Shake Hands With the Devil

by Roméo Dallaire

  I shared the points in the letter Booh-Booh had obtained from Bizimungu, which echoed Bagosora’s enumeration of conditions for a ceasefire. Kagame surprised me by saying that the idea of the belligerents returning to the pre–April 6 positions was an invention of the French. He said that last week, the diplomatic corps in Uganda had met under the auspices of the French ambassador in Kampala. President Museveni had also attended. Kagame had sent a representative, who made it quite clear that such a return was a no go. He was surprised that I raised it again today and that I was so obviously in the dark about the Kampala meeting. As far as Kagame was concerned, I was the UN representative in Rwanda and I had to sort this out.

  He had one more subject he wanted to discuss, out of the blue it seemed to me at that moment. He was not going to be happy with any reinforcement of UNAMIR that looked like an intervention force. With the ceasefire going nowhere fast and his successes mounting on the battlefield, it was obvious why he wouldn’t be.

  I told him outright that there had been no discussion of an intervention force coming from UNAMIR and that if a force was being considered, it was to help stop the massacres and then work on the ceasefire and its potential application.

  But Kagame contradicted me. “The UN is looking at sending an intervention force on humanitarian grounds, but for what reason?” he asked. “Those that were to die are already dead. If an intervention force is sent to Rwanda, we will fight it. Let us solve the problem of the Rwandans. This force is to protect the criminals in power. The international community cannot even condemn the massacres of poor innocent people. It is presenting the Rwandan problem as an ethnic one, which is incorrect as the massacres were against Tutsis and the opposition. All my soldiers that I command have individually lost family, starting with myself. My idea is not to divide the country but to hunt the criminals everywhere they might be.”

  He berated France and world indifference and blamed the UN for not giving me an appropriate mandate when the time was right. And then, as a final shot, he banished Booh-Booh: “The SRSG is not welcome anymore in Rwanda. We do not recognize him, and if he stays we will cease to collaborate with the UN.” After politely offering me and my party beds for the night, he excused himself.

  It was already past 1700. With direct death threats uttered against me, I knew it would be dangerous to try to get back to the city in our unmistakable white SUVs with the blue UN flags after nightfall, but I decided I had to pass on this pronouncement to Booh-Booh that night as well as touch base with the triumvirate. I also had to review the first draft of our response on the future of UNAMIR.

  Dark descended on us as we wove our way back over the hills and down into valleys, our headlights picking out the roadblocks manned by drunken militia and half-asleep RGF soldiers. Around one curve, out of the pitch-black we fell into what looked like a swarm of fireflies, an entire cosmos. For as far as we could see, on the mountain slopes and seemingly high into the sky, thousands upon thousands of small fires and candles flickered in the perfectly still night. We had driven into a displaced persons’ camp. We cut our speed drastically to manoeuvre through crowds of people still moving on the main route, hardly able to make out their dark shapes against the night. We crept along, our hearts in our mouths, hoping that we wouldn’t attract the wrong kind of attention, for what seemed like endless kilometres, and then, just like our sudden stumbling into this unusual carpet of stars, we were out of it and back into utter blackness.

  When we made it to the Force HQ, Henry was very relieved to see us. I spoke separately to Dr. Kabia, confiding to him alone Kagame’s comment about Booh-Booh. I then called the triumvirate and briefed them on my session. Since Brent was gone, the draft notes to the secretary-general’s report were not ready for my review. For a time I slept in my big chair by the window in my office-cum-bedroom. An hour later, I was awoken with the news that my new aide-de-camp, Captain Ndiaye, had gone to the Meridien hotel to bring some papers to Booh-Booh and had been ambushed about five hundred metres from the hotel. One of the bullets had creased the left side of his head, giving him an awful headache. The RPF soldiers controlled the area and were undoubtedly the culprits. Kagame’s troops were getting more and more trigger-happy, and it was time for him to sort them out. So far, his troops had handled themselves quite well. There had been a case of rape that was dealt with summarily—the guilty soldier was shot. We had witnessed no looting per se. Bizimungu had told me that all the families of the senior officers in Byumba had been killed outright after the fall of that city. An RPF non-commissioned officer had come across his own uncles, aunts and cousins who had all been slaughtered by machete in Ramagana. He had gone on a rampage, killing Hutus until he was stopped.

  The next morning I met with Bizimungu at the Diplomates, in our regular place looking out on a magnificent garden now full of artillery and mortar shell holes. A window was cracked and splattered with mud from the explosions. Once I briefed him on my meeting with Kagame, Froduald Karamira, the vice-president of the MDR, slipped into the room and joined us. I had a proposition for them: I wanted them to arrange for me to meet the Interahamwe leadership. If I was going to approve humanitarian efforts and civilian transfers I wanted to form a personal impression of the militia’s willingness to let this happen since it would be impossible to get through all those barriers, back and forth, without having a firm commitment from the militia leaders. I needed their personal agreement in order to hold them accountable if things went wrong. I also wanted to talk to them directly about the refugee transfers between the lines because Bizimungu refused to do so. He and Karamira told me they could arrange such a meeting for later in the day.

  I then made my way to the airport to see Lieutenant Colonel Joe Adinkra and his battalion in the air terminal. The Ghanaians had done a first-class job of reinforcing the interior with the sandbags and revetting that had finally commenced to come in with our twice-daily Hercules flights. Although the battalion had been bombarded on two separate occasions, there was little damage to their area of the massive building. They had established good defences from any ground assault, had excellent observation and fire positions over the tarmac and had laid land line (to link field telephones) to the support troops on the other side of the airfield.

  I then moved on to tour the rest of the positions with Lieutenant Colonel Joe, a fine young battalion commander, solid and straight as a metal rod, whose troops were very loyal to him and responded to his orders with energy. The support troops, many of whom were members of the regimental band, had built themselves a veritable fortress, which would sustain artillery fire without any doubt. The problem was that they had poor observation and fire control around the site. They did not like digging in and so they had few people posted outside. I took Joe along with a few of his officers and NCOs to the old Belgian trenches. Although well-disposed, they needed to be expanded and connected by either open or covered communications trenches. A media crew joined us as we went, though I didn’t realize it at the time. The newscast the next day showed Joe and me standing on the old Belgian trenches, binoculars in hand, as I pointed farther afield. I am saying, in the most collegial of fashions, “If you don’t dig in here and place a heavy machine gun under cover there, the f–––––s are going to be right on top of you before you can even fart.” The comment was followed by footage of extensive scurrying about with orders at top voice and troops with shovels and picks leaping into holes in the ground followed by dirt flying in the air. It felt good to do some classic soldiering.

  Later on the afternoon of May 1, I had my first meeting with the leaders of the Interahamwe. Not only was Bizimungu present, but so was Bagosora, who had deigned to come himself. I had made my way to the Diplomates, jostling through the ubiquitous roadblocks, drunken and downright mad militiamen, and hundreds of children jumping around, all excited among today’s kills. These kids were being egged on to throw stones at our vehicles and yell at us as we stopped for the militiamen to open the gate. I had tried to anaesthetize my
self to the ethical and moral dimensions of meeting with the génocidaires, recognizing that if they refused to assist in the transfers I might not ever get anyone out. Arriving at the hotel, I took the bullets out of my pistol just in case the temptation to shoot them was too extreme, and went inside.

  The three young men Bagosora introduced to me had no particularly distinguishing features. I think I was expecting frothing at the mouth, but the meeting would be with humans. Until now, these men had never figured in any official discussions. They had been perceived as gang leaders, punks, criminals. However, today they had been asked to meet me for formal discussions on security. They had come of age, and they conveyed a certain cockiness as they greeted me. I remember smiling at them, with my heart beating so hard I was sure they could see it. I nearly lost my composure when I noticed that the middle guy’s open-collared white shirt was spattered with dried blood. There were small flecks on his right arm as we shook hands. I moved on before I could think. They were Robert Kajuga, president of the National Interahamwe; Bernard Mamiragaba, representing the National Committee Interahamwe, and Ephrem Nkezabera, whose title was special councillor. At the end of the receiving line, Bizimungu was polite. We all sat down at once. Bagosora presided as Kajuga, the most senior of the three, whose mother had been Tutsi, began with words of respect, admiration and support for UNAMIR and its efforts with the Arusha peace process—at which point Bagosora excused himself and was out the door so fast we barely had time to respond.

  Kajuga continued, offering to help UNAMIR. He proposed putting some of his youths with us as we patrolled our different protected sites. He said he had passed the word to all the barriers to let the Red Cross through while on humanitarian activities. What other kinds of activities did the Red Cross do? I wondered to myself. “We are at your disposal,” he insisted and then was interrupted by the chap to his right, who said they were ready to work on the details of the transfers. He also said that they had “sensitized” all their people to stop the massacres. I could not believe my ears. He had actually blurted out the fact that they were doing the killing. Kajuga took over again, a little put out. He repeated that the Interahamwe had absolutely no problems with UNAMIR.

  I thanked them for their support, for demonstrating such a sense of co-operation. I said I was overwhelmed with their positive attitude and promised that in the future I would be consulting them on matters of security. They nearly burst their shirts with pride. Whether they were telling me the truth regarding their intentions I could not be sure, but it was clear that they responded well to flattery. After about twenty-five minutes of this, I had had enough. Delighted with the turn of events, Bizimungu thanked me and I returned the compliment, shaking all of their hands.

  What a sick event. I walked out of the hotel and passed by the RGF guards without even looking, at odds with myself about what had just happened. I then proceeded to the Mille Collines hotel to meet separately with the vice-president of the MDR party, Froduald Karamira who, due to his extremist loyalties, had survived the fate of his party colleagues. He gave me the same story as Bizimungu, only from the stance of a political person from the interim government, not a military man. At least I now had proof that they were all singing from the same song sheet. The links between the army, the militia and the interim government were real.

  On the way back to the Force HQ, I felt that I had shaken hands with the devil. We had actually exchanged pleasantries. I had given him an opportunity to take pride in his disgusting work. I felt guilty of evil deeds myself since I had actually negotiated with him. My stomach was ripping me apart about whether I had done the right thing. I would only know when the first transfer happened.

  The Sainte Famille church is a reference point on the Kigali skyline. The compound surrounding it is large, open and on a slope halfway up one of the hills in the city core. For artillery and mortar observers, it is an ideal target—impossible to miss if you’re trying to hit it and easy to avoid if you’re not. After I got back from my sickening encounter with the Interahamwe leaders, I had been trying to deal with the deluge of paperwork at my desk, already badly missing Brent and his ability to triage my workload. I had left my radio on as I worked, monitoring the force radio net, and at about 1645 I heard a call go out for medical support at Sainte Famille, as mortar rounds had fallen in the protected site at the compound.

  It took almost half an hour to get there. The scene was chaos. Several thousand panicked people were either trying to seek refuge in the school and chapel, cowering against the walls or trying to get away from the area, even though that would likely mean falling into the hands of the militias. I could see the blue berets of the UNMOs in the thick of things, surrounded by the dead and the dying. Civilians, some obviously from the Red Cross, were working on the dozens upon dozens of casualties. As I got out of my vehicle, I was swamped by hysterical men and women demanding answers, comfort, rescue. I ended up having to push and fight my way through them to meet with my UNMOs. Breaking out of the mob, I approached the sites where the bombs impacted. Severed limbs and heads, children ripped in two, the wounded turning their bewildered eyes toward you at the moment at which you can actually see the life expire from them, the smell of burnt explosives mixed with burning blood and flesh. And amid the carnage, a glimpse of dignity in the face of an elder resigned to his approaching and inevitable death. The MILOBs and Red Cross staff were working feverishly. Covered in blood, the MILOB chief told me that one of his team was finishing the calculations on the crater analysis in order to determine where the bombs were fired from. He had taken his measurements among the bodies and gore in the shell holes.

  Meanwhile, some of the informal civilian leaders were having some success in calming parts of the crowd, and I waded over to talk to as many people as I could. They could not understand why I did not have more soldiers to protect them. They appreciated the mobile patrols that checked in on them during the day, and the fact that some of my unarmed men stayed with them at night, but that simply was not enough. Squeezed in by hundreds of frightened people, I remember trying to explain to one group all the reasons why my troops were unable to fight to protect them. Puzzled at the complexity of my answer, they pressed me to sort it out. What could be so complicated? They were under fire and I was their only hope.

  At prayers the next morning, it was confirmed that we finally had a team that could visit the presidential crash site, and an agreement in place allowing an international investigation. Thus commenced a process that to my knowledge has never brought a definitive answer to the mystery of who shot down that plane and why.

  The report on the Sainte Famille bombing was in: over 120 casualties with 13 dead, 61 evacuated to the Red Cross field hospital and 15 to the King Faisal. I couldn’t help thinking, “Too bad this slaughter was not in a market in Yugoslavia—maybe somebody outside Rwanda would have cared.” As it happened, the Rwandan genocide was having a hard time knocking the South African elections and American figure skater Tonya Harding’s criminal troubles off the front pages. The crater analysis indicated that the mortars were eighty-one-millimetre projectiles and they had been fired from the RPF positions. I would see Kagame tomorrow and formally expose this to him for action and, in the daily sitrep to New York, lay the atrocity at the RPF’s doorstep.

  Finally my request to be interviewed by RTLM came through, and I drove to the Diplomates around noon. Despite an attempt by the RPF to shut down the station by shellfire a few days earlier, it was back on the air, more virulent than ever, and we suspected it had a mobile capability.

  The three RTLM staffers were set up in a room in a lower level of the hotel—a white man, George Ruggiu (who claimed to be Italian, but was actually a Belgian), a very aggressive female announcer and a technician. The interview was taped, not live as I had wished, which meant that they would chop it up to use as they liked. I decided to get some value out of the encounter and started asking them questions. What did they think the RPF was really up to? With venom, the woman replied,
“Divide the country in two, which will not happen. No Tutsis will be secure in their villages. Arusha has been buried by the RPF.” I’d heard that illogic before, but what was behind it? I asked about the impact of Habyarimana’s assassination and got a surprising answer. As far as these extremists were concerned, Habyarimana had been protecting the Tutsis. He was pro-RPF, and they had not wanted him to stay in power. It was as close as I could get to a confession that the extremists wanted to get rid of Habyarimana.

  I went a little further and asked them about the massacres. They immediately responded that the RPF was responsible for the downing of the plane and starting the war, and the Presidential Guard had merely reacted “to liquidate certain elements who had dabbled in the conspiracy.” Clearly, in their minds this was a pro-Tutsi RPF conspiracy. The session ended with them making more accusations against the Belgians, but at least I’d gained some information.

  That afternoon I received a letter from the interim government, signed by Bizimungu, agreeing to the transfers from the Mille Collines and the Amahoro. The UNAMIR staff led by Henry, with Yaache and two members of his humanitarian action cell, Major Marek Pazik and Major Don MacNeil (a new officer from Canada), were concurrently meeting with the militia and RGF staffs to iron out the details for the transfer we had scheduled for the next day: we were going to move some pro-RPF people from the Mille Collines to behind the RPF lines outside Kigali. It would be a first test of whether the Hutu belligerents were actually on side and in control. There were considerable exchanges of artillery and mortar fire, including medium-calibre rockets, all over Kigali that third day of May. More rounds ended up in Sainte Famille, though this time there were few casualties. Later in the afternoon the hangar area at the airfield received four to five hits. Three Ghanaian soldiers were wounded in the attack and required evacuation, but the Hercules could not get into Kigali because of bad weather, and the wounded would have to wait for a flight at first light.