By Chinedu Eliyahs
The 1994 Rwandan Genocide was a watershed with regard to reshaping US foreign policy and UN/UNSC doctrine in respect of intervention in internal conflicts within sovereign states.
US Somali Syndrome.
It has been said that the American government’s tragic reluctance to intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda was due to the hangover it suffered from its debacle in Mogadishu, Somalia (1993).
US Rwandan Remorse.
Till date, Clinton who was the US President at the time of the Rwandan Genocide, still regrets and laments his hesitation to intervene to stop the carnage in Rwanda.
In any case, international relations and political dynamics within the international political system have critically and drastically changed since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the Bosnia/Kosovo wars of 1995. Recall that the former Yugoslavia was partitioned into seven independent republics – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo. With some ethnicities boxed and trapped in enclaves surrounded by a different nationality. This resulted in ethnic cleansing and territorial wars that caused horrendous humanitarian crisis in the region. Remember the July 1995 unconscionable massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys by Serbian irregulars in the city of Srebenica, Bosnia during the period?
US Blitzkrieg on Bosnia
The sheer scale and severity of the Srebenica massacre jolted a seemingly hesitant international community to take immediate and decisive military action to put an end to the genocide and crimes against humanity in the Serbian-held parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. So, in August 1995, President Clinton in coalition with America NATO allies swiftly launched massive campaign of air bombardments against military installations/locations of the belligerent Bosnia Serbian army. Thus, President Clinton decisively put an end to the genocide and humanitarian crisis in the Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo enclaves.
The West Bemoans Biafra
Similarly and surprisingly. some European foreign policy analysts and influential political leaders in Europe, in consideration of the humongous human carnage in the Biafran genocide, have over the years retrospectively opined that it was a grave mistake for American and Western European leaders at the time of Nigeria – Biafra War (1966 -1970), not to have intervened to stop the genocide against Biafra, and not to have supported the secession of Biafra from Nigeria.
American Mercy Airdrops
Again, recall that in August 2014, President Barack Obama simultaneously ordered precision air strikes against ISIS terrorists on the one hand, and massive airdrops of packages of food and water to tens of thousands of Yazidis and other ethno-religious minorities in Iraq who were stranded on the Sinjar desert mountain, as they fled from ISIS genocidal onslaught. Let’s call it Anti-ISIS Military Airstrikes and American Mercy Airdrops. This effectively prevented ISIS from finishing off the Yazidis.
Military and or humanitarian intervention to prevent or end genocide is justified under international law. Moreover, it is supported by the UN 2005 doctrine of Responsibility to Protect – R2P. In this regard, the UN urges or justifies the intervention of member states in countries or regions where there is large-scale violence, due to general break down of law, order and security; where a failed or failing state is deemed incapable or unwilling to prevent or stop; or it is irresponsible, indifferent, even complicit in the said genocidal killings, ethnic cleansing and ensuing humanitarian crisis within its boarders, with or without the invitation of the government of such a country.
The seemingly uncontrollable State of fear and insecurity, and humanitarian crises caused by unabated and spiraling terrorism, banditry and brigandage in Nigeria, seem to justify this type of external military intervention by the US government.
Eliyahs Writes from Awka.
