Chantalle, a Congolese policewoman, was one of the first female trainees assigned to the genocide team. She is pictured in her living room with four of her seven children and her mother-in-law. Photograph: Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita
Chantalle, a Congolese policewoman, was one of the first female trainees assigned to the genocide team. She is pictured in her living room with four of her seven children and her mother-in-law. Photograph: Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita
I wonder if the UN report is going to mention how much blood is on the UN hands in all this.
We are accustomed to war as a political exercise. War, they say, is politics by other means. Except that sometimes war is more than that, its between peoples. Political war can be relatively antiseptic; overthrow the enemy’s government and its over.
War between peoples is actually, historically, the more common kind of war. It is also the bloodiest and most pitiless. Just overthrowing the government doesn’t solve the problem. The enemy himself has to be expelled to a safe distance or destroyed. The war doesn’t end until the map has been redrawn and demographics have been redistributed.
When the enemy government is the danger, you defeat the government. When the enemy people themselves are the danger, the logic is horrific but inevitable. A million Tutsis were murdered by, not merely the Hutu government, but the Hutus themselves. That inspires a whole different level of reply.
