Colonel (Retired) Rick Orth speaking at Rwanda Day 2024 held in Washington DC.
A retired American soldier has commended the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) –Inkotanyi for stopping the 1994 genocide against Tutsi when his country and the United Nations forces, among others failed to do so.
Colonel (Retired) Rick Orth had the rank of Major at the time and served under Major General Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR).
Ward said that 30 years after, Rwanda’s success is attributed to the vision of the Rwanda Patriotic Front and the work done by the Rwanda military especially reintegrating the armed forces.
“First and foremost, it is the Rwanda Patriotic Army that stopped the genocide in 1994. Secondly almost immediately they reintegrated but most especially during the second Congo war,” Orth said.
The retired soldier was speaking this February 3, 2024 at Rwanda Day 2024 held in Washington DC, bringing together Rwandans and friends of Rwanda.
Woth gave an example of a wounded former Armed Forces of Rwanda (Ex-FAR) officer who lived in a camp in DRC but feared to return home for treatment (due to his ideology that a Hutu couldn’t be accepted by a Tutsi) only to be shocked when he was received and given medical attention by the same RPA soldier he was afraid of.
“Guess what? They were all RPA and he ended up going back to a hospital in Rwanda. That is a testament to the greatness of Rwanda,” Orth said.
Speaking as a military professional, the retired soldier said that he rates Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) as the greatest armed force in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region.
Woth explained why he said so. One, is because he would have previously rated the Ethiopian defense force as top, but because of the civil war in the country they no longer hold that status in his point of view.
Among other reasons, Orth stated that it is because of Rwanda’s active participation in peacekeeping forces (4th in the world), and enforcing peace in conflict zones like Darfur (Sudan) among others as a result of the country being victims of a failed UN mission (UNAMIR).
On this failed UN mission to stop the genocide, Worth said that it was not the Commander’s fault but from the U.S.
“It comes out of New York. I know that for fact because I was a Major at the Pentagon working this,” he said, Dallaire asked for intervention, he was denied time and time again,” Orth stated.
As a solution to the conflict in CAR, the retired soldier (using classified information) said that the USA should support in training Rwandan soldiers serving in the country to make the Wagner mercenaries irrelevant.
