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

by Roméo Dallaire

  I had left my vehicle at the entrance with Robert, who despite all the shooting was still sitting in it. After a quick goodbye to Walter Ballis—he was a dependable, solid senior officer and I told him I still needed him to stay put with the UNMOs and wished him luck—we headed through the line of fire on a direct route to the Ministry of Defence to see if I could connect with Bagosora and the Crisis Committee. It took over half an hour to manoeuvre through the various roadblocks, many of which had now attracted spectators; it was as if each barrier had turned into a theatre of cruelty. Power was in the hands of vigilante groups. Closer to the Ministry of Defence, in the inner city, the Presidential Guard and the Reconnaissance Battalion were still manning the roadblocks—we saw no civilians past the Mille Collines checkpoint. Soldiers stopped us at each one, glanced in at us and let us pass. I had the impression that instructions had been given to permit me to move freely and I hoped that such freedom would be extended to all UNAMIR personnel. I was mistaken.

  I surprised Bagosora again, as he sat at the head of the minister’s conference table talking to politicians from the different parties. The men I recognized were all known hard-liners. He got up to greet me and told me he was chairing a meeting of the political parties in order to advance the transition from the current military control to political control. He was clearly nervous: he was fidgeting and all the while trying to steer me toward the door. He couldn’t have made it any plainer that he didn’t want me at this meeting. Before he shooed me out and closed the door in my face, he said that the government would be sworn in the next day, April 9, probably at the Hotel des Diplomates. Most of the surviving politicians had moved there with their families for security reasons.

  Fuming, I went directly to the RGF’s headquarters to find Gatsinzi and Ndindiliyimana to see if I could figure out what direction Bagosora had given them. Soldiers opened the defensive steel barriers and the gate for us. There were Presidential Guards in all controlled locations, and the RGF soldiers appeared to be deferring to them. I met General Gatsinzi near the entrance of the office complex. He seemed relieved to see me, as were all the officers in his entourage, but he looked anxious and tired. He apologized again for the deaths of the Belgians and for the fact that he still hadn’t gained control over the army. Some units refused to communicate with him at all; others listened but then ignored him. He had some units in the south that had not engaged in any skirmishes, but they were extensively infiltrated by hardline officers from the north and were too far away to influence the situation in Kigali. He was despondent that the moderates were unable to rally a cohesive force. He said Ndindiliyimana was attempting to reconstitute the quick-reaction companies to bring his gendarmes under control. Both he and Ndindiliyimana suffered extensive command and control problems: their radios weren’t reliable and the phone system was down.

  Since Bagosora hadn’t given me a chance to speak, I relayed the preconditions to Gatsinzi and told him that the RPF would only negotiate with the military Crisis Committee, not with any politicians. He agreed to meet with the RPF, but because he wasn’t in control of the army, I knew the RPF wouldn’t find him very credible. I wanted to re-establish liaison officers between our headquarters to increase direct communications and promised I would dispatch an UNMO team for that purpose. I wanted the same from him. I then asked him where the abducted politicians were. He didn’t know, though I suspected Bagosora did. Gatsinzi walked me to my vehicle and watched me drive away with a look on his face I recognized: that of a commander in the throes of an impossible mission.

  On the way back to the Amahoro, I decided to stop by the Mille Collines, where a number of expatriates, Rwandans and UNAMIR personnel had sought sanctuary. The lobby, patio and rooms were filled with terrified civilians, who crowded around me begging for information and protection. I told them all to remain calm and tried to be encouraging, but words were all I could offer.

  I was discreetly trying to spot Captain Mbaye when he appeared out of nowhere and pulled me aside. Yesterday, when no APC had shown up, he had gathered Prime Minister Agathe’s children, put them under a pile of clothes in the back of his vehicle and driven them to the hotel. There had been no incidents along the way, and for the moment the children were safe in a room upstairs. I told him I would do what I could to get them out. Without a doubt, there would be informers in the hotel—he was to keep the kids hidden in the room.

  Outside, a group of Interahamwe was erecting a roadblock in front of the hotel. I stopped and demanded to know what they were doing. They said there were traitors in the hotel and they were not going to allow anyone to leave, but that anyone who wanted into the Mille Collines could pass through their barrier. Shivers went up my spine. They were herding people into the hotel, which would be a convenient place to kill them. I told them the hotel was now under UN protection and that they were not to enter. They laughed at me. I waved over the group of MILOBs who had taken refuge at the hotel under the leadership of a Congolese major, Victor Moigny. I ordered the major to permit any unarmed person to enter the hotel and to deny entry to any armed person. He looked at me in disbelief—how was he going to stop an armed person from going in? My order put him and his team at extreme risk. His only weapon was his ability to bluff until I could get armed troops and possibly APCs to the hotel, in the heart of the extremist-controlled area of Kigali.

  On the way back to Force HQ, we could hear sporadic firing from several directions. Chez Lando was in flames. It was early afternoon by now and the mob had increased to thousands, again blocking the entrance to the stadium. As we drove through them, all I could think about was the possibility of widespread massacres breaking out, as they had done in Burundi after the October coup. We absolutely had to find a way to stop the killing from spreading.

  Inside I received an update. Kagame had launched his offensive and had crossed into the demilitarized zone almost twenty-four hours after his original warning. Before the attack, all of our forces in the demilitarized zone had been able to withdraw from forward or isolated locations and were now consolidated in their camps. Fighting had broken out near Ruhengeri in the northwest, Byumba in the centre and Gabiro in the east. Our MILOBs reported a three-pronged attack: Kagame obviously wanted to keep his enemy guessing as long as possible as to where the main effort would be coming from. He had massed his forces for a direct assault on Kigali while fixing large concentrations of enemy forces on the opposite flanks—Ruhengeri and Gabiro. If he launched a determined attack he could overwhelm the garrison in Kigali, link up with his unit in the city, seize the capital and control the country in record time. This time there were no French intervention forces to stop him, and UNAMIR was not mandated to stand in his way.

  While more of my officers were at their desks, and Tiko had hastily organized a new MILOB group headquarters in a room adjacent to my operations centre, many staff officers were still missing. Apparently the order to convoy them to Force HQ had gotten lost somewhere between Kigali Sector and the Bangladeshi headquarters. Too many of my orders seemed to disappear in the Bangladeshi battalion. I directed Henry to personally ensure that another convoy was conducted the next day and that all of the staff officers were brought into Force HQ. They were not doing anyone any good sitting in their rooms at the Meridien. As we had no food or water left, Henry was organizing a convoy to bring us a reserve of water, fuel and food from the Bangladeshi logistics company, which couldn’t bring the supplies to us since it refused to move without an armed escort. Electrical power had now gone down in Kigali, to join the water and the telephone systems. If we had no fuel to run our generators, we would lose both our satellite communications system and our mission radio net and be completely isolated from the outside world.

  We now had about 15,000 Rwandan civilians taking shelter in our compounds, with the highest numbers at the King Faisal Hospital and the Amahoro Stadium. The Bangladeshis, from experience with natural disasters in their nation, knew that dehydration and the risk of cholera and dysentery were imminen
t. They ordered latrines to be built and their use strictly enforced. But even so, we did not have lime for the pits. No matter what we did, in the present circumstances people would start to die within days.

  I went to the operations centre to get a feel for the overall situation in the country from Moen and the duty officers. While I was being brought up to date, Brent reported that the UNDP security officer had accounted for and secured all of the UNDP staff without casualties. The acting CAO had located most of her people and essential civilian support staff in the headquarters. There were no reports of any expatriate casualties—it appeared that UN and diplomatic staffs weren’t being targeted by the extremists. Our local staff was not faring as well, however. Brent reported that patrols sent to the staff’s homes had found families murdered or that they had disappeared. Our Rwandan contract workers, most of them Tutsis, had provided the link in language from us to the local people and had been crucial to the functioning of the Force HQ. In the coming hours we were able to rescue some of the workers, but the majority were killed as priority targets in the early days of the tragedy.

  Armed with this dismal information, I called New York and talked to Annan, Riza and Maurice Baril. For all intents and purposes, my mandate was over. I needed direction on what to do with what I had. I didn’t control the airport, which was the only link to the outside world. While my troops still held their positions there, the RGF controlled the perimeter, and the tower and runways remained closed. The RPF had informed me that it considered the airport closed and would fire on any plane attempting to land, in order to ward off any attempt by the French to intervene in support of the RGF.

  I told the triumvirate of the humanitarian disaster that had been dropped into our laps as thousands sought our protection in Kigali. I asked for two battalions, and I urgently needed logistics support. I was going to attempt to expand UNAMIR’s control beyond its current isolated garrisons, as this was the key to any evacuation, or any expansion of the mission. By this point, I had already made an extensive verbal report to the DPKO as well as two written reports.1 I was confident that my superiors were fully informed of the state of my force and the situation in the mission area and had as clear an understanding of the crisis as I could provide them. They directed me to prioritize my logistics requirements and they committed to meet them. Kofi Annan offered words of encouragement and promised to support me, urging me to stay in touch with the parties and to try to negotiate a ceasefire.

  By evening prayers, the situation had worsened. Kagame had left Mulindi with a tactical headquarters, and our MILOB sector commander was accompanying him. The RPF soldiers were moving out of their camps, loaded for war, their morale and discipline high. It was as if they were just off on a well-planned and rehearsed exercise. There were no reports of any outbreaks of violence in the RPF sector.

  In the demilitarized zone, the Ghanaian battalion, the Bangladeshi engineer company and the MILOBs were moving into defensive positions in their camps. In the Northern Sector there were reports of killings, especially in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. I directed Tiko to keep his teams in place as long as he could. If they felt their lives were threatened by the fighting, they were to head to our garrisons in the demilitarized zone, to Kigali or to the nearest border. All was quiet in the south, where the army and Gendarmerie were out in force. The situation there was tense but calm, and our MILOBs were in close contact with the political, military and police leadership, all of which claimed to be committed to law and order and to Arusha.

  In Kigali all members of the Belgian and Bangladeshi battalions—the logistics company, the movement control platoon, the military police section and the hospital—had been accounted for and were in guarded locations. The Belgian and French ambassadors were pressuring Luc for help in securing the expatriate population. I told Luc that UNAMIR tasks came first and that the integrated evacuation plan, which included the expatriates, would be implemented when ordered. Until then we had a responsibility to all of the people of Rwanda. The militia was now blockading whole areas of the city and Luc’s Belgian troops were being physically harassed and occasionally fired on. The situation with the Bangladeshi battalion was worsening. Luc felt that this unit was almost useless. The Bangladeshis had either ignored his orders to conduct missions or told him they had complied when they hadn’t. The commanding officer offered nothing but excuses, and most of the contingent had gone to ground inside their compounds in a state of fear.

  After evening prayers, I had a cup of tea with Faustin in my office. His family hadn’t yet been located and he had again spent most of the day listening to the propaganda being broadcast by RTLM—a stream of commentators were exhorting violence, playing provocative songs and even reading out the names and locations of those who must be killed. In Rwanda the radio was akin to the voice of God, and if the radio called for violence, many Rwandans would respond, believing they were being sanctioned to commit these actions. The killing songs Faustin had been listening to must have been taped, which meant that RTLM had known for a while what was coming and was a key player. A call from the RGF ordering up reservists had also gone out over the radio. Even so, Faustin thought that the RPF would win this war. Its soldiers were fighting for a cause they believed in, whereas the RGF soldiers were killing for the sake of killing, not knowing or caring why. In this type of conflict, the men fighting for principles they believed in would inevitably win.

  When Faustin left, I summoned Colonel Moen and asked him to explain the Bangladeshi contingents’ performance over the last twenty-four hours. He stated that the Bangladeshi commander had no problem risking the lives of his men to save foreign nationals but did not want to put them on the line to save Rwandan civilians. He told me that the commander had referred the matter to Dhaka for direction and that his superiors had ordered him not to endanger the troops by protecting Rwandans or to risk carrying any Rwandans in their vehicles. Looking uncomfortable, Moen told me that if I issued any order that the contingent commander felt unnecessarily risked the lives of his men, I would have to provide the order in writing.

  This stance made me furious. I told Moen that I was tired of the Bangladeshis’ lack of courage and unprofessional behaviour. I expected orders to be obeyed. I assured him that I would not unnecessarily risk the lives of the Bangladeshi troops, but I expected them to take the same risks as the other UNAMIR soldiers. They were not here for a free ride. I directed Moen to order the unit commander to launch in force at dawn, clear mobs from the area around the stadium and the Force HQ and open the crossroads to traffic. I wanted this forward posture maintained. Any time a crowd formed to block a route, it was to be cleared immediately. This operation was to be conducted in overwhelming force with every man the unit could muster, with all the APCs they could put in the streets. It was to be led personally by the unit commander. Moen agreed and assured me he would speak to the unit commander. I felt sorry for him. He was an experienced officer, a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth. I knew he was ashamed of his compatriots’ performance. As a UN commander, I could not fire any national officer over the rank of lieutenant colonel, and especially not a commanding officer, without permission from New York, but pressure from a countryman of equal rank might prod the contingent commander into action.

  After Moen left, Brent encouraged me to call Beth and let her know I was fine. I’m glad I did. Earlier that day the regimental padre had been in touch with her to offer whatever help she might need, and she had immediately assumed the worst. She told me that she and the children were praying for me and were holding up. Every day I was in theatre she and so many other wives and children of UNAMIR soldiers would live on a knife-edge, waiting for a phone call or a visit that would tell them their loved one was dead or injured. In this era of live twenty-four-hour broadcasting from war zones, our families had to live the missions with us—a new phenomenon that haunted them and haunted us.

  I finished more written reports to New York before midnight and, st
ill restless, left my office to walk the dark corridors. The Ghanaians had taken over the security of the Force HQ that day, and I decided to take a look at what they had deployed. I went onto the roof of the causeway to the rotunda and met with two Ghanaian soldiers who were manning a machine gun overlooking the parking lot. They had also been given the short-range anti-tank rocket, the M72, but were uncertain how to use it. I ran a short weapons lecture in the dark, then went to the roof of the hotel, where an observation post had been set up. I startled the lone Ghanaian observer so badly he soiled his pants. I sat down beside him to try to ease his embarrassment and reassure him he was all right and then sent him to change his pants while I replaced him at his post. The city was largely quiet. Sitting there in the dark, I studied the fence surrounding the compound and visualized hundreds of extremists swarming our headquarters, intent on getting to Faustin. The image made me think of the movie Khartoum, when swarms of dervishes rush the stairs to kill General Gordon and his men. Would my soldiers fight under a UN flag to defend Faustin? For the first time that day I felt truly hopeless and trapped, a feeling I determinedly shunted to one side when the young Ghanaian came back to relieve me.