Shake Hands With the Devil

by Roméo Dallaire

  As the month wore on, I became even more concerned about the condition of my force. The armoured personnel carriers I had requested months ago had arrived from the UN mission in Mozambique on January 30. I had requested twenty. Only five of the eight APCs that actually arrived were in working order. They came with no mechanics qualified to operate them, no spare parts, no tools, and operating manuals in Russian. A hundred more vehicles, principally SUVs from the closing of the Cambodia mission, had been shipped to Dar es Salaam, where they had been vandalized while they were sitting in port; the Tanzanians would not let me send UNAMIR troops to guard them, and the UN had no capacity to provide security. The UN signed a transport contract with the lowest bidder, who hired inexperienced civilian drivers to convoy these vehicles over a thousand kilometres of African dirt roads to Kigali, and on the trip, about ten of the vehicles were lost. By the time the convoy arrived, just under thirty vehicles were functional, though they were missing everything from windshield wipers to seats, and many of them had been stripped of their radios. We could not find the spare parts or expertise in Rwanda to repair them.

  Both Luc and I wanted to increase our firepower, particularly at the airport. I requested ammunition, some heavier weapons, mortars and the like—none ever came. The Belgians had used up a lot of ammunition in training exercises and never replaced it, since the UN and the Belgians could never agree on who would pay. The UN or Belgium should have resupplied me and quibbled about the cost later.

  Though I had requested a further forty-eight unarmed observers in December in order to deal with the confirmed reports of recruiting in the Burundian refugee camps by both the RPF and the RGF, the SRSG had not supported my request, and I had not received them. As it stood, I had only six unarmed military observer teams available to search the camps; they could do little beyond verifying the reports. As well, the ceasefire along the demilitarized zone was increasingly fragile. On February 11, there had been a major violation about thirty kilometres northeast of Byumba at a place where RGF and RPF forces were stationed on either side of a river. Apparently, an RGF soldier had opened fire on a group of RPF troops collecting water. In the short firefight that followed, three RGF soldiers were killed and another five injured, and a number of civilians caught in the crossfire were wounded, and one of them killed. Colonel Tikoka produced a new deployment plan in order to reinforce the demilitarized zone, but the moves he suggested would come at the expense of the other sectors.

  When I addressed these needs with General Baril, he told me that I shouldn’t make such major requests on an ad hoc basis. Instead I should include these needs for consideration in the six-month mission report due in March. This meant that even if the increases were approved, I wouldn’t see any new troops before the summer.

  On February 17, General Uytterhoeven, the Belgian army’s inspector general, and Colonel Jean-Pierre Roman, the Para-Commando Brigade commander, arrived in Kigali for a four-day visit. I was very happy to see these gentlemen. I needed to talk with the Belgian higher command and straighten out some problems I was having with their contingent. We had been told that in March, the UN intended to replace the battalion of para-commandos in Kigali with an ad hoc battalion put together from Belgian para-commandos and Austrian soldiers. I was determined to nip any such move in the bud, as it would destroy any nascent cohesion within the force at a time when our military tasks were becoming even more demanding.

  With the full support of Luc Marchal, I broached the serious deficiencies in leadership, discipline and training of the Belgian battalion. Even after I had spoken to the Belgian leadership specifically about the change of attitude required to successfully conduct a chapter-six mission, the battalion did not change its approach. Belgian soldiers were often frustrated by the patient negotiations required of peacekeepers on a mission such as ours, where building a relationship of trust and cooperation with the local population was just as important as setting up roadblocks to check for smuggled weapons. They saw themselves as the crème de la crème, as vastly superior soldiers to their UNAMIR colleagues. They seemed to view the mission as a sort of Club Med assignment where their recreational and vacation needs were to be met and where any training they undertook was designed to help them meet the paratrooper evaluation they would face when they returned to Belgium. This serious deficiency in leadership, coupled with disciplinary problems and the lack of mission-specific training, created conflicts between the mission, the RGF and the general population.

  There had been dozens of incidents of disciplinary infractions. The Belgians were constantly being caught out of bounds in nightclubs that had been restricted for their own safety. They drank on patrol and got into barroom brawls, seeming to take their cue from the French troops who went dancing and drinking at Kigali Nights, the local hot spot, with their personal weapons. One night, several drunken Belgian soldiers completely trashed the lobby of the Mille Collines, which was Kigali society’s favourite watering hole. The Belgians often refused to salute or pay proper respect to officers of other contingents, especially officers of colour. There were Belgian soldiers who went absent without leave into Zaire and got up to heaven knows what until they were detained by the authorities. In one of the more serious incidents, in order to celebrate Belgian Airborne Day, the battalion commander, Leroy, held a party for the unit at the Meridien hotel, to which VIPs were invited. In the spirit of the occasion, the pilots of the Belgians’ Hercules aircraft, which were parked at the airport for medical evacuation purposes, decided to buzz the hotel. While making a low pass over the Meridien, the plane overflew the CND complex, prompting an immediate reaction from the vigilant RPF battalion. After being cooped up for nearly two months, they were a little paranoid, and scrambled to the roof where they opened fire on the aircraft. In this case, as in many others, the culprits were formally charged by Luc Marchal and sent home to face punishment.

  It was also brought to Luc’s attention, and then to mine, that a few of the Belgian staff officers were fraternizing with Tutsi women. RTLM and the scurrilous extremist newspaper Kangura had gotten wind of this and exploited the story fully, accompanying lurid text with obscene cartoons that implied that I, too, was involved in such behaviour. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as consensual sex between soldiers and the local civilian population in a war or conflict zone. The Belgians were also destroying the credibility of UNAMIR by giving fodder to the rumours that we were pro-Tutsi. Luc summoned these officers to his office, read them the riot act and confined them and the whole battalion to quarters. A few days later, a couple of the officers had the temerity to come to my office to protest Luc’s action. I told them that Luc not only had my full support, but that I would personally write to their chief of staff.

  Still, it seemed that no amount of censure and disciplinary action from me or from Luc could correct the rot that was eating away at this contingent. At the beginning of February, one of my Belgian patrols had roughed up Théoneste Bagosora at a checkpoint in Kigali. Bagosora was travelling in a clearly marked military vehicle and had presented his identity papers to the patrol, but the Belgians forced him, his driver and his bodyguard out of the car and proceeded with a humiliating search, all the time pointing their weapons at them. A Belgian officer finally intervened.

  The coup de grâce came just before General Uytterhoeven and Colonel Roman arrived. A group of Belgian soldiers in civilian dress forced their way into the home of one of the heads of the extremist CDR party, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, and assaulted him in front of his family. The CDR had close links to RTLM, which often carried negative stories about the Belgians. The soldiers badly beat the politician on his own doorstep and, just before they left, one of them aimed a gun at his head and warned him that if he or his party or the local media ever again insulted or threatened Belgium, Belgian expatriates or the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR, they would return and kill him. Barayagwiza immediately went public and wiped out any of the hard-won public sympathy we had achieved earlier in the mont
h. I ordered a full investigation to identify and charge the offenders, but a wall of silence descended over the unit, and we never did uncover the culprits.

  It was with this thick file of incident reports that I confronted General Uytterhoeven and Colonel Roman. I told them that their troops were not only a discredit to the Belgian army but were seriously undermining the credibility of the mission. Their pre-deployment training must have been woefully inadequate for them to come into this chapter-six mission with such aggressive and destructive attitudes; worse, despite my clear instruction to their leadership, nothing had changed. I reminded them that through Luc Marchal, I had formally requested a copy of the training program that the Belgian replacement battalion was undergoing for the mission so as to avoid a similar situation with the incoming troops. I knew that by being so brutally frank, I risked damaging the relationship between myself and the Belgian military authorities, but I had no option—the Belgian para-commandos were putting the mission at risk.

  Later, Colonel Roman came to my office on his own in an attempt to smooth things over and defend his troops. He thought he should explain to me the idiosyncrasies of airborne forces. They were trained to be very decentralized and inventive, he said, and therefore tended to be a little less responsive to their officer corps than regular infantry troops. They needed to spend time training in order to keep up their high level of efficiency. The undercurrent in all this was that I was overreacting and “boys would be boys”—exactly the outmoded notion I was fighting in the Canadian military. I countered by telling Colonel Roman that his troops spent so much of their time keeping their skills up that they had gone through much of my valuable ammunition, and that his government didn’t seem keen to replace these essential stocks, leaving us at risk. I told him what I had told General Uytterhoeven: unless these criticial deficiencies in training, discipline, attitude and leadership were addressed, I was considering the unprecedented step of recommending to New York that the Belgians be pulled from the mission. When I finished, the colonel was white with anger.

  Coincidentally, Willy Claes was also in Kigali. I spoke with him on Sunday, February 20, as part of a round-table discussion among diplomats, NGOs, expatriates and the SRSG. I told him we had to get tougher and more active, both militarily and politically, to ensure that we could deliver a success within the time frame specified by the accords. I said that the leaders of Rwanda’s nascent political parties had proven themselves incapable of rising above their own self-interest. There wasn’t a statesman among them. In order to break the impasse, we had to raise the diplomatic stakes and get international partners such as Belgium to start applying real pressure, not only to Habyarimana but to all the political players, including the RPF. Claes listened attentively and complimented UNAMIR on what it had achieved to date. He left us with the impression that he was going to fight for our mission in Brussels and New York.

  That same day, the Belgian politician had the opportunity to witness a couple of object lessons in Rwandan politics. Sundays were always the most difficult day of the week for my force, because that was when the political parties held their rallies. Little white Toyota pickup trucks chock full of drunk and belligerent Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militia would zoom around Kigali, stirring up trouble. The streets were usually full of people milling around, looking for something to do, and it didn’t take much to whip them up. This Sunday was worse than most. The MDR party was holding a huge rally at the Nyamirambo stadium; Faustin was still trying to sort out the split between him and the Power wing of his party, led by Froduald Karamira, the vice-president of the MDR. According to our informant, the Interahamwe was encouraging people to show up to the meeting armed with DDT “as medicine for the Inyenzi.” By the time the rally began that afternoon, the stadium was surrounded by Interahamwe mingling with the raucous crowd, making it almost impossible for the MDR leadership to make its way into the building. When Madame Agathe arrived with her Belgian escorts, the crowd began to pelt them with stones, drawing blood. The Belgians fired into the air to break up the crowd.

  That evening, at a supper given in honour of the departing Belgian delegation, Willy Claes had a front-row seat on the hair-trigger nature of Rwandan politics. The entire diplomatic community, the SRSG and myself from UNAMIR, and the leading politicians from the official parties, including the RPF, were invited. Extremists sat side by side with moderates. Still, the evening started well, with a lot of lighthearted chatter assisted by liberal quantities of food and alcohol. There was some political discussion, but it was all vague and optimistic. We were going to make another attempt at installing the BBTG later in the week, but the conversations flowing around me carefully avoided any real discussion of the impasse. I was struck again by the ability of the Rwandans to close ranks when the glare of the international community fell upon them, as if they were one big dysfunctional family conspiring to keep up appearances.

  Then something quite unexpected happened. I was sitting next to Félicien Gatabazi, the head of the influential (and still united) PSD party, and a well-known Hutu moderate from the south who was very pro-RPF, who had a few too many glasses of wine and got into an intense discussion with members of the MRND about their extremist views. The more drinks Gatabazi downed, the louder and more confrontational he became, until he was almost shouting. He started to insult individual members of the MRND, accusing them of manipulating the political process and causing the deadlock, and the whole room fell silent to listen. Gatabazi had already publicly accused the Presidential Guard of training militias at the Kanombe barracks and had received a number of death threats; that night he was fearless. I tried to diffuse the situation by interrupting with a change of topic, but the damage had already been done. Staring into the eyes of the MRND extremists, I saw sheer hatred, which rose like a wall to surround Gatabazi and me. There is no doubt in my mind that Gatabazi wrote his own death sentence that night. Yet on the way home from the dinner, it was Faustin Twagiramungu’s car that was ambushed. Faustin escaped but one of his bodyguards was killed.

  It was as if some dark force had been unleashed. The next day, CDR demonstrators burst into Madame Agathe’s office and took eight hostages. There was an uneasy standoff, but the Gendarmerie showed up to help my troops and, after a few hours of patient negotiation, managed to get the demonstrators to release the hostages.

  That evening, Brent was attempting to enjoy some quiet time at home while de Kant and I were at an official dinner at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. Brent had just got back from a two-week leave and was starting to unpack when the quietness of the night was shattered by the unmistakable crack of automatic weapon fire coming from behind the house. Believing our house was under attack, Brent shut off the lights and crept to the cupboard where he thought he would find Willem’s pistol, but Willem had taken it with him that evening. Brent armed himself with a Canadian-issue machete (which had never been out of its sheath and wasn’t even sharpened) and crawled to the phone to call headquarters. He hung up and moments later the phone rang. It was Félicien Gatabazi, who lived in our neighbourhood. He had been ambushed and wounded and was gasping, obviously in great pain. He had managed to get back to his house and wanted Brent to send help. Brent immediately called headquarters and reported the shooting, making sure that the message would be relayed to me at the dinner. De Kant, Troute and I raced back to the house just as a section of Belgian troops was pulling up. Once we knew that Brent was okay, we did a thorough sweep of the area. On the road behind the house, the Belgian patrol found a limousine riddled with bullet holes. The bodies of two gendarmes, the politician’s escorts, lay nearby in a pool of blood. Gatabazi had died shortly after he had made the phone call to Brent.

  This death may well have been the spark that set the whole country ablaze. The next day, February 22, we were once again supposed to swear in the transitional government. Fearing the worst, I ordered all off-duty troops to return to barracks, and cancelled all leave. Before first light, the force was on red alert and h
ad deployed.

  The next morning, moderates and extremists both took to the streets of Kigali. The extremist media immediately spun headlines celebrating the killing of Gatabazi as a victory against Hutu traitors; the Interahamwe was much in evidence. Political leaders of all persuasions literally hid from view, avoiding my attempts to contact them. The mob ruled the streets and only UNAMIR and the riot control Jali companies of the Gendarmerie were there to confront it. I restricted all unnecessary movement but increased our presence and patrolling in an attempt to calm the city. In the midst of this situation, Luc Marchal had to get Willy Claes to the airport. Once again, the swearing-in of the BBTG was aborted. Although the president did make his way to the CND, the prime minister designate and the RPF refused to attend in protest of Gatabazi’s assassination.

  Despite a determined effort on the part of the UN Civilian Police Division to finally solve one of these cases of political violence, not a single witness, other than Brent and members of Gatabazi’s family, came forward. Kigali was alive with rumours that ran the gamut from the reasonable to the exotic. There was some talk that the assassination had been the work of a hit squad from Togo, but most people believed that extremists inside the CDR were responsible. (In fact, the case was never solved.)

  In Gatabazi’s hometown of Butare, in the south, there were huge demonstrations. Later that afternoon, we heard that a mob of PSD supporters had grabbed Martin Bucyana, the national president of the CDR, near Butare and had lynched him. When this news spread to Kigali, the Interahamwe militias retaliated by blocking all of the major intersections, and routes out of the city.

  UNAMIR was overwhelmed by the vast numbers of hysterical and violent civilians who poured out into the streets. It was all we could do to move around. I wanted to avoid having armed UNAMIR soldiers use force against unarmed or machete-armed civilians, sure that if we fired on anyone, no matter the provocation, it would simply escalate the violence. Instead, I approached the government and the Gendarmerie to try to get them to do their jobs.