Shake Hands With the Devil (55 page)

Peter Hansen, the
UN
under-secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, was due that day with his group of analysts—he was the first senior
UN
executive to visit us since the war began. The major point I made to him, after he had toured the protected sites and had been briefed by our humanitarian section under Yaache, was that
UNAMIR
had to be the conduit on information to the
NGO
s and agencies coming into Rwanda, and that we had to control their movements. I could not tolerate individual aid organizations wanting to do their own thing in ignorance of the overall situation and possibly jeopardizing ceasefire negotiations or the security of the mission. The best thing Hansen could do was send me a solid emergency team to marry up with my humanitarian section.
Hansen was courageous, determined and quick to grasp the situation. He left a team behind with orders to integrate with the Force
HQ
and promised to convey my plan and directives to the aid agencies, though he could not guarantee that they would all fall in line. I told him to pass on a simple message: if any one of them aided and abetted the belligerents by even inadvertently allowing aid resources to end up in the hands of troops, I would expel them from Rwanda and answer questions later.

I set off for Gitarama to brief the interim government members and the
RGF
on the new mandate and troop reductions. The trip was yet another descent into the inferno. You can handle such scenes for a while, but as we once again became engulfed in a slow-moving, suffering human mass, my tolerance for the brutality waned and I see-sawed from rage to tears and back again, with brief interregnums of numbed-out staring. I could not look away. All those eyes staring back at us. Tired, red, sad, fearful, mad, bewildered pairs of eyes.

I was late for the meeting, and as we drove into the compound where the interim government was holed up, the contrast between the site and the scenes along the road really got to me. The compound was a peaceful modern schoolyard. A large number of well-dressed gentlemen and a few middle-aged women milled aimlessly about under the avocado trees amid a large flower garden. The prime minister and a particularly aggressive minister of information seemed to be at work in small offices, but no one else was doing much and there was no apparatus of government to be seen—the interim government had been here for over a week and still looked as if it was sorting out the seating plan for a meeting that was not about to convene any time soon.

Kambanda was uneasy, and no one looked particularly pleased to see us, so I got right to the point. The prime minister had no reaction one way or the other to news of the reduction of my force and the new mandate. He said he would support the secure transfer of people between the lines and would confirm with the minister of defence a militia truce for such transfers. When I mentioned the relentless killing at the barriers, Kambanda insisted that the “self-defence personnel” had an important security job to perform in weeding out rebel infiltrators.
We ticked off a few more items on the list, and then he singled out the fact that
UNAMIR
was “cohabiting” with the
RPF
at the Amahoro complex: How could he go along with a neutral airport when we would fold up if the
RPF
decided to take over the airport? I said that I was not cohabiting with the
RPF
: my headquarters area had been overrun and was now behind their lines. I said I would move the Force
HQ
to the airport as a guarantee that my actions were independent of the
RPF
, which caused the minister of information to scoff loudly.

Then the minister surprised me by requesting a public funeral for the murdered president. I replied that unless I could get access to the presidential residence and the crash site, I could do nothing about it—international inspectors had to be allowed in to do an independent investigation. He and Kambanda agreed and asked when the inspectors could come. I said they were waiting for my call. Lastly, I firmly decried the verbal abuse and disinformation being broadcast about
UNAMIR
and the Tutsis by
RTLM
. I wanted to go on air and tell my version of the situation. To my surprise, the minister agreed and said he would set it up for the next day.

Shaking hands automatically, I left the small office and walked among the ministers and others on my way to my vehicle. As I walked, I brooded on their complacency, on how clean and at ease they all seemed; either they were outside the decision loop or they had ulterior motives in this catastrophe befalling their homeland. And where was Bagosora?

We arrived back at the
HQ
by 1800 and held prayers soon after. The news from the Arusha meeting was that the
RGF
delegation hadn't shown up. The
RPF
had sent their secretary-general, Théogène Rudasingwa, as head of a small delegation, and he presented a ceasefire proposal that still included the demanding preconditions. In the words of Booh-Booh in his report to
UN
headquarters: “Having waited in vain for the arrival of the Government delegation and with the departure of the
RPF
delegation, I plan to leave Arusha for Nairobi. . . . I however took advantage of the presence of the
OAU
Secretary-General and the Tanzanian delegation (President) to exchange views on our efforts to
help the peace process and also to prepare a cease-fire proposal which I believe could form the basis of ending the present hostilities.” Not only did Booh-Booh decide to leave for Nairobi, from that point on he mostly stayed there, as did his politicos, making only brief visits to Kigali. So the political wheel went spinning into a vacuum, and everyone could say on their way home that they had tried their best.

The last of the six troop flights was leaving Kigali airport as we wrapped up prayers, and the
HQ
was readjusting for the second time in two weeks. I retained a Force Headquarters, a reduced Military Observer Group, a little more than a platoon of Tunisians and a small battalion of Ghanaians. The
MILOB
s were with us at the Amahoro Hotel in our familiar headquarters, protected by the Tunisians. I based the Ghanaian battalion at the airport, as my alternate headquarters, with the medical section, the service support element (which would run the logistics base) and one rifle company to defend the airport. The other rifle company I based at the Amahoro Stadium to protect the refugees.

I had also placed small detachments at the other sites throughout Kigali where we were protecting persons, with mobile
MILOB
teams travelling between them. I gave the
APC
s to the Tunisians, who without tools, spare parts or mechanics, managed to increase the working number from three to five within hours. The “deadheads” (an old military term for unserviceable vehicles), which had arrived in February from Mozambique, could not be redeemed, and we hauled them to the gates of our camps and employed them as bunkers.

Despite the best efforts of the Tunisians, the vehicles progressively broke down—eventually all of them did. After much wrangling, the United States authorized its mission in Somalia to “loan”
UNAMIR
six old, stripped-down (no guns, no radios and no tools), early Cold War–era
APC
s in mid-April. Brent had taken a call one night from an
NCO
at the Pentagon, who asked why we needed the
APC
s. With some eloquence, Brent described our substantially reduced force structure, our desperate logistics state and our precarious situation on the ground, ending his explanation with: “It gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘light forces,' doesn't it?” The good old boy in Washington responded, “Buddy, you'll get your
APC
s, good luck to you and God bless.” We got
more and faster support from that one sergeant than from the rest of the United States government and armed forces combined.

How could I spark the conscience of the world? We were diminished but determined to stay put and continue to tell the story of what was happening in Rwanda. I had to press the right buttons and I had to do it as fast as possible. Since my reports seemed to keep vanishing into the abyss of non-action in New York, I stepped up the media campaign. For those politicians and generals who distrust and avoid the free media, I can assure them that the media can be an ally and a weapon equal to battalions on the ground. With the Belgian departure, it appeared that Mark Doyle of the
BBC
might also leave. I called him into my office and made him an offer he could not refuse. He could live with us, be protected by us, be fed and sustained by us, and I would guarantee him a story a day and the means (my satellite phone) to get that story to the world. I did not care if his story was positive or negative about
UNAMIR
as long as it was accurate and truthful. The key was for him to become the voice of what was happening in Rwanda.

Mark agreed and in the coming days he did become that voice. Other news agencies noticed, and journalists began to flow into Rwanda to cover the slaughter. Jean-Guy Plante was on the case, helping them in any way he could. He loved to be around people, and he organized the reporters already in country, establishing a system of rotation of media between Nairobi and Kigali with the help of the Canadian movement staff in charge of the Hercules flights. Plante decided how long reporters would stay in theatre in order to permit a maximum of different media outfits and journalists to report what was going on in Rwanda. I wanted no stupid casualties. Plante had
UN
vans, rooms in the Meridien, food cards, and electronic hookups in the Force
HQ
ready for them. He guaranteed them security, at least one story every day and delivery of their stories to Nairobi. This was achieved on occasion by
UNMO
s driving to the Ugandan border and handing the material to
UNOMUR
, who would take it by helicopter to Entebbe and beyond.

I also directed Brent to ensure each night that any journalist calling for an interview was given access to me. With our own national broadcasting
network, the
CBC
, Brent exercised his initiative, with very positive results. The producer of
As It Happens,
an internationally well-regarded radio interview show listened to at home by hundreds of thousands of Canadians, finally secured our phone number and called to set up a live interview with the show's host, Michael Enright. Brent refused to put me on the line unless the producer provided the scores of the
NHL
(National Hockey League) playoff games. We had no news at all from home but knew the playoffs were on. Brent, a confirmed Toronto Maple Leafs fan at the time, and I, a resolute Montreal Canadiens fan, were grateful for this news. In the weeks that followed, we always got our scores, and Enright got his live interviews. In our conversations, Enright became the voice of home to me.

The media was the weapon I used to strike the conscience of the world and try to prod the international community into action. I would even risk the lives of my
UNMO
s to ensure that the stories got out every day.

As far as I have been able to determine, on April 24 the
NGO
Oxfam became the first organization to use the term “genocide” to describe what was happening in Rwanda. Calling it “ethnic cleansing” just did not seem to be hitting the mark. After numerous telephone conversations with Oxfam personnel in London, we queried New York if what we were seeing in Rwanda could be labelled genocide. As far as I am aware, we never received a response, but we started to use the term sometime after April 24 in all of our communications. Little did I realize the storm of controversy this term would invoke in New York and in the capitals of the world. To me it seemed an accurate label at last.

April 25. Tiko briefed me with a big smile on his face. He had made contact with and regained control of all the valorous
UNMO
s forced to escape to Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire and Burundi. He had chosen the officers he wanted to keep in Rwanda and concentrated the rest in Nairobi until further orders. That was the one good piece of news I was able to pass on in my assessment cable to New York that day.

The rest of the report: Bizimungu had made it quite clear that he would take no action except under instruction from the interim government,
which I was having a hard time keeping track of, since it had refused my liaison officers (which I ultimately sent anyway). He also did not want to ask the militias at the roadblocks to open the gates for the transfers of
RPF
supporters. He and the prefect of Kigali demonstrated real uneasiness when speaking of the militias, as if they had to defer to a body more powerful than either the
RGF
or the interim government.

I had a report from Gatsinzi that Ndindiliyimana was in the south actually helping people escape, and that there existed a number of
RGF
officers who were disgusted with the way things were going and felt that Bizimungu did not have control of the military. I recommended to New York that, if required, we should provide these moderates with protection as they could prove to be useful in the post-crisis period. The humanitarian side continued to be bleak, bleaker in fact after a huge massacre in Butare. Both Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross had had people severely threatened, and local Red Cross staff had been killed. Médecins Sans Frontières had decided to get out of the country to regroup, and, I wrote, “Due to the Butare massacre, the withdrawal of Médecins Sans Frontières, the pillaging of the Red Cross refugee supplies by the militias, the security situation and the lack of guarantees from both sides, the ICRC shut down operations in Rwanda for today and is only staying put for now at their hospital.”

With the airport drawing fire from both sides, planes had stopped coming in, and Canada was going to repatriate its Hercules in five days. Add to that the fact that the Amahoro complex was being fired upon by both sides with mortars, and this was neither a good start to my new mandate nor an encouragement to my troops to carry on.