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

by Roméo Dallaire

  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.

  Prime Minister Agathe went on national radio to appeal for calm. It seemed like nothing would prod Ndindiliyimana into action. As well, the chief of staff of the army cleverly disappeared. When I eventually found him, he said he was compelled to abide by the KWSA agreement, which prohibited his troops from performing a task that was the responsibility of the Gendarmerie. Round and round we went as the violence increased. Over the next couple of days, 35 people died and a further 150 were injured—the majority were Tutsis and moderate Hutus. If there had been any doubt before, there was certainly none now: the poisonous pot of ethnic hatred had been well-stirred and was about to boil over.

  At her request, I visited Madame Agathe in her office. She was close to tears. She told me that she understood that we couldn’t do much more than what we were already doing, but she begged me not to take away the guards that we had stationed at the homes of the moderates. I assured her that until the situation was under control, I would continue to provide twenty-four-hour protection for all of the politicians who were in danger. She emphasized that my troops had to get a handle on the security situation inside the KWSA, because people simply didn’t feel safe. Many abandoned their homes as soon as it started to get dark and made their way to church compounds to camp out overnight or until they felt safe enough to go home. Churches had always been a place of sanctuary in Rwanda and were increasingly becoming refuges for people who felt threatened.

  She paced as she spoke, like a weary lion penned up in too small a cage. She told me that her hardline MRND cabinet ministers refused to attend the meetings she scheduled and even ignored her phone calls. She raged on about Habyarimana and how he was meddling with the political situation. She wasn’t looking for advice or answers from me, just comfort and my assurance that no matter how difficult the situation became, I would not abandon her and the moderates.

  As I rose to leave, tears spilled down her cheeks, and I felt a lump rising in my own throat as I pledged that whatever happened, I would never abandon Rwanda. It was hard to see her like that; she had been rock solid through all the troubled months in which I had known her. But Madame Agathe’s courage and strength of purpose never wavered, and her absolute faith in her country and its people never failed to inspire me. I left her office with a renewed sense of purpose.

  Later that day, accompanied by Colonel Marchal, I finally met with Bizimana and Ndindiliyimana. Faustin Munyazesa, the minister of the interior, a well-known MRND hard-liner, also joined us—I wasn’t sure whether by chance or design. I asked them straight out why they weren’t doing more to calm the situation. I told Ndindiliyimana that his gendarmes were not doing enough to help my troops get a grip on the riots. In defence, he confessed that he didn’t really know what to do: his men were burnt out, their vehicles were breaking down, and they were almost out of fuel. Besides, he added with a significant glance at the minister of the interior, he wasn’t getting any political direction on the use of lethal force. His men had no other way to disperse the crowds: no riot gear, no tear gas or water cannons. He also needed reinforcements to weather the crisis. Bizimana piped in at this point, suggesting that the RGF at Camp Kanombe could take over guarding VIPs and vital points and that he could move a battalion of military police into Kigali to beef up the depleted ranks of the Gendarmerie. With this increased force, they could impose an eight o’clock curfew in the evenings and start to shut down some of the more violent activity. This was essentially the same request I’d categorically turned down at the beginning of the month; I didn’t believe that the safety and security of the citizens of Kigali was Bizimana’s major concern. If I granted the request, it was quite possible that he would use those troops to reinforce Kigali, gain control of the city and potentially overwhelm the RPF battalion inside the CND complex, and the country would be back at war.

  I countered by recommending that they go to the media and call upon the extremist parties to control their militias and stop the riots, then watched as the three of them fidgeted uncomfortably. Our informant had indicated that the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militias were directly linked to the MRND and the CDR respectively. I knew as I sat there, that in the ministers of defence and the interior I was confronting extremists. Ndindiliyimana was still an enigma. I thought I could feel his ambivalence about his associates and their suggestions. I turned to him and proposed mixed patrols of gendarmes and UNAMIR troops. When he objected, saying that he didn’t have enough vehicles, I suggested that his men ride with my troops. I told him that we had already had some success working together breaking up the demonstration at Madame Agathe’s office earlier in the week. I left the three of them with the promise that I would work out a curfew patrol plan and that we would commence joint patrols as soon as I could sort out the troops and vehicles. For the time being, there was no need for the RGF to bring more soldiers into Kigali.

  At about 1600, I returned to my headquarters. That morning, we had permitted the RPF liaison and supply convoy, under armed and MILOB escort, to conduct its regular administrative run to Mulindi to conduct liaison and pick up firewood, food and mail. The convoy made it out of Kigali with no problem, but later in the day, mobs again sealed off the city. After sending Tikoka to check out the current state of unrest north of Kadafi Crossroads, I decided the convoy would not be safe coming back that afternoon and issued an order for them not to return but to stay in Mulindi until the all-clear was given. But the Belgian escort deliberately disobeyed that order; they decided to risk returning to Kigali after dark with the whole convoy rather than spend an uncomfortable night camped out in their vehicles.

  They had just entered the suburb north of Kadafi Crossroads, which had been a major flashpoint that day, when a grenade was tossed at the lead vehicle, followed by machine-gun fire. The Belgians returned fire and manoeuvred to get out of the ambush. One of the MILOB vehicles ended up in the ditch, and the two observers scrambled out and jumped onto one of the Belgian Jeeps; the other MILOB vehicle managed to do a U-turn to get out of there. The RPF soldiers, whose vehicle had been hit, could not. They returned fire, calling for help on their hand-held radios, and one of them was hit in the head. When the Belgians realized that the RPF had not escaped with them, they did not go back but headed for safety at the UNAMIR camp at Byumba in northern Rwanda. As soon as the RPF message was received in Kigali, two sections of RPF reinforcements burst out of the CND compound, easily overcoming the feeble protests of the Bangladeshi guards, and stormed through the city to rescue their comrades.

  We were just finishing supper when the ambush was reported over our radio net. Moments later, I heard that the RPF had broken out of its compound. I called Luc to ask him to take action and then called more than a half hour later, asking for a sitrep: nothing was moving yet. I looked over toward Brent and Willem and said, “Let’s go check it out.” We piled into my vehicle, with Troute at the wheel, and drove like hell out to Kadafi Crossroads.

  When we arrived, it was dead quiet. Although there was a scattering of houses nearby, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Not a person, not a light, not a sound. There was blood all over the road and the unmistakable grey matter we knew was human brain. We spotted the MILOB vehicle abandoned in the ditch, and near it, a trail of blood. Fearing the worst, Willem and Brent began to search around the vehicle for clues as to what might have happened. On their third pass, Willem suddenly yelled out to Brent to stop. Right beside Brent’s foot was an unexploded grenade, pin out, hammer gone. A very close call.

  Then Luc arrived with Kesteloot, followed some time later by a squad of Belgians, who secured the area. Bre
nt and Kesteloot walked up the road and discovered a big old truck abandoned in the ditch. Brent looked over the tailgate and found himself looking at a dead male civilian whose skull had been split in two by a machete.

  Not only had the Belgians disobeyed my direct orders to stay overnight in Mulindi and displayed outright cowardice in abandoning the RPF convoy they were charged to protect, they had put themselves before the mission, which was conduct that violated every code of the profession of arms. I demanded a full investigation and heads to roll. Luc, terribly embarrassed and shamed, agreed.

  In breaking out of their compound, the RPF had demonstrated a complete lack of trust in UNAMIR, which at that moment I had to agree was justifiable. That night, I ordered the sixty-man Tunisian company to leave the demilitarized zone and come to Kigali to assume responsibility for the CND, and the Bangladeshis to return to their unit to take up less demanding tasks. I then proceeded directly to the CND to clarify the situation. When I got there, the wounded RPF soldier was being transferred to our hospital for emergency surgery. He had left a large portion of his brain at the site of the ambush. Commander Charles acknowledged that he had broken the KWSA agreement but only after my troops had failed to protect his men. I got home late that night, troubled by the failures of these troops.

  That same night, the evening of February 22, Habyarimana had held a meeting at his office complex, inviting all of the political parties with the exception of the RPF. Dr. Kabia filled me in on the details. The diplomatic community, as well as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, were putting enormous pressure on the president to solve the political crisis. They didn’t seem to understand that under the Arusha Peace Agreement, the president had renounced his authority over the government and had been moved over into the role of head of state. His only real power was persuasion.

  At this point, many people were confused as to who really held the power. Who was responsible for governance? Was it Madame Agathe’s interim government, whose mandate had expired at the end of December? Who held the final responsibility for finding a solution? Faustin Twagiramungu? Booh-Booh?

  During the meeting, Habyarimana cleverly exploited this uncertainty by attempting to impose a solution. He laid out a plan whereby the warring factions within the PL and MDR would compromise by dividing up the ministerial and deputy-ministerial positions evenly. In the case of deputies whose fitness was being challenged, those positions would be decided by the courts. The proposal seemed reasonable, but Madame Agathe and the PL representatives rejected it out of hand, vociferously protesting that Habyarimana was manipulating the impasse to his own advantage although he no longer had the power to dictate such a solution. In the opinion of several of her moderate colleagues, Madame Agathe’s fearless verbal abuse of the president at this meeting sealed her fate. Faustin Twagiramungu, perhaps chastened by his recent brush with death, seemed much more willing to accept the proposal. But because of opposition from Madame Agathe and the PL, this meeting, too, ended in failure, with no agreement on the lists.

  On February 23, an eight o’clock curfew was declared in Kigali. With the increased presence of the Gendarmerie, the mobs disappeared and a nervous calm settled on the city. As the violence and mayhem seemed to just melt away, I couldn’t get over the feeling that there was a hidden hand at work, orchestrating it all. I no longer questioned that there were direct links between the cadre of powerful ministers that controlled the interim government and the militias, but our informants suggested that there was another entity beyond them, one whose members didn’t show up at meetings and whose motives we were just beginning to probe. On a number of occasions, I used Luc as a sounding board on these political—military issues and ambiguities. He and I spent hours trying to figure out where all the tracks led, but as soon as we thought we had come close to solving the puzzle, the tracks would disappear.

  One thing was clear. We always seemed to be behind the eight ball, reacting to, rather than anticipating, what was going to happen. The reason for that was no mystery at all. Since January, the Rwandan ambassador to the UN, Jean-Damascène Bizimana, had had a seat on the Security Council and was not only privy to the inner workings of the mission but to the Security Council’s attitude toward the mission and its many woes. All this information was obviously being fed back to the shrouded entity that seemed to be running the show in Rwanda. I remonstrated with Maurice about this situation in phone call after phone call; he told me that, yes, everybody knew it was a problem, but it would be impossible to remove him. There I was with my small team of intelligence officers who were risking their lives for crumbs of information while the extremists had a direct pipeline to the kind of strategic intelligence that allowed them to shadow my every move.

  The following day I learned that the senior leadership of the RPF had been invited to attend Gatabazi’s funeral in Butare. A soccer stadium had been set aside for the service, as it was to be a very large affair. I was shocked that the RPF had accepted the invitation without telling me; a high-level RPF delegation travelling the hundred-kilometre route to Butare would be an irresistible target for the extremists. We couldn’t afford to lose any more ground with the RPF, so together with my staff, I built an operation to rival Clean Corridor in order to move the delegation safely to and from the funeral. There was a risk that we would be ambushed, but I was determined that this time we would use overwhelming force to respond, and I would lead the operation myself.

  We embarked in a large, well-armed convoy, with the two Belgian helicopters overhead and APCs positioned along the route. At critical junctions, we passed UNAMIR soldiers who were confident and in control. All my troops were immensely impressive that day, especially the Belgians and the Bangladeshis.

  It was a three-hour drive to Butare, and all along the route, word of our passage must have been announced, for both sides of the road were crowded with cheering Rwandan civilians. The RPF was delighted at the welcome; the fact that the ordinary people of Rwanda had left their schools and workplaces to spontaneously voice their support for all of us and what we represented also encouraged me enormously. At Butare, we arrived under tight RGF and Gendarmerie security and attended the funeral in the stadium, where the RPF delegation was cheered by the thousands of attendees.

  The funeral went on for four hours and was quite moving, but my attention was fully focused on the security nightmare laid out before me. In the crowd were about eighteen of my unarmed observers, twenty-five to thirty Belgian para-commandos and twenty members of the RPF—and many more RGF troops and gendarmes. Behind every pillar in that stadium was a soldier, armed to the teeth either with AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and there were many others, equally armed, outside in the parking lot. All it would have taken was one gunshot—one overenthusiastic mourner to shoot his gun into the air—and there would have been a massacre. When the funeral was finally over, I almost wept with relief.

  It was mid-afternoon when we reassembled the convoy, which meant that it might be nightfall before we reached Kigali. I stopped the convoy just outside of Butare and jumped into the RPF vehicle with Pasteur Bizimungu and Tito Rutaremara (a proposed RPF assemblyman). I wanted any potential assassin with his binoculars trained on the car to see me. We drove like that all the way back to Kigali. The trip home was as emotionally charged as the trip down; it was if the crowds of people had not moved, as if they had waited there all day for our return, and they were still wild with excitement when we passed. Pasteur and Tito were almost giddy with the joy that these ordinary Rwandans displayed as we made our way north.

  After that trip, I became even more determined to launch a campaign to reach out to the local population and win their support. Luc was trying to build on our small success at the Kigali town hall meeting earlier in the month, and was conducting similar meetings in towns and villages within the twenty-kilometre radius of the KWSA. He met with local officials and citizens to explain who we were, what we were trying to achieve and how they could help; for the most part, he was warmly welco
med. I also tasked my MILOBs both in the southern sector of the country and in the demilitarized zone to not only patrol their areas of responsibility but to meet and talk with the population, to offer assistance and, where they were able, to solve practical problems, such as helping to repair a school damaged by grenade attacks. With the arrival of some old and trial de-mining equipment, we were able to clear small sections of the demilitarized zone, enabling many of the people crowded into the displaced persons camp that I had first visited on the technical mission back in August to return to their small farms and villages. These were such small steps, but at least they were positive ones.

  I had been considering moving 225 Ghanaian troops from the demilitarized zone to Kigali to take over static guard duties in the city so that I could free up the Belgians for mobility and reserve tasks, while the Bangladeshi rapid reaction force trained. I had directed my subordinate commanders and principal staff officers to begin administrative preparations for such a move, when a final incident persuaded me that the decision was a proper one. On February 26, the entire senior political leadership of the RPF decamped unannounced from the CND and headed back to Mulindi, leaving only minor officials and the garrison behind them. Supposedly, they were leaving for a party congress, but they never came back. On February 27, I informed New York of my decision to move the Ghanaians before the end of the month, and we prepared a small tactical headquarters and logistics support group for the redeployment.

  That day, Luc Marchal and I gave a major press conference to attempt to regain the initiative on the media side. I specifically attacked RTLM and its relentless anti-Arusha and anti-Tutsi rhetoric. I suggested that its broadcasts were nothing more than hate propaganda and as such constituted an unethical assault on the very idea of democracy and free expression. I told the crowd of journalists that the people of Rwanda were being manipulated by a well-organized campaign of fear to destroy the peace process by raising ethnic tensions. And then I launched an appeal to the people of the country to get together and, with the help of UNAMIR, hold a peace march to send a message to the forces of violence and extremism that such evil ideas did not have a place in the new Rwanda. This idea caught on, and in March we held a large and successful march through Kigali. Although our peace-building initiatives were generally successful and the situation seemed calm on the surface, ugly signs and incidents persisted.