Shake Hands With the Devil (80 page)

UNAMIR
2 was still engaged in a scramble for resources and equipment. Belgium had at last agreed to equip a Malawi company once they got to Kigali; the old colonial powers were fearful that equipment might be hijacked en route and used for coups or to outfit palace guards to reinforce the new government. The site at Entebbe was still all too basic and
I redirected more
UNOMUR
personnel and assets there to assist in improving it (
UNOMUR
was to close down and I'd soon lose their valuable assistance). Our facilities were too limited to hold troops for any length of time before deploying them. But the reinforcements were still not coming. By the last week of July, I had at best six hundred personnel of all ranks in the mission.

My Kigali staff, still living in terrible conditions, were visibly tiring, now partly from the stress of dealing with all the parties who wanted to come in and help us. I nearly had a second mutiny over food when another batch of German rations was opened and it smelled to high heaven. These rations, so generously provided to us when we had nothing left to eat, were now well beyond their best-before date. (The crisis was resolved when the Canadian contingent arrived, bringing with it a hefty supply of hard rations that we all could share.)

I had a mission headquarters staff of fewer than thirty officers, with varying levels of skills and knowledge, trying to keep a multitude of operational tasks moving: I had made a vow that
UNAMIR
would never be the stumbling block to peace and stability in Rwanda, and the staff worked themselves ragged to fulfill that promise. I had not allowed my principal staff any leave time, with only a few exceptions, since the start of the war. A couple of people had become zombies, blank and unresponsive, and we'd had to send them home. Others were over-irritable and would become very emotional over conditions that we had been living with for some time. It was as if a line had been crossed and they began to interpret everything as if they were Rwandan, wholly identifying with the victims. Once they started inhabiting the horror they could not handle any serious new work. We started to send them off to Nairobi on the Hercules for a couple of days' rest. Their fatigue was a recognized medical state. After seeing a doctor in Nairobi, they would move to a hotel room and then wash, sleep, eat and somehow attempt to relax. Since there was no budget to handle the walking wounded, such bouts of rest and recuperation were at the expense of the injured person.

What really began to wear us down was the constant raising and then dashing of hopes. Watching the world support Turquoise, with all the ambivalence that engendered in us, was one thing. But believing
that we were finally to be aided by the Americans—and then being utterly let down—was another.

The first American officer to arrive in Kigali was Brigadier General Jack Nix, every inch the image of a solid U.S. Army combat one-star general—the only way he didn't fit the stereotype was that he didn't smoke cigars. As the field commander of the U.S. Joint Task Force (
JTF
) to Africa, Nix came to me to discuss the U.S. concept of operations in the region. He said the Americans would first operate out of Entebbe and then transfer all
matériel
to cargo planes, then onto trucks to move to
UNAMIR
in Kigali, and then on to Goma and all regions of Rwanda. I told him our most urgent requirement was off-loading equipment and personnel at the airport—he wouldn't be able to send anything more than a Hercules into Kigali until we had the infrastructure to deal with it. As far as he knew, his mission was to help the
UN
efforts in Goma and in Rwanda, but before he initiated anything he had to await confirmation from the overall
JTF
commander, Lieutenant General Daniel Schroeder, who was due in theatre in a couple of days. We parted with me reminding him that Goma had to remain a temporary exercise. For the Americans to be part of the solution, the aid effort had to be from within Rwanda.

The
UN
did its bit at the airport. Within twenty-four hours of receiving the call from the
DPKO
a group of about twenty Canadian Air Force air traffic controllers had been assembled from all the bases back home and were in the air. When they arrived in Kigali they went directly from their Hercules to the air-control tower and complex. They removed the bodies they found (no abandoned building in Kigali was without its dead), washed the place down, set up their old manual-and-visual air control apparatus (which looked like something out of the Battle of Britain), and slapped a large Canadian flag on the tower underneath the Rwandan and
UN
flags. They were open for business before nightfall.

A few days later, when the U.S. ground and off-loading crew arrived with media crawling all over them, the Americans unabashedly announced that they had “opened” the Kigali airport. But the picture that made it to newspapers around the world caught a gaggle of our air
controllers hanging out of the tower pointing to the large Canadian flag. The Americans had to take a lot of ribbing after that as they worked hand in hand with Canadian and other
UN
troops to get the airfield functional and the much-needed aid, contingents and logistics on its way.

I had to drive north toward the border of Uganda in the last week of July to meet with Baroness Chalker, the British minister for Overseas Development, who had just been to Goma and Mulindi but had not had enough time to complete the leg of her trip to Kigali. (She was a “tourist” I immediately warmed to. She did not stand on protocol and travelled with a tin of homemade tea biscuits, which she shared with everyone.) I met up with her at Kilometre 64, and we carried on northward, crossing into Uganda at the Gatuna bridge, while I pointedly explained why we needed the promised British trucks, engineers, maintenance platoon, field hospital, small headquarters and
UNMO
s. She sent the colonel who was travelling with her to do a recce in Kigali and told him to forward the list of our needs to the British ministry of defence. In parting, she promised me what I requested, though she reminded me that she had only a six-month commitment from her government to support Rwanda and
UNAMIR
.

At Entebbe the American presence was already strong—the Stars and Stripes flag was flying from the roof of the main terminal. I visited my team in their minuscule ground-floor office and then proceeded to my transient camp. The Ghanaian platoon had set up tents and portable latrines, benches and tables, but they had no cots. There was no electricity and no running water, no cooking facilities and no phone lines. The
APC
s were standing in silent rows by a pile of junked parts. The Brown and Root mechanics were working hard, swearing about the lack of spare parts, and the repainting of the vehicles in
UN
colours had begun. Even with the exceptional efforts of the
UNDP
resident representative and our
UNOMUR
civilian support staff, the camp was going nowhere fast. I went back to the
UNMO
s in charge of troop movement and told them to alert the mission and New York to the fact that the Entebbe base was not functional and that all incoming troops should
fly directly to Kigali, where we'd manage as best we could. They needed to get the word out quickly since the large Canadian contingent under Mike Hanrahan was due the next day.

I then headed to the top floor of the new terminal, where at least a hundred military personnel were going in all directions putting the American headquarters together before Schroeder arrived. Nix was in Goma doing a reconnaissance. Not wanting to burden the junior staff officers, I headed back to Kigali, wryly smiling about how comfortable the furniture in the American headquarters looked—a demonstration of the priorities and capabilities of an imperial force.

Of course, Hanrahan did not get the word in time, and the next day 170 personnel landed in Entebbe. The unit was up to strength, operationally current and ready for a rare deployment as a full unit (usually only individuals were sent to augment missions). They got to the theatre exactly fourteen days after official notification of the mission, and were proud of their speed. Hanrahan took one look at the camp at Entebbe airfield and rented a large warehouse and a bunch of hotel rooms until they could fly into Kigali. This was the kind of despatch and flexibility I desperately needed from contingents, but which only the “have” nations could afford.

The night before I was to meet General Schroeder for the first time the
DPKO
sent us some pertinent news clips from the U.S. media. The
Washington Post
was reporting that the U.S. government was planning to put at least 2,000 troops inside Rwanda “to set up a relief network to encourage Rwandan refugees to return home from their horrific camps in Zaire.” A Lieutenant General John Sheehan, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted as saying that “the operation would be done in concert with
UN
forces in Africa and several nations would be taking part.” Their mission, according to officers interviewed in Entebbe by the
Post
, “would be to establish relief stations with food and water that would tend to refugees on their walk home.” According to Sheehan, “U.S. military teams would fan out from Kigali airport on roads leading to the Zairean border” and establish way stations as the proposed support structure for a reverse trek. “Establishing a multinational
HQ
in
Kigali is also intended as a statement to Hutu refugees that there will be no reprisals.” The triumvirate had done a fine job, because it seemed as if, this time, the United States had accepted my entire concept of operations. We were elated. It looked like we now had the means and a plan that would end the Goma catastrophe and enable the return home of the displaced persons in the
HPZ
.

Reality struck again at morning prayers with a report from our liaison officer in Goma. Some refugees trickling back into Rwanda in order to escape the hellhole of their disease-infested camps had been attacked by extremists. A few were killed but most were mutilated and returned to the camps to serve as examples—the favoured punishment was using a machete to chop the Achilles tendon, which prevented the victim from walking. The news sent me spinning into a tirade against every nation and body who could have assisted us in preventing this, most especially Turquoise. My ranting was beyond the bounds of decorum, and rendered my own staff and the French liaison officers noticeably ill at ease. When I stopped, the orders group headed quietly off to their duties.

It has never been my way to rant and rave like a cartoon general. In fact, even at the height of any crisis, a model Canadian headquarters was low-key, restrained, efficient. I remained alone for a time, staring at the big map of Rwanda tacked to the wall. I had to recognize that I was exhibiting the signs and symptoms that caused me to send others to Nairobi for a rest. I could rarely sleep, and could not bear to eat anything other than peanut butter from Beth's last care package. I was moody and overtaken at the most inopportune times by spontaneous daydreaming. I resolved to speak to Maurice about my condition soon, then pulled myself together to meet the American commander.

Schroeder was preceded by a small military police detachment led by a very tense colonel. They were given space in the terminal to set up their preliminary
HQ
. The general arrived in a small twin-engine commander's aircraft. When I laid eyes on him for the first time it looked to me like real help had finally arrived. His introductory words to me were, “General, I am here to help you in whatever way I can.”

We spent some time together in my
HQ
going over the concept of
operations for both Goma and the
HPZ
, my status of forces in theatre, my future capabilities, the priority of effort I needed from his troops (airfield handling; transport for
matériel
and men between Entebbe, Goma and Kigali; mine clearance, logisitics and security elements for the way stations; water and electricity in Kigali; if possible, the restoration of the hydro dam near Cyangugu); and the humanitarian and political situation as of that day. He and his few staff officers took notes. When Schroeder left, the only outstanding question about the imminent arrival of American help was some political posturing in Washington.

The next morning, July 29, I was reading the Washington clips sent overnight by the
DPKO
, this time accompanied by a note from the triumvirate warning me that our plan was now running into serious opposition. Schroeder was quoted as saying that the U.S. deployment would take place despite hesitation voiced in Washington, but he added that he would proceed cautiously because of difficult conditions in Kigali: “The one thing you do not want to do is to overwhelm an already overstressed infrastructure.” What kind of doubletalk was this? His resources were the solution to the stress. Clearly between the time he left me and the time he gave an interview to the media in Entebbe he had been told off by his superiors. Apparently the State Department and the Pentagon were at odds, and the State Department viewed it as premature to speak of a large-scale U.S. presence in Kigali, or of the capital as the proper hub for relief efforts, I scanned the clippings to discover that U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvilli, were to tour the region on the coming weekend; no policy decision about Kigali would be reached until after their visit.

The root of the issue was expressed by an unnamed State Department official, who said that the Clinton administration did not want the U.S. military presence in Rwanda to be seen as a de facto recognition of the new Rwandan government, which had not yet satisfied Washington of its commitment to protecting human rights. They also did not want to station any U.S. military personnel in Rwanda until their safety was “absolutely” assured. While the U.S. military thought it would be more efficient to operate out of Kigali, General Shalikashvilli
told reporters that U.S. officials had concerns about how they would ensure the security of participating American forces if they were inside Rwanda. As a possible alternative to the way-station plan, Shalikashvilli offered that “Pentagon officials also are considering a system of airdrops to provide food and other basic supplies to refugees on their way home.” The great humanitarians in the U.S. administration wanted no part of anything inside Rwanda that could lead to American casualties.