It’s noticeable as soon as you cross the border from Uganda.

A palpable anxiety, hanging in the air over the country: a sense of apprehension. Rwanda feels like it’s trying to enjoy a brief respite from violence, knowing that a similar future is inevitable. The genocide of 1994 may be in the past, but the causes have not been addressed.

If Rwanda continues down the path it’s on now – despite the infrastructure development in Kigali, Rick Warren’s attempts to create a “purpose-driven nation,” and all the good intentions and foreign aid of international organizations – it won’t be long before genocide surfaces again.

And I get the feeling that deep down, many Rwandans sense it.

There were several factors that led to the 1994 genocide, but land pressures were probably the primary cause. A country of 8 million that relied on agriculture, in a land smaller than the state of Maryland, simply couldn’t continue to support population growth. Nearly every square inch of Rwanda’s steep hillsides is deforested and used for growing crops.

Add the authoritarian government of Habyarimana, the Hutu president that had held power since the early 1970s. Since independence, the Tutsi – a minority but a favorite of the colonial powers – had been seeking to restore their power. In the early 1990s, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, was trying to destabilize the government from bases in Uganda.

But the fuse that set the whole thing off was the media. “Hutu Power Radio,” as it was known, fueled ethnic hatred as an outlet for the economic and land frustrations in the country. It’s an age-old recipe for controlling an angry public: channel the anger away from authority figures and toward the minority “other.” When the shipments of Chinese-made machetes started arriving across the country, the solution became obvious.

[...at Murambi Genocide Memorial in southern Rwanda, the clothes of victims found in a mass grave have been collected and still remain, 15 years on...]

Unfortunately, despite the reconstruction efforts of the international community, the major causes of the genocide – insufficient land area, an authoritarian government and the abuse of media – all still exist in Rwanda.

Other than two national parks, the entire country is deforested and farmed. The only trees left are non-native eucalyptus, a fast-growing tree that provides firewood.

Paul Kagame has been the effective leader of Rwanda since 1994, first directing a figurehead transitional government. He was installed as president in 2000, and finally elected in 2003. He is expected to run for president again in 2010. That makes at least 16 years and counting…

Throw in the Rwanda military’s penchant for interfering with its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo (at the behest of Kagame and his RPF party). Tutsi militias, backed by Rwanda, have been on a 15-year, human-rights-abusing warpath of revenge against Hutus in the Congo (many genocidaires fled to the Congo and are a primary factor in Congo’s conflict). Of course, there is also Rwanda’s long-held claims that large swaths of Eastern Congo are actually part of Rwanda (that would solve the lack of land, wouldn’t it?).

But don’t forget a complicit media. The Rwanda Dispatch, a glossy monthly “news” magazine sold on the streets of Kigali, had an article praising the new media laws in Rwanda. Why do they think that “both journalists…and media consumers…will be celebrating?”

“[A new law requires] minimum capital for prospective investors…Some people have been setting up media firms, especially newspapers, without figuring out sustainability of resources for administrative and other costs…

[T]he result has often been publications registered as weeklies, but actually coming out after three months…

[The lack of start-up capital] had a lot to do with the abundant freedom exercised by all, including those having less than a million francs ($20,000 USD) as initial investment, to set up so-called newspapers.

[This law] will no doubt deal a blow to the lazy, irresponsible, malicious and amateurish press.”

Really? Saying you’ll publish once a week and then (heaven forbid!) only publishing once a month is a serious problem? (I’ll ignore the fact that the Dispatch apparently doesn’t have enough capital themselves to renew their website domain…)

As a sign of their responsible and professional journalism, the next story in the magazine is a 2-page hagiography on Paul Kagame. It’s so over-the-top NOT journalism, it’s embarrassing to read:

“…Paul Kagame – the man who has come to personify hope, vision and reconciliation world over…but of whose transformational prowess and ideas are beyond [his] territorial boundaries.

In this unfolding appeal, I wish to give my attention to the man the world has come to admire most because of his superlative performances…The man is Paul Kagame….”

It goes on from there – but you get the idea (I wonder how much Congolese civilians admire Kagame, given his support for pro-Rwandan militias operating in the Congo). The rest of the magazine is filled with pro-RPF, pro-Rwandan government, pro-Kagame propaganda. The daily newspaper, The New Times, isn’t much better.

[...more than 50,000 Tutsi were slaughtered inside the Murambi school in southern Rwanda during the genocide. The rooms still house the dead - men, women, children, and babies - preserved in lime and all with tell-tale signs of murder: heads with machete marks still visible; legs cut clean through, limbs mangled by clubs and garden hoes...]

Rwanda, still trying to recover from mass murder, where their friends and neighbors were among the perpetrators, faces the same three problems almost two decades later:

• Pushed to the brink by unsustainable land use and over-population, they have done little to address the problem.
• After suffering under one authoritarian government, they have replaced it with another.
• A media that followed the government line to the point that they incited mass murder has used that lesson to justify a crackdown on media that doesn’t follow the new government line.

In reality, the genocide never really ended – it just transplanted itself into the DRC, causing a 15-year conflict. The international community and media seem content to ignore the Congo and the 4 million dead, conveniently misidentifying it as a “civil war” (which is also what the world said in 1994 about Rwanda) and placating themselves with slogans like “never again.”

Meanwhile, international aid workers have developed a fetish for anything Rwanda, driving up the cost of living in Kigali far beyond what average Rwandans can afford. The Tutsi have been labeled as victims and given a free pass in world politics by an international community that feels guilty for letting one million people be murdered. The Hutu have wrongly been generalized, stereotyped and demonized as tribal, blood-thirsty and hateful, and are used as evidence that ethnicity – not economics – was the cause of the genocide.

The new generation of Rwandans has no memory of 1994, but the causes are still there – no land, authoritarian and unresponsive government, and a censored and controlled media. How long before the young are manipulated into perpetrating the same crimes?

The clock is ticking.