While the information dimension is pivotal in perception warfare, the epistemic dimension should not be overlooked. The case of the French embassy attack in Kinshasa illustrates this point, as an academic report commissioned by the Élysée was followed by a diplomatic rapprochement with Kigali, in a context of Russian information operations targeting France's image in Africa, without considering the perception of the Rwandan regime on the continent.
Kinshasa, January 28, 2025: attack on the French embassy
On January 28, demonstrators attacked the French embassy in Kinshasa, protesting against international inaction regarding the attacks by the Rwandan-backed M23 in eastern DRC. The attack - which was foreseeable - was prompted in particular by the perception of relations between France and Rwanda, which had been affected by the diplomatic rapprochement following the publication of the Duclert report on a hypothetical French responsibility in the Rwandan genocide.
The Muse and Duclert reports
In April 2021, the Rwandan government published a report it had commissioned from the US law firm Levy Firestone Muse on France's role in the Tutsi genocide. The report was as expected from a US law firm: at best, an unexploitable document. For its part, the Élysée had commissioned a similar report from a group of historians under the direction of Vincent Duclert, which was intended to settle the question of France's role and enable a diplomatic rapprochement in a context of the ousting of French influence in Francophone Africa, mainly due to Russian information operations.
An “ethnicist” interpretative framework?
The only criticism that the Duclert report manages to draw is that France has adopted an “ethnicist” interpretative framework, which can be understood in two ways. Either the French government is reproached for having analyzed the situation in terms of ethno-cultural factors, which would reveal a problem of perception of natural fact: only actors who have never lived in Africa can deny the crucial role of ethno-cultural factors on the continent. Or it could be that France favored the Hutus to the detriment of the Tutsis, which would be incompatible with the fact that France promoted the Arusha Accords, the arithmetic of which favored the Tutsis. Which, incidentally, cindynic analysis identifies as precisely one of the factors that triggered the genocide.
Superficial media coverage
While there are problems with the Duclert report, Vincent Duclert praised the RPF's political legitimacy in the media, which in addition to legitimizing the violence of armed groups on the continent, is not compatible with what is described in the report, or even with what Paul Kagamé himself says, since he has admitted that he could not have come to power through the ballots. The media did not provide a critical reading: it would have been necessary to analyze the 900 pages of the report and the 900 pages of that of the Quilès information mission, among others. But which news company would give a journalist the time to read two or three thousand pages of reports or academic articles before writing an article?
Putting the blame on France instead of the United States
What the Duclert report does not describe is that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States scaled back its policy of peacekeeping intervention. This was formalized in a classified directive and implemented at the UN by Madeleine Albright, who systematically thwarted any plans for peacekeeping operations in Rwanda. On May 25, 1994, Bill Clinton declared that U.S. interests were not sufficiently at stake to intervene in ethnic conflicts such as those in Rwanda, and then, on May 28, that the U.S. could not send troops whenever there was civil unrest or when American values were “offended by human misery”. To sum up: while the Duclert report concluded that France was responsible, in fact, it was France that finally intervened to stop the genocide, after the Clinton administration had first blocked a UN intervention, and then the African intervention that was supposed to overcome this initial blockage. Admitting the conclusion of the Duclert report is tantamount to forcing France to assume American responsibility. While this in itself could only damage France's image in Africa and, what's more, fuel Russian information operations, basing a diplomatic rapprochement with Paul Kagamé's regime on this conclusion could only worsen the situation.
At second order: the failure to perceive the African perception of the Rwandan regime
While the case of the Duclert report illustrates the hazardous nature of positivist postures and the need to assess epistemic risk in any political decision-making process, this process is also subject to information risk: in the context of perception warfare targeting France's image in Africa, it would have been necessary to assess how a diplomatic rapprochement with the Rwandan regime might be perceived there, and therefore to assess how this regime is perceived there. In practice, however, many Africans have a particularly negative view of Paul Kagamé: the Rwandan leader is seen as “a snake”, and those who have had the opportunity to visit Rwanda have observed a “terrorized population”. For this reason, a rapprochement with the Rwandan regime could only be negatively perceived, but this information had to reach Paris. Hence the more general question of diplomats' perception of Africa: sometimes, some are interested in what expats can pass on, only to find that none of their services can provide such depth of insight. And some sincerely want to deepen their knowledge of Africa, but this requires years of initiation, countless discussions with friends under the mango trees or by the lagoon, and a thousand iffy experiences that etiquette forbids them.