The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

38 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL gated outbreaks of violence or violations of the accords, calling a halt to impunity. Finally, we should have listened more carefully to all sides in the negotiations, especially to Habyarimana’s outline of his basic demands. He led the largest political bloc and com- manded a still-intact, if somewhat inept, military. And we should have understood how the military ratios that the facilita- tor, the observers and the newly installed Rwandan government accepted in the rush to sign the Arusha Accords signaled to the sitting regime the insurgent’s eventual victory. But we did not, rather trusting that our high ideas of rule of law, civil rights and shared governance would win out by friendly persuasion. To do otherwise would have required confrontation with one side or another, the use of force to attain the peace. Instead, the kindling of failed negotiations gave way to conflagration in the April 1994 plane crash carrying the only installed authority of the intended interim regime. This brought a return to civil war and the launching of a horrific genocide, but also the eventual creation of a new regime under RPF control. Though we had predicted mass atrocities, even genocide, with a return to fighting, a concerted international effort was not able to preempt the tragic logic of war. n To keep the peace process on track, we could have moved for a more rapid deployment of peacekeeping forces after the signature of the 1992 cease-fire and the 1993 peace agreement.