ABSTRACT
This chapter provides three phases of Arusha which ran from the outset of the civil war in 1990 until the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) victory in July of 1994. These were: A pre-negotiation phase, formal negotiation phase and implementation phase. Each of these phases is considered in turn followed by an attempt to evaluate the Arusha process. The argument developed here is that the Arusha process was sophisticated and well managed, but that the outcome was indeed flawed. The outcome reflected the inherent difficulties in achieving a stable transition bargain in the context of civil war. Efforts to bring the civil conflict in Rwanda to a peaceful resolution began within days of the RPF's invasion. Informed by a cogent theoretical analysis, the formal Arusha peace process was an extraordinary story of a sophisticated conflict resolution process which went disastrously wrong. Arusha was fundamentally about power-sharing, and the power to share was all held by the regime.
