There is a very big difference between the Rwanda Defence Forces and the armed forces of the previous government, commonly known as the Ex-Far, according to senior officers who have served in both armies. The former, besides playing a role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, was a feared army that was totally disconnected from the people.

Speaking to The New Times in an exclusive interview, Maj. Gen Jerome Ngendahimana, who was a Major during the liberation struggle, said that they would only stay in the barracks, without any interaction with the people they were supposed to serve.

Besides serving in the two forces, the General, who is currently the Reserve ForceDeputy Chief of Staff,  was also a senior leader within the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), before he decided to surrender and repatriate.

"They are completely different armies…on one side you have FAR, which was completely detached from the population; there was no interaction with the people which I think is more important. We were much feared by the people,” Ngendahimana said.

He also says the recruitment procedure is very different, where you had an army that was seen as only for the Hutu, who were the only ones entitled to be conscripted. 

"This is not the case with RDF; it is open to all Rwanda as long as one fulfills the necessary requirements,” he added.

During the interview, Ngendahimana narrated how they were beaten by the Rwanda Patriotic Army, though it was ill-equipped in all logistics, saying what was most important was the cause for which they fought.

"Because of the killings that were being sponsored by the government, especially killing of politicians, the international community seemed to have abandoned us, but the most important thing was the determination by the RPA,” says Ngendahimana, who at the time of his repatriation in 2003, was the FDLR Deputy Chief of Staff.

Though the General claims they had lost support of the international community, another officer who served with him, both in Ex-Far and FDLR has a different opinion.

In an interview, Lt Col Fredrick Itangayenda, who is better known as Ninja, said they openly received military hardware from the French soldiers in Umutara region, where he was based. 

There was a whole detachment of French armed forces who were providing them logistical and tactical support, he added.

"I remember when I was in Gabiro barracks during one of our drills; I personally witnessed French soldiers training the Interahamwe militia…it was all happening in broad day light. Actually, the Interahamwe were trained together with some Burundians,” said Itangayenda.

Itangayenda was infamous during the insurgencies that saw former soldiers who had fled to the DRC (Abacengezi) and were responsible for the mayhem in the north-western part of the country, hoping they would recapture state power.

Attack on Nyange students

Itangayenda had particularly been accused of masterminding the attack on Nyange School in the current Ngororero District, where on the night of March 18 1997, students were killed after they resisted ethnic profiling by the assailants, who wanted Hutu students separated from their Tutsi colleagues.

The victims together with the survivors of this attack have since been made national heroes.

Itangayenda, however, strongly denies the allegations.

"These are allegations that I have heard, but I was not part of that attack. As a battalion commander, I would not lead a small attack like that on a school. 

"Also, at the time of the attack on the school in 1997, I had not yet joined the insurgents and I was still at home in Gisenyi,” said the man, who is currently a lecturer at the RDF Senior Command and Staff College in Nyakinama.

He said his alibi is the birth of his first born son, who was born when he was still in Gisenyi (town). He added that as a former soldier at the time, he was required to report weekly to a nearby Police station, which he did until he left to join the Abacengezi.

"I joined the insurgents after the birth of my first born and the birth certificate clearly shows his date of birth. 

"Even when I joined, my group never operated in that area as we were mainly concentrated in the north, near the volcanoes,” he said.

ALIR, which metamorphosed into the FDLR, had initially held some pockets of the country in the north-west in their earlier days.

Ninja, who was in charge of counter intelligence in the group, said their major operational setback came after the people in the areas they held later refused to support them.

The people, according to both officers, used to give them food and other supplies.

"In 1998, we lost popular support, and the population, not only cut off the supplies, but also cut down the banana plantations where we hid most of the time. 

"This left us exposed to attacks from the national army…that is how we were repulsed and went back to the DRC,” he said.

After they returned to Congo, both officers held different positions in the rebel force before, at separate times they decided to return home.

Why insurgency?

According to Gen Ngendahimana, they launched the insurgencies simply because many did not want to return home after the several refugee camps in the DRC where they stayed, were forcefully shut down.

"We felt we would fight and eventually take over the country from the RPF.

"We were fighting with the late (Desire) Kabila forces. As time went on, we realised we were doing nothing fighting from a foreign country. The conviction we had, we knew we were very weak but we thought it was better off fighting from home,” he said.

However, both Ngendahimana and Itangayenda conceded in separate interviews that they soon realised "this was not a war that they could win”, mainly because, besides riding on ethnic sentiments, they had no justified cause to sell to the people to win their support.

"And the fact that the RPF government had started giving the people social services, some of them having not seen any such from previous government, they decided to abandon us and this is when the world started to crumble on us,” he said.

He said as the head of intelligence, "the operatives I sent into Rwanda to gather intelligence, some defected, others were captured, while those that made it back to base all had bad news from their operations”.

"We were clearly headed nowhere, and towards the end of the year 2000, I started laying strategies for my surrender,” said the Colonel, who surrendered that same year on Christmas Day.

Ngendahimana’s abandonment of the FDLR was mainly inspired by his wife whom he says tracked him in the jungles, where he stayed and it took her over two weeks to convince him to come home.  

"During those two weeks, I was literally interrogating her… I asked her many questions about the guarantee I had if I was to come home. I was even suspicious she had been compromised or misled to lure me home so that I get killed,” he said.

However, like his colleague, as a senior commander in the rebel movement, Ngendahimana had started seeing no solution in remaining in the bush because they could not under any circumstance win the war.

Why choose RDF

Meanwhile, both senior officers did not hesitate when, after their surrender, they were asked if they would want to be reintegrated in the army, or be discharged and lead their lives as ordinary citizens.

"I had not known any profession since I was young, having been a soldier and I immediately chose to stay in the military given an opportunity to serve my country,” he said, adding that he was surprised that on that particular day, he got reintegrated and given an RDF battalion to command.

In their words...

Maj Gen Ngendahimana on the attack in 1990

In 1990, when the RPF attacked on October 1, I was based in Butare…we heard of the attack on the news and we were surprised. To be honest, we did not take it very serious, we thought that this was just an insurgency and it would be just days before the rebels are defeated…we really undermined their strength.

We went on with our work and it was even of much less concern to people like us who operated from the countryside (and far from the frontline). Personally, among my duties was securing the border with Burundi in the south, which was far from the North East where the attack had been launched.

But the general impression was that the situation would be back to normal within just a matter of days. This is mainly because almost all the armed forces at the time (FAR) had never been exposed to a war in their entire career.

Indeed, we took advantage of what I think was the disorganisation or strategic mistakes on the part of the rebels in the first few days of the attack. Naturally, there were celebrations across the country, but these celebrations were short-lived.

Within just a month, the RPA reorganised itself and launched another offensive against our force, and this time used a different approach. Initially, it had launched a conventional war, but the second attack was guerilla tactic and this is when they attacked from north in the thick forest of the virunga and throughout 1991, the struggle stretched from east to the northern part of the country.

During this time, I was part of Gendermerie, but I was deployed to reinforce the combat forces in Ruhengeri (North). I fought in Butaro, in the present-day Butaro area towards the volcanoes…but as we fought on, the struggle took a different shape…as RPA gained momentum, FAR got more and more demoralised because we had started treating the situation with the seriousness it deserved.

For example, there is this major attack around February 1992 by RPA where they came up to Base (Rulindo District, about an hour outside Kigali) they were gaining strength and this led the government to agree to the Arusha peace talks.

Lt Col Itangayenda on if the FDLR will ever make any military gains

In military tactics, I think what they are doing is survival. First of all, there is no objective for them to remain in combat; they are like any other bandit you see in town, who will survive on snatching people’s wallets.

I am reluctant to comment about their strength because this is preceded by the aim to fight. A small army with clear objective is worth getting someone worried, but then these have neither the objective for their struggle nor the military strength itself because thousands have over the years abandoned them.

Even from the time I was part of the insurgents, the hardest part was to come up with objectives; something with which to convince the population to win their support. With no popular support, there is no way you will ever pose a threat.

The objectives by RPF are for instance clear and they are clearly delivering on these…for example if they say the objective is to deal with all issues that would lead Rwandans into refuge and they have delivered; millions have returned home, if they say we want to fight poverty among all Rwandans with no form of discrimination whatsoever, and millions are being lifted out of poverty…the list is endless.

When I was still part of them, I remember in meetings with the foot soldiers, you would only feed them lies and we ran out of these…I would just tell them to sing because there was nothing to tell them.