Shake Hands With the Devil (82 page)

On August 2, I made my way to Entebbe to meet Schroeder in his
HQ
. The visit from Defense Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvilli and their large entourage had changed nothing, though Khan and I had taken our best shot at explaining the region's imperatives. Once again, General Schroeder was most welcoming and he immediately had his staff bring me up to date. More of his forces were moving into Goma and he had sent Nix there semi-permanently. He would be sending a total of three hundred military police and airfield staff with off-loading equipment to Kigali over the next few days, and I could expect the C5 military cargo planes to start carrying in my troops by August 6.

We then spoke privately as there were far too many busy people and boards and charts and crackling communications systems arrayed around us. When we were alone together in his office, I didn't even have to ask the question. His orders, he said, were to operate out of Entebbe with his main effort concentrated on Goma. His people at the Kigali airport would not be allowed to leave the airfield perimeter. The political heat was on for him not to take any risks that might lead to the injury or death of his troops. When I left him to go visit my
UNMO
s in their unassuming quarters I was incensed, and Schroeder, who had criticized the course his bosses had decided upon, was ashamed. His political masters were being suckered into Goma and into a no-risk approach—shades of Mogadishu haunting us still. Such actions helped ensure lasting conflict in the area.

I climbed to the top of the decrepit old terminal and looked out from the bullet-riddled tower. My camp at Entebbe looked like a tiny, amateur operation against the bustle of the American enterprise here. I could not believe that the outside world was finally coming into the Rwandan catastrophe en masse and screwing it up so totally—and for the same reasons that had prevented them from reacting properly to the genocide in the first place. I flew back to Kigali that night, knowing that without the Americans' support for the Homeward Bound plan the road ahead was near-impassable.

And so for the last weeks of my command the Americans, with all their resources, sat inside the perimeter of the Kigali airport, and though they helped us bring our troops in and out, they did little else.
There were still casualties in Kigali as a result of crime (our
UN
civilian police were working hard with the new government, but there was a ways to go yet) and people were stumbling across land mines or other unexploded ordinance. The Americans had several well-equipped ambulances on the ground with medical staff, while we were making do with vans, pickup trucks, four-by-fours and sometimes even dump trucks. But when we asked the Americans if they could do emergency casualty evacuation to the hospitals in Kigali, they refused, evoking their standing orders.

Then there was water. With the help of British and Canadian engineers, we were able to establish water purification points around the city but we did not have any bulk-water carriers to move the water to our locations or to the civilian population. As a result, we had to make endless water runs, which ate up fuel and time. Rwandans had to walk long distances to the water points each day to fill up buckets and cans. One day an American C5 landed at the airport and unloaded several huge bulk-water carrying trucks, some even painted in
UN
colours. Even though we knew about their restrictions, we asked if they could please drive the vehicles, under our escort and protection, and begin moving potable water to distribution sites for the population and
UNAMIR
within Kigali. They refused. We then asked if we could “borrow” the vehicles, as we suspected they were destined for us. They again refused, stating they had no authority to loan the vehicles and no, they weren't coming to us, but were destined for Goma. Apparently, the water carriers had landed in Kigali by mistake.

The original U.S. assessment for
UNAMIR
1, which the Americans committed to pay to the
UN
but never did, would have been no more than $30 million. The cost of
UNAMIR
2 would have been only slightly more. By deciding to support the refugee camps in Goma, the U.S. paid ten times that amount—$300 million—over the following two years. If we reduce to the petty grounds of cost effectiveness the entire argument over whether the U.S. should have supported the United Nations in Rwanda, the United States government could have saved a lot of money by backing
UNAMIR
. As to the value of the 800,000 lives in the balance books of Washington, during those last weeks we
received a shocking call from an American staffer, whose name I have long forgotten. He was engaged in some sort of planning exercise and wanted to know how many Rwandans had died, how many were refugees, and how many were internally displaced. He told me that his estimates indicated that it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier. It was macabre, to say the least.

A solicitous Canadian signals officer had found me a cot to replace my flimsy old mattress on the floor, but I found it difficult to sleep the night I came back from seeing Schroeder. I was haunted by the feeling that no matter how fast we moved we would never be a match for all that was required of us. Morning prayers that day showed that the rhythm of activity had increased exponentially. My daily list of things we had to accomplish had gone from an average of fifteen to a high of forty-nine. Looking back now at those daily lists, I see that I was often repeating myself and becoming unrealistically demanding. I was also continuing to lose my temper.

Near the end of prayers I exploded again over our continuing difficulties in securing the basics for the mission, especially the water supply. Major John McComber, our harried chief logistician, had already solved so many problems so unobtrusively some of us had taken to calling him “the silent miracle worker.” He and his young partner, Major St-Denis, had worked hard to meet impossible milestones, but since the Canadian logisitics base was just opening up and contracts were still being negotiated, there were some problems we still couldn't adequately fix. McComber felt I was attacking him directly, but he said nothing. Looking at my orders group, I realized that my manners and my sense of humor, two essentials of leadership, were fading fast.

After prayers I climbed into my vehicle and took off without telling anyone. It wasn't the first time. I had begun to suffocate in the headquarters, with its endless stream of problems and demands. I had been inventing trips to get me away from it, deciding that I had to see the troops in the field or just tour the country. In every village, along every road, in every church, in every school were unburied corpses.
My dreams at night became my reality of the day and increasingly I could not distinguish between the two.

By this point I wasn't bothering to make excuses any more to disguise my quest for solitude. I would just sneak away and then drive around, thinking all manner of black thoughts that I couldn't permit myself to say to anyone for fear of the effect on the morale of my troops. Without my marking the moment, death became a desired option. I hoped I would hit a mine or run into an ambush and just end it all. I think some part of me wanted to join the legions of the dead, whom I felt I had failed. I could not face the thought of leaving Rwanda alive after so many people had died. On my travels around the country, whole roads and villages were empty, as if they'd been hit by a nuclear bomb or the bubonic plague. You could drive for miles without seeing a single human being or a single living creature. Everything seemed so dead.

On one of my solo wanderings, I ended up at the modern convent that belonged to the Soeurs du Bon Pasteur from Quebec City. I found it full of looters. Drawing my pistol, I ordered everybody out—and they went. I rescued the small wooden cross from the chapel to take back to the sisters. Though a lot of the doors were kicked in, the built-in beds and the nuns' personal effects were still there, and the water and sewage systems and most of the windows were intact. I went back to my vehicle and called the Canadian contingent headquarters and requested that Mike Hanrahan meet me there. He arrived less than fifteen minutes later with Lebrun. I asked them to take care of the convent. Hanrahan called the order's Mother Superior in Quebec and got her blessing to use the building as a rest area for his troops. Her only caveat was that the troops not establish the bar in the chapel. The signallers completely refurbished and protected the convent, and handed it back to the order some months later in a very emotional ceremony of mutual appreciation. One happy ending.

Toward the end of July I had asked my Ghanaian escort to buy us a few goats—a ram, a nanny and a couple of kids—to bring some life into my days. I took immense pleasure in watering them, feeding them and watching them roam the Amahoro. The goats were not appreciated by the staff, as they left droppings all over, even inside the operations
centre. One day my Ghanaian batman came running into my office and said for me to come quickly—a pack of wild dogs was attacking my goats. Without stopping to think I grabbed my pistol, raced outside and started shooting at the dogs as I ran across the parking lot. I fired my entire clip at them. I missed them all, but still the dogs fled and I felt satisfied that I had saved my goats. When I turned to go back to my office, I saw at least fifty pairs of surprised and concerned eyes staring at me intently: Khan, the civilian staff, my staff officers and my soldiers. They said nothing but the message was clear: “The General is losing it.”

I informed Maurice on the night of August 3 that I needed to be relieved of my command sooner than planned. He checked with Annan and Riza, and they recommended that Maurice pursue the matter directly with the Secretary-General. He told me later that he warned Boutros-Ghali that if I wasn't replaced, I would be dead in less than two weeks. Unknown to me, Phil had been laying the groundwork for Maurice's swift response by keeping him informed as to my deteriorating state of health. Phil did this out of love and loyalty to his old friend and commander. When close subordinates realize that their commander is becoming a liability, the act of passing such information to the chain of command is not disloyal, but the epitome of loyalty. To have subordinates with the courage to act in such a way is a reward in itself.

The next morning I told Khan I had to leave. He was sorry but also not surprised. The guilt I felt was incalculable.

On August 4 I was given a copy of a code cable received in the night from the
DPKO
, which contained notes from the Security Council deliberations of the day before. Sometime during the meeting, the U.S. representative announced that General Dallaire would shortly be replaced by another Canadian of equal rank. This was the first I'd heard of it. Back home, Beth was on a trip to Halifax and when she returned to Quebec City with our two youngest children, the answering machine was blinking like a Christmas tree with messages from family and friends telling her how happy they were that I was finally coming home. None of the calls were from official channels, however, which didn't impress Beth. She called the
CDF
operations centre herself, and they confirmed the news.

I was extremely upset at hearing that Henry, who was away visiting the Ghanaians in the
HPZ
, would not be getting the command he so richly deserved. I called Maurice to find out what had happened and he told me that the
DPKO
had fully supported my recommendation, but that the Secretary-General's office had rejected Henry. He quietly confided that they wanted a bilingual general from a Western nation. What type of criteria were those? While Henry could not speak or understand French, he worked extremely effectively through interpreters. And why should it matter where Henry came from when he had all of the requisite skills and more experience than anyone else in the world? The decision was final. The
UN
had turned to Canada for a replacement. Complimented by the unique opportunity to appoint back-to-back force commanders, Canada had readily agreed and named Major General Guy Tousignant to replace me.

When Henry got back, I told him the bad news. He was stoic about it, and said he would carry on serving the mission loyally as deputy force commander if he was still needed. He was only sorry and embarrassed that he had already gone to his government to sound out whether Ghana would support his appointment and the required promotion.

The next day, I headed to the
HPZ
for a last tour with my aide-de-camp, a driver and a guard. It was beautiful out, bright and cloudless. When we slowed down at the final
RPF
barrier before the
HPZ
, I noticed a truckload of people travelling back into Rwanda being waved to a dirt side road that led behind a hill surrounded by trees. I stopped my four-by-four, got out and asked where the truck was going. I got a mumbled and evasive answer. I decided we would follow the truck.

I don't think we had even edged our front wheels off the highway and onto the dirt road before we were stopped by
RPF
soldiers practically stuffing their AK-47s up our noses. The soldier who had his weapon trained on me yelled that we were to go no farther, and I yelled right back telling him with gestures to get his boss. We stayed like this until an
NCO
appeared. I asked him why I could not go and inspect what was around that hill. He told me his troops were conducting a security check of returnees, looking for weapons, ex-militia and
RGF
soldiers, and he refused to let me through. He warned me that, blue beret or not, he was authorized to use force if necessary.

I withdrew. I now had personal proof that Kagame was allowing the security checks of returnees to go beyond what had been discussed with me, and I could only think the worst. I was putting my people at risk in the
HPZ
so that his troops could conduct purges as Rwandans tried to return home.