This is a list of wars involving Rwanda since its independence from Belgium in 1962.
This is a list of wars involving Rwanda since its independence from Belgium in 1962.
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the sobriquet "land of a thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. It is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth-most densely populated country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kigali.
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has been the President of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel armed force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the armed force which ended the Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he was Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000 after which the vice-presidential post was abolished.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbors, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped.
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War or the Great War of Africa, was a major conflict that began on 2 August 1998 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), just over a year after the First Congo War. The war initially erupted when Congolese president Laurent-Désiré Kabila turned against his former allies from Rwanda and Uganda, who had helped him seize power. Eventually, the conflict expanded, drawing in nine African nations and approximately 25 armed groups, making it one of the largest wars in African history.
The First Congo War, also known as Africa's First World War, was a civil and international military conflict that lasted from 24 October 1996 to 16 May 1997, primarily taking place in Zaire. The war resulted in the overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, who was replaced by rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. This conflict, which also involved multiple neighboring countries, set the stage for the Second Congo War (1998–2003) due to tensions between Kabila and his former allies.
The Rwanda Defence Force is the military of the Republic of Rwanda. The country's armed forces were originally known as the Forces armées rwandaises (FAR), but following the Rwandan Civil War of 1990–1994 and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front (Inkotanyi) renamed it the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), its army name during the struggle of 1990–1994. Later, it was renamed to its current name.
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda is an armed rebel group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. As an ethnic Hutu group opposed to the ethnic Tutsi influence, the FDLR is one of the last factions of Rwandan rebels active in the Congo. It was founded through an amalgamation of other groups of Rwandan refugees in September 2000, including the former Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALiR), under the leadership of Paul Rwarakabije. It was active during the latter phases of the Second Congo War and the subsequent insurgencies in Kivu.
The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. A 1959–1962 revolution had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsi to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.
The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees.
Fred Gisa Rwigema was a Rwandan military officer and revolutionary. He was the founder of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political and rebel group formed by Rwandan Tutsi exile descendants of those forced to leave the country after the 1959 Hutu Revolution.
The Banyarwanda are a Bantu ethnolinguistic supraethnicity. The Banyarwanda are also minorities in neighboring DR Congo, Uganda and Tanzania.
Gérard Prunier is a French academic, historian, and consultant. He specializes in African history and affairs —particularly the Horn of Africa and the African Great Lakes regions.
Human rights in Rwanda have been violated on a grand scale. The greatest violation is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi in 1994. The post-genocide government is also responsible for grave violations of human rights.
The Simba rebellion, also known as the Orientale revolt, was a regional uprising which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1963 and 1965 in the wider context of the Congo Crisis and the Cold War. The rebellion, located in the east of the country, was led by the followers of Patrice Lumumba, who had been ousted from power in 1960 by Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Joseph-Désiré Mobutu and subsequently killed in January 1961 in Katanga. The rebellion was contemporaneous with the Kwilu rebellion led by fellow Lumumbist Pierre Mulele in central Congo.
The Rwandan Revolution, also known as the Hutu Revolution, Social Revolution, or Wind of Destruction, was a period of ethnic violence in Rwanda from 1959 to 1961 between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda. The revolution saw the country transition from a Tutsi monarchy under Belgian colonial authority to an independent Hutu-dominated republic.
The Kanyarwanda War was a conflict in the northeastern region of Congo-Léopoldville, specifically the newly-established province of North Kivu, between the Banyarwanda and indigenous groups within North Kivu including the Hunde and Nande groups that lasted from 1963 to 1966. It was sparked by years of ethnic tensions between the Banyarwandan people, who had significant influence and power in North Kivu and surrounding provinces, and native groups such as the Hunde and Nande groups.
André Kisase Ngandu was a Congolese rebel leader. An insurgent in the Simba rebellion of the 1960s, he immigrated to East and later West Germany where he lived for many years. He resumed his rebel activity with Ugandan support in the 1990s and emerged as leader of the National Council of Resistance for Democracy (CNRD) which waged an insurgency in eastern Zaire.
Modern relations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have origins that date back to the European colonial era. Sharing a border that is 221 km in length, the two countries were both colonial possessions of Belgium between 1919 and 1960, and were impacted by the two world wars. Both Rwanda and the Congo experienced violent upheavals during their first years of independence, with the Congo being left with a weak central authority, and Rwanda dealing with periodic raids and incursions from expelled Tutsi rebels in the east of the Congo.
Relations between Burundi and Rwanda have existed for at least as long as the states themselves. Before contact with Europeans, Rwanda and Burundi were kingdoms competing to gain control over nearby territory. In the 1880s, the two kingdoms were placed under colonial authority, first by Germany, and then by Belgium after 1919.
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, originally published as From Genocide to Continental War: The 'Congolese' Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa is a non-fiction book by French historian Gérard Prunier. It was originally published in 2009 by C. Hurst & Co., and then republished in the United States of America later that same year under a new title by Oxford University Press. In the book, Prunier discusses events starting from the Rwandan genocide and the collapse of Zaire through the Second Congo War and the years afterward.
