During his rebellion, Museveni recruited heavily from the Rwandan refugees located in the southwest of the country; of the 27 original members of the NRA, two were Tutsi refugees: Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame. Tutsi refugees formed a disproportionately large number of officers in the NRA for the simple reason that they joined early and had accumulated more experience. After his 1986 victory, Museveni rewarded their long service by appointing Rwigyema to the second-highest military post and Kagame to the post of acting head of military intelligence. Many Tutsi veterans were also members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was initially created as an intellectual forum. However, a nativist backlash resulted in the refugees feeling increasingly unwelcome. On 1 October 1990, the RPF invaded Rwanda, stating that they were fighting for a just government and the right to return, thus beginning the Rwandan Civil War. With the initial offensive repulsed, the RPF retrenched for a long guerrilla struggle. Museveni would later tacitly admit that he had not been consulted prior to the invasion but, faced with the choice of offering aid and sanctuary to his old comrades in the RPF or watching them defeated along Uganda's southern burden, chose to offer assistance. Roméo Dallaire, the head of United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (1993–1994), would later complain of the substantial restrictions the Ugandan government put on his efforts to discover military supplies surreptitiously transported to RPF-held areas in northern Rwanda.