page_title: Rwandan genocide
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Rwandan genocide / International involvement / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Members from the 501st Transportation Squadron, Kaiserslautern Germany, and C Company, 3rd Battalion, 325th Infantry Brigade (Airborne Combat Team, (ABCT)), Southern European Task Force (SETAF), Vicenza, Italy, and the Task Force 51, Mannheim Germany, bring a convoy of fresh water. The water was made by eight chlorinators and two reverse osmosis machines in Goma for Rwandan refugees located at Camp Kimbumba, Zaire. Photographer's Name: TSgt. Marv Krause, VIRIN: J-3003-SPT-94-04-0004-0683
context_page_description: The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, was a mass slaughter of Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutu in Rwanda, which took place between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.
  In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group composed of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage in the war, and the Rwandan government led by President Juvénal Habyarimana signed the Arusha Accords with the RPF on 4 August 1993. Many historians argue that a genocide against the Tutsi had been planned for at least a year. However, Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994 created a power vacuum and ended peace accords. Genocidal killings began the following day when soldiers, police, and militia executed key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders.
  The scale and brutality of the massacre caused shock worldwide, but no country intervened to forcefully stop the killings. Most of the victims were killed in their own villages or towns, many by their neighbors and fellow villagers.
context_section_description: Intelligence reports indicate that United States president Bill Clinton and his cabinet were aware before the height of the massacre that a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" was planned. However, fear of a repeat of the events in Somalia shaped US policy at the time, with many commentators identifying the graphic consequences of the Battle of Mogadishu as the key reason behind the US's failure to intervene in later conflicts such as the Rwandan genocide. After the battle, the bodies of several US casualties of the conflict were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by crowds of local civilians and members of Aidid's Somali National Alliance. According to the former US deputy special envoy to Somalia, Walter Clarke: "The ghosts of Somalia continue to haunt US policy. Our lack of response in Rwanda was a fear of getting involved in something like a Somalia all over again." President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings, saying "I don't think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it." Eighty percent of the discussion in Washington concerned the evacuation of American citizens.
caption: Convoy of American military vehicles bring fresh water from Goma to Rwandan refugees located at camp Kimbumba, Zaire in August 1994
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