The Rwandan genocide is geopolitically a bit of a misnomer. It implies boundaries that are far too limiting. Rwanda is best viewed historically, politically, economically and culturally as part of the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Once viewed in this regional context, the Rwandan genocide can be analyzed as part of a much larger conflict, which includes eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, western Tanzania and Burundi--not just Rwanda.
Although in the literature about Rwanda it is often noted that Rwanda is one of the few states in Africa whose borders actually approximate that of the pre-colonial state (the Kingdom of Rwanda), the Great Lakes region has for centuries been the site of extensive population movements. In the last 50 years alone hundreds of thousands of people have moved either into or out of Rwanda. Uganda and Tanzania both have had significant Rwandan refugee populations. Indeed Uganda's Rwandan refugee population was large enough to be a source of internal political disruption. Furthermore, while there was a Kingdom of Rwanda where the modern Rwandan state is located, significant portions of what is now Rwanda were never actually incorporated into the Kingdom of Rwanda prior to the arrival of Europeans. These particular areas were only subdued with the aid of European colonizers. This is one of the many reason there are significant regional differences within Rwanda.
Ironically--from an American perspective--much of Rwandan politics breaks down on a north-south divide. With Juvénal Habyarimana's coup in 1973, political power was firmly concentrated in the favor of the north. In the twenty years between Habyarimana's seizing of power and his death in a plane crash--which was the impetus for full-scale genocide--the north-south division became a divide predicated not just on historical relationships among differing polities, but a divide based on socio-economic privilege and deprivation. While a few localities within southern Rwanda were predominantly Tutsi (ignoring for the moment what such a statement even means), the southern region was still by far a majority Hutu region (Hutu, like Tutsi, is unproblematized in this statement). This implies that one of the major internal divisions within Rwanda had little if anything to do with "ethnicity."
Rwanda's extensive external linkages and complex internal divisions make even the term "Rwandan genocide" problematic. And this leaves aside temporal considerations. When did the Rwandan genocide start? When did it end? Did it end? Time further complicates the picture.
The issue of boundaries is not to be taken for granted. Just as the ethnic boundaries "Hutu" and "Tutsi" seem to imply are permeable membranes at their sturdiest, the obvious geopolitical boundaries carry their own descriptive inadequacies.
