There are obviously still fresh wounds and current political implications at play with regards to the events discussed in this article. Our priority here at this subreddit is to focus on the things that happened at least 20 years ago, and not those reverberating effects still occurring now.

With an event so closely tied to more modern politics and a story that clearly has some modern political implications the line between acceptable and rule breaking can be very blurry.

So we just ask that you try your best to ensure that the main focus here is on the past events (i.e. whether France was actually complicit in the 1994 genocide) and less so on the present events (i.e. how politicians might currently be acting regarding it). If you are unsure or have any questions feel free to contact the mods via modmail.

I went to a Rwandan Church memorial in Nyamata in 2019. Hit harder than anything I have seen before anywhere because it was so fresh and in such an underdeveloped part of the world. They don’t have enough money to memorialize in any grand way but do the best they can. This church had pews and pews full of blood stained clothing. The doors and walls still had bullet holes. The outer door was still fragmented from a grenade. It honestly felt like they were still continuing to even clean up after the massacre.

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If you recall, Clinton later confessed his inaction was one of his biggest regrets? https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/02/bill-clinton-regrets-rwanda-now-not-so-much-in-1994 Woulda-Coulda. I hope we learn from history with enough gusto to practice peace, with force if necessary.

The problem at the time is that intervention was seen as neo-colonialist and bad. The US got roundly criticized for intervening in Somalia. People rightfully asked why the hell western troops were being sent to third world nations on peacekeeping operations which seemed to only produce collateral damage and bad blood between the occupiers and occupied.

Then Rwanda happens, all the western nations are frozen. Do they send in troops and get shit on at home and abroad about being the "world police"? Needlessly interfering with other people's problems. Perpetuating warfare by being in a place no one asked them to be in. They clearly were stuck in a catch-22, chose to try to downplay the genocide and hope it blows over so they could get out of having an occupying force overseas. Didn't happen and it looked bad.

A couple years later Kosovo happens, You see the USA and UN step up, they didn't want a repeat of Rwanda.

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The church in Nyamata is intentionally left like that. The Rwandan Government has taken out LOTS of money to upgrade certain sites of the genocide. They left Nyamata alone because of its rawness

The West is always in a damned if you do damned if you don’t in these sort of situations. You’ll have just as many people on one side saying its right to intervene to stop genocide / revolution / terrorism, etc than you will on the other saying its neocolonialism / tyrannical, etc.

Hasn’t this already been thoroughly documented?

France implicated in/doing something bad in Africa?!?! How unexpected

Your description of the US (and the west in general) as a morality-driven force doesnt reflect the reality at all.

> The US got roundly criticized for intervening in Somalia.
> ...
> Then Rwanda happens

For reference, those were only 6 months apart:

• Oct 3, 1993: Battle of Mogadishu ("Black Hawk Down")
• April 7, 1994: Rwandan genocide starts

The fact that so little time passed between those two events is highly likely to have played a role in determining the response to the latter.

>Then Rwanda happens, all the western nations are frozen. Do they send in troops and get shit on at home and abroad about being the "world police"?

No that's fair enough - but I think the crux of the issue here is that France was already operating in Rwanda. Civil war had broken out a few years earlier and France were already there, supporting the government against the rebels, training them, supplying them, etc.

Then, government-sanctioned gangs start up the genocide and France just... ignores it, because they don't want the rebels to gain ground. Hell, the French govt were aware that the "Presidential Guard", who they had trained, were actively murdering civilians (page 327).

It's one thing to jump into another nation's affairs, but it's another thing entirely to do nothing when you've already jumped in.

Seriously.

One of the stories (Page xviii) is of a terrified woman being chased by a gang. She runs out and collides with a parked car that two French soldiers are sitting in, desperate for help. One of the murderers comes up, sees the French soldiers, sees that they don't move, and drags the woman off. Later, they "kindly acknowledge" the French soldiers with a "smile and a friendly wave".

The West stopped ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. The UK stopped a civil war in Sierra Leone. France was helping fight against Islamic terrorists in Mali.

I agree its not always morality driven. In fact I’d say its mostly not - it’s mostly driven by self interest. But there has been times where interventions have had in part been driven by morals.

Of a horrific topic. I knew some stuff about it, but this report is stomach-churning. Holy Moses.

The US certainly had a hand to play, and did more then inaction to make the situation worse.

"Kagame is only in place at all because he serves a purpose

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/07/exposing-the-crimes-of-the-cias-fair-haired-boy-paul-kagame-and-the-rwandan-patriotic-front/

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/08/brutal-from-the-beginning-paul-kagame-rwanda/"

Links were provided to me from a fellow i was discussing with on matters related to kagame and how much a shite guy he was.

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They are largely being criticized here for inaction. Might wanna read next time

I think you should rather reverse the statement: it is rarely
driven by anything else than self interest. If you take a closer look
at any of your examples, you ll get a different picture.
The UK intervention was primarly meant to evacuate british
and other foreign citizens from Freetown, where they were eventually
attacked by the rebel forces. The biggest diamond mining corporation happens also to be british (Sierra Leone´s President used to sell-out
the diamond mines for military support, it was only after the long
civil war that a ban on "blood diamonds" was installed).
Uranium and oil in Mali as well as in Niger are big part of France´s
strategical interest in Westafrica so their intervention is not surprising
and can be clearly considered as a means to save "their" resources. And speaking about the Balkans, you might want to read what Taylor
Branch had to say about the leaders of the "west".
I understand the desire to see the west, especially the US, as some kind
of a "good" world police force, at least to some extend, but it simply doesnt
hold true, except in Hollywood movies.

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While I understand your point I think we also need to think in a very pragmatic way. Those soldiers in the story had orders and can't act on their own gut feelings. Taking a stance here would have had so many implications.

I don't see a way where France would not be blamed. If the French army had taken a strong stance and toppled the Rwandan power, I don't know if it could have prevented anything in terms of civil war and massacres, but it would have been sure to create a power vacuum in the middle of a bloody civil war from a western former colonial power.

I guess the best option was to leave completely, impose fast sanctions, and not get involved further. Still a massacre with a loss of influence as well for the aftermath.

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That's my picture as well.

I wrote a paper about this, Rwanda directly led to the United Nations "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine which has been invoked more than 80 times since its introduction.

I argued that intervention to stop atrocity is needed, but we also need a democratization of the security council if allegations (and instances) of neo-imperialism are to ever be effectively resolved. Unfortunately that seems very unlikely, especially with the resumption of great power politics on the world stage.

In the genocide museum in Kigali it says that France financed the weapons that were used in the genocide. It doesn't say if it was government or private but says all it took was $7 million USD

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You can't democratize the security council, that's the whole point. Why would any of the countries on it listen to weaker ones, if they were appointed? They'd just quit or ignore anything "binding."

Right, it's clearly a contested idea, but this article details what it might look like. It doesn't advocate a complete democratization, but one in which a veto is tied to atleast one other country, so not unilateral (among other things). Don't get me wrong, I highly doubt this will ever happen in my lifetime, but it's not an unreasonable notion in and of itself.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/17/decolonizing-united-nations-means-abolish-permanent-five-security-council/

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Point.

I am no politician and have, like, zero knowledge of the delicacies of international politics, so I can't authoritatively say what the correct action for the French government would have been. And I am not a soldier either, so I can't really fault the soldiers in the story too much - they did have orders of some kind. I have no idea what I would do when faced with such a scenario, so I'm not going to sit here in my armchair with 20/20 hindsight and say "Oh they all should have done X or Y".

But I can say that refusing to condemn the acts, lying to their own troops, not asking their allies what the hell they were doing, and even stymieing efforts to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, were almost certainly not the right actions to take.

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Fair points in your last paragraph.

Find and watch the film Shooting Dogs and you'll understand why. There's another one called Sometimes In April that explores the same events.

> Uranium and oil in Mali

There are neither uranium nor oil in Mali.

Lol they're not

French did intervene but on the guilty side

They don't have those "damned you do or don't" mentality when the rebel regroups and launched a fanatical counter offensive (or to be exact, a counter genocide) to avenge all the previous atrocities

They went straight to action, deploy by the thousands, and help the government evacuate. This was after they deployed tens of advisors helping the govt army

Oh and this is after they refused to evacuate the Tutsis that's gonna be killed en mass, they only let foreigners in. Not even Tutsi spouses were welcome

but when the genocidal Hutus came running? Lo and behold their attitude changed

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Lol they're not

French did intervene but on the guilty side

They don't have those "damned you do or don't" mentality when the rebel regroups and launched a fanatical counter offensive (or to be exact, a counter genocide) to avenge all the previous atrocities

They went straight to action, deploy by the thousands, and help the government evacuate. This was after they deployed tens of advisors helping the govt army

Oh and this is after they refused to evacuate the Tutsis that's gonna be killed en mass, they only let foreigners in. Not even Tutsi spouses were welcome

but when the genocidal Hutus came running? Lo and behold their attitude changed

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It took them this long to finger France for this?

I know this 20 years ago when I was a kid, I had family in the CAF who had friends under the command of the UN Peace keeping force which was Canadian led. This mission is one of the reasons why Canada was still respected after what happened in Somalia, because our commander disobeyed direct orders and stood his ground with avaible resources to save as many as possible.

The French? Stood by idly while people were being butchered, General Dallaire asked the French for help and they stood by and watched the events happen.

Also the UN has a lot of blame in this, they held back resources that could have stopped the genocide within 12 hours. General Dallaire asked for battalion of Marines because he knew Canada didn't have forces in the region that could be immediately transferred to Rwanda within 24 hours. He was told there was no one available because of the Balkans which was complete horse crap since the US basically had units in the ME doing security in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi army at that point was well armed enough to fend off a crippled Iraq.

Also the French knew about the coup that was occurring which kicked off the Genocide, which means the UN/NATO knew about it as well, and before you guys go "Oh they wouldn't have known" the US literally has eyes in every government in the world that has access to high level intel, look at the Canadian ambassador to Iran during the revolution, he was a CIA operative, one of the highest level ones too. This means that the UN and NATO are complicit the only ones that aren't were the boots on the ground trying to stop it.

E: This means by this report that France is now also directly responsible for the First Congo war since it kicked off due to Rwanda invading to find and destroy the Génocidaires

E2:

Sorry I get highly emotional about this, I had friends who survived through this genocide and came to the US when I lived there, they were kids who lost family in the most horrific ways you could think of. I also know folks who were on the mission as engineers and the stuff they saw was unrepeatable by me.

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> and other foreign citizens from Freetown

That doesn’t sound like self interest then does it?

> Uranium and oil in Mali

As the other commenter said. There is none.

> you might want to read what Taylor Branch had to say

Why would I care what Taylor Branch had to say with regards to genocide in the Balkans. I care more about what the people of Kosovo had to say - you know the people who where slaughtered. In that case I’ll just leave this here:

> Tonibler is a male given name in Kosovo, given in honour of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair following his role in the 1999 NATO air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.

Except force doesn't necessarily stop anything. It can make things much worse. There have been multiple foreign interventions made to pacify and separate the two sides of African ethnic conflicts and that rarely ends up with great results. Last one was in the CAR between the Seleka and the Anti Balaka

Edit : typo,it's the CAR not the BAR

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It was most definitely the government. François Mitterrand at the time was convinced (like lots of French people tbh) that the French language was going to fade everywhere to English, and that the francophone community of nations was, sort of, under siege by English.

He made it clear he supported the francophone side for this reason. Did he know what they planned to do? Hard to say, probably not, at least for the genocide, but the French government was most definitely in cahoots with them. And the French government very well knew about the planned coup. Not some private actor.

100% second this. But I will say, it is EXTREMELY hard to find. I recommended it to someone last year and it took us quite a long time to find it.

Thought it said $12 million but ya thought it was clear that France financial weapons in the days leading to the genocide

I got them via pirate bay, too hard to find them legitimately, which is probably why pirating wins so often.

Didn’t Kofi Annan admit that he regretted the UN’s inaction with regards to the genocide? Definitely remember reading that somewhere. In any case, too little, too late! Regret, my foot.

That sounds a lot like WWII sites which were left as-is for remembrance.

Any good books on the subject? Been to Rwanda briefly and wanted to learn more about the specifics as well as the bigger picture…

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So Hutu speak French and Tutsi speak English in the same country? That is nonsense.

Why is that nonsense? Plenty of countries are multilingual

Which weapons? Machetes? You find them in supermarkets. Small firearms where used but in smaller quantities.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022343306059576

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This situation also exists in Nigeria, where again the Francosphere and Anglosphere interests clashed during the Biafra war.

And uhh, maybe I should talk to you about Canada, Belgium, Spain, China, India, Ukraine, and countless other countries that practice bilingualism or even multilingualism

>The country's principal language is Kinyarwanda, which is spoken by nearly all Rwandans

According to Wikipedia. French and English are used, but there are not mainstream.

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God, SHOOTING DOGS really affected me. Such an incredible, powerful film.

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It’s because the tutsi rebel group the rpf where base in English speaking Uganda.

It’s was obvious to literally everyone involved that they where complicit. Look up Opération Turquoise in which they literally helped hutus who had just committed genoicde escape into the Congo

Reminds me of the Sarajevo roses

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Shake Hands with the Devil is really good. It's written by Romeo Dellaire, the Canadian commander of UN forces in Rwanda. It doesn't necessarily have the best overall view, but it is best for understanding how the international community failed to help Rwanda.

Thank you.

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If I remember correctly, the inaction of the US/NATO during the Rwanda genocide is believed to be one of the reasons why Clinton decided to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo later on to stop the genocides of Bosnians and Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs.

An outstanding book. It does a great job detailing the atmosphere in Rwanda before and during the genocide, and also breaks down the complete and utter ineptitude of the UN in treating it as a “peacekeeping” mission, which prevented them from stopping the genocide in its tracks.

colonial linguistics moment

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Yeah, the book Daillaire wrote about the genocide is pretty horrifying on all levels. It is an accelerating descent into madness and the reader can feel the helplessness plaguing him and the ones on the ground. Had to put down the book several times.

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Just a reminder that France investigated itself and found no evidence of purposeful wrongdoing. Wow, how brave.

It's not nonsense when you look at imperialism...

Isn't this around the time that the US started to take a bunch of shit for playing "world police" getting involved in foreign conflicts that had nothing to do with them?

Other than US merely having knowlwdge of the events and the capability to intercede, what reason did they have to?

Some would say merely those two things create an obligation to intercede, others would call it imperialism.

This is due to colonial powers picking sides. Tutsi's were picked as a 'ruling class' and given all the government jobs. After a bunch of decades of that it engendered hatred between the peoples and genocide was the result.

America is damned if it does get involved in foreign countries, and damned if it doesn't. There will always be people criticizing American foreign policy. If we had intervened, we would have been the demonized World Police, the Western imperialists who can't mind their own business, the white saviors "saving" people who don't want to be saved, etc. etc.

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Wouldnt the Rwandans be directly responsible? The French may have stood around and done nothing to stop it but ultimately the people doing the killing are the most responsible.

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Canada speaks French and English. Alot of ppl in USA speak Spanish, it's normal for multiethnic countries

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

By Philip Gourevitch

Both speak both - at least today they do

> look at the Canadian ambassador to Iran during the revolution, he was a CIA operative, one of the highest level ones too

name so i can read more? any good books in general about high level cia hijinks?

That is the cost of having the world's most powerful and expansive navy and air force.

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You should watch the "Shake Hands with the Devil" documentary.

Or at least that's how it is continuously justified to our taxpayers.

Not when the French are expressly financing millions for the weapons used

If I give a suicide bomb to a jihadi Im not exactly blameless for what happens next

They did the killing with weapons and training provided by the French.

I second this book. Very harrowing read. Philip is a French journalist, and he actually places a lot of blame on France in this book.

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Have you ever heard of a country called Canada? What about the history of Senegal and The Gambia?

Obviously a report commissioned by the Rwandan government should be taken with a grain of salt, but given the number of coups in Africa that were stage/supported by France, none of this seems surprising

My friends from Montenegro? Im sure i spelled it wrong. Said they were finally rebuilding or fixing there war torn home in ole yugolslavia. This was like 5 or so years. Ago. Unreal.

The French held significant influence within the old Rwandan (Hutu nationalist) Government who went on to commit Genocide. At any point in the month long massacre that killed nearly a million people they could have put their foot down in order to, at the very least, tamp down some of the killing. Going beyond inaction, there have been an abundance of accusations that France actively participated by shuttling Hutu nationalist to cities, villages, or dwellings where Tutsi (or moderate Hutu) citizens were hiding and subsequently murdered. As the Genocide began to slow down and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel army who fought the Hutu Nationalist government both before and after the Genocide) began to gain control, the French helped to evacuate many of the genocidaire's (mostly of upper government position) out of Rwanda and into the DRC or abroad. The French were some of the first on the ground in the DRC to provide aid and create refuge encampments for the fleeing Hutu Nationalist who were now on the run after having murdered their neighbors. The French media blasted on about the dangerous RPF and the poor Hutu who were fleeing an unprovoked army who wanted them dead for no reason; don't mind the million dead Tutsi and Hutu brothers and sisters those Hutu Nationalist left behind them. And the reason for it all, essentially, is because French policy was to side with whoever spoke French. That's it. Seriously. They just didn't care about what was happening and they desperately wanted to keep French speaking leadership in control.

Check out the Wiki on Rwanda and do some source clicks, it has plenty of places to start on this topic, but really you need to find books and media written about the subject, of which several good ones have been mentioned in these comments.

EDIT: further to add, the French being found "complicit" is not the same as the French being found responsible (what you wrote). They helped further the cause of genocide in ways that go beyond simple inaction (inaction being the flavor of diplomacy the rest of the world adopted). The Hutu nationalist are the ones ultimately responsible and no one denies that, but while the rest of the world turned a blind eye the French were doing deals with the devil under the table.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

I watched movie Hotel Rwanda, and it’s horrific killings was carried out by the ordinary people. It was neighbors killing neighbors.

Why is US responsible when it should be UN?

...Did I say otherwise?

The French have been around atrocities for quite a while

Thank you for mentioning Opération Turquoise (and in French). Totally goes under the radar in these discussions usually.

That’s the weapons neighbors used to kill their neighbors! Machetes! This was ethnic cleansing carried out by the people themselves, and the authorities didn’t stop it.

"Shooting dogs" is thst reference to D'Allaire mental breakdown?

Lot of stupid comments like yours. No need to do a tour of the World. Tutsi and Hutus shared the same country for millennials. No reason for one to speak English and the other French. They all speak Kinyarwanda, the local language.

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The article does not indicate what would have been the motive for France to participate on the level suggested in the article and claimed by several commentators. Selling a few guns seems hardly to be worth the risk. I've read in such journalists as Kapuszinski that African politics can be quite chaotic and unpredictible. I would venture to guess that the French didn't believe what they first heard and then floundered trying to find an appropriate response. Nothing I have read here seems like more than a deflection of blame from the African killers, and the extortion of guilt offerings.

If they were paying for and supplying weapons, it would be surprising to not know what the weapons were for.

False. US gets involved only when there are benefits for US corporates.

When the local government renovated Jallianwala Bagh they kept the walls and the well the same way.

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In Africa, English and French are mostly second languages used in order for different ethnic groups to communicate with each other

Hutu and Tutsi are not ethnicities only dependent on their second language, it is an ethnic and class division supported by the Belgians. Divide et impera, classic stuff

Oh they knew the coup against Tutsi power was about to be violent. It started with the assassination of the president by having his plane crash, they weren't planning for a peaceful transition of power

> Canada speaks French and English

More like the Quebecois speak French and English, while the Anglophone Canadians only speak English and barely learn the most basic French outside of school.

*coup against the Hutu power [government].

The Hutu nationalist were in power, and the coup was against them. I don't believe there is any solid consensus in the International community about whether President Habyarimana's plane was shot by extremist elements of his own regime (who were upset with his more moderate policies) or by RPF leaders (i.e. Kagame), but it is likely that France was in no way involved in that specific powder keg element.

EDIT: coup is only an accurate term if Habyarimana's plane was shot by his own extremist party members, otherwise it would be labeled an assassination.

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> If I give a suicide bomb to a jihadi Im not exactly blameless for what happens next

That’s a bad comparison. A suicide bomb is designed specifically to kill innocents, whereas basic weapons and training are not.

Oh I wouldn't go as far as saying the French knew what would happen to the plane, but that they planned for an escalation of violence seems quite evident

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And read the book the documentary is based on.

Shake Hands With The Devil was written by General Romeo Dallaire, who was the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda. The documentary is based on the book and him.

Another good book to read is We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch.

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Second reading this book. It is very thorough in documenting the role many nations had in allowing things to spiral into genocide, and just how much effort was put in to trying to head it off.

Of course, fair warning it's not for the faint of heart. There aren't many books that I can say "changed me" in some clearly identifiable way, and that was one of them. Such a failure of humanity in so many ways.

Don't think so. In the film it's pretty clear what it's about.

That's not accurate but okay

French pilots died on the plane crash

Most of the time France is supporting the power in place (even if dictator) they don't stage that much coups in africa. They mosty corrupt the gouvernement it's less expensive than find a new one. And coup are bad for business.

So is America directly responsible for the Taliban, Al Qaeda and 9/11?

I was responding to OP who used the phrase "directly responsible for".

Ken Taylor, he did most of the scouting for Operation Eagle Claw.

America didn't train the Taliban, that was the ISI. AQ had backing from many people in the Arab world, and their tactics weren't taught by them AQ hooked up with multiple other terror networks to actually build their doctrine, AQ was associated with the Chechens who had used AQ's tactics aside from flying planes into buildings against Russia during the 90's.

Pakistan though supported both AQ and the Taliban, the TTP (Pakistani taliban) was only founded in 2007 as a result of the US, and Pakistan cracking down on AQ in Pakistan.

>Also the French knew about the coup that was occurring which kicked off the Genocide

I think you need to reread my entire comment, and then go do some reading.

The RPF (The current leaders of Rwanda) tried to prevent this from happening by fighting back against the government for years. The genocide was just the peak of the entire civil war.

The French due to allowing the coup plotters and genociders to meet in the embassy with the military attache means they are directly an actor of the genocide therefore responsible. Much like the Belgians were directly responsible for the Congo Crisis because they ordered the murder of the Prime Minister of the Congo which directly lead to the crisis.

Yep the UN actually has come out on multiple occasions and used Rwanda as a reason for more funding. But countries are reluctant to fund peacekeeping anymore. Back in the 60's Canada was one of the biggest contributors, giving entire regiments to the peacekeeping forces. But even we have drawn down from what we used to be.

I think peacekeeping is a cause worth funding 100%, just like ending hunger which we could do easily.

Alison Des Forges “Leave None to Tell thé Tale” is the definitive account of the genocide. It demonstrates how it was planned, and how it was pretty well known that it was going to happen and how the International community basically chose to do nothing.

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There are also allegations that Kagame and the RPF didn't really want American intervention, and were pushing against intervention with soft politics in the US. The UN means some degree of stasis being placed on both sides, and the RPF, at the expense of civilian casualties in the ethnic cleansing, was routing the government forces very successfully, and did successfully push the government into a total, French protected rout out of Rwanda. Leading to Kagame's total control over the country to this day. Put a full UN mission in place and you conceivably just kick the can

Because for all of its talk about a global response, the UN is helpless without the logistical support of major powers, which at the time was the US, and to a lesser extent, other members OF NATO.

They are, but you're discounting the tactical implications of a modern, western army force stationed in the enemy capital, and allied to that enemy. The RPF was superior to the Rwandan army, but it wasn't superior to the French army. The french had the effect of making Kigali like an impenetrable castle that the RPF had to work around until the military situation was so favorable towards the RPF, and international condemnation of the Rwandan government so strong that France could no politically act as a major force multiplier, except to evacuate the perpetrators of the genocide.

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I personally doubt that they knew about it. However, I also doubt they would have cared about the presence of French nationals if they were aware and cool with such a project

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Apologies for the late replay, but anyways..

About the uranium in Mali.
About the [oil](https://theconversation.com/how-oil-exploration-is-adding-to-malis-security- woes-85268) in Mali.
If you search around a little bit, you will find more sophisticing sources, but these should
be already sufficient.

> That doesn’t sound like self interest then does it?

Uh, i cant imagine a scenario where british troops would evacuate british citizens and tell
citizens of the commonwealth to wait for the next bus without damaging their "savoir"
reputation forever...