Shake Hands With the Devil

by Roméo Dallaire

  At the refugee camp all was quiet. The CND was ready and the route through Kigali secure, with large and happy crowds of Hutus and Tutsis gathering along the way, turning out to welcome the RPF to Kigali. The extremists were nowhere to be seen. We were glad that the Interahamwe, in particular, was absent. The Interahamwe were a group of young men who had attached themselves to the youth wing of the ruling MRND party and were beginning to show up at a lot of political rallies dressed rather bizarrely, in cotton combat fatigues covered in fantastical symbols in the red, green and black of the Rwandan flag, and carrying machetes or carved replicas of Kalashnikovs. We had found them comical at first, because they looked and acted like clowns, but we soon learned that wherever they showed up, violence and mayhem were never far behind.

  When the convoy arrived at the refugee camp, I joined it. There were no incidents along the route. It finally dawned on me why the RPF had procrastinated. If someone with inside information had laid an ambush, they would have expected the convoy by early morning. As the convoy was delayed for hours, any ambushers would have abandoned their position for fear of being discovered by our patrols or because they would have thought the operation had been cancelled. It takes a very disciplined soldier to hold still in an ambush position for many hours, and disciplined soldiers were in short supply in both the RGF and the extremist camps.

  A single shot or grenade from the crowd that lined our way into Kigali could have been disastrous, but as we moved through the streets, there was only euphoria. The RPF soldiers were cheered and showered with flowers. By mid-afternoon, the convoy moved into the CND complex. I personally welcomed Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe, the chairman of the RPF, to Kigali with a Rwandan flag to fly at the CND. Once the RPF troops unloaded, they began deploying into a defensive posture around the complex and taking over security from my soldiers. As these handovers were completed, my troops withdrew to the perimeter of the complex to interpose themselves between the RPF and the Gendarmerie, which was trying to hold the cheering mobs back.

  I spent the evening at the CND with Luc, watching the RPF get settled. Ambassadors from the diplomatic community came to pay their respects to the chairman. I was surprised to see the French ambassador arrive, since no foreign nation had done so much to prevent this day from happening. Perhaps the French were reconciled to a new Rwanda.

  Brent had spent the afternoon and evening studying the RPF soldiers and their deployment around the CND. The commanding officer—who went by his nom de guerre, Commander Charles—was only in his late twenties, but he was obviously an experienced and able leader. The occupation of the CND had been well-rehearsed: the RPF had deployed by company, platoon and section-sized groups in a direct and deliberate manner. The entire area was checked in minutes, commanders liaised and passed direction, troops were moved into defensive locations, and they immediately began to dig in. Once secure, they had dismissed the UNAMIR troops and assumed total control of the interior of the complex. Once the RPF began digging, they never stopped for the next four months. From shellscrapes or foxholes, they dug full fire-trenches, then roofed the trenches for protection from artillery or mortar fire. They then dug full communication-trenches between the individual trenches and built bunkers that developed into caverns. By the time the war resumed in April, they had built an underground complex under the CND. It was clear that while the peace process was progressing, they were also prepared for the alternative. I was determined that it would not come to that.

  Earlier in December, Brent and I had sat down to draft our three-month review for Boutros Boutros-Ghali, which was to go to the Security Council on December 30. Overall, we were pleased, maybe even euphoric. Despite the world’s lack of interest, the supply shortages, and the stonewalling from our CAO, we would achieve our phase-one military objectives by the deadline we had set. The ground was prepared for the interim government to step down and the BBTG to be sworn in.

  However, the situation facing us was tough. With the RPF inside the capital and delays dogging the naming of the transitional government, I urgently needed all of the phase-two troops to deploy ahead of schedule. I had to concentrate troops in Kigali at the expense of the demilitarized zone, leaving me wide open with two possible fronts to worry about and only enough troops for one. I was very frank in outlining for the secretary-general how the lack of logistical support was placing my troops at undue risk. The fallout from the Burundi coup had also increased the demands on the military side of the mission. I had asked for more troops to deal with the changed situation in the south but had been told by the DPKO that I couldn’t have them because I hadn’t requested them in my technical mission report. How could I have, when the coup hadn’t yet happened? Now I reported that I was making do by stretching my unarmed military observers to the limit so UNAMIR could at least maintain a presence in the south. We tried to frame it as optimistically as possible, urging the necessary backing instead of blasting the inadequate support provided to date. When we finished our report, we shipped it off to Booh-Booh to be included in his overall mission report.

  When I eventually got a copy of the document that was presented to the Security Council, I was angry: where Brent and I had presented a realistic, if positively framed, picture of the overwhelming challenges facing the mission, Booh-Booh and his staff had watered it down, giving our masters back in New York a reassuring story of slow but steady progress.

  In the last days of December, Faustin Twagiramungu became a frequent visitor to my office at the Amahoro. We would occasionally sit out on the balcony and talk well into the night. The balcony faced northwest, and as the sun dipped below the horizon, staining the sky blood-red, we would look out across the hills and valleys alive with the lights of hundreds of small wood fires. We could just make out the white cube of the CND and the silhouettes of RPF soldiers as they stood guard. The twilight hush was often punctuated by unexplained gunshots.

  Faustin was another Rwandan leader who had been educated in Quebec during the Quiet Revolution of the sixties. He had been close to the radical students and intellectuals who would eventually migrate to the separatist cause of the Parti Québécois. One of the people he met during this period was René Lévesque, who became the PQ’s leader. During our long conversations, he reminisced about his student days in Canada and the radicalism of his youth. I think he found that our shared history made it easy and natural for him to discuss the complex situation facing his country.

  When he came to see me on December 30, it was late and he was on his way to another of the interminable meetings the politicans were holding to decide the final lists for the representatives in the transitional government. According to Arusha, the BBTG was to be a coalition of Rwanda’s five signatory parties: Faustin’s MDR; the ruling party led by Habyarimana, the MRND; Lando’s Parti libéral; the PDC and the PSD (both moderate parties led by Jean-Népomucène Nayinzira and a triumvirate of Fréderic Nzamurambaho, Félicien Gatabazi and Théoneste Gafarange respectively); and the RPF. But the extremist CDR party, led by the likes of Jean Shyirambere Barahinyura, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Martin Bucyana, whose ideology was blatantly fascist and racist, had refused to sign on with Arusha and as a result, was shut out of the transitional government. That did not prevent its members from infiltrating the official parties and whipping up public paranoia and hysteria in their propaganda rag, Kangura, and over RTLM.

  In the Arusha negotiations, Lando’s PL had been allocated the powerful justice portfolio, and the RPF had been given the interior ministry, which in theory would enable them to investigate, charge and try individuals for corruption, murder and other crimes. This ability undoubtedly worried many of the current power-holders in Rwanda, who had money in their pockets and blood on their hands. According to Faustin, the biggest fear of the former ruling party was that once the transitional government was installed, the PL and the RPF would see to it that the president and many of his entourage were clapped in jail for crimes committed during the regime. That night, Faustin also told m
e that President Habyarimana was trying to manoeuvre around the installation of the BBTG and that his direct interference was one of the major factors behind the political impasse.

  I remember Faustin’s voice rising with concern and anxiety as he described how that manoeuvring was playing itself out and why the lists of the representatives to the BBTG kept changing. A woman named Agnès Ntambyauro was agitating for a position in the justice ministry, an appointment that was being blocked by Lando, even though she was a member of the PL. Lando was also having trouble with his party president, Justin Mugenzi. Both Ntambyauro and Mugenzi were known to be extremists who had joined the shadowy group that called itself Le Power, or Hutu Power. There were rumours that Mugenzi was being paid off by Habyarimana’s henchmen to stir up trouble within the PL.

  I told Faustin I understood his worries but urged him to find some way to rally the moderates in other parties in order to get the political process on track. If the installation of the BBTG was further delayed, he risked losing the support of moderates inside the army, the Gendarmerie and the communal police, who we knew supported Arusha. Many of these military moderates were taking great personal risks by doing their utmost to co-operate with UNAMIR. He and the rest of the politicians had to do the same if we were to have any chance at success. I had hoped to inspire him, but he left me that night unpersuaded.

  The holidays had passed in a blur of meetings, as everyone scrambled to make the last possible window for the installation of the BBTG. This last official round of discussions was held at the rotunda inside the Amahoro complex. I attended all of the meetings and even agreed to chair some of them. Booh-Booh, before he went on holiday, hadn’t been able to get any forward momentum. By New Year’s Eve, the rifts in the PL and Faustin’s MDR were becoming even more marked, and a threatening tone edged the debate. As the clock ticked down on 1993, I could feel my energy and optimism ebbing. When the meeting broke up close to midnight, I was depressed and exhausted. I hadn’t slept much in weeks and I just wanted to go home and crash.

  As I was packing up, Brent slipped into my office with a twinkle in his eye and suggested that we go up to the New Year’s Eve party that our officers had organized at the Meridien hotel. I didn’t really feel like it but knew I should go. As soon as we entered the party room, the place erupted. The guys had hired a live band, which tore into a wonderful set of African tunes that started my blood pumping. I couldn’t resist. I started dancing and didn’t stop for a good two hours. At first, my troops couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing and joined in a little nervously. As the night turned to morning, I felt the tension draining out of me as I danced out all the frustration and disappointment.

  Whatever the future held, that night nothing could touch or interfere with the wonderful bond I shared with my men.

  7

  THE SHADOW FORCE

  I WENT INTO the office at seven-thirty New Year’s morning. The civilian staff were taking the day off, and all was quiet on the second floor of the Amahoro. As I looked around, my office seemed a symbol of everything that was wrong with the mission. I could use the phone on my desk only gingerly because the scrambling device attached to it never worked properly. We had begged, borrowed, scrounged and dipped into our own pockets to buy the furniture in the room. The fax paper was doled out by the CAO as if it were gold. Everything about this mission was a struggle.

  I had pushed my small force to the point of exhaustion in order to meet the first of the ninety-day milestones set out in the Arusha accords, and yet where exactly had that gotten Rwanda or us? We were still bogged down in a political quagmire that threatened to hijack the mission. We had less than three days’ water, rations and fuel; we had no defensive stores (barbed wire, sandbags, lumber and so on); no spare parts; no night vision equipment; and severe shortages of radios and vehicles. Staff officers worked on their bellies on the floor because there were so few desks and chairs. We had no filing cabinets, which meant none of the mission information and planning could be properly secured. Every week in our situation reports and almost daily by phone we begged for these shortfalls to be addressed; we knew there was equipment sitting at the UN depot in Pisa, Italy, but we were obviously a low priority, and everything seemed to go to missions such as the one in the former Yugoslavia. A commander seldom has all the resources he needs to conduct a mission and has to accept managing shortages, which themselves present risks. A leader manages risk. But everything we did in UNAMIR was a risk because we had next to nothing.

  I walked out onto the balcony, where I lit a cigar and looked over toward the CND complex, already swarming with activity. For a moment I envied the RPF their organization, energy and resolve. We were three months into the mission and I still lacked a deputy force commander and chief of staff, which meant that all the day-to-day tasks and decisions about resources fell to me. I really didn’t know how much longer I could sustain this pace and the administrative hassles, which were eating a black hole in my time.

  That first week of January, I had a major row with Hallqvist, which must have been heard all over the headquarters. The CAO directly accused me of manipulating his staff while he was on Christmas and New Year’s leave, in order to get them to approve the cleaning, repairs and equipping of the CND for the RPF battalion, as well as building the security perimeter. I shot back that as far as I was concerned he had left the mission without making sure our requirements had been met. He insisted that he had no authority to just make things happen and no money, either, and I yelled that it wasn’t me who was setting the milestones, but the politicians and the accords—but still I was damned if we were going to let this country down. Somehow in this battle, which raged for one of the longest hours of my life, we cleared the air between us. While the UN administrative and logistics systems continued to frustrate us enormously, Hallqvist and I bashed out a way to work together.

  A date had been set aside for the swearing-in ceremony of the BBTG: January 5. After the acrimonious debates of late December, there was still no consensus on the cabinet, but Booh-Booh suggested we go ahead on January 5 and at least swear Habyarimana in, and then sort out the problem of the ministers and the representatives later. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. Since the SRSG’s arrival, I had sworn off direct involvement with the political side of things, so I was surprised, on January 2, to receive an unscheduled visit from Enoch Ruhigira, the former prime minister of Rwanda and now Habyarimana’s chef de cabinet and a close confidant.

  We sat in the little conference room beside my office and talked about the political impasse. Brent had put together a schematic of the BBTG on one of the white boards we’d put up on the walls, and I remember staring at it and actually having to agree with Ruhigira: for those inside the former regime, it looked like the cards were stacked against them. The moderates seemed to have cornered most of the important government portfolios; to Ruhigira, they weren’t moderates at all but “RPF sympathizers.” He suggested that once the BBTG was installed, the RPF and its “sympathizers” could send Habyarimana and those around him to jail for crimes committed by the regime.

  And he was right. During the Arusha negotiations, the former regime, and especially Habyarimana, had wanted an amnesty provision. For the sake of making a lasting peace, they should have gotten it. Instead, the RPF had successfully argued for a process in which a two-thirds vote in the national assembly could impeach a president or minister. In the new government, the RPF believed that all the moderate opposition parties would support them; the moderates and the RPF would assume control of certain key ministries, open the books, no doubt find corruption, present such crimes to the National Assembly for a vote, have the individual impeached and charged, and be able to discredit and punish the MRND. It struck me that all the jockeying from Habyarimana’s side since Arusha may have been dedicated to blocking the swearing-in of the BBTG until the Hutu Power factions had infiltrated the moderate parties and assumed control of at least 40 per cent of the assembly, thereby blocking any pote
ntial impeachments. If there had been an amnesty included in the Arusha Peace Agreement, none of this would be in danger of happening. But what could I say to Ruhigira? All I could offer was that because of the involvement of the international community, due process would have to be observed and any impeachment would take years to organize: there would certainly be a mellowing of attitudes as time went on and the political process matured. Besides, I added, the political landscape could change significantly when the scheduled democratic elections were held in two years. At that point it might prove to be counterproductive to put Habyarimana on trial.

  After Ruhigira left, I sat alone in the conference room, looking at the chart of the BBTG and wondering if there was some way of getting the RPF to bend a little and offer some concessions to the former regime. But given the sweet deal they had cut at Arusha, the RPF had shown little interest in negotiating. As far as I was concerned, going ahead with the swearing-in ceremony in these circumstances was inviting disaster. But the SRSG insisted, and after meeting with all the concerned parties as well as the diplomatic community, the day of the installation ceremony was confirmed.

  On the morning of January 5, large crowds swarmed around the CND, where the ceremony was to be held. The people were noisy but not particularly threatening to the UNAMIR soldiers who were providing security alongside the Gendarmerie. Then Habyarimana arrived in a high-speed motorcade of Presidential Guards, who drove so recklessly they almost ran down some of the spectators and blue berets. The guards leapt out of their transport, tough, arrogant and armed to the teeth. As Habyarimana was hustled inside the National Assembly, the Presidential Guard commander set up just outside the gate and began issuing orders to some of his troops, who were dressed in civilian attire. They dispersed into the crowd and, moments later, the situation turned ugly as spectators started to threaten the moderate delegates who were trying to follow Habyarimana through the entrance. Lando Ndasingwa and a busload of Parti libéral delegates were swarmed, blocked from entering and terrorized. When we asked the Gendarmerie to intervene, their attempt to control the mob was half-hearted. I did not want to create an incident by having armed UNAMIR troops wade in alone; we protected those who sought refuge with us on the perimeter of the mob. I was supposed to join Booh-Booh, the ambassadors and other VIPs to watch the ceremony, but something in me rebelled. I excused myself from the proceedings on the pretext that I had to keep an eye on the situation outside.