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SNID Talk: Before the Explosions: Western economic, political, and military interventions before the Rwanda genocide an

When:
Thursday, March 15, 2018
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Where:
Mackintosh-Corry Hall
Room: D214
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Description:

Does it matter for the study of the Rwanda genocide and the Congo wars that the World Bank and IMF supported disastrous development initiatives, followed by the forced constriction of these economies? That a Western austerity program cut Rwanda's government budget by 40% in 1989 - a year before the 1990 invasion that started the Rwandan civil war? In the late 1980s, the US also provided covert support to Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda's bloody civil war, while in Zaire supporting Mobutu's maneuvers to stay in power despite agitation for multipartyism. I argue that these Western maneuvers created the conditions for Central Africa's explosions: the Burundi massacres of 1988 and 1993, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and the Congo wars of 1996 and 1998-2001.

Justin Podur is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He is the author of Haiti's New Dictatorship (2012), contributor to Empire's Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan (2013), and is currently working on a book about Western intervention in Central Africa since independence. 

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Cost:
free event
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