Shake Hands With the Devil (36 page)

In a nationwide radio address on the evening of March 18, Faustin had read out the final list of ministerial candidates for the new
BBTG
and emphatically assured the nation that the political manoeuvring was now at an end. Nothing would stand in the way of the new government, he promised, which would be installed on March 25. On the
following evening, Prime Minister Agathe had announced the names of the deputies for the assembly.

Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, chose that very day to suddenly arrive in Kigali and meet with both Kagame and Habyarimana. What did she tell them? Was she simply delivering a warning that the international community was beginning to lose patience with them all? She also met with Booh-Booh and told him that the Security Council's forthcoming meeting to review the renewal of the mandate could be “difficult” if there was no progress toward the installation of the
BBTG
or if there was violence.

Habyarimana had been displeased with the lists and publicly chastised the prime ministers on national radio for not consulting him before their broadcasts. On March 21, he called Faustin into his office and told him that he had received a letter of complaint from members of the
PL
on the choice of the justice minister. He suggested that Faustin needed to continue his consultations with the party. Habyarimana said he had received letters from the
CDR
and the
PDI
(the tiny Islamic party) stating they were both now willing to sign the Arusha accords and the Political Code of Ethics and therefore wanted to claim their respective seats in the Assembly. In the spirit of reconciliation, the president said, the transitional government should go out of its way to include members from all of the official parties that were identified in the Arusha Peace Agreement. Faustin knew that including the
CDR
in the government was completely unacceptable. It was a blatantly fascist organization that espoused a radical pro-Hutu, anti-Tutsi agenda and was intimately linked with the Impuzamugambi militias as well as the infamous
RTLM
. And of course the
RPF
categorically rejected the inclusion of the
CDR
in the chamber of deputies and blamed Habyarimana for throwing insurmountable obstacles in front of an already stalled political process.

Considerable political effort had gone into the preparation of the March 25 swearing-in. There had been verbal assurances from the minister of defence and from Enoch Ruhigira that there would be no demonstrations to block the ceremony. But once again it had failed disastrously, this time because the
RPF
refused to attend. A subsequent attempt on March 28 failed too, touching off a significant increase in banditry and
armed attacks against the more moderate elements of the population. The gendarmes had very limited transport and couldn't control the situation. Some people had sought protection in churches at night.

The Kigali diplomatic corps, jointly led by the papal nuncio and the
SRSG
, essentially endorsed the president's proposal that all parties acknowledged at Arusha should be included in the
BBTG
. They issued a joint declaration that was also signed by representatives from Zaire, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania—in effect, the entire Great Lakes region. In one master stroke, Habyarimana had isolated the
RPF
as the sole party holding up the political process. The
DPA
in New York, the
UN
and the entire political and diplomatic community fell into his trap. We, the international community, caused the demise of Arusha the day all our diplomats, with the
SRSG
of the
UN
in the lead, accepted the president's gambit. In the Security Council deliberations on the future of the mission, the United States wanted to force the council into agreeing to a very stringent time limit for the swearing-in of the
BBTG
. The
RPF
would have little time to figure out a political countermove—but they were in a good military position for a swift offensive. No one at the
UN
had thought to fill me in on any of these events while I was in New York, and I had to wonder again whether anyone was paying real attention to Rwanda.

The security situation had deteriorated in concert with the political chaos, Brent told me. Many of the moderate politicians had received death threats. Henry now had
UN
troops camped out permanently in the backyards of five prominent politicians: Judge Kavaruganda of the constitutional court, who would have to rule on some of the contested deputy positions; the two prime ministers; Lando Ndasingwa; and Anastase Gasana. On March 15, in an incident reminiscent of the Gatabazi killing, Enoch Ruhigira's sister and her husband had been ambushed in their car and killed. Both were influential moderates. Chez Lando had come under grenade attack on March 19, a Saturday night when the hotel disco was packed. Eight people were injured.

There was also disturbing news from the south. Both my unarmed observer teams and aid workers with
UNHCR
reported that the
RGF
was continuing to recruit young men from the Burundi refugee camps of Ruheru and Shororo. The recruits were taken to a nearby forest, where
they were being trained using dummy rifles and wooden grenades. In some northern areas of the demilitarized zone, the
RPF
was preventing my
MILOB
s from conducting patrols.

I had to tackle all these issues, but first I had to take on my political boss. The first piece of news I encountered upon arriving at headquarters that first day back was that Booh-Booh had accepted an invitation from the president to spend the Easter weekend at his retreat near Gisenyi. Not only that, the
SRSG
was requesting a
UNAMIR
escort. Dr. Kabia and I went immediately to confront him in his impossibly neat office. We tried to be diplomatic, pointing out that the only advantage to his trip was that he might be able to gain insight and intelligence. Of course, he said, that was entirely his intention. He'd known the president since he had been the foreign affairs minister of Cameroon, and he was well placed to penetrate Habyarimana's intentions. We quickly pointed out that any benefits he might reap were outweighed by the terrible optics: the
RPF
and the moderates would assume he was on the president's side. Booh-Booh shrugged and repeated that it would be a working weekend where he would continue to pursue strategies to bring about the transitional institutions. Nothing I nor Dr. Kabia could say would dissuade him, and he actually implied that our misgivings were the result of our imperfect understanding of the ethos of francophone Africa.

The next day was Good Friday, and I rose to the longed-for smell of charcoal fires and the cacophony of beautiful birds, but the first thought in my head was the fact that the head of mission would be leaving at noon that day in the service of a disastrous impulse. And sure enough, Booh-Booh went, with a
UNAMIR
escort and Kane in tow. The next morning we received a formal protest from the
RPF
questioning the
SRSG
's impartiality.

I needed immediate contact with the military leaders on both sides to see for myself where things stood. On Saturday morning, April 2, I met with the minister of defence, bringing Brent with me to take notes. I think Bizimana wanted to gauge
UNAMIR
's resolve after my trip to New York; he would certainly have known the status of the mission at the Security Council by way of Rwanda's ambassador. I came out swinging, rattling off his sins
of omission and commission: Why had Bizimana done nothing to assist in the investigation into the Gatabazi assassination? Why had he not provided me with the list of those individuals who had special permits to carry self-protection weapons in the
KWSA
, or the lists of small arms that had been distributed in the countryside over the last couple of years? He had not had the mines removed from the Gatunda-Kigali corridor; he had obstructed further meetings of the Joint Military Commission that was attempting to plan the demobilization. I asked him, why were his troops preventing humanitarian traffic from getting through to the refugee camps inside the
RPF
zone? At this last question, he counterpunched: yes, he had promised to aid
NGO
s and humanitarian efforts, but some of this aid was being siphoned off to support the
RPF
troops, and he was not going to tolerate that. Neither the minister nor I received much satisfaction from the meeting.

I left him and, after lunch, flew up to Mulindi to see Kagame in one of our two mission helicopters, which had finally arrived. He seemed distant and a little withdrawn as I hit him with a similar long list of troublesome issues. Even when I told him that my helicopters had arrived and that we would be starting regular aerial reconnaissance over the whole country, including his operational area, he hardly reacted, which was odd considering his usual concern for keeping others in the strategic dark about
RPF
movements and capabilities. I chastised him about an increasing number of ceasefire violations on the east flank of the demilitarized zone where the sides were often separated by only one hundred metres. He had changed his local commander in the zone and, since then, there had been four altercations in which no less than six
RGF
soldiers had been killed and several injured. My
UNMO
investigation team had been on the site of the most recent incident in less than an hour and it appeared that the firefight had been started by Kagame's troops. He promised to investigate.

Finally I asked if he had any issues to raise with me. He wanted to know how the
CDR
and
PDI
proposal had come about. I looked at his face and it was as sombre as I'd ever seen it. Something cataclysmic was coming, he said, and once it started, no one would be able to control it.

As I flew back to Kigali, I realized I had seen two men that day who were both preparing for something I couldn't yet face: the whole Arusha experiment was about to collapse. I needed to see Luc—Kigali Sector
would be key to our security if the worst came to pass—but I also needed to check in with all my subordinate commanders to assess our few strengths and our glaring weaknesses.

Later that day, Luc walked into my office as keen and confident as ever, though his eyes looked tired. I was happy to see him. The first joint deterrent raid on a suspected arms cache had gone ahead as planned on April 1, with
UNAMIR
troops providing the security cordon and gendarmes conducting the actual search. The gendarmes had come up empty-handed; obviously the plan had been leaked and the weapons moved. But Luc had not lost faith. He had been training the Gendarmerie and was certain of their good faith, and he thought that next time, if the intended location of the raid was more closely held, we might achieve some success. We picked April 7 for the next attempt.

But there were many matters troubling his sleep. We both knew how stretched the force was. Luc now told me that if either side launched a major action in the capital, his units simply couldn't defend themselves or protect
UN
civilians or foreign nationals. The 225 Ghanaians were still deploying. The new Belgian battalion hadn't yet adjusted to their area of responsibility or to the rules of engagement of a chapter-six mission. Then there was the Bangladeshi contingent. Their commanding officer was demanding that every order be delivered to him on paper and was resisting the use of his troops for operations. On the brighter side, the medical evacuation plan was well advanced, but we still hadn't received any medical supplies. Neither New York nor Brussels had solved the ammunition problem, and no one would pay for ammunition to replace what the first Belgian contingent had expended on training. The force had approximately two magazines, or forty to sixty rounds, per man—a pitifully inadequate amount. It could sustain a one- to three-minute fight and then we would be reduced to throwing rocks.

I went home that night exhausted and full of the warnings that were coming from all sides. But on some deep level, I was glad to be back. The people of Rwanda were not an insignificant black mass living in abject poverty in a place of no consequence. They were individuals like myself, like my family, with every right and expectation of any human who is a member of our tortured race. I was determined to persevere.

On April 3, Easter Sunday, I flew to Byumba to review the bulk of my forces in the demilitarized zone—the remaining Ghanaians and the Bangladeshi engineering company. We had a magnificent fifty-minute flight at very low altitude over the rounded mountaintops of central Rwanda. Below me that morning it looked like all the villagers in the country were dressed in their finest, walking in near-procession toward their places of worship. Here is what my experience in Rwanda has done: I am unable to remember the serenity, order and beauty of that scene without it being overlaid with vivid scenes of horror. Extremists, moderates, simple villagers and fervent worshippers were all in church that day, singing the message of Christ's resurrection. One week later, the same devout Christians would become murderers and victims, and the churches the sites of calculated butchery.

We landed in Byumba in a terrible cloud of dust. The site was a superb piece of modern architecture, a sprawling complex under the care of nuns, which was to open as a school the next year: an expression of the vast amounts of Canadian aid that had been invested in this small Franco-African country. Proportionally, Rwanda had been the largest recipient of Canadian aid in all of sub-Saharan Africa. The nuns had put the Bangladeshi engineers to work on various tasks and informed me that this would be our rental bill. There were discreet
CIDA
stickers with the Canadian flag on nearly every door. I wondered again why Brent and I constituted the entire Canadian military commitment to the country at this perilous time. A battalion or even a company of French-Canadian troops would have made more sense. The Department of Foreign Affairs and
CIDA
had a long history in the country, but there had been no contact between me and these agencies before my departure, no sharing of cultural and historical information as I prepared to try to secure a peaceful future.
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