The writer is author of ‘Do Not Disturb. The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad’
One of the peculiarities that struck journalists crossing into Rwanda in the wake of the 1994 genocide was just how intensely cultivated this tiny, staggeringly beautiful African state had been. At first glance — we would later discover the Nyungwe Forest and Akagera National Park — every inch of its soil appeared to have been terraced, tended and tilled.
The shortage of unclaimed land was one of the reasons Rwandans fleeing extremist militias and the Rwandan army of the day struggled to find anywhere to hide: exposed slopes made it easy for the killers to pick out their prey. And it is why UK home secretary Priti Patel’s blithe comment that asylum seekers will be able to “settle and thrive” in Rwanda, under the terms of a deal struck with the government in Kigali, is triggering widespread incredulity.
Rwanda is not only one of the poorest countries in the world, it is the single most densely populated state in Africa, a nation already struggling to accommodate a refugee caseload of its own — 130,000 refugees, mostly from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Despite the financial incentives being offered to the Rwandan government — and, as former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell has said, putting them up at the Ritz would make better financial sense for Britain — any notion that Rwanda has room to spare smacks either of ignorance or extreme cynicism.
What this project will certainly do, however, is serve as a deterrent.
There’s something deeply surreal about the notion that Paul Kagame, a president whose treatment of his critics both at home and abroad has attracted considerable international criticism, represents a respectable custodian.
Whatever Patel’s cherished image of Rwanda might be, would-be asylum seekers will see things in a different light. If they google “Rwanda” and “Kagame” as they weigh up their options, they will see that this vaunted “donor darling” and “model of development” boasts one of the most sinister human rights records on the continent.
Its armed forces have been blamed by UN investigators and human rights groups for the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in both the run-up to the 1994 genocide and the massacres’ wake. Over the decades, while Rwanda’s army generals looted the DRC’s minerals, militias supported by Kigali have terrorised the east of the country. Had Patel done her research more rigorously, she would know that one of the most notorious, the M23 movement, is actually back in operation in Congo once again.
For Kagame, this deal with the UK marks part of a relentless and strikingly effective campaign to persuade the west to embrace him as a proactive African leader offering radical solutions to thorny domestic and foreign policy problems.
When Total’s giant liquefied gas project in Mozambique was closed by jihadist rebels last year, for example, Kagame was quick to send 1,000 troops, which swiftly secured the area and won him admiration from France’s Emmanuel Macron. This new offshore processing deal possesses a similar imaginary silver bullet quality.
The problem is that the solutions offered tend to be cosmetic, short-lived and often come with a sinister sting in the tail.
Rwanda’s operation in Mozambique has done nothing to address the marginalisation that caused the jihadist insurgency in the first place, and there are signs the rebels merely shifted their operations into Tanzania. That deployment has also coincided with a spate of assassinations and disappearances of high-profile Rwandan exiles who had sought safety in Maputo.
Patel’s asylum agreement does not even possess the merit of originality. Not long ago, Denmark’s government struck a migration deal with Rwanda, but it seems not a single migrant has been dispatched there yet.
Israel attempted a similar operation in 2018, sending unwanted migrants — many of them Eritreans and Sudanese fleeing their own repressive African regimes — to both Rwanda and Uganda. Once they had their passports taken off them, they were often left to their own devices, presumably setting out, once again, on the hazardous route to the industrialised north. A public outcry forced Israel to abandon the plan.
It’s astonishing that given these two dreary, demeaning precedents, Britain considers this a model worthy of repeating.
