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

by Roméo Dallaire

  The scene was essentially the same at the King Faisal. That hospital tour, however, included a locked ward. When Khan asked James Orbinski why, James explained that these casualties had been identified by the RPF as having participated in the massacres, and the RPF wanted them to live to face the courts instead of lynch mobs. Khan considered this an extraordinary example of discipline from a victorious rebel force.

  Khan had been in Afghanistan during the worst of Soviet and mujahedeen conflict. As a child he had lived through the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1947. In his book he wrote, “The fact is that never in living history has such wanton brutality been inflicted by human beings on their fellow creatures [as in Rwanda]. . . . even the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia pale before the gruesome, awful depravity of massacres in Rwanda.” He chose one example from among many others to make his point. “The Interahamwe made a habit of killing young Tutsi children, in front of their parents, by first cutting off one arm, then the other. They would then gash the neck with a machete to bleed the child slowly to death but, while they were still alive, they would cut off the private parts and throw them at the faces of the terrified parents, who would then be murdered with slightly greater dispatch.” Khan was wrong when he wrote that the veterans of the genocide had become hardened to such things. We were simply putting off our feelings until later.

  Kagame had moved his command post into a cottage inside Camp Kanombe, and after winning Kigali was trying his best to be magnanimous. He told me he now fully supported the total deployment of UNAMIR 2 to help move the French out of the HPZ; he promised that the airport would be opened in a few days; and he was ready to announce a unilateral ceasefire. If the RGF didn’t accept the ceasefire, Kagame vowed to push the fight to the Zaire border.

  He informed me that he and his political advisers would soon be setting up a broad-based government founded on the Arusha framework—with some modifications, of course. No one who had had any part in the genocide would be included, and despite the fact that the RPF was calling for a ceasefire, it would not enter into negotiations with the interim government. The country, as he saw it, was now divided in three: the RPF zone; the Turquoise humanitarian zone, which UNAMIR 2 needed to monitor and then take over in order to evict the French as soon as possible; and in the northwest, the relatively small RGF zone, which he would have no scruples about attacking if the former regime’s forces didn’t lay down their weapons. There we had it, the victor’s map. I asked Kagame to wait until he could meet the new SRSG before going public with his plans so that UNAMIR could have some time to react to the new circumstances, and he agreed.

  I can only dream of what Shaharyar Khan might have done for Rwanda if he had been the one who had led the mission from the start. He had the valuable leadership trait of being able to anticipate. Two days into his mandate, he already understood that the most crucial issue facing us was the need for action in order to bring the refugees home. When he had his first meeting with Kagame, at the damaged VIP lounge of the airport on the morning of July 6, he quickly grasped the implications of the RPF’s position—we had to get to the interim government and Bizimungu as soon as possible because it was up to us to persuade them they should agree to the ceasefire. Otherwise Kagame would push right through the remaining RGF territory in pursuit of total victory, and the humanitarian disaster would be complete.

  Khan managed to set up his first meetings in Goma and Gisenyi for the next day, and took off with Tiko and a mixture of civilian staff and UNMOs by road to Kabale and then by helicopter to Zaire. (Tiko accompanied Khan on this and other risky early missions of shuttle diplomacy since Henry was finally in Ghana seeing to the myriad details of burying his father. Tiko would never allow anyone to come close enough to injure Khan.)

  Lafourcade met Khan at the airport and gave him a short briefing on Turquoise. A French escort accompanied Khan and his team across the border to the Meridian Hotel in Gisenyi, where they met with the interim government’s minister of foreign affairs, Jérôme Bicamumpaka, whose job was clearly to size up this new player. To be effective, Khan had to persuade both sides of his complete neutrality. Over the next few days, he met the other major figures of the interim government in Gisenyi, as well as Bizimungu, the head of the RGF. (The Gendarmerie’s chief of staff, Ndindiliyimana, was nowhere to be found, and I was never to see him again.) The ministers were calling their flight to Gisenyi a strategic withdrawal rather than a rout, and while they ultimately agreed to the ceasefire, I suspected they were brokering deals with the local Zairean authorities (possibly even colluding with sympathetic senior French officers inside the camps) in order to retain their weapons and political structure, thus setting up to come back into Rwanda in force within a couple of years and start the war all over again.

  The RPF was certainly aware of the use to which its foes could put the refugee camps in Zaire and the Turquoise HPZ. On July 8, Frank Kamenzi asked if I would consider forwarding a letter from a new group, “les forces démocratiques de changement,” to the president of the Security Council. Though I didn’t recognize the names of the signatories, the group was composed of moderate political leaders who claimed to represent the MDR, the PSD, the PDC and the PL parties. The letter expressed vehement opposition to the HPZ, which they described as a protection zone and escape route for criminals. The fact that they’d come forward so quickly after the fall of Kigali was a sign that the RPF was helping to build a coalition of most of the old Arusha signatory parties. UNAMIR’s efforts to identify politicians who could speak for the Hutu population after an RPF victory—and therefore had the moral right to sit and discuss the future political structure of this disembowelled nation—had been sporadic at best. True to form, the RPF took the initiative. I informed Khan and agreed to forward the letter immediately.

  The RPF also stuck rigorously to their position that they would not deal with any people who had played a role, no matter how reluctantly, in the command structure of the old regime. The next day I received a copy of an open declaration by the RGF moderates, who were now holed up in the town of Kigame just southwest of Gikongoro. (I had lost touch with them and had assumed they had already fled to Zaire.) The document was an unequivocal disavowal of the extremists and a total commitment to ceasefire, peace and the reconstitution of the nation according to the terms of the Arusha accords. Nine moderate officers, headed by Rusatira and Gatsinzi, had signed it. I sent the declaration on to Kagame with a covering note stating that accepting their return to Rwanda would be a significant act of reconciliation that would help the cause of international recognition of the new government. But I got no substantive response. Kagame, and those around him—figures such as Pasteur Bizimungu, the RPF’s hardnosed political negotiator—still had no time for these officers.

  Meanwhile, the ebb and flow of contingents was picking up momentum. On July 9, we held a small farewell ceremony at the airport for the Tunisians. Earlier in the mission I had given this stalwart contingent the large UN flag we had raised in Kinihara on November 1, 1993, to mark the official start of the mission. The Tunisians were the only troops on the ground when we boldly took over the monitoring of the demilitarized zone and the flag had stayed with them as they fulfilled all the dangerous duties I had assigned them. On the tarmac in front of the gaping hold of a Hercules, we saluted each other and shook hands for the last time. At their request, I signed the flag. I’m told it still flies today in a garrison somewhere in Tunisia.

  The first small batch of Ghanaian reinforcements had been dropped off at Entebbe only to find that our supposed reception and training site was non-functional (we still had no budget for it, just a million administrative excuses from UN staff). They were eventually bused to Rwanda and we put them up in the military school in Camp Kigali, where they dug themselves in.

  Later that day, Lafourcade sent me an urgent message that he wanted me to deliver immediately to Kagame. He had serious concerns about the northwestern part of the country, essentially the RGF area from Ruhengeri west
to the Zairean border. There were hundreds of thousands of displaced people in that area and they were fidgety from fear of the RPF. He wanted Kagame to stop his advance. An exodus to Goma would complicate things with the Zaireans and make it impossible for the belligerents to reach a political accord.

  Kagame reacted as if Lafourcade’s letter confirmed every suspicion he had of Turquoise’s agenda—clearly it was political, not humanitarian, he charged. He told me to remind Lafourcade that all the RGF had to do to stop his advance was agree to the unilateral ceasefire—unlike his opponents, Kagame said, he was not targeting civilians. As far as he was concerned, the movement of displaced persons was a reaction to extremist propaganda and therefore not his responsibility. Lafourcade was furious.

  Kagame did acquiesce to the request to move a French liaison team into Force HQ, perhaps realizing how much more effective it would make me as intermediary between himself and Turquoise. Lieutenant Colonel Francis and Commandant Pierre arrived on July 11 on a Canadian Hercules flight with their vehicles and equipment. They were immediately escorted to my HQ, where they set up shop not far from my office. Although they received curious looks from the heavy RPF presence at the airport and along the route to headquarters, all went smoothly. The two officers were friendly, cooperative and respectful, but since my Force HQ was in RPF territory, the officers agreed to be confined to the headquarters for the time being, both to keep them safe and because I did not want them to conduct intelligence operations against the RPF that would violate UNAMIR’s neutrality. Within hours of their arrival, we had a dependable and secure communications link between Turquoise and UNAMIR 2.

  As the RPF had moved in, Kigali had been nearly abandoned, save for the militia-populated communes in the poorest suburbs of the city. Now increasing numbers of displaced persons were starting to enter the city. Some were coming home but others seemed to be squatters. It was not unusual to see RPF soldiers evicting people from an abandoned home and then moving others into it. (We didn’t know whether they were original owners who had survived the genocide, or whether they were merely friends of the RPF movement.) As the days went by, a large number of Tutsi refugees and diaspora came to Kigali and settled in.

  The influx worried Khan, who thought it would destabilize the country. I took him on an extensive tour of all the nearby hellholes. Neither he nor I enjoyed swerving around corpses and bundles of rags left on the streets, but the vestiges of the barbaric handiwork of the militias was everywhere. Though the Amahoro Stadium was still full, several of our protected sites were now empty or occupied by only a few hundred people still in dire need of aid. One orphanage in the Butare area still harboured over six hundred children along with a makeshift hospital that had thirty-five casualties confined to beds and a large number of ambulatory patients. One German doctor and two nurses were running the place with assistance from some of the healthier adults. Yaache and the MamaPapas had been in contact with UNICEF to arrange deliveries of food and water. Many of the kids were so psychologically damaged that they were immobile, sitting here, there and everywhere and reacting to nothing, even the hundreds of flies that clustered at every orifice of their bruised, dirty and frail bodies. The eyes in their thin faces seemed to blaze at you like lasers, projecting beams of energy that burned right into your heart.

  Around this time the little sleep I got at night began to be completely invaded by nightmares of these children’s accusing eyes, or gruesome scenes that I’d blocked out of my mind shortly after I’d witnessed them, or the ugly consequences of decisions I’d taken. My dreams often brought back in ghastly detail the ten dead Belgian soldiers piled in a bloody heap by the morgue door in that terrible hospital courtyard.

  July 12 began with a major political statement from the RPF, the “Declaration of the RPF for the Installation of the Formal Institutions of Government.” The three-page document laid out modifications to the Arusha Agreement that generously favoured the RPF. Those ministerial and legislative positions previously held by the extremist parties would now accrue to the RPF. There would be no amnesty for members of the old regime or the military implicated in the genocide—they would face the full penalty of the law. Faustin Twagiramungu would be the new prime minister. Since the leaders of the other political parties had been murdered, it would be up to Faustin to propose suitable replacements in consultation with the president, who would be nominated by the RPF. The leaders of the RPF were moving very rapidly to build a government and a national army that would be instruments of their movement. Although they professed the new institutions would not be ethnic-based, it was becoming harder and harder to accept that line of argument when some of them quietly expressed disdain for the millions of Hutus now being pushed into living as both refugees and potential pawns to another round of war.

  Faustin, back from Belgium, had made contact with the UNAMIR liaison team in Nairobi and asked for transport into Kigali. He came home on July 14 on one of our Hercules flights. We had cleaned out a couple of the floors in the Meridien for the new mission staff. When Faustin said he had no accommodations in the capital and that the RPF had nothing to offer him, we set aside a suite for him, which he had to use as an office as well as living quarters for a while. We provided him with office supplies, typing support, long distance phone calls, food and even some transport. His surviving family was still scattered and he had to scavenge to survive, because the RPF was not yet supporting him in any way. His situation was not unique. As more of the surviving Rwandan officials came back to the city, we found ourselves putting up several of them in the Meridien. Everything in Kigali was either burned or otherwise destroyed, or had been looted, and with the RPF still sorting itself out, these officials needed help to open up their offices. Even the Supreme Court justice was operating out of his bedroom at the Meridien hotel.

  Things were hopping on all fronts. Yaache and the humanitarian team were meeting with the bigger NGOs and agencies such as UNICEF, WFP, MSF and the ICRC to sort out how to restore the water system in Kigali. The civilian humanitarian staff moved to the UNDP building downtown, as space and communications were at a premium in the Force HQ. MamaPapa teams were moving over two hundred Hutu displaced persons from the Byumba camp into our Kigali safe sites for protection. Our UNMOs in Entebbe were having a hard time getting support from the airport authorities, who threatened to throw us out of the main complex because we were not paying our bills. The UNMOs were also having arguments with Brown and Root regarding the state of the American APCs and the contractor’s logistics support plan for our battalions to be deployed across the country. A bright note was that the Australian recce party was still here, and busy considering where to put their field hospital. Since we agreed they had to serve the force but also be of maximum aid to the civilian population, they were looking at the main Kigali hospital. I immediately requested that the head of the recce party, Colonel Ramsay, contact his leaders back home and ask that he be given authority to take on—in fact, create—the position of UNAMIR’s chief medical officer. Ramsay was keen. For the first time since the departure of the Belgian medical field hospital, we would have a professional medical plan with the assets needed to support the force. The Australians were also bringing a company of infantry for close protection.

  On July 14, my intelligence officer reported at morning prayers that the RPF was running two interrogation centres in Kigali and that summary executions were being conducted all day long. He could not get close to the well-guarded centres himself but believed his informants were reliable. Also, new recruits were being trained in Camp Kanombe—we were seeing more and more of them at the checkpoints. In eastern Rwanda, soldiers speaking only Swahili were conducting security checks and patrols. My intelligence officer believed they were NRA soldiers from Uganda.

  On a trip that day to Bukavu and Goma, I met with five of the RGF moderates who had signed the “Kigame Nine” declaration, among them Gatsinzi and Rusatira, whom I was relieved to see again. They and their families had been evacuated to
Zaire by the French after their declaration made them even more of a target for Hutu hard-liners. But the French were not supporting them, and they asked if I could give them some cash so they could buy food. They wanted to come back to Kigali and work on the reconciliation of the country; they insisted that they were not defectors to the RPF, but men who loved Rwanda. I promised to speak with Kagame about them. This time I offered my services as their guarantor if he let them back into the country. A couple of weeks later we brought them to Kigali, and the RPF set them up in the Milles Collines, where we fed them and provided security. The RPF left them to stew for a while, but finally integrated them into the new national army.

  As we flew over Goma, I could see the massive movements of people flowing across the border (technically Gisenyi fell to the RPF on July 17, but it had already been under attack by the RPF). Lafourcade and I met for an hour or so in his logistics base. He estimated that about 300,000 people had already crossed into Zaire—Gendarmerie and militia groups among them—and were being directed to camps just north of the city. Neither he nor the government of Zaire had the capacity to aid them, and Lafourcade thought the number of refugees would soon hit one million.

  Back at my helicopter, I was told that we could not take off from the airport unless we paid a landing fee of $800 U.S. UN aircraft were supposed to be exempt from such fees, and I went into the tower building to negotiate with the manager. He told me to pay up in cash or we wouldn’t be allowed to leave—and there were enough Zairean guards around the airport, armed to the teeth, to indicate his threat was very real. We pooled our money, but the bulk of the cash came from Phil. He was never reimbursed—the manager gave us no receipt and the UN did not accept our explanation of the expense, insisting that we should have refused to pay.