s/fareed zakaria this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show, a remarkable man who has saved the country on its way to collapse. a conversation with the president of rwanda, paul kagame. let me start by reminding you what happened in rwanda 15 years ago. over a period of just 100 days, 800,000 men, women and children were killed. most of them slaughtered with knives, machetes and axes by their neighbors. it is perhaps the most brutal

genocide in modern history. many of you probably remember its portrayal in the movie, "portrayal of rwanda." by the time it ended, one-tenth of the country's population was dead. most people assumed that rwanda was broken, and like somalia, another country wrecked by violence, it would become a poster child for africa's failed state. 15 years later, rwanda is a poster child, but for an entirely different reason. it is now one of the most stable countries in africa, tourism and trade are all improving dramatically. the government is widely seen as one of the most efficient and honest ones in africa. for tune magazine published an article recently called "why we

love rwanda." he said his goal was to have his country stop receiving foreign aid all together. but before he could receive financial success, rwanda had to achieve social stability. as a writer points out, rwanda is unique in the post-conflict countries. the jews left for israel, and the groups split up geographically. in cambodia, the group that promoted the violence was easily identifiable and could be separated. in rwanda, however, the killers and the victims live now side by side in every village and every community. imagine nazis and jews living next door to one another throughout the country. the only way to make peace in rwanda was to reintegrate these

communities, and kagame came up with a solution using routines called chawacha. it made for a fascinating experiment which seems to be working. we'll talk with him about how he did this and about some of the controversy that surrounds his presidency. later a debate, should the united states even be in afghanistan? >> the assumption in america seems to be that afghanistan constitutes a vital security interest of the united states, and, therefore, we should be investing tens of thousands of soldiers and many billions of dollars to try to remake it. i question that assumption. frankly, i think afghanistan is of marginal interest to the united states. >> let's get started.

i welcome rwandan president, paul kagame. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> many look at what's happening in rwanda as a miracle. 15 years ago, you had this extraordinary, horrific genocide, and now rwanda is one of the most stable countries in africa. what i'm most struck by is that you have done this with a very strange kind of process. why was it important not to punish the killers? >> first of all, there are many killers, hundreds of thousands because of the genocide that took place in our country yielded a huge percentage as far as those who were killing.

and if you went to try each one of them, then you would have trouble bringing people back together. that's why we had to say, let's look at the masterminds of this genocide, the people behind it. i think it is about the biggest responsibility in this. so they had to protect themselves. but there was this big number of people who killed, people thought justice had to be done and had to be done in the sense of saying, if you go to committing loss of life, you

needed to be tried, you need to be sent to jail, and that's how it started. we had about 130,000 people in the jail, and there were many more outside that you couldn't find jail for. >> so then you started thinking -- >> so then you started thinking, but no, you must solve this problem. we have to build our future. we can't just get stuck with the problems created by or people. we had to find a formula to get out of this. at the same time, they looked for people to give a new life to give them a chance to understand their role and the future for them as a country. >> now, you are a leader who

happens to be tuitsi. they were the victims of the genocide. how can you tell them we're not going to make these people pay the price? >> people who have been victims and others who are traitors, and you want, in the process of juljul justice, to win them back together, to help one another and love one another. creating that was so complex, and the only way we could get out of that was the chacha process. some would come out and apologize and confess, and they

wanted information that the people didn't have. people wanted to forgive in hearing their testimonies. >> but is this process still very fragile? because, you know, these people, the killers, are now back in these villages living amongst the people they killed. and there's, you know, the very favorable biography of yours. even there, in his book, he says, you get the feeling these people are mounting plat titude of reconciliation. asking this guy about when he killed six people, did you enjoy it? yes, i enjoyed killing these

people. and he's back living in the village. isn't this held together by very fragile bonds? >> i think there are more people who regret what they did. they must also be heard and the country means a lot to this future i'm talking about. there are many more cases of people who come forward and repent and show remorse, and it's like even they have been affected. they are at a loss as to how to live their lives. there is a lot of -- you know, it is a balancing act here, but

we are doing better than either doing nothing or perhaps pursuing other alternatives. >> when you look at other countries, iraq, for example, one community came to power, felt like it had been persecuted by the other. a lot of vengeance. you look at the valkans, much retribution. do you feel that is not the path that would work? >> i think maybe the facts would speak for themselves, but if you do things like that, you don't reach a good result. i don't know whether it works for other situations, but it can speak for my own situation. it does work and has worked better than anything they could have thought of or even today,

we don't see people giving us the alternative. a lot of people could say what we are doing made sense and gave more results, but they have >> we'll be back. why is africa so screwed up? >> it is screwed up. well with us, it's the same flat rate. same flat rate. boston. boise? same flat rate. alabama. alaska? with priority mail flat rate boxes from the postal service. if it fits, it ships anywhere in the country for a low flat rate. dude's good. dude's real good. dudes. priority mail flat rate boxes only from the postal service. a simpler way to ship.

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in speaking with paul kagame, the president of rwanda, the one thing that struck me was his continued reliance on the idea of self-reliance, on the idea that his people, his community, needed to stand by itself. this comes perhaps from the fact that his people was let down by the community, by the united states, by the western general when they most needed intervention. he has a skeptical view of outside intervention or offers to help weather it involves foreign aid, the u.n. in its involvement, and the court. he is skeptical of the national criminal court to indict the president of sudan over the genocide in bal darfur. >> you don't like the criminal

courts of basheer and sudan. here is a man who desperately sought international assistance against the genocide, and when the government in sudan seems to be perpetrating something that in some ways can be seen as similar, you're standing on the sidelines. >> i question the process because i understand better how international justice is flawed. first of all, rwanda has 3,200 troops in darfur. we were the fifrst country in te world to respond to the call in trying to do something in darfur. in kenya, almost every country wanted to come.

when we are there, we are not being supported or used properly to help the people because of the critics between you, the u.n., different countries. i have been arguing for fair international justice, not selective justice. that is my point. when the country is being turned down, where the international institutions, they must be related. my point is we cannot cut out selective justice. >> this is the argument a lot of people made who didn't want to get involved in rwanda. they said there's problems all over the world. we can't selectively get involved in one place. the fact you can't have universal justice still does not argue that you cannot render

occasions of real guilt as in basheer and sudan. you cannot focus on them, and by not doing that, you have the moral party. >> but it is selective justice. there are more numbers than you actually know you are doing. and they draw a distinction. i said, i've told you. i can't be accused of being effective at all. >> but it's effective without real pressure on the government, because at the end of the day, there is only so much they can do, as you know. >> but they have to be supported to be effective. >> now, as you rebuild your nation, you're trying to embark on a path that turns rwanda into an economic role model. self-reliant, and you have cited

the book of danby samoya, which talks about cutting off aid to somalia. >> the emphasis is not on a time limit as such. i think we're sitting here talking about the principles, the process that must be carried out. i wish i could see it in my time of office. it might come after. but i have to make sure the process is on and is effective. so whoever comes after me may finish the job. that's it. aid is about supporting social transformation of people, and in

supporting them, aid must do other things that will eventually see people get foreign aid. >> so you think you should get foreign aid. >> exactly. >> why is africa so screwed up? >> it is certainly screwed up. >> so much poverty, so many wars, so much corruption, so many leaders that leave their countries rather than building them up. there are not so many like you. >> i think there has been an upset in africa for so many reasons. some of them historical. they like what president obama has been saying and what he said in ghandi.

we need to shift to our own things and what we need to be doing in order to get africa out of this situation. so the process is on. and i think in the case of africa today, you will realize that progress has been made. if you look in the first couple of years before the current war crisis, africa had unemployment rate of about 5 or 6%. now -- >> some of that was the high prices of commodities. >> absolutely. there is also more work to be done. >> we will be back with the

president of rwanda. >> in other cases, they will go further. we should be free to transact business. e dust might be settli. that's great, but i'm not. ♪ (second man) i guess i'm just done with doing nothing, you know? ♪ (third man) oh, i'm not thinking about moving my money. i am moving it. tdd# 1-800-345-2550

storm. we're back with the conversation with the president of rwanda. you have great relationship with the government who wants to give you aid. but then i heard you have an industry that was entirely paid for by the government of china as a gift. is china's influence growing rapidly in africa, and should we worry about this in the united states and the west? >> no, i think china's influence is growing globally. that's why america itself is rushing there for business. that's why europe is rushing there for business. the whole world is embracing china for business. >> but it's very symbolic, it

seems to suggest they wanted some control of your foreign policy. >> that would be another problem. if they have control of our f foreign policy, it would be our problem. you just said a while ago friends are americans. fine. in our case, we don't want anybody to control us. nobody owns us. but we should be free to transact business in the interest of rwanda and who they want to do business with. so when china offers something like that, we will take it. it has nothing to do with

controlling us. >> let me ask you, you have a lot of faith in people -- in your people. you talk about self-reliance, beating them -- building them up as entrepreneurs. let me read to you what the economist magazine says. kagame allows less freedom and space zimbabwe. anyone who poses the slightest political threat to the regime are dealt with ruthlessly. >> people talk about rwanda as if it has won 15 years of war. nothing has happened there that is -- >> it talks about prosperity. is it just restricted political rights?

>> yes, but we have built institutions, we have additional alternatives which comes from learning, if it's lawyers. we have long-trained lawyers and even in the whole set-up, it will speak for itself. i don't have to wait for an economist to say to me, come and rub shoulders with me, nothing is working. the freedom of press is what they're talking about. the initiative is about freedom because that's why cnn, nbc or others would come and work there and do whatever until they want to leave. how can we say there is no freedom of that? the problem is, we've made rwanda itself an institution.

they have become the best on everything, including the president of rwanda, the active practitioners. the press is not vibrant itself, it has not developed. they call it oppression. that's not true. maybe they should -- we see more leverage with the press. >> do you guarantee -- i assume you'll win reelection because you won your first election by 95%. is it is likely a strange statistic to people in the u.s., but do you guarantee you will leave after two terms? >> yes, but this is, again, hipocracy. i saw in france not too long

ago, the president won by 8%. 8% is very high. >> but you know how -- the first round he did not get it and then he was up against a very competitive competitor. are you telling me you won't be in office longer than your two constitutional terms? >> no, i think the constitution is not there by accident. it is there for a purpose, and i will serve that purpose, so respect our constitution. >> and, in fact, a gift to my people and embrace the things happening to me, and that gift could be to leave a legacy behind where i can leave power

for others to run and lead the country and it becomes a culture and the norm. i want to do that for the country. >> president kagame, a pleasure to have you. >> thank you.

now or for our "what in the world" segment. what caught my attention this week was silence. they were the ethnic minority in china who claim they've been discriminated against for years, and in the past week have been caught up in ethnic fighting with the majority of the population. the clash has left more than 180 dead.

the second in command released a video calling on muslims to back the militants in pakistan. religious authorities in pakistan released a statement in week for electricity. but where were the uighurs? they printed a cartoon about mohammad in 2005, a war erupted. people were killed and writhing. they formally protested to the beijing government. why aren't they protesting to beijing? the lone exception has come from turkey. the kind of genocide, the chinese reacted very angrilangr.

they deemed them groundless and irresponsible. i am not suggesting other countries should get involved in this, but look at the hipocracy of the self-appointed leaders around the world who scream at the smallest slights who scream against muslims when americans are involved, but the silence is deafening. and we will be right back. we're making afghanistan something we're not capable of doing, that we can't afford to attempt to do, and frankly, it's unnecessary.

hello, here's what's happening right now in the news. a civilian helicopter crashed in southern afghanistan. seven civilians were killed, five injured. they were on the way to protect nato enforcers in afghanistan. the soldier on this taliban video has been identified as private first class bowe bergdahl of ketchum, idaho.

it was put on line 2 1/2 weeks after he was captured in afghanistan. his parents say they're hoping and praying for his safe return. would you sell your kidney to a stranger in a foreign country? they say they have no choice. this is next hour. this has been a report.

here are some facts. july will be the deadliest month

for nato forces in the entire afghanistan war. the pentagon is even admitting the u.s. has lost troops, quote, at an alarming rate this month. when the caskets return home, the united kingdom held a day of national mourning. britain is the united states's most important allies in this fight. many remain if the casualties remain high, the british could soon abandon their effort. joining me to talk about all this, david kilcullen. david is a former army officer who helped plan the troops in both iraq and afghanistan. he is a profess this man is a professor of boston university.

they are in opposition on this. >> when the surge began in iraq, they said the directive of the surge would be to raise casualties because the u.s. forces would be actively engaging the enemy in ways they had not done so far. is that what's happening in afghanistan? >> i think we're inevitably going to see some increase in casualties in the next few months, but i do think casualties aren't necessarily a particularly good indicator of whether you're winning or losing. casualties, both to the civilian population and to coalition forces, tend to be very low in two kind of places, places that are completely controlled by the government and places that are completely controlled by the enemy. so the absence of casualties doesn't necessarily mean you're doing well or doing badly. and the presence of casualties that we're finding in some areas just tells you fighting is going on.

it doesn't really indicate whether we're seeing progress on the ground. just to pick up something you said in the introduction, i think, in fact, the most important partner for the united states in afghanistan is actually not the british people but the afghan people. and i think that has to be the focus of what we're doing here in the next fighting season. if we don't really rebuild that partnership with afghans that we once had, then i don't think any amount of troop surge or any amount of actual fighting is going to get us there. >> andy, what do you make of these casualty numbers, because, again, it's worth pointing out in iraq they speck quite substantially and then dropped down as we started winning those engagements and, more importantly, providing security for the population so that it felt more secure. is that a wise strategy in afghanistan? >> the big question, it seems to me, is not whether casualties are up or down or why they're up or down.

the big question has to do with what are u.s. interests in afghanistan? the assumption seems to be afghanistan constitutes a vital security interest of the united states, and therefore, we should be investing tens of thousands of soldiers and many billions of dollars to try to remake it. i question that assumption. frankly, i think afghanistan is of marginal interest to the united states. >> well, let me press you on that, andy. if the united states withdraws, britain withdraws, by every account the afghan government is pretty weak. there is a very good chance that it will either fall or large parts of the country will be taken over by the taliban which has, in the past, and is now closely allied with elements of al qaeda and al qaeda-like groups. so you will have a country that has -- allows al qaeda and its people to operate, train, have bases and potentially do

terrorist activities from london to madrid, and, of course, the biggest target they often talk about, which is the united states. why is that not a threat? >> well, it is a threat, but it's a modest threat. with regard to what becomes of afghanistan and whether afghanistan does become some hotbed of islamist activity that gets ex porported to the region seems to me we should at least examine the possibility that would prevent ways of that happening that doesn't require us maintaining tens of thousands of troops there in perpetuity. there i think the limited success achieved by the surge in iraq is destructive. to the extent the surge did succeed, it did because the united states paid off the heart

of the insurgency. it seems by analogy, we can explore the possibility of paying afghan war lords to rule their little patch of afghanistan in ways that prevent al qaeda from taking up positions there. >> david, why is that not a good idea? i know you were in favor of it in iraq, i know you've talked about it in afghanistan. it does seem to me that that key element of the surge doesn't seem to be happening. we don't seem to be reaching out and trying to find members of the taliban, members associated, maybe they don't call themselves the taliban, and affecting some kind of switching of sides. >> well, i think there were two very distinct specific circumstances about the situation in 2007 in iraq, which are not necessarily present in afghanistan. the first one was the sunni

awakening was happening in the sunni community with different activist groups turning away from iraq and trying to push them out of their communities. when we were there in 2007, that was the fifth attempt by the tribes to throw al qaeda off their backs. we participated by helping an existing movement that was already starting to reject al qaeda. i don't see a similar large-scale turn by tribes or war lords or anybody else to try and push the taliban out of their communities in afghanistan. so that's one issue. the other issue is we should never have invited iraq. we got ourselves into an incredibly difficult position in 2007. we got ourselves into an environment where the iraqis were suffering 3,000 to 3,500 civilian casualties every week, week after week after week. that's a 9/11 every week on a population ten times smaller than the united states, and a population, by the way, that had

nothing to do with 9/11. so there was a moral imperative to save iraqi lives. we did what we had to do in 2007 to rescue ourselves from a situation we really never should have been in. the situation in afghanistan is, again, somewhat different. i think, in fact, getting back to your earlier point, the real center of gravity here is not afghanistan, it's pakistan. and what's happening in pakistan actually concerns me a lot more, and i think it's a lot more strategically important to the united states. >> but there still is this inconvenient issue of the moral obligations that we as an international community assumed in getting involved in afghanistan. a lot of people are getting killed here, and we need to think about what our moral obligations are. >> but does that mean you accept andrew bacevich's strategic point, that it's marginal security interest of the united states? we can protect ourselves with a

combination of vigilance on the homeland security front, perhaps a little bit of buying off of locals, you know, doing things that treat afghanistan with and the troops there. >> well, i think that i wouldn't necessarily use the term marginal, but i would certainly agree that pakistan is a much more important problem than -- than afghanistan in terms of its regional complications and border counterterrorist there. >> should we get troops out of afghanistan, david? >> i don't think that's quite the issue this year. i think everybody wants to get as many troops out of afghanistan as we possibly can. consistent with not having the state collapse and a major bloodbath. when you look at how quickly we can get troops out of afghanistan, i think we have to

stabilize the environment. we have to work with afghan people to restore that situation that once existed so they are actually in the position to handle the threat themselves and then they can start pulling out. just as the surge we interact, we had to go up so we can start coming down. i think in afghanistan, something similar is true. >> andy, do you buy that? >> well, i think dr. kilcullen made a very important point, that from a strategic perspective, pakistan is far more important to our security and to international security than is afghanistan, and whether or not this u.s. and allied military presence in afghanistan is alleviating the threat to pakistan or is exacerbating the threat to pakistan. and it seems to me it's pretty clear that indeed it's

exacerbating. it is contributing to the destabilization of pakistan. >> i'm not quite sure i entirely understand that. the international presence in afghanistan is trying to create a reasonably stable government there that controls the territory. if you have a more powerful -- listen to me, if you had a more powerful taliban in afghanistan, isn't that going to destabilize pakistan more because, of course, they will engage in more cross-border violence and they will destabilize the parts of the pashun parts of taliban even other. >> we're pushing the taliban into pakistan. we are increasing the islamist threat to pakistan as a result of our presence in afghanistan. >> david, the argument that if we pull out of afghanistan, everything will become quieter in pakistan. that may have been true back in '02/'08. i don't think it's through now. i think if we were to move out

of afghanistan, i think that would probably just increase the resources able to them to take on islamabad. >> one final question to each of you, just a quick bottom line. andrew, do you think the best thing to do, cut our losses, withdraw and we will be surprised at how little the instability, if there is any in afghanistan, affects us, our core national security, correct? >> by and large. last week, "time" magazine, fareed, had a story about the new u.s. commander in kabul. and the headline on the cover was, striked h described him as general who is remaking afghanistan. i think remaking afghanistan is something we're not capable of doing, that we can't afford to attempt to do, and, frankly, is unnecessary. so we need to examine strategic alternatives rather than simply

continuing down this path that we've been on for almost eight years. >> and, dave, your view would be, you've got to give this a little more time to stabilize the environment, am i correct? >> yeah, i think we need to be there. we need to make it stable. we need to step up to our moral responsibilities to the afghan people. but i would agree with professor ba basevich, we need to do that in the cheapest way possible and make sure we don't soak us up in an unsustainable effort. but the international community has signed now three international agreements with the afghan government and there are a lot of expectations out there and i think we have some obligations we need to consider. i think we should figure out how to meet those obligations in the most sustainable way possible. >> david, andrew, thank you very much. >> thanks. >> and we will be right back. it was tough news to hear. everything changed.

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i want to share some breaking news with you. "gps" has been nominated for an emmy award. it's for my chinese interview with the premier. now our question to you, last week i asked you if you thought the united states needed a second stimulus. listen to some of the responses. no, no, a thousand times no, says a viewer named betsy. a second stimulus would pick the clinical definition of insanity. that's dave henning of chandler, arizona. i happen to disagree with both of you. i think another stimulus might turn out to be needed because american consumers are just not spending, they are maxed out so somebody has to. the government is the only

option. i love hearing all of your input and your insights, even when you disagree with me. for this week's question, here's what i want to ask, do you think that some countries actually need a strongman? as you saw earlier in the program, rwanda is an amazing success story. but some of what kagame has done might be called autocratic. my question is, might it take a tough, autocratic leader to turn a country around as he did with rwanda? let me know what you think. as always, i would like to recommend a book. it's by a new york writer named philip gervoich and it has an unusual title. "we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families." it is an award-winning book about the genocide in rwanda. it's not a new book. it came out ten years ago, but it is unforgettable. one final note, before we go, i continue to hope for the release of mazi, a