Rambuchan
The Funky President
Tonight I watched "Hotel Rwanda" for the first time. It was brutal, tragic, outrageous and educational. There are many lessons in that film for us all. One question I got interested in was - How does DIVIDE & RULE work?
I want to understand this crucial tool of governmental manipulation in its finest detail. It has afterall been used in countless instances throughout history and still affects much of the world today - check Iraq, N.Ireland and Kashmir for starters. I'm going to throw up some instances from history with some explanation. I really hope others will too. In finding out about this dynamic's implementation I've learnt much. Hopefully together we'll understand:
- How Divide & Rule has been used
- Why
- When & where
- By whom to which groups
- What were the consequences
- Other shocking, interesting and surprising stuff no doubt.
Here is one from the hip, starting with...duh! Rwanda. This turned out longer than I intended folks but it is hugely relevant to the situation in Iraq right now and I gained many significant insights into, well - lots! I am mainly quoting from "History, Leave None to Tell the Story"; Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch, March 1999. But a very good analysis can be found here
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIVIDE & RULE CASE STUDY NO.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Germany & Belgium
Hutu vs. Tutsi
RWANDA
1884 - 1994 and ongoing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*1 ~ RWANDA BEFORE COLONIAL TIMES & AT ITS INCEPTION
First up, Germany & Belgium did not fictitously create this divide. It existed already but in a benevolent form:
"The Rwanda area had been dominated by hunter gatherers (the Twa) since 1000 A.D. Hutu speakers began to settle in the area, with farms and a clan-based monarchy that dominated the Twa. Around the sixteenth century, new immigrants from the Horn of Africa, the cattle-raising Tutsi arrived and set up their own monarchy. Hutu and Tutsi were a type of class distinction, rather than based on physical differences. Tutsi were typically more dominant and controlled wealth such as cattle, while Hutu were without wealth and not tied to the powerful. But, people could move from being Hutu, to Tutsi, and the other way round, depending on their wealth and status. In addition, inter marriage was not uncommon, and power was attainable by both groups."
1884 - Germany acquires Rwanda after the Thieves' Charter is signed in Berlin, allowing Europeans to basically acquire whatever they want, esp. in Africa, as long as they have, well, set foot on it (without a single African nation present at the Conference). And they set about ruling the country thus:
When the Germans assumed control of the area after the Berlin Conference of 1884 as Robbins goes on (p. 270), they applied their racist ideology and assumed that the generally taller, lighter-skinned Tutsis were the more natural leaders, while the Hutus were destined to serve them. Consequently the Germans increased Tutsi influence.
*2 ~ REWRITING HISTORY
So the Germans were already exploiting these differences when WW1 ended and Rwanda was ceded to Belgium. Belgium's colonial strategy in central Africa was to enchance and exploit an extant difference yet further. They went about it systematically and viciously IMO. There are detailed accounts (in the link at foot, which all these quotes are taken from) of how Belgian monks, together with Tutsi historians, went about rewriting the history of Rwanda (Twa) to cleave open the growing canyon between these ancient neighbours:
In the early years of colonial rule, Rwandan poets and historians, particularly those from the milieu of the court, resisted providing Europeans with information about the Rwandan past. But as they became aware of European favoritism for the Tutsi in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they saw the advantage in providing information that would reinforce this predisposition. They supplied data to the European clergy and academics who produced the first written histories of Rwanda. The collaboration resulted in a sophisticated and convincing but inaccurate history that simultaneously served Tutsi interests and validated European assumptions.
But we must note that this revision of history had a massively negative impact on the Hutu population :
"this faulty history was accepted by the Hutu, who stood to suffer from it, as well as by the Tutsi who helped to create it and were bound to profit from it. People of both groups learned to thinkof the Tutsi as the winners and the Hutu as the losers in every great contest in Rwandan history."
*3 ~ THE PRACTICALITIES OF DIVIDE & RULE
Let's remember that this division was used to employ the MINORITY, lighter skinned Tutsi to govern the MAJORITY, darker skinned Hutu. Everything was stacked up against the majority Hutus. This is quite typical actually.
The minority always have a vested interest in gaining a foothold on power and it's far too dangerous to work with the majority you are governing.
But it wasn't just the history books which got rewritten by the Belgians. The following changes also took place:
1959 - The first large scale killings begin. Anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 Tutsis were killed in violence preceding independence, while some 120,000 to 500,000 fled the country to neighboring countries such as Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo. Tutsi's have also now been campaigning for independence. The Belgians respond by exploiting the divide the other way. They begin to re-replace Tutsi chiefs with their rivals. And Belgians allowed the Hutu elite to engineer a coup, and independence was granted to Rwanda on July 1, 1962.
The French also backed the Hutus by now, funding and arming them as part of their Cold War effort. But other countries were funding the Tutsi 'Rebels'. And a result of this is a military coup d'état in 1973 which brought Juvenal Habyarimana into power, promising national unity. The govt is largely accepted by the global powers.
*5 ~ POST-COLONIAL NATION THRUST INTO A GLOBAL ECONOMY
After the Europeans left Rwanda was actually doing quite well. Habyarimana was praised for 'running a tight ship' with collective farming and production programmes. He flirts a lot with Castro and China's Commie influence. Like many socialist African govts, he is dogged by a poor economic track record - not to mention civil unrest from the old DIVIDE & RULE. In the grand scheme of things, the country was sorely set on a losing streak in the global marketplace. This came to a head in 1989 and the situation is best summed up by Richard H. Robbins:
Soon, whatever progress Rwanda was making to climb out of the pit of its colonial past was undermined by the collapse of the value of its export commodities -- tin and, more important, coffee. Until 1989, when coffee prices collapsed, coffee was, after oil, the second most traded commodity in the world. In 1989, negotiations over the extension of the International Coffee Agreement, a multinational attempt to regulate the price paid to coffee producers, collapsed when the United States, under pressure from large trading companies, withdrew, preferring to let market forces determine coffee prices. This resulted in coffee producers glutting the market with coffee and forcing coffee prices to their lowest level since the 1930s. While this did little to affect coffee buyers and sellers in wealthy countries, it was devastating to the producing countries, such as Rwanda, and to the small farmers who produced coffee."
Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999, 2002), p.271.
And what is a hungry man but an angry man?
The malnourished fingers of blame start to get pointed. The Hutus, with all that distorted history in their heads and with the media egging them on, quite naturally exacted their revenge on the Tutsi 'cockroaches', branding them traitors and collaborators -
hmmm where have we heard that before?
*6 ~ THE RESULT
Genocide resulted. 3/4 of the Tutsi population lost their lives at the hands of Hutu militias armed mostly with machetes. Mostly with machetes!!! ~ while the UN was present! The radio station in Kigali strongly promoted anti-Tutsi sentiment and used the code word "Tall trees" to refer to the Tutsi 'cockroaches'. Eventually the code words "we must cut the tall trees" were issued on the radio and the massacres began ~ while the UN was present.
Many of the UN troops fled, along with the rest of 'the whites' in Rwanda. Africans could kill themselves in their millions for all the world cared. I mean what use are they anyway? And as the battle raged on, we ate our dinners while watching the pictures or changing the channel, and around 800,000 Tutsis lost their lives in mankind's most recent genocide. Just 10 years ago.
DIVIDE & RULE in action.
I want to understand this crucial tool of governmental manipulation in its finest detail. It has afterall been used in countless instances throughout history and still affects much of the world today - check Iraq, N.Ireland and Kashmir for starters. I'm going to throw up some instances from history with some explanation. I really hope others will too. In finding out about this dynamic's implementation I've learnt much. Hopefully together we'll understand:
- How Divide & Rule has been used
- Why
- When & where
- By whom to which groups
- What were the consequences
- Other shocking, interesting and surprising stuff no doubt.
Here is one from the hip, starting with...duh! Rwanda. This turned out longer than I intended folks but it is hugely relevant to the situation in Iraq right now and I gained many significant insights into, well - lots! I am mainly quoting from "History, Leave None to Tell the Story"; Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch, March 1999. But a very good analysis can be found here
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIVIDE & RULE CASE STUDY NO.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Germany & Belgium
Hutu vs. Tutsi
RWANDA
1884 - 1994 and ongoing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*1 ~ RWANDA BEFORE COLONIAL TIMES & AT ITS INCEPTION
First up, Germany & Belgium did not fictitously create this divide. It existed already but in a benevolent form:
"The Rwanda area had been dominated by hunter gatherers (the Twa) since 1000 A.D. Hutu speakers began to settle in the area, with farms and a clan-based monarchy that dominated the Twa. Around the sixteenth century, new immigrants from the Horn of Africa, the cattle-raising Tutsi arrived and set up their own monarchy. Hutu and Tutsi were a type of class distinction, rather than based on physical differences. Tutsi were typically more dominant and controlled wealth such as cattle, while Hutu were without wealth and not tied to the powerful. But, people could move from being Hutu, to Tutsi, and the other way round, depending on their wealth and status. In addition, inter marriage was not uncommon, and power was attainable by both groups."
1884 - Germany acquires Rwanda after the Thieves' Charter is signed in Berlin, allowing Europeans to basically acquire whatever they want, esp. in Africa, as long as they have, well, set foot on it (without a single African nation present at the Conference). And they set about ruling the country thus:
When the Germans assumed control of the area after the Berlin Conference of 1884 as Robbins goes on (p. 270), they applied their racist ideology and assumed that the generally taller, lighter-skinned Tutsis were the more natural leaders, while the Hutus were destined to serve them. Consequently the Germans increased Tutsi influence.
*2 ~ REWRITING HISTORY
So the Germans were already exploiting these differences when WW1 ended and Rwanda was ceded to Belgium. Belgium's colonial strategy in central Africa was to enchance and exploit an extant difference yet further. They went about it systematically and viciously IMO. There are detailed accounts (in the link at foot, which all these quotes are taken from) of how Belgian monks, together with Tutsi historians, went about rewriting the history of Rwanda (Twa) to cleave open the growing canyon between these ancient neighbours:
In the early years of colonial rule, Rwandan poets and historians, particularly those from the milieu of the court, resisted providing Europeans with information about the Rwandan past. But as they became aware of European favoritism for the Tutsi in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they saw the advantage in providing information that would reinforce this predisposition. They supplied data to the European clergy and academics who produced the first written histories of Rwanda. The collaboration resulted in a sophisticated and convincing but inaccurate history that simultaneously served Tutsi interests and validated European assumptions.
But we must note that this revision of history had a massively negative impact on the Hutu population :
"this faulty history was accepted by the Hutu, who stood to suffer from it, as well as by the Tutsi who helped to create it and were bound to profit from it. People of both groups learned to thinkof the Tutsi as the winners and the Hutu as the losers in every great contest in Rwandan history."
*3 ~ THE PRACTICALITIES OF DIVIDE & RULE
Let's remember that this division was used to employ the MINORITY, lighter skinned Tutsi to govern the MAJORITY, darker skinned Hutu. Everything was stacked up against the majority Hutus. This is quite typical actually.
The minority always have a vested interest in gaining a foothold on power and it's far too dangerous to work with the majority you are governing.
But it wasn't just the history books which got rewritten by the Belgians. The following changes also took place:
*4 ~ INDEPENDENCE & THE COLD WAR
1959 - The first large scale killings begin. Anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 Tutsis were killed in violence preceding independence, while some 120,000 to 500,000 fled the country to neighboring countries such as Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo. Tutsi's have also now been campaigning for independence. The Belgians respond by exploiting the divide the other way. They begin to re-replace Tutsi chiefs with their rivals. And Belgians allowed the Hutu elite to engineer a coup, and independence was granted to Rwanda on July 1, 1962.
The French also backed the Hutus by now, funding and arming them as part of their Cold War effort. But other countries were funding the Tutsi 'Rebels'. And a result of this is a military coup d'état in 1973 which brought Juvenal Habyarimana into power, promising national unity. The govt is largely accepted by the global powers.
*5 ~ POST-COLONIAL NATION THRUST INTO A GLOBAL ECONOMY
After the Europeans left Rwanda was actually doing quite well. Habyarimana was praised for 'running a tight ship' with collective farming and production programmes. He flirts a lot with Castro and China's Commie influence. Like many socialist African govts, he is dogged by a poor economic track record - not to mention civil unrest from the old DIVIDE & RULE. In the grand scheme of things, the country was sorely set on a losing streak in the global marketplace. This came to a head in 1989 and the situation is best summed up by Richard H. Robbins:
Soon, whatever progress Rwanda was making to climb out of the pit of its colonial past was undermined by the collapse of the value of its export commodities -- tin and, more important, coffee. Until 1989, when coffee prices collapsed, coffee was, after oil, the second most traded commodity in the world. In 1989, negotiations over the extension of the International Coffee Agreement, a multinational attempt to regulate the price paid to coffee producers, collapsed when the United States, under pressure from large trading companies, withdrew, preferring to let market forces determine coffee prices. This resulted in coffee producers glutting the market with coffee and forcing coffee prices to their lowest level since the 1930s. While this did little to affect coffee buyers and sellers in wealthy countries, it was devastating to the producing countries, such as Rwanda, and to the small farmers who produced coffee."
Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999, 2002), p.271.
And what is a hungry man but an angry man?
The malnourished fingers of blame start to get pointed. The Hutus, with all that distorted history in their heads and with the media egging them on, quite naturally exacted their revenge on the Tutsi 'cockroaches', branding them traitors and collaborators -
hmmm where have we heard that before? *6 ~ THE RESULT
Genocide resulted. 3/4 of the Tutsi population lost their lives at the hands of Hutu militias armed mostly with machetes. Mostly with machetes!!! ~ while the UN was present! The radio station in Kigali strongly promoted anti-Tutsi sentiment and used the code word "Tall trees" to refer to the Tutsi 'cockroaches'. Eventually the code words "we must cut the tall trees" were issued on the radio and the massacres began ~ while the UN was present.
Many of the UN troops fled, along with the rest of 'the whites' in Rwanda. Africans could kill themselves in their millions for all the world cared. I mean what use are they anyway? And as the battle raged on, we ate our dinners while watching the pictures or changing the channel, and around 800,000 Tutsis lost their lives in mankind's most recent genocide. Just 10 years ago.
DIVIDE & RULE in action.
