From October 1990 to July 1994, the government of Rwanda under President Juvénal Habyarimana fought the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army formed largely by Tutsi refugees living in Uganda. A peace agreement signed in 1993 broke down after Habyarimana was killed in April 1994, when Hutu extremists launched the Rwandan genocide. The RPF resumed its offensive, took the capital, Kigali, on 4 July and ended the war on 18 July 1994, bringing the genocide to a halt and taking control of the country.
Roots of the conflict
Under Belgian colonial rule, Tutsi had been favoured over the Hutu majority, and from 1935 identity cards fixed each person's group. A Hutu revolution beginning in 1959 overthrew the Tutsi monarchy, and by 1964 more than 336,000 Tutsi had fled to Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire. Rwanda became independent in 1962 as a Hutu-led republic, and in 1973 the army officer Habyarimana seized power and later created a one-party state. In Uganda, Tutsi exiles including Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army, which took power in 1986, and then built a network inside the Ugandan army. Facing hostility in Uganda and an economic crisis in Rwanda, they decided in 1990 to invade.
Invasion and setback, 1990
On 1 October 1990 the RPF crossed from Uganda into north-eastern Rwanda, with perhaps 2,500 fighters according to its own estimates. Rwigyema was killed on the second day, in circumstances still disputed. France sent troops, officially to protect its citizens but in practice supporting the government, and by the end of October the invasion had been largely defeated. The Rwandan government arrested more than 8,000 people, mostly Tutsi, and local officials organised the killing of 383 Tutsi in Kibilira. Kagame returned from the United States, regrouped the rebels in the Virunga mountains and in January 1991 raided the northern town of Ruhengeri, beginning a guerrilla war that lasted until mid-1992.
The road to Arusha
Domestic protests forced Habyarimana into negotiations with the RPF and opposition parties in Arusha, Tanzania. Extremist Hutu factions, which became known as Hutu Power, opposed any deal and carried out killings of Tutsi civilians; their youth militias included the Interahamwe. In February 1993 the RPF launched a new offensive that met weak resistance and strengthened its hand at the talks. The Arusha Accords, signed on 4 August 1993, provided for a power-sharing government and a merged army in which the RPF would hold half the officer posts. A UN peacekeeping mission, UNAMIR, arrived later that year, and several hundred RPF soldiers were stationed in Kigali.
Genocide and the final campaign
On 6 April 1994 the plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi's president was shot down near Kigali. Responsibility remains disputed: French and Spanish judges later accused the RPF, while a later French ballistics and acoustics study seemed to support the view that Hutu extremists were responsible, and the French case was dropped in 2018 for lack of evidence. Within hours, a military crisis committee and an interim government began the systematic killing of Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed in about a hundred days. The RPF renewed the war on three fronts, moved south through eastern Rwanda, cut off and then took Gitarama, and fought through Kigali. France's Opération Turquoise created a protected zone in the south-west from late June. The fall of Gisenyi on 18 July drove the interim government into Zaire.
Aftermath
The RPF formed a government with the Hutu politician Pasteur Bizimungu as president and Kagame as vice-president and defence minister; Kagame became president in 2000. Some 7,500 combatants had died in the war. Human Rights Watch and some scholars allege that RPF soldiers killed as many as 100,000 people during and after the genocide; Kagame has acknowledged killings but attributed them to rogue soldiers. About two million Hutu fled to camps in neighbouring countries, chiefly Zaire, where leaders of the former regime rearmed. Rwanda's attack on those camps in 1996 began the First Congo War.
On our maps
Our 1985 map shows Rwanda before the war, and the 1994 map shows the country in the year of the genocide and the RPF victory.
From the atlas
Rwandan Civil War in time and on the map
Rwandan Civil War lasted from 1990 to 1993. The nearest maps from before and after are 1985 and 1994; compare them side by side.
Living through it, among others on this site: Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006), Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Desmond Tutu (1931–2021), Elizabeth II (1926–2022), Fidel Castro (1926–2016), Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000), Idi Amin (1925–2003), John Rawls (1921–2002), Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) and Karl Popper (1902–1994).
Other events of the same years: Satsuma Rebellion (1877–2005), Nahda (1900–2000), Cold War (1945–1991), The Troubles (1960–1998), Guatemalan Civil War (1965–1996), Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), Nicaraguan Revolution (1978–1990), Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) and Singing Revolution (1987–1991).
Next to it in time on this site: before, Gulf War (1990–1991) and Human Genome Project (1990–2003); after, Breakup of Yugoslavia (1991–1992) and Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991).
Quick answers
- When did Rwandan Civil War happen?
- It began in 1990 and ended in 1993, lasting 3 years.
- Where did Rwandan Civil War take place?
- Rwanda.
- How did the map change?
- Compare the atlas’s maps of 1985 and 1994 side by side.