Cyangogu, Rwanda
It says something for the change that David Cameron has already wrought in his party that I find myself in Rwanda courtesy of Andrew Mitchell, the Conservatives’ international development spokesman, and Lord Ashcroft (who provided the plane). Aid, trade and conflict resolution provide one of the six policy themes on which the Tories are working, and the hardest of Tory hard men now pursue the subject. Mitchell says that the party’s ‘Victor Meldrew’ dislike of international development is to be banished. Rwanda is a good first stop to study the problems because it was probably the greatest disaster of international intervention ever. In 1994 the ‘international community’ proved its semi-fictional status by willing the end — an agreement for broad-based transitional government leading to multi-party elections — but not the means. The UN force in the capital, Kigali, was constantly denied the men, money and rules of engagement needed to prevent bloodshed.
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