Rwanda was nick-named the country "of a thousand hills" among numerous adoring tourists in the 1980s who fell in love with what they felt was "jewel of East Africa". Impressive, towering volcanoes grace the panorama of the inspiring awe-inspiring natural beauty in this perceivably peaceful, mountainous country. Behind the scenes of tranquillity among the dense vegetation also rampant in the country, is the horrific conflict between two tribes whose ethnic tensions run deep and date back centuries. The very complex conflict, generally accepted as a grim fact of life, is made up of events intertwined as strands of blood-soaked thread in an intricate tapestry that symbolizes the centuries of accumulated hate and bloodshed. On April 6th, 1994, shards of metal and balls of flame plummeted from the skies of Kigali (the Rwandan capital); all were the remnants of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane which exploded. This event would prove the catalyst for the humanitarian disaster would ensue, as the violence that had gripped the country for the past 40 months, much of it rooted in historic grievances, would explode in an escalation of horrendous violence.
             Essentially, the factors that caused the massacres of 1994 can be somewhat generally considered as: environmental scarcity, overpopulation, poverty, victimization, and ineffective, corrupt governmental regimes. The first two factors, which are linked, can be attributed to the interesting fact that the countryside was one of the most densely populated in the world, with as many as 760 people per km2 and an annual growth rate of more than 3 per cent. Hill slope erosion, landslides, and annual soil loss were among the highest in the world, seriously threatening food production.
             The history between the two warring factions is interesting and should be mentioned. Essentially, there has been a shift in power going from one group to the other since the German occupation of Rw...