Shake Hands With the Devil (39 page)

Brent had left Robert's notebook of contacts and addresses behind on the Belgian military adviser's desk, and he and Robert decided to drive back to
RGF
headquarters to get it. They ran into an army roadblock manned by a group of angry, drunken soldiers who had an armoured car as backup. Brent got out of the vehicle and attempted to negotiate his way through, but when the soldiers pointed their weapons at him, including the armoured car's gun, he and Robert withdrew and drove back to Force
HQ
. When Brent told me what had happened, I tried to call Bagosora. But he was not in his office at the Defence Ministry; he was not at the army's headquarters; and he was not at home. So much for his promise to stay in touch. We couldn't locate any of the members of the so-called Crisis Committee.

Colonel Moen was trying to make sense of the radio nets, which had never really been operational let alone secure; our numerous outposts were cobbled together with hand-held Motorolas and too few
repeater stations to boost the signals. Different contingents had brought their own radios with them, while the
UN
standard issue were the insecure Motorolas. From Force
HQ
to Kigali Sector, we operated on the Motorolas. Kigali Sector communicated with the Belgian battalion on the Belgian army's
VHF
radios, which were incompatible with our Motorolas. The Belgian, Bangladeshi and Ghanaian unit command posts also talked to their various subunits, patrols and outstations, such as the
VIP
guard posts, on a different set of
VHF
frequencies over incompatible radios. Every message of concern to the mission or to me could pass over four different insecure radio nets and between operators who had a wide variety of languages, accents and technical skills. At the moment it was all Moen could do to stay in touch with the few sector commanders who could reach us.

Prime Minister Agathe called regarding the radio address. We reached the station manager by phone, and I told him I was bringing the prime minister to the station within the hour. He said he'd have to get back to me. A few minutes later, he called and said he would only give the prime minister air time if I could guarantee that
UNAMIR
would provide security for himself and his family. I told him I would find out what was available and get back to him. I called him back in ten minutes, but this time he said there was nothing he could do. The Presidential Guard had arrived and was blocking the station entrances, not letting anyone in or out. I asked whether he could do a phone patch from Madame Agathe's home. In a nervous whisper he said he could do nothing more and hung up.

I called Madame Agathe to tell her the address was off and urged her to stay inside her walled compound, protected by the extra Belgian troops. She agreed. I counted off the men designated to protect her: the five original Ghanaian guards, several gendarmes who were loyal to her personally, and whoever Luc had sent to reinforce and escort her. There could be as many as twenty well-armed men with her by now. She was as safe as we could make her.

There was no sleep that night. As the sun came up over the mountains, the phone calls pleading for help and protection dramatically increased. Brent fielded these calls without a break for the next twelve
hours, sometimes as many as a hundred an hour. Moustache, the security officer for the
UNDP
, called by radio to tell us that an “important figure” had sought refuge with them, but he wouldn't say who it was over the radio. Brent relayed the message to Kigali Sector, which directed two Bangladeshi
APC
s to the
UNDP
.

We began to get ever more disturbing phone calls reporting that elements of the Presidential Guard, the army, the Gendarmerie and the Interahamwe were going from house to house with a list of names. Shots and screaming had been heard. It was terrifying and surreal to be talking to someone, sometimes someone you knew, listening to them pleading for help, and being able to do nothing but reassure them that help was on the way—and then to hear screams, shots and the silence of a dead line. You'd hang up in shock, then the phone would ring again and the whole sequence would be repeated. Help might or might not be arriving, depending on whether Kigali Sector received the message and had a patrol to dispatch and if the patrol was not held up at a roadblock.

Information was sketchy, incomplete and hard to collate. This difficulty was compounded by poor radio discipline. Everyone from
UN
civilians to military staff was speaking in English—which was their second, third or fourth language—and everyone was trying to speak at once.
²
Of the 2,538
UNAMIR
military personnel on the ground on April 7, Brent was the only one who spoke English as his first language. Panic was erupting and only the direct intervention of senior officers maintained any discipline whatsoever on the radio nets. Users lost their tempers, yelled louder and became incomprehensible; less and less information was getting through. Even the most vital messages had to be repeated time and time again as a Bangladeshi tried to relay it in broken
English through a Uruguayan who in turn had to relay it through a Ghanaian who in turn had to relay it through a Flemish-speaking Belgian.

Early that morning I received a call for help from Hélène Pinsky. I told her to remain with her guard in her home until we could arrange transport to bring the family to Force
HQ
. There were already five
UNAMIR
troops and at least two gendarmes who were loyal to the Ndasingwas with her family. I believed that they would be safer at home than to try to move on their own. She was very fearful for her husband and two children; she'd heard that some of their moderate politician friends were being attacked in their homes. I assured her that we would get there as soon as we could, and Brent passed the message to Kigali Sector. Even as I was telling her this, she stopped me to say she could hear people in the street outside her home. Her voice became indescribably calm, as if she had no choice now but to be resigned to her fate, and she hung up. I found out the next day that her husband had then called Luc Marchal and while still on the phone with him, the Presidential Guard arrived, overwhelmed the guards and killed the entire family. Hélène, like so many others, trusted
UNAMIR
to protect them. Luc had heard them being murdered over the phone.

I can't bear to think of how many Rwandans were told that help was forthcoming that day and were then slaughtered. In just a few hours the Presidential Guard had conducted an obviously well-organized and well-executed plan—by noon on April 7 the moderate political leadership of Rwanda was dead or in hiding, the potential for a future moderate government utterly lost.

The senior leadership of the
RGF
and Gendarmerie were meeting that morning but I didn't know where. I needed to find them, and I asked for Major Peter Maggen, the senior duty officer, to come with Robert and me to take notes since he was the only other officer available at Force
HQ
at that time who was fluent in French. A slight, reserved air-defence artillery officer, Maggen was steeped in the mores of the
NATO
Central Front in Europe. When he'd heard what was going on, he'd made his own way to the headquarters through Kigali's dangerous streets. My thought was that if it was only the units close to the president
that had gone rogue, why shouldn't my force intervene with the Gendarmerie and help nip this thing in the bud? If it was a Bagosoraled coup by the hard-liners, aimed at derailing the Arusha accords, I had no more mandate. Civil war would surely break out.

Booh-Booh called to complain that the
APC
had not yet arrived to take him to his meeting at the American ambassador's residence. I told him I would see to the missing
APC
myself and sent out the request over our shaky radio net. Booh-Booh called back about ten minutes later. The
APC
still had not arrived, he was going to miss the meeting and he was furious.

Before I left, I phoned Riza in New York. We now knew that moderates were being targeted, that people under the protection of
UNAMIR
had been attacked—and God knew what was happening to our guards. It was difficult to get through roadblocks. Soon we might have no choice but to use force. Once again Riza instructed me that
UNAMIR
was not to fire until fired upon. (From the sitrep sent to New York later that day, I quote, “The Force Commander discussed Rules of Engagement with Mr. Riza and the Rules of Engagement were confirmed that
UNAMIR
was not to fire until fired upon.”)

At about 0930 the
SRSG
called to say the diplomatic meeting had been cancelled because the ambassadors couldn't be safely escorted there. It was a lost opportunity to try to sway Bagosora. I had to get to the
RGF
military meeting as quickly as possible.

At 1000, I met with the few officers who had made it to Force
HQ
. The standoff at the crash site hadn't changed; a platoon of Belgian troops at the main terminal of the airport was still being held prisoner, but they still had their weapons. It was hard to move around the city; we had neither the authority nor the firepower to force our way through roadblocks. There was little our patrols could do other than try to find an alternate route, which inevitably led to another roadblock. The situation outside Kigali was relatively quiet.

I asked Henry to round up the remaining staff any way he could and to bring order to the chaotic situation in the operations centre. I broke the news of Riza's new limit on our
ROE
, emphasizing the need to avoid any incident the extremists could exploit to turn the army,
the Gendarmerie, the militias and possibly the population against us. I directed that the change of rules be passed to all sectors down the chain of command. I sent Ballis to the
CND
and asked him to remain with the
RPF
, who for the present were holding up their side of the
KWSA
agreement. He was to assure them that I was in contact with the Crisis Committee and intended to stay with Bagosora for as long as it took to get control of the situation. What I really didn't need now was for the
RPF
to break out of the
CND
. The ceasefire and the whole peace process were hanging by a thread. Brent was to finish the written report to New York but hold off on sending it until I got back. He was also to answer my phone and maintain the link with the
DPKO
, relaying messages to myself or Henry as required.

Robert, Major Maggen and I left to try to find the meeting. We had a hand-held Motorola radio in addition to the one in the vehicle. Robert had the only weapon, a pistol. There was the sound of sporadic gunfire around the city, but the main streets were still empty except for the occasional Presidential Guard vehicle. Maggen was at the wheel, Robert was in the back seat, and I was in the front with my ear close to the radio. We had to make a long detour to the southwest of the city in order to avoid the firing that had broken out again between the
RPF
and the Presidential Guard around the
CND
. I hoped Ballis had made it through. As we approached the city centre, there were people in the streets and in doorways, and groups were gathering around the roadblocks. Interahamwe, in their distinctive baggy, clown-like suits, some soldiers and ordinary civilians were manning the roadblocks, armed with machetes. Some of them had guns. Youths half-dressed in army uniforms swore at us before reluctantly letting us through.

Near the Hôtel des Mille Collines in the centre of Kigali, we met two Bangladeshi
APC
s held up at a roadblock manned by Presidential Guards. A French-made armoured reconnaissance vehicle had its seventy-six-millimetre-cannon aimed at them. When I got out, the Bangladeshi lieutenant pushed his head out of the turret. He and his men were very uneasy, he told me. They hadn't been able to get to the
UNDP
compound to extricate the Rwandans stranded there. I told him to stay put until I could get the
APC
s through. I walked up to the corporal
who was running the roadblock and told him to let my vehicle and the
APC
s by. He refused. His orders were that no one, especially
UNAMIR
, was permitted into the city centre and that if we tried to cross his roadblock he would open fire. I wanted to drive right over his roadblock, but I remembered Riza's directive. I turned in place, absorbing the situation around me, and noticed that the cannon on the turret and its coaxial medium machine gun were now aimed at me. I walked back to my vehicle and told the Bangladeshi lieutenant to keep the
APC
s in place until I ordered them to move forward. This did little to allay the fear so explicit on his face. The five working
APC
s were our last line of resort and if they couldn't get through a roadblock, nothing we had could. I had to get Bagosora or Ndindiliyimana to open the roadblocks.

I decided to proceed on foot. I told Robert to back up and find a road to the west; he might be able to negotiate his way through a roadblock there and link up with us. I told Maggen to join me as I walked toward the roadblock. The corporal watched as we went by him, then yelled at me and gave orders in Kinyarwanda, which were followed by the sound of weapons being cocked. I told Maggen that we would keep walking. Other orders were yelled but no shots rang out.

We now had to walk about half a kilometre through the deserted government and business district. There were a few bursts of small arms fire coming from northwest of the city, but there was no sign of life here, as if all the people had fled or were in hiding. The Presidential Guard was doing a fine job of containing the relatively small city centre, but who was issuing the orders? Why was the rest of the city starting to resemble anarchy while the Gendarmerie was apparently sitting on its hands?