A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  At the height of the war in Bosnia, the op-ed pages of America’s newspapers had roared with indignation; during the three-month genocide in Rwanda, they were silent, ignorant, and prone fatalistically to accept the futility of outside intervention. An April 17 Washington Post editorial asked “what if anything might be done” about the killings. “Unfortunately, the immediate answer to the last question,” the editors wrote, “appears to be: not much”:

  The United States has no recognizable national interest in taking a role, certainly not a leading role. In theory, international fire-engine service is available to all houses in the global village. Imagine a fire department that would respond only to the lesser blazes. But in a world of limited political and economic resources, not all of the many fires will be equally tended. Rwanda is in an unpreferred class.74

  An April 23 New York Times editorial acknowledged that genocide was under way but said that the Security Council had “thrown in the bloodied towel”:

  What looks very much like genocide has been taking place in Rwanda. People are pulled from cars and buses, ordered to show their identity papers and then killed on the spot if they belong to the wrong ethnic group. . . . It is legally if not morally easy to justify pulling out since the unevenly trained U.N. force was meant to police a peace, not take sides in a civil war. Somalia provides ample warning against plunging open-endedly into a “humanitarian” mission. . . . The horrors of Kigali show the need for considering whether a mobile, quick-response UN force under UN aegis is needed to deal with such calamities. Absent such a force, the world has little choice but to stand aside and hope for the best.75

  A May 4 Nightline program began with anchorman Ted Koppel’s asking: “Rwanda: Is the world just too tired to help?” The segment included a comment from President Clinton, who had been asked about Rwanda that day. Clinton invoked Somalia: “Lesson number one is, don’t go into one of these things and say, as the U.S. said when we started in Somalia, ‘Maybe we’ll be done in a month because it’s a humanitarian crisis.’. . . Because there are almost always political problems and sometimes military conflicts, which bring about these crises.”76

  American newspapers included graphic descriptions of the atrocities, but although the coverage was steady, it was not heavy. In South Africa in early May 1994, some 2,500 reporters congregated for the historic elections that officially dismantled apartheid and brought Nelson Mandela to power. In Rwanda at the height of coverage of the killings, between April and June, the number of reporters present never exceeded fifteen.77 Editors make judgments about where, when, and why to deploy their “troops” in much the same way commanders-in-chief make theirs. And since U.S. or European military intervention in Rwanda was seen as highly unlikely, none of the major Western media outlets made coverage of the crisis a priority. Of course, as in Cambodia, because press coverage was light, public and elite pressure for military intervention remained faint.

  Capitol Hill was likewise quiet. Some in Congress were glad to be free of the expense of another flawed UN mission. Senator Dole had introduced the Peace Powers Act in Congress in January and made his opposition to U.S. involvement widely known. Other members of Congress were not hearing from their constituents. On April 30 Representative Patricia Schroeder (D.–Colo.) described the relative silence in her district. “There are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas,” she said, noting that Colorado was home to a research organization that studied Rwanda’s imperiled gorilla population. “But—it sounds terrible—people just don’t know what can be done about the people.”78

  Around the time of President Habyarimana’s plane crash in Rwanda, Randall Robinson of TransAfrica started a hunger strike to protest the Clinton administration’s automatic repatriation of Haitians fleeing the coup that had ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Robinson was quoted in the Washington Post on April 12, 1994, a week after the Rwandan massacres had begun, talking about America’s Haitian refugee policy: “I can’t remember ever being more disturbed by any public policy than I am by this one. I can’t remember any American foreign policy as hurtful, as discriminatory, as racist as this one. It is so mean, it simply can’t be tolerated.”79 Some 10,000 Rwandans had been killed that week in Kigali alone. On April 21 six members of the U.S. Congress were arrested in front of the White House for protesting the administration’s decision to turn back the Haitian refugees.80 Robinson was briefly hospitalized for dehydration on May 4; Clinton officially changed his policy on repatriation on May 9.

  A few members of the Africa subcommittees and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) did eventually appeal tamely for the United States to play a role in ending the violence. But again, they did not dare urge U.S. involvement on the ground, and they did not kick up a public fuss. The CBC staged no hunger strikes and no marches; no members were arrested in front of the White House; and in the end, after a few isolated television appearances, three letters, and a handful of private contacts, the caucus had no effect on U.S. policy. Holly Burkhalter of Human Rights Watch acknowledges the CBC’s lethargy but notes, “We can’t forget that the White Caucus, which is a lot bigger, wasn’t very effective either.”

  The phones in congressional offices were not ringing. Representative Alcee Hastings (D.–Fla.) later recalled, “In my constituency, I’m first to admit that the primary focus is on Haiti. You have to remember that I come from south Florida, and . . . we have suffered the megashocks of refugee influx. Africa seems so far away, and there is no vital interest that my constituency sees.” Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat, later said she had trouble following what was going on. “I don’t know whether the Hutus or the Tutsis were correct. I couldn’t tell anybody what I thought they should do,” she recalled. “A lot of people were like me; they didn’t know from crap.”81 No significant Rwandan diaspora lived in the United States; few African Americans identify specific ancestral homelands and lobby on their behalf in the way Armenians, Jews, or Albanians might. On May 13 Senator Paul Simon (D.–Ill.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa, and Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, telephoned General Dallaire in Kigali and asked what he needed. A desperate Dallaire told them if he had 5,000 troops he could end the massacres. The senators immediately drafted and hand-delivered a note to the White House requesting that the U.S. get the Security Council to authorize the deployment of troops. “Obviously there are risks involved,” the letter read, “but we cannot continue to sit idly by while this tragedy continues to unfold.” The senators got no reply. When they called to follow up ten days later, they were unable to reach National Security Adviser Lake but were told by another official, “We don’t feel there is a base of public support for taking any action in Africa.” “This might have been accurate,” Simon noted later, “but if there is no base for public support, the president can get on television and explain our reasons for responding and build a base. Even then, if public support still is not strong, leadership demands action in this type of situation.”82 Simon believes public pressure might have altered the U.S. response. “If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different,” Simon said.83 He wishes he had telephoned Clinton personally or at least staged a press conference: “I remember I considered calling in the press, but I just assumed nobody would show up.” Clinton did not write back to the senators until June 9, and in his letter he defended U.S. policy, listing all of the important steps the United States had taken, ranging from paying for medical supplies to pressing for a cease-fire. “I have spoken out against the killings,” the president wrote. “We have called for a full investigation of these atrocities.”84

  Although Human Rights Watch supplied exemplary intelligence to the U.S. government and lobbied in one-on-one meetings, it lacked the grass-roots base from which it might have mobilized the crucial d
omestic pressure everyone agreed was missing. When Des Forges, Mujawamariya, and Burkhalter of Human Rights Watch visited the White House on April 21 and asked Lake how they might alter U.S. policy, he shrugged his shoulders. “If you want to make this move, you will have to change public opinion,” Lake said. “You must make more noise.”85 But the only noise that could be heard was the sound of machetes slicing their way through Rwanda’s Tutsi population.

  PDD-25 in Action

  No sooner had most of Dallaire’s forces been withdrawn, in late April 1994, than a handful of nonpermanent members of the Security Council, aghast at the scale of the slaughter, pressed the major powers to send a new, beefed-up force (UNAMIR II) to Rwanda.

  When Dallaire’s troops had first arrived, in the fall of 1993, they had done so under a fairly traditional peacekeeping mandate known as a Chapter VI deployment—a mission that assumes a cease-fire and a desire on both sides to comply with a peace accord. The Security Council now had to decide whether it was prepared to move from peacekeeping to peace enforcement—that is, to a Chapter VII mission in a hostile environment. This would demand more peacekeepers with greater resources, more aggressive rules of engagement, and an explicit recognition that the UN soldiers were there to protect civilians.

  Two proposals emerged. Dallaire submitted a plan that called for joining his remaining peacekeepers with about 5,000 well-armed soldiers he hoped could be gathered quickly by the Security Council. He wanted to secure Kigali and then fan outward to create safe havens for Rwandans around the country who had gathered in large numbers at churches and schools and on hillsides. The United States was one of the few countries that could supply the rapid airlift and logistic support needed to move reinforcements to the region. In a meeting with UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on May 10, Vice President Al Gore pledged U.S. help with transport.

  But Richard Clarke and Tony Lake at the NSC and representatives of the Joint Chiefs challenged Dallaire’s idea. “How do you plan to take control of the airport in Kigali so that the reinforcements will be able to land?” Clarke asked. He argued instead for an “outside-in” strategy, as opposed to Dallaire’s “inside-out” approach. The U.S. proposal would have created protected zones for refugees at Rwanda’s borders. It would have kept any U.S. pilots involved in airlifting the peacekeepers safely out of Rwanda. “Our proposal was the most feasible, doable thing that could have been done in the short term,” Clarke insists. Dallaire’s proposal, in contrast, “could not be done in the short term and could not attract peacekeepers.” The U.S. plan—which was modeled on the allies’ 1991 Operation Provide Comfort for the Kurds of northern Iraq—seemed to assume that the people in need were refugees fleeing to the border, but most endangered Tutsi could not make it to the border. The most vulnerable Rwandans were those clustered together, awaiting salvation, deep inside Rwanda. Dallaire’s plan would have had UN soldiers make their way to the Tutsi in hiding. The U.S. plan would have required civilians to move to the safe zones, negotiating murderous roadblocks on the way. “The two plans had very different objectives,” Dallaire says. “My mission was to save Rwandans. Their mission was to put on a show at no risk.”

  America’s new peacekeeping doctrine, which Clarke had helped shape, was unveiled on May 3, and U.S. officials applied its criteria zealously. PDD-25 did not merely circumscribe U.S. participation in UN missions; it also limited U.S. support for other states that hoped to carry out UN missions. Before such operations could garner U.S. approval, policymakers had to meet the PDD’s requirements, showing U.S. interests at stake, a clear mission goal, acceptable costs, Congressional, public, and allied support, a clear command-and-control arrangement, and an exit strategy.

  The United States haggled at the Security Council and with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations for the first two weeks of May. U.S. officials pointed to the flaws in Dallaire’s proposal without offering the resources that would have helped him to overcome them. On May 13 Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott sent Madeleine Albright instructions on how the United States should respond to Dallaire’s plan. Noting the logistic hazards of airlifting troops into the capital, Talbott wrote, “The U.S. is not prepared at this point to lift heavy equipment and troops into Kigali.” The “more manageable” operation would be to create the protected zones at the border, secure humanitarian aid deliveries, and “promot[e] restoration of a ceasefire and return to the Arusha Peace Process.” Talbott acknowledged that even the minimalist American proposal contained “many unanswered questions”:

  Where will the needed forces come from; how will they be transported; . . . where precisely should these safe zones be created; . . . would UN forces be authorized to move out of the zones to assist affected populations not in the zones; . . . will the fighting parties in Rwanda agree to this arrangement; . . . what conditions would need to obtain for the operation to end successfully?

  Nonetheless, Talbott concluded, “We would urge the UN to explore and refine this alternative and present the Council with a menu of at least two options in a formal report from the [secretary-general] along with cost estimates before the Security Council votes on changing UNAMIR’s mandate.”86 U.S. policymakers were asking valid questions. Dallaire’s plan certainly would have required the intervening troops to take risks in an effort to reach the targeted Rwandans or to confront the Hutu militia and government forces. But the business-as-usual tone of the American inquiry did not seem appropriate to the unprecedented and utterly unconventional crisis that was under way.

  On May 17, by which time most of the Tutsi victims of the genocide were already dead, the United States finally acceded to a version of Dallaire’s plan. But few African countries stepped forward to offer troops. Even if troops had been immediately available, the lethargy of the major powers would have hindered their use. Although Vice President Gore had committed the United States to provide armored support if the African nations provided soldiers, Pentagon stalling resumed. On May 19 the UN formally requested fifty armored personnel carriers from the United States. On May 31 U.S. officials agreed to send the APCs from Germany to Entebbe, Uganda.87 But squabbles between the Pentagon and UN planners arose. Who would pay for the vehicles? Should the vehicles be tracked or wheeled? Would the UN buy them or simply lease them? And who would pay the shipping costs? Compounding the disputes was the Department of Defense regulation that prevented the U.S. Army from preparing the vehicles for transport until contracts had been signed. The Defense Department demanded that it be reimbursed $15 million for shipping spare parts and equipment to and from Rwanda. In mid-June the White House finally intervened. On June 19, a month after the UN request, the United States began transporting the APCs, but they were missing the radios and heavy machine guns that would be needed if UN troops came under fire. The APCs did not arrive in Rwanda until July.

  “Interventions”

  In June, France, perhaps the least appropriate country to intervene because of its warm relationship with the genocidal Hutu regime, announced its plan to send 2,500 soldiers to set up a “safe zone” in the southwest of the country.88 Operation Turquoise was intended to serve as a “bridge action” until UNAMIR II arrived.89 French troops were deployed extremely quickly, entering Rwanda on June 23 and illustrating the pace at which a determined state could move. Although they undoubtedly saved lives, mop-up killings proceeded in the French protected zone. When the Hutu moved their Radio Mille Collines transmitter into the area, French forces seized neither the hate-propagating equipment nor the individuals responsible for orchestrating the genocide. Yet President Mitterrand was quick to claim credit, alleging the operation had saved “tens of thousands of lives.” France bore no responsibility for events, he said, because the massacres happened after France left Rwanda and because France could not intervene during the genocide, as this was the job of the United Nations.90

  It was Tutsi (RPF) rebels under the command of Paul Kagame who eventually brought the genocide to a halt. In so doing, they sent Hutu
perpetrators, among an estimated 1.7 million Hutu refugees, fleeing into neighboring Zaire and Tanzania. On July 19, the day the RPF government of national unity was sworn in and nearly two months after the Security Council’s reinforcements resolution, Dallaire commanded the same 503 soldiers as he had since late April. Not a single additional UN soldier had been deployed.

  Only after the RPF had seized virtually all of Rwanda (except the French zone) did President Clinton finally order the Rwandan embassy in Washington closed and its assets frozen. Clinton said the United States could not “allow representatives of a regime that supports genocidal massacres to remain on our soil.”91 On August 25, 1994, the Security Council ruled that Rwanda would not take its turn as president of the council.92

  Clinton did in fact send U.S. forces to the Great Lakes region. Rwandan refugees, mainly Hutu fleeing the RPF advance, were ravaged by hunger, thirst, and cholera in neighboring Zaire. They had begun dying at a rate of 2,000 per day. President Clinton requested $320 million in emergency relief funds from Congress and announced the deployment of 4,000 U.S. troops to aid refugees in the camps in Zaire. The New York Times editorial on July 23, 1994, was titled: “At Last, Rwanda’s Pain Registers.”93 On July 29 President Clinton ordered 200 U.S. troops to occupy the Kigali airport so that relief could be flown directly into Rwanda. Ahead of their arrival, Dallaire says he got a phone call. A U.S. officer was wondering precisely how many Rwandans had died. Dallaire was puzzled and asked why he wanted to know. “We are doing our calculations back here,” the U.S. officer said, “and one American casualty is worth about 85,000 Rwandan dead.”94

  These troops, Clinton administration officials insisted, would aid in the provision of humanitarian relief; they would not keep peace. Somalia was not the model. Indeed, peacekeeping had become a four-letter word. “Let me be clear about this,” the president said on July 29, 1994. “Any deployment of United States troops inside Rwanda would be for the immediate and sole purpose of humanitarian relief, not for peacekeeping.” He assured Americans, “Mission creep is not a problem here.”95