I had judged that we needed one hundred APCs to be effective on the ground. The DPKO approached forty-four nations to give, lend or lease APCs to the troop-contributing African countries to equip their forces. The United States, with its vast unused Cold War stocks of APCs, eventually supplied fifty. As soon as the United States offered anything at all, the DPKO stopped searching for other donors. And then the stalling began: staff with the Pentagon were reluctant to put their vehicles into central Africa and seemed content instead to let them rust in German depots. They badgered the DPKO with questions, and staff there passed the questions on to me. Then the United States decided that the APCs could not be given to the mission but would have to be leased and that the lease would have to be negotiated. Eventually they came up with the price of $4 million, which they insisted had to be prepaid. When the issue was raised of transporting the carriers to Kampala to link them up with the Ghanaians who needed to be trained to operate them, the United States insisted upon another $6 million to cover the cost of air transport. After the funding was secured—another time-consuming exercise—the APCs were airlifted to Entebbe; after much negotiation with Uganda, they arrived stripped of machine guns, radios, tools, spare parts, training manuals and so on. The United States, in effect, delivered tons of rusting metal to Entebbe. We were without trucks to transport the APCs to Kigali and had no drivers trained to operate them.
Not to be outdone by the Americans, the British offered fifty Bedford trucks—again for a sizable amount to be paid up front. The Bedford is an early Cold War–era truck, which in 1994 was fit only to be a museum relic. When I was told of this “most generous” offer, I sarcastically asked, “They do work, don’t they?” I was answered first with silence and then: “I’ll check and get back to you.” The British later quietly withdrew their request for payment and provided some of the vehicles, which broke down one at a time until there were none left. There were many more transactions like these, and they were not isolated to the great powers.
While the UN and the international community were dithering about the fate of UNAMIR 2, on the ground in Kigali we were picking up signs that the interim government was getting ready to launch a coherent counteroffensive in the city. The Interahamwe leaders had told my military intelligence officer, Deme, that they had been having extensive meetings with Bizimungu. They said they had made a deal with the RGF chief of staff that would allow the militias to carry on as they liked at night, but that required them to work with the RGF on local security operations in the daytime. Taking their cue from Bizimungu, the militias were continuing the genocide after dark with a free hand.
Apart from the inner core of the city, where Presidential Guard units were still running the show, on the barriers we saw more gendarmes working with the Interahamwe. Deme’s deduction was that a decision had been made to synchronize all the forces—the military, Gendarmerie and militias—in order to launch a counterattack in the city. A significant number of government forces were still inside Kigali: the army had seven battalions—four thousand troops—as well as the para-commandos, the artillery, the military police battalion and the reconnaissance battalions, who were the most highly trained troops and had heavy weapons systems.
The Interahamwe leaders told Deme that the militia was now split into two factions. The CDR-affliated Impuzamugambi (in Kinyarwanda “those who have a single aim”) would offer no mercy to the Tutsis. The Interahamwe, represented by the leaders I had met with, described itself as the legitimate third force and as “more considerate of the situation.” The leaders also admitted that the chances of our transfers succeeding were very slim because they couldn’t guarantee that the other faction would respect any agreement they had made. Even if Bagosora said that the transfers would work, they couldn’t promise that they would. They advised UNAMIR not to negotiate with the government or the military because we wouldn’t get the real answer. “Co-operate with the people,” they told Deme, “and avoid the politicians and the heads of the military, for they are telling only lies.” I gave this report from my intelligence officer a lot of credence. It confirmed for me that there was going to be a last-ditch effort to save Kigali, and the Interahamwe were in on that plan. Negotiating a ceasefire was a secondary concern: we were about to see these bastards continue the fight, even as they were making nice noises at the negotiating table. Stopping the killing had to be UNAMIR 2’s primary mission.
Deme also had news about the other side. The RPF was heavily recruiting Tutsis behind its lines. After basic training, these men were deployed as rear security in the areas that had already been captured. Our UNMOs started to encounter these new troops behind the RPF lines and noticed that some of them spoke only a dialect of Swahili, which meant they came from the Ugandan diaspora. Reports of massacres of Hutus who were former government agents and employees, along with their families, continued to come in. These massacres were mainly conducted in the areas of Byumba and Ngarama. Deme also passed on the news that there was a huge number of Hutu orphans in Byumba, whom Kouchner had gone to check on. To make matters more interesting, the RPF had put heavy restrictions on where our UNMOs could go. The last line of Deme’s report read, “It has been established that the restrictions imposed on us are done to conceal their [RPF] activities especially massacres.”
Throughout May the RPF continued to pursue their campaign of turning Kigali into a pocket in order to slowly strangle the RGF. They advanced from the north and east and in a large southernly hook, which on May 16 cut the road between Kigali and its large RGF garrison and Gitarama, where the interim government was located—effectively separating the head from the body. Increasingly the morale and discipline of the RGF forces were faltering, as the appearance of RPF patrols on their flanks or in their rear would bring wholesale retreats. Retreats cause defeatism and inevitably a breakdown in discipline; we received an increasing number of reports of RGF troops assisting in the genocide, looting, deserting and mutinying. This process was accelerated when the RGF conducted mass recruiting and conscription campaigns, gave the recruits three to four days of training and then threw them into battle against the seasoned and skilled RPF, which only resulted in the RGF’s inevitable defeat and a further deterioration of morale and discipline. At Gitarama, the liaison team of MILOBs that I had finally established with the RGF’s consent, was often threatened by drunken and dispirited soldiers.
Around this time, I found out that Mamadou Kane had commandeered an APC to go meet directly with the chief of staff of the RGF. I had no idea what he thought he might achieve by talking with Bizimungu on his own, since we usually went together. When I confronted him about the visit, he denied that he’d even gone.
The pressures on all of us were beyond extraordinary. The fighting around the airport, with the RGF and the RPF firing on each other and anything else that raised its head, curtailed the Hercules flights, cutting drastically the emergency supplies that could get in. We had little food, little medicine and much stress: the result was a sapping of will and commitment among my troops. On a daily basis I saw the increase in sick parade, as more and more soldiers went down with disease, especially malaria. I can’t tell you how disgusting daily life could be; the corpse-eating dogs that we shot on sight now had no qualms about attacking the living. One day while I was driving in Kigali, a lone dog attacked my side window while the vehicle was on the move. If I had not had the window up, the dog would have ripped off my arm. Another time, several officers taking a short coffee break saw a strange-looking dog wandering in the compound, then realized it was a rat that had grown to the size of a terrier. One of the officers, who was from Ghana, said that he had seen this after natural disasters back home: the rats fed and fed on an inexhaustible supply of human flesh and grew to an unbelievable size.
We had completely run out of water and were unable to find a source inside the country. I called the new CAO in Nairobi, Allay Golo from Chad, and asked him why there was no water.1 Golo was a career UN civilian administrator, and he respon
ded that he was bound by UN rules. Even though we had had no water for days, he still had to conduct a call for proposals and then do an analysis of the three best bids. The minimum estimate was a million litres, but securing that much water would take weeks, and we didn’t even have days. I told him that even twenty thousand litres would tide us over, but he insisted on following procedure. I couldn’t wait, and instead arranged to bring water in from UNOMUR. Even so, all of us, including the people we were sheltering, went without water for two more days.
RTLM was escalating its personal attacks on me. I already knew that I was the target of “third force” death threats. But what brought the hostility out into the open, I think, were my continuing efforts to negotiate safe passage for Tutsis trapped behind RGF lines—combined with the lie that I was plotting to export orphans from Rwanda. It didn’t seem to matter to the hate-mongers that I was also trying to transfer Hutus in the other direction. On May 18, RTLM broadcast propaganda against what it described as the Canadians’ desire to deport orphans, portraying it as an RPF-inspired attempt to put the extremist government in a bad light. It claimed that Bernard Kouchner and I were part of a cabal working to release the Tutsi refugees from the Mille Collines and the Meridien, ignoring the fact that most of the people in the Meridien were Hutu. The radio recommended the usual culling: “We do not oppose the principle of the release of these refugees, but we must first sort out the RPF sympathizers, who will not be allowed to leave.” The extremists were also incensed about Canada’s role in pushing for a UN Commission on Human Rights investigation of the genocide.
With hate propaganda targeting us directly, no water and little food, relentless killing all around, military buildups happening on both sides, and clear preparations being made for the escalation of the war, Riza sent me a message on May 20 announcing that he and Maurice Baril aimed to arrive in Kigali in three days for their first visit to UNAMIR. Their stated purpose, Riza said, was not political but humanitarian, to explain the new mandate and advance the ceasefire negotiations. My immediate job was to arrange a two- to three-day truce so that Riza and Baril wouldn’t get shot in my company.
The threats got even more personal on May 21, the day that RTLM first openly exhorted its listeners to “kill Dallaire,” describing me as the white man with the moustache. If I was seen, the broadcasts said, I was to be stopped and killed immediately. At that point I became the target of any Hutu with a machete. I recognized the escalation of danger to myself, but what this threat also did was put all my white MILOBs in jeopardy, particularly the ones with moustaches. I immediately ordered them to stand down from operations, but even so, a couple of them narrowly escaped from roadblocks with their lives. If I sent them out again, they would run even more than the ordinary risk of being killed.
The RPF forwarded a communication it had intercepted between Bizimungu and his head of operations, in which the chief of staff told the officer that “the order was to eliminate Dallaire.” I had no way of corroborating this intercept, and I didn’t move on the information since I didn’t have definitive proof. Also, with the broadcasting of the command to kill me, the damage had been done.
Whatever stress Mamadou Kane was under did him in around this time: he totally lost it one afternoon. I was in my office when I heard screaming and the sound of running footsteps on the floor above. Kane had gone berserk in the halls, apparently from fear, and locked himself in one of the rooms. His colleagues from political affairs had to break the door down and Beadengar Dessande, a large man, had to sit on him to physically restrain him. The next morning, we flew him out to Nairobi, where he was treated for his breakdown.
The day the death threat went out over hate radio, the HQ came under sustained artillery attack. A few of our troops were injured, vehicles were destroyed, windows were broken, strewing glass all over the place, and the operations centre was damaged. Our crater analysis confirmed that the attack had come from the RGF at Camp Kanombe.
It seemed like another unending marathon. Before the attack, I had met at the Hôtel des Diplomates with Ndindiliyimana, who had finally reappeared earlier in the month at a political session in Gitarama. He had approached me to arrange to meet with him alone in Kigali. And so Ndindiliyimana and I sat together, ostensibly to resolve some Gendarmerie operational concerns with the transfers between the lines. He seemed terribly ill at ease but determined to speak his mind. He warned me that the prefect of Kigali was not to be trusted, and confided that Bizimana, the minister of defence, was despondent due to the failures in the field, the loss of his properties in Byumba, and the deaths of his relatives there. He told me that the moderate faction in the RGF, including Gatsinzi and Rusatira, was growing in strength, yet he could give me no specifics except that most of its members had left Kigali and were now in the south. (Later Deme found out that Gatsinzi had left after he had proposed to the high command that the RGF withdraw to southern Rwanda, and his own troops had threatened him with death.)
The meeting continued for about an hour with Ndindiliyimana doing nearly all the talking. He confided that he had become the protector of a large number of persons in danger in and around Butare. He said that many people had been hiding in the ceilings, the walls and even the latrines of their houses and were now dying of starvation, thirst and worse because we could not get to them. He stressed that it was essential to create a force or a movement that was neither ethnic- nor military-based to govern the country. He gave me names of prominent Tutsis in the Mille Collines who had to be saved from certain death. Yes, I said, the people in the Mille Collines were like live bait being toyed with by a wild animal, at constant risk of being killed and eaten. Yet until the mission was reinforced, I was doing all I could. The militia cordon around the site, the harassing of my UNMOs and blue berets to give the refugees up, the deliberate bombardments, the sniper fire through the windows, the random RPF rounds through the hotel walls, were enough to wear on anyone’s resolve. It was admirable, I said, that the Red Cross still made it through the cordon to patch up the injured and help the sick while bringing in water and food.
Ndindiliyimana had one last piece of advice for me. He said that the roadblocks would disappear if I used the threat of force: the local bullies would abandon the barriers when they realized that the risks of being attacked by a reinforced and bolder UNAMIR 2 were high. He believed that if UNAMIR 2 came on strong, the hard-liners would melt away, and he did not think they could readily organize a reappearance. I had sat through most of our session taking in what he said with a healthy skepticism. But he was now essentially confirming the rationale behind my argument for UNAMIR 2. If he was being candid with me, I was saddened that he had never once offered to take on the mantle of leader of the moderate movement. With support from Kagame or even just from us, we might have helped the moderates create another front, confounding the extremists’ belief that they were acting in the name of all Hutus. The moderates’ ineptness, and lack of courage and commitment would cost them dearly after the RPF victory. As we said our goodbyes, Ndindiliyimana looked like a man who had been to confession but had not received absolution.
Late that afternoon, I had to return to the same hotel to meet with Bizimungu. Because of the now-explicit death threats, I was usually moving around the city in the slow and unreliable APCs. The Tunisians had done wonders to keep them mobile, keeping the engines and other moving parts running with wire and even cloth. They assured me that the main weapon, a heavy machine gun, worked and that they knew how to use it. They never hesitated to point the weapon at the person who controlled a barrier, aiming at his upper thorax and keeping the gun on him no matter where he moved. It was enough to intimidate many of those gangsters of the so-called self-defence forces.
As Diagne and I arrived at the hotel and got out of the APC, we were faced with more than sixty militiamen who were set up in trenches and bunkers replete with heavy weapons, including armour-piercing rockets. My pleasant “Good afternoon” did not erase their scowls, though they let us pas
s. As I entered the lobby, I saw Bagosora to my right, talking to an officer I did not recognize. Spotting me, Bagosora launched into a tirade, blaming me for the failure of the evacuation of the orphans. His body was spastic with hostility. He accused me of stalling for time in order to make him and the interim government look bad in the eyes of the world. He demanded to know why I was “deliberately” preventing these transfers from happening.
When he finally paused for breath, I told him that I was not totally convinced that the extremist branch of the militias had agreed to the orphan transfer. His face was about a foot from mine, but he screamed his response. He had made sure, he yelled, that the real authorities in the militias had been present at the meeting to arrange the transfer and they, in front of him, had given their word to support this exercise, and that was that. He stomped away. I had seen him angry in the past, but this time he bordered on the berzerk. I had to wonder what was really eating at him.
Despite everything that was going on, I slept rather well the night of May 21. Maybe I was somehow relieved that the death threats against me were now out in the open. I had protested the extensive bombardment of the HQ to Bizimungu and the minister of defence, and I was scheduled to meet them again the next day about the three-day truce we needed for the safe passage of Riza and Baril. Bizimungu could explain to me in person what his troops hoped to accomplish by bombing UNAMIR.
Phil Lancaster woke me up at about 0615 to pass on to me a report from the UNMOs at the airport: during the night the RGF had totally abandoned its positions there and at Camp Kanombe. They had thinned out through a hole in the RPF ring surrounding the camp. I asked him if there had been significant fighting in Kigali overnight or early this morning, since the RPF liked to leave openings for their enemy and then ambush them in the open or on the run. Phil said no, but told me that Tiko had reported that an observer had spotted artillery guns in the western part of the city.
Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda Page 46
