supported and aided the RPF with the knowledge that this
would most likely lead to ethnic violence. If correct, this of course means that thegovernment was covertly supporting a rebel army engaged in a war with the Rwandan
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government which was receiving overt assistance from the French; indeed Cameronsuggests that the Rwandan civil war was an ‘undeclared war’ between France on one
side and the USA and Britain on the other (p. 113). What she does not make clearthough is Britain’s motivation for the alleged alliance with the RPF. The only
explanation Cameron can provide is to suggest that RPF’s control of Rwanda wouldgive the USA and Britain easier access to the natural resources of neighbouring Uganda
and Zaire, an argument that for me makes little sense and is here made with too littleevidence to be persuasive. The remainder of the two chapters on Britain’s role is given
over to reviewing the British at the UN and the government’s knowledge of impendinggenocide (which somewhat contradicts her earlier statement that genocide was notpre-planned); it is a shame that this section is not more extensive.
In terms of method, Cameron draws heavily on documents released to her under theFreedom of Information Act and also interviews with British officials and politicians.
One weakness with this approach, though an understandable one, is that Cameronrarely names her interviewees. One can understand why interviewees prefer to be
anonymous, especially as in this case so many remain in public life, but it does raise anumber of questions. For example, Cameron quotes one cabinet minister who claims
to have been in secret contact with Romeo Dallaire, the commander of UN troops inRwanda (p. 84); whilst I have no reason to doubt Cameron, I am astounded that thiswould happen and would love to know which minister she spoke to.
Unfortunately, one cannot review this book without remarking on the number oferrors in the text. Whilst one can accept and live with a certain number of typographical
errors, this book does seem to have more than its fair share, including two differentspellings of “Mitterrand” in the same sentence (p. 62). More unforgivable than the
spelling errors, however, is the mis-referencing to other literature. In one extreme casethis includes incorrectly suggesting Douglas Hurd wrote of Rwanda ‘We acted in good
conscience . . . [but] we made mistakes’ (p. 102). In fact, this statement was made aboutthe war in Yugoslavia.
Whilst Cameron does certainly add to our understanding of the Rwandan crisis,I am afraid The Cat’s Paw fails to convincingly and comprehensively explain Britain’salleged role in the genocide. Reading this as a historian, there is simply too little
evidence to support the conclusions. Cameron has though hopefully opened a newdebate; Britain’s role in a crisis as significant as Rwanda surely should not be hidden.
Dean White
Independent Scholarq 2013, Dean White
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2013.823703
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