Paul Kagame may cut a slight figure, yet no one would ever accuse him of lacking stamina—or ambition. He has run Rwanda for almost 30 years since he led a rebel army that toppled its genocidal regime in 1994, but shows no sign of flagging. Last month he said he would run for a fourth presidential term in elections next year. He will almost certainly win because many opponents are too frightened to stand against him, some having been locked up before previous polls.
If Mr Kagame is going nowhere, his army is certainly on the hoof. Rwandan troops are fighting rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) and waging war against jihadists in Mozambique. Now they are thought to be preparing to deploy to Benin, some 3,000km from home, to fight jihadists on the fringes of the Sahel. Mr Kagame, who visited Benin earlier this year, promised military support to Patrice Talon, that country’s increasingly authoritarian president.
These far-flung troop deployments are at the heart of Mr Kagame’s strategy of making Rwanda an exporter of security across Africa—the bobby on the beat, if you will—in exchange for profit and diplomatic influence. In doing so he is promising to fill a security vacuum that has emerged amid turmoil across large parts of the continent. Jihadists are terrorising millions across the Sahel, which has helped spark a spate of coups. Old power-brokers such as France are retreating or being forced out. Western influence is being challenged by great powers such as China and Russia and by shadowy newcomers such as Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. Big UN peacekeeping missions, such those in Mali and Congo, have not been terribly effective.
Yet the bitter irony of Mr Kagame’s becoming Africa’s policeman is that his own government is also one of the most thuggish and gangster-like on the block. An exhaustive report released today by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international monitor, documents Rwanda’s extensive extraterritorial campaign of intimidation, which includes more than a dozen murders, kidnappings or attempted kidnappings and violent attacks targeting Rwandans living abroad. The government has previously been accused of killing high-profile exiles such as Patrick Karegeya, Mr Kagame’s former intelligence chief, who was found strangled to death in a hotel room in Johannesburg in 2014. That prompted a rebuke from America. (Mr Kagame has denied Rwanda’s involvement, but with a nod and a wink, telling the Wall Street Journal: “I actually wish Rwanda did it.”) Yet the report by HRW suggests not just that the abuses are widespread and continuing, but that they may also be facilitated by Mr Kagame’s troop deployments abroad. Rwanda’s government said in a statement that “Human Rights Watch continues to present a distorted picture of Rwanda that only exists in their imagination” and said it had made progress in improving people’s well-being.
At first glance the idea of Rwanda exporting security seems preposterous. It has a population of just 13m, a GDP per person roughly half that of Haiti’s and only 33,000 regular soldiers. But its troops are tough and well trained and have inflicted crushing defeats on larger, less disciplined adversaries, such as in neighbouring Congo, which is roughly 100 times its size. In order to help fund its army and to raise hard currency, Rwanda has long been a mainstay of UN peacekeeping missions, to which it is the third-largest contributor worldwide. The nearly 6,000 blue helmets it sends abroad bring in some $8.5m a month. They have also won the gratitude of Western policymakers, helping Rwanda gain access to military training and equipment from NATO members, says J Peter Pham, an American former diplomat in Africa. Over the past few years, however, Mr Kagame has moved on to provide troops directly to embattled governments.
In 2020 he sent almost 1,000 soldiers to fight rebels threatening Faustin-Archange Touadéra, the president of the CAR, where they fought alongside Wagner mercenaries. The following year Rwanda sent troops to Mozambique, where jihadists have halted a $20bn natural-gas project led by TotalEnergies, a French oil major. With other troops from the region, they drove the militants from their strongholds. TotalEnergies is now preparing to relaunch its project. Benin is the latest country to call on Mr Kagame for help, following incursions by jihadists from Burkina Faso and Niger.
These deployments appear to serve two broad aims: to make money and influence people. The European Union has contributed €20m ($22m) to Rwanda’s mission in Mozambique. But that does not buy much. Instead, the real payback appears to be through Rwandan firms getting rights to mine minerals. Mr Kagame acknowledged as much in a recent interview with the Africa Report, saying that since Mozambique and the CAR had no money they had agreed to “find another way” to compensate Rwanda. A number of Rwandan companies have piled into both countries, many of them linked to Crystal Ventures, a sprawling holding company linked to Rwanda’s ruling party. “Wherever the army goes, Crystal Ventures follows,” says David Himbara, a former economic adviser to the president and now a vocal critic in exile.
More than 100 Rwandan companies are registered in the CAR, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank, up from about 20 in 2019. Among them is a firm linked to the Rwandan government that has reportedly been granted 25-year concessions over five mines.
Rwandan companies linked to Crystal Ventures are doing deals in Mozambique, too. One has reportedly won a security contract for the gas project. TotalEnergies declined to comment on specific contractors, but said all had been selected through a tender process.
The second payoff for Rwanda is diplomatic. Some Western countries see Rwanda as a useful counterweight to Wagner. Last year American officials involved Rwanda in secret talks with Mr Touadéra in an effort to displace Wagner, according to the ICG. In Mozambique, meanwhile, many suspect Mr Kagame ended a three-decade-long bust-up with France by riding to the rescue of Mozambique, where TotalEnergies operates. In return France announced a €500m aid package for Rwanda, to be disbursed over four years, having given less than €4m as recently as 2019.
Deploying troops to Benin would make Rwanda an even more valuable ally to the West, which is struggling to contain jihadists in the region and is losing influence to Russia, whose Wagner mercenaries are active in Mali. In doing so it could help the West “maintain its influence while decreasing its footprint”, says Mvemba Dizolele, the Africa director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington.
Yet Rwanda’s efforts to build closer security links with the West may well be undermined by its human-rights abuses and other meddling in the region. UN investigators have accused Rwanda of backing the M23, a rebel group that is destabilising parts of eastern Congo. This issue came to a head on September 15th, when America suspended military assistance to Rwanda (though President Joe Biden has given approval for these restrictions to be waived if Rwanda improves its behaviour). At the core of Rwanda’s appeal for the West is its offer to improve security and stability in the region. That seems less of a bargain if instead it is sewing chaos and fear. ■
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