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Then came Belgian colonial rule in 1916, followed by the country's independence in 1962 and the abolition of the monarchy. Then the disagreements grew into animosity that turned violent and sadistic. Rwanda's ethnic conflict remains Africa's largest genocide of modern times. Rwanda's ethnic fault line has extended even beyond its borders and caused violence and instability in its two neighbours, Congo and Burundi.

It was 600 years ago that the Tutsis moved south from Ethiopia and invaded the homeland of the Hutus. The Tutsis established themselves as the ruling class and the Hutus agreed to farm and raise crops in return for security. When the Belgians colonised the country, they brought to the fore the inherent but subdued disagreements between the two ethnic groups. New identity cards were used to classify people according to their ethnicity. People began to take sides and the divisive sentiments grew. Under colonial rule, the Tutsis enjoyed better jobs and education opportunities. Resentment, especially among the Hutus, grew accordingly. The growing friction between the two tribes culminated in a series of riots in 1959 in which more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed.

In 1962 the Belgians granted Rwanda its independence. The departure of the colonial ruler and the dissolution of the monarchy left a huge political vacuum that the Tutsis and the Hutus have fought over and killed to fill ever since.

After a plane carrying the Hutu president and his top aides, as well as the president of Burundi (also a Hutu) was shot down by a missile in 1994, the country was plunged into instant catastrophe. Genocide, butchery, retribution and counter-retribution was perpetrated by both sides, leaving over a million dead and millions more as refugees.

Linda Melvern, a British expert on the Rwanda genocide contended in a 2006 book that the killing may have been pre-planned and that the assassination was just a trigger.

Today, Rwanda has regained a kind of uneasy political normalcy. It has a Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, an enigmatic leader whose family fled Rwanda to Congo in 1960 when he was an infant. He returned to his homeland after 30 years in exile as the triumphant head of a guerrilla army.

Kagame has made a conscious effort to court the international community. He has assumed the role of an African leader who is willing to be involved in and take charge of the affairs of his continent. As a result, world leaders have conveniently looked elsewhere when Kagame exercises his ruthless authority to put down political threats. Such exercise extends into Congo, where Rwanda has been involved in the vicious civil war there. The Rwandan involvement is carried out in the name of "security and enhancement" - a justification that the world seems to accept gladly. Reports that Kagame's army is making millions of dollars in revenue from Congo's precious resources, such as diamonds, go largely ignored.

Despite numerous accounts of human rights violations by the Kagame regime - such as extrajudicial killings, torture, deaths in custody and limited press freedom - the West seems to love the president who managed to put down ethnic violence and who takes an active role in re-establishing some kind of order on the continent the world wants to forget, but whose value has been recently rediscovered by the Chinese.

Kagame has received numerous awards and honorary degrees from prestigious organisations and renowned universities in the West and around the world. He rubs shoulders with world leaders and was received by President Bush in the Oval Office.

The tragic history of Rwanda and the struggle to maintain the fragile yet costly internal political truce should serve as a lesson that the path of hatred leads nowhere but to a calamitous nightmare.

We Thais are now divided into our own Tutsi and Hutu camps. The animosity appears to have grown too deep and is beyond any rational remedy. We are heading towards a point of no return. Increasingly, the country appears doomed.

The seat and symbol of our political system, the Government House, is no longer the place from which our country is run. It is not only that the physical building and its vicinity has been violated; it is the crushing defeat of the spirit of democracy, respect for the rule of law, and harmonious coexistence commonly known as unity despite differences.

Some may say that the takeover was justified and inevitable, as it was the end result of having a government that had severely abused its authority and power while in office. For whatever reason this came to be, the fact remains that ours is an abnormal political situation.

Our Tutsis and Hutus have leaders who are prepared to go for broke, to fight the "Last War" - the one that ends all wars. On one side we have the publicly professed goal of protecting the institution of democracy, whose meaning is lost upon many of us. On the other side, we have a stigmatised, intelligent, versatile and resource-rich figure who says his back is against the wall and will use any means, and go to any lengths, to restore his "dignity", and in the process get back assets which he believes are rightfully his.

Both leaders have followers, many of whom genuinely believe in the righteousness of their respective paths. Vindictiveness replaces our usual give-and-take attitude. Fierce disagreements erupt, even within families and among close associates and friends - because everybody seems to be taking sides. More people who used to sit on the fence are abandoning their comfort zone and jumping into the fray. War has been declared.

Rwanda in recent years has shown the world the extraordinary lengths to which people are prepared to go to gain and hold on to power, and the result has been catastrophic. If Thais cannot learn from this lesson and continue on this unyielding path of hatred, we will face a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that has been whispered often these days.

There will be blood.