In the 1994 genocide we can identify six main levels of perpetrator:

1. The Hutu MRND little house clan that seized power on April 7, 1994;

2. Other Hutu Power political factions entering the post-coup regime;

3. Cooperating Hutu officials and army and police officers;

4. Cooperating Hutu local social elites;

5. Hutu paramilitaries;

6. A large number of ordinary Hutus.

The first five of these formed the various levels of a party-state, brandishing an extreme ideology and dispensing economic patronage through public offices, nationalized industries, and aid and development funds. Their ideological, economic, military, and political powers enabled them to mobilize group 6 in a genocidal process. This chapter traces this mobilization process.

Some degree of indirect blame can also be laid on the Great Powers, especially France, allied to the Hutu regime, and the United States, which blocked any UN intervention. General Romeo Dallaire, commanding the small UN force already in Rwanda, asked for reinforcements as soon as the killings began, insisting that 5,500 troops could prevent genocide. Pentagon advisers were later to endorse his assessment, yet the UN did not respond since the Security Council's permanent members, led by the United States, refused to provide troops or money. All this is laid bare by the International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) Report of the Organization for African Unity and, more bitterly, by Melvern (2000: chap. 14), who believes the Great Powers knew what was happening and still refused to intervene.