Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

by Roméo Dallaire

  It was clear that the general public still did not know what all the blue berets running around in white vehicles really meant. I cursed the DPKO and the FOD in my heart for not understanding the vital need the mission had for a radio station or for a competent public information office so that we could build on the desire of the vast majority of Rwandans to reach out with both hands for peace. After the endorsement of UNAMIR by the crowd, the ministers at the table each pledged their support for UNAMIR, even encouraging us to go after arms caches in order to get a tighter grip on the KWSA. Ndindiliyimana appealed to me once again to ask the UN for non-lethal riot gear so that his gendarmes could control the violent demonstrations without having to resort to lethal force. One of the politicians even suggested that the minister of information and his office be utilized to help us get our message out.

  Afterwards, I visited Booh-Booh to fill him in on the highlights of the meeting, and he seemed quite encouraged by the news. I then asked him point-blank once again when he expected the other components of his staff to arrive. We needed legal advisers to help work out solutions to the stalled investigations into the November killings and provide us with expert guidance. For instance, did our rules of engagement authorize us to defend an ex-belligerent who was attached to our force? I was thinking of the assassination attempt against Major Frank Kamenzi, the RPF liaison officer to UNAMIR. We also needed human rights workers to help us find solutions to the ethnically motivated violence and to liaise with the many activists and organizations in Rwanda, who had a wealth of information but would not share it with us. The NGOs for the most part treated UNAMIR as if it was one of the belligerents, and handed their excellent information over to the international news media, not to us.

  Above all, we needed a humanitarian coordinator and workers to help manage all the different NGOs and UN agencies who were dealing with the various crises in the country and to handle the future challenge that returning Rwandan refugees would create when they flooded back into the country once the BBTG was established. I told the SRSG that we desperately needed these advisers and coordinators so that when the people had questions, we could actually answer them professionally. We had been in theatre for over three months, and we were still ineffective in these critical areas. Booh-Booh knew these issues were important, but seemed reticent to throw his weight around. I left his office believing that there was never going to be a way of moving forward.

  I took it upon myself to lobby the French, German and Belgian ambassadors for riot gear for the Gendarmerie, but neither country would commit those resources. This unwillingness puzzled me, as these countries were the first to condemn civil violence and urge the Rwandan gendarmes not to overreact. But when they had the opportunity to actually commit some resources to match their words, they did nothing.

  In the meantime, the bill was coming due for Rwanda. The political impasse was upsetting the country’s principal creditor, the World Bank, which was threatening to cut Rwanda off from financing if the BBTG was not in place by March 1. Once the World Bank actually cut off funding, it would take six months for the institution to re-establish it; the chain reaction from other nations and organizations would be disastrous. It could lead to a total economic collapse in Rwanda, and the result would be more violence. We would find ourselves in a situation where ordinary people, such as the ones who had come to the meeting, would begin to wonder whether the oppressive but stable rule of Habyarimana was preferable to the current insecurity and hardship.

  The other dire economic news came from a preliminary report on the demobilization process. The IMF and World Bank study on implementation wouldn’t be completed before mid-March; that study would spark other planning exercises and studies. As a result, it would be another three to six months before the funding was in place and we could start demobilizing troops. The IMF and the World Bank also decided to off-load to us the first four months of taking care of the basic needs of the demobilized soldiers, at a cost they projected as close to $12 million U.S. But if all the potential troops—as many as forty thousand angry, hungry men—arrived at the demobilization centres at the same time, which was highly likely since neither the RPF nor the RGF would want to carry on supporting them once they could hand over the responsibility to us, we calculated that the cost would be more like $36 million U.S. We were supposed to carry this burden of demobilizing, retraining and integrating these forces over a nine-month period, when we couldn’t even get our small peacekeeping force properly funded. The IMF and World Bank obviously did not understand the severe financial restrictions that UNAMIR was suffering under, and were in the middle of creating a plan that could never be successfully achieved.

  Seeking to build momentum through the Joint Military Commission, I once again proposed opening the major roadway that connects Rwanda with Uganda to commercial and humanitarian traffic. Except for the occasional aid convoy, the road had been closed since the hostilities in February 1993. It was well-built and still in good shape, though the bridge between Rwanda and Uganda had been damaged in the conflict and needed to be repaired, and the road would need to be swept clear of land mines. I was sure both tasks could be easily accomplished by the Bangladeshi engineers that I had stationed in Byumba near the demilitarized zone. Since the road sliced through parts of the zone controlled by either force, to open the road would require a major gesture of co-operation between them.

  I planned for mixed RPF and RGF patrols, supervised by UN observers, to monitor the road; the larger aim was to build a rapport between the two forces. This time Bizimana readily agreed to my plan, but the RPF flatly refused, insisting that given the current political situation, they couldn’t agree unless we opened the southern portion of the road first, from Mulindi to their compound in Kigali. I was angry at their inability to see beyond their own self-interest. Ordinary Rwandans were starving because humanitarian aid couldn’t be properly distributed, and the bottle neck was not the section of road from Kigali to Mulindi. I was finally able to persuade the RPF to let me open the road to humanitarian convoys and UN staff, but they maintained their checkpoints along the route and refused to allow commercial or civilian traffic to flow freely through the area. Once again, the RPF proved how unwilling it was to give up any of its winning cards.

  Things were coming to a head in Rwanda and also within the mission. On February 13, Per Hallqvist submitted his resignation. Mamadou Kane had pushed Hallqvist too far in ordering accoutrements. Booh-Booh’s residence was already palatial, but Kane also insisted that the SRSG be ferried around the country in grand diplomatic style. At one point, Kane ordered the purchase of two Daewoo Super Salon vehicles and more furniture for Booh-Booh’s residence, including oriental carpets and expensive easy chairs. Kane had also commandeered a Land Cruiser and driver so that Booh-Booh’s staff could run errands and do shopping, even as my MILOBs made do with too few vehicles. Hallqvist refused to purchase many of these items and complained repeatedly to the SRSG about Kane. But Kane enjoyed Booh-Booh’s patronage, friendship and confidence, and in exasperation, the SRSG told Hallqvist not to approach him on any of these issues but to speak directly to Kane. Hallqvist was furious. In a long and damning letter that itemized his problems with Kane, Hallqvist resigned, taking his complaints with him to New York.

  His resignation couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The Bangladeshi contingent had completed its deployment on January 30, and the Ghanaian contingent had begun to arrive on February 9; in the space of two weeks, roughly 1,200 soldiers arrived at Kigali airport, ready to be accommodated and absorbed into their new duties. I personally greeted most of the flights to welcome the troops and their officers. When the Bangladeshis had arrived at the end of January, their commanding officer, Colonel Nazrul Islam, invited me to address them at their quarters at the Amahoro Stadium. He and his soldiers were exemplars of the old British colonial standards of dress and deportment. When I entered the soccer pitch at the Amahoro to address the newcomers, I was rather astonished at the sight of more
than six hundred troops sitting several rows deep on the field, impeccably dressed and perfectly aligned. As my words of welcome and inspiration were translated for them, I realized that none of these men understood French, English or Kinyarwanda; only the officers spoke any English at all. The soldiers demonstrated strong personal discipline, deportment and excellence in drill. But I soon found out that this was the extent of their skills; they were as fragmented a collection as their large advance party and equally reliant on UNAMIR for the necessities of life and of soldiering.

  The Ghanaians were a different story. Since they were moving directly north to their place of duty in the demilitarized zone, I addressed them as they arrived at the airport. To the amazement of their officers and NCOs, I motioned for the whole group of two to three hundred troops to gather around me—I practically disappeared inside the circle of blue berets as I spoke to them about the importance of their mission to Rwanda and the major role that they would play in its success as my eyes and ears in the demilitarized zone. These men were generally tall, well-built and had a determined air about them. Though not as practised on the parade ground as the Bangladeshis, they bore the signs of a well-led, cohesive unit. They would distinguish themselves over the next couple of months and really come into their own during the war. They led the way on every new front and never wavered. They did not wait for supplies to come to them (if they had, they might have waited forever); they improvised, bartered and bent the rules, scrounging with the best of them. I felt a kinship with these men; after independence in the early sixties, the Ghanaian army had been trained by Canadians, and they shared our ability to make a military silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  With them came a worthy successor to Colonel Figoli, the new demilitarized zone sector commander, Colonel Clayton Yaache, who was to become famous during the war. Sturdily built, bright, keen and unflappable, he brought the demilitarized zone under control in very short order and became a welcome addition to my group of immediate subordinates. He would distinguish himself during the genocide with his leadership of the emergency humanitarian cell within UNAMIR.

  It was a good thing the Ghanaians were expert scroungers. Although a considerable staff effort had gone into identifying the interim requirements of these troops, Hallqvist and his civilian staff had not been able to arrange for their immediate needs for food and shelter. I felt we were being dragged backwards to the mad scramble of November and could ill afford the chaos. The Bangladeshis had nothing except their personal kit and weapons and weren’t expecting anything to arrive from home. I didn’t even have a proper kitchen for the eight hundred troops in the Amahoro Stadium, who had been making do with an outdoor affair and no proper sanitation. I had been begging Hallqvist for the funds to build a proper structure with basic plumbing facilities to no avail. Now he was gone. While Henry Anyidoho assured me that the Ghanaians would eventually be fully supplied, their equipment and stores were being shipped by slow boat from Ghana to Dar es Salaam and then had to travel by vehicle across eastern Africa to Kigali, a process that would take three months. I needed troops kitted and functional and deployed in the demilitarized zone as soon as possible. With no facility to take care of them in Kigali, we shipped them out to Byumba, where they were accommodated in a school built by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). We cobbled together what we could for them, undoubtedly breaking every rule in the UN book, with the help of Christine de Liso, a civilian staffer who became the acting CAO after Hallqvist left.

  On the evening of February 13, we held another all-party meeting at the Amahoro; the next day was yet another deadline for the installation of the BBTG. We applied the code name “Grasshopper” to events such as these, which required a very high level of security. We provided UNAMIR escorts for most of the moderates and the RPF; the MRND was taken care of by the RGF; the PL, the MDR and many of the dissenting members or extremist factions had gendarmes. I would often wander off during a break in these sessions to watch the different groups of soldiers and militias milling around in the parking lot, all armed to the teeth and hyper-vigilant. We never had a shot fired in the numerous Grasshopper-coded events that we arranged, but the manpower required for these meetings put an added stress on my troops stationed in Kigali.

  Near the beginning of this meeting, Booh-Booh announced that there were not going to be any more meetings: tonight they would solve the impasse. He then looked up from his notes to discover that the MRND representatives had not bothered to show up. There was an awkward pause and some stifled laughter before the politicians settled down and began marching out the same tired, circular arguments.

  During the general discussion, an idea came up, which I had also been mulling over: why didn’t we swear in those deputies and ministers on whom everyone had agreed, set up the transitional government, leaving the few positions that were so contentious unfilled, and then let the new government sort it out? At least then we could satisfy some of the conditions required for continued financial support from the international community, as well as send a message to Rwandans that we were advancing toward a solution instead of remaining stuck. The PL and the MDR shot this idea down in flames, worried that the Power wings would be given their parties’ allotted portfolios and assembly seats. After a couple of hours of wrangling, Booh-Booh suddenly pounded the table, startling us all, and got up, knocking his chair over in his haste. This meeting was going nowhere, he announced emphatically, and he was not going to waste any more of his time. In fact, he refused to chair any more such meetings. He packed up his things and stormed out of the room, leaving the rest of us dumbfounded.

  Even though it was evident to me and just about everybody else left in the room that there was no point in staging another swearing-in ceremony, Booh-Booh contacted me later that night to make sure I had all the security arrangements in place for the affair. The following day I geared up for another day of escort details and crowd containment, but this time none of the parties showed up. Even the RPF, who were just on the other side of the complex, couldn’t be coaxed into making an appearance. The only people who were there were Booh-Booh, some ambassadors and the press.

  Demonstrators crowded around the complex, egged on by the Interahamwe and the usual cadre of Presidential Guards dressed in civilian clothes. Denied the spectacle of the ceremony, they began to get ugly. The brief flash of candour and accommodation that we had witnessed at the beginning of the month had now vanished without a trace.

  In the second week of February, my intelligence officers managed to recruit an informer from inside the Interahamwe who added details to Jean-Pierre’s original revelations on arms caches and militia training. The informer told us that the MRND was behind a series of grenade attacks that had been carried out against Tutsi families, moderate businesses, Kigali Sector headquarters and Major Kamenzi. We also had gotten a report on February 7 from UNOMUR that several reliable sources from the NRA “had intimated to UNOMUR officers that resumption [of hostilities] between the RPF and the RGF could start this week, as a result of [the] stalled swearing-in” of the BBTG. Then we received information that death squads were being formed with the intention of assassinating both Lando Ndasingwa and Joseph Kavaruganda, the president of the constitutional court. When UNAMIR warned both men of these threats, neither of them was surprised, as they usually knew more than we did about the serious threats against their lives. The informant indicated that the masterminds behind the death squads were the brothers-in-law of President Habyarimana. Although we had no way of confirming the information, I was certain that there was more than a grain of truth in it—it was common knowledge among diplomats, moderate politicians, the NGOs and expatriates. I thought it was imperative to show in some way that UNAMIR was aware of the Machiavellian plots and was determined to shut them down, but how was I going to do it?

  Since my last restricted code cable from Annan, I had kept pressing the DPKO on the issue. On February 15, I received support for deterrent operations from a totally unexpected
source. Dr. Kabia passed on to me a code cable from New York, asking us to help the UN respond to a letter that the secretary-general had received from Willy Claes, the Belgian foreign minister. As a result of Luc Marchal’s persuasive discussions with the authorities in Brussels, Claes was endorsing my call for deterrent operations, warning that if UNAMIR did not take a more assertive role, the political impasse could lead to “an irreversible explosion of violence.” Finally, I had somebody on my side who might be able to persuade New York to give me greater leeway.

  I quickly drafted a response to address Claes’s concerns, adding public security measures to my existing plan for arms recovery operations, and walked it over to Booh-Booh’s office. The SRSG seemed open to my suggestions, though I found out much later that he had sent my proposal to Annan’s office but had not included it in his reply to Claes. Instead, Booh-Booh downplayed the information we had gathered on the distribution of weapons and training of recruits for the militias to Claes and emphasized in the strongest terms the strict limitations on the mission.

  Two days later the triumvirate in New York, advised by Hedi Annabi, sent a code cable responding to my revised arms recovery and public security plans and again shot them down. The response stressed that “UNAMIR cannot and probably does not have the capacity to take over the maintenance of law and order, in or outside Kigali. Public security and the maintenance of law and order is the responsibility of the authorities. It must also remain their responsibility, as is the case in all other peace-keeping operations.” I remember sitting at my desk, reading this reply as a particularly violent gust of wind whistled its way through the corridors at the Amahoro, rattling windows and slamming doors.