Shake Hands With the Devil (40 page)

We stopped at the gates of the
UNDP
office compound. It was deserted. The important person, whoever it might have been, was not here now—there were no signs that anyone had been here all morning. We returned to the Boulevard de la Révolution and kept walking. Our pace was brisk. The only sounds we heard were birdsong, the echo of our footsteps on the pavement, and the pounding of our hearts. Maggen kept his own counsel as I was deep in thought. Should I use force regardless of the direct order from Riza? Given our resources, I couldn't magically transform us into an intervention force, but how far
could I go? I still had a mandate—the
RPF
was still following the rules and we were only facing rogue
RGF
units. The key to re-establishing a secure situation was Bagosora. He was in charge. He and Ndindiliyimana had to demonstrate to me that this was not a coup.

The Ministry of Defence was only about a hundred metres from the
UNDP
office compound and was guarded by a platoon of about forty personnel, mostly army troops wearing no regimental insignia, along with a few gendarmes. I asked the lieutenant in charge—who had made it clear that he was not disposed to let me inside—where Colonel Bagosora was. He responded that he wasn't there. I turned around and carried on walking with Maggen, heading west to the main gate of army headquarters at Camp Kigali, about four hundred metres farther down the avenue. As we walked along the edge of the Ministry of Defence compound, a major called out from the wall. He yelled that he did not think it wise for us to proceed on foot—he would drive us the rest of the way. I told him not to bother, but he came running to join us, trailed by a small military car. At his insistence, we climbed in. I told him I had to find Bagosora and Ndindiliyimana.

The army headquarters was just inside the main gates of Camp Kigali. When we arrived, the place was still in full combat readiness. All the bunkers were manned and medium machine guns covered the entrance. Several rows of spiked barriers were set up to deter wheeled vehicles. There was a large bunker about twenty metres inside the gates with a direct line of fire down the long, straight boulevard. An armoured car was parked outside the entrance in a semi-hull-down position, partially hidden, its gun aimed down the street. Several troops and some Presidential Guards were manning the gates. The major leapt out of the car and approached the guards. After a few minutes he came back and told us that the meeting was being held at the École Supérieure Militaire.

We backed up and drove south along Avenue de l'Hôpital, past the second gate to Camp Kigali, heading for the military school entrance. Inside the gate, I got a glimpse of what looked like two Belgian soldiers lying on the ground at the far end of the compound. It was a brutal shock. How had they been captured? I ordered the major to stop the car, telling him I thought I had seen some of my own soldiers on the
ground. Instead, he sped around the corner and drove directly into the college parking lot. It was only a matter of moments, but those moments seemed to last a lifetime, the small car carrying me farther and farther away from the second gate. The major told me emphatically that I could not go into Camp Kigali. The troops inside the camp were out of control.

I got out of the car, Maggen behind me. Sizable numbers of fully armed troops and gendarmes, some with bandoliers of bullets across their chests, were sheltering from the noon-day sun in the shade of several mature trees. All talk amongst them abruptly stopped as they stared at me. Suddenly a
UNAMIR
military observer, Captain Apedo Kodjo of Togo, stepped away from the soldiers who had been holding him and approached me. He was fearful and whispered in my ear, pointing out five Ghanaian soldiers who were being held nearby. They had just been brought here from Camp Kigali, where a group of Belgian soldiers were still detained. These Belgians, he said, were being assaulted—the verb he used was
tabasser
, which means “beaten” or “roughed up.” I looked over at the Ghanaians, who should have been armed but had no weapons with them. They waved nervously. Murmurs were rising from the
RGF
soldiers, but none of them changed position.

I told Captain Kodjo to stay put and await my return. His eyes grew wide at this order but he obeyed. I judged that the Ghanaians and my military observer would be safe for the moment and rapidly headed along a short path to the amphitheatre where I suspected Bagosora was holding court.

I entered a small anteroom that was in total darkness. Opening the heavy curtains on the other side, I burst out into a well-lit room full of people in uniform. I could see the shock and surprise on Bagosora's face. I seemed to have caught him in mid-speech, with one arm raised for emphasis. I advanced a few steps toward the small platform where he stood. Ndindiliyimana was sitting at a table to his left. The hall was silent and no one moved. Then Bagosora lowered his arm and came toward me, extending his hand and saying that I was most welcome, and how fortuitous it was that I had arrived when all the army and Gendarmerie senior leadership were in one location.

A third chair was quickly placed on the podium for me. I looked
around the room, spotting some of the moderate senior officers with whom I had had several discussions in the past about the political future of the nation. Overall though, it was a less than sympathetic crowd. Carrying on with his speech in French, Bagosora defended the creation of the Crisis Committee and said that it must put together a communiqué by two o'clock that afternoon to calm the nation and inform the people that the security situation was well in hand. Bagosora received support for this plan, and Colonel Léonidas Rusatira, the senior colonel in the army (a moderate I had met with several times), was made the chair of the subcommittee that was to draft the communiqué. Bagosora emphasized that it was essential that the
RPF
understand what was happening. He hoped that I would relay this information to them.

At this point I still did not believe that Arusha was irrevocably lost. However, with the Belgian soldiers being mistreated in Camp Kigali, as well as other troops still not accounted for, we were moving rapidly toward confrontation. How could I protect the unarmed civilian and military personnel? And there were other
UN
staff in remote locations around the country who would become targets for retaliation if I met violence with force. In addition, there was a diplomatic and expatriate community of about five thousand, scattered all over Rwanda, who were vulnerable.

Bagosora turned to me and asked if I would address the commanders—I discovered a completely new set of stomach muscles that were attempting to bend me in two as I stood. The hall was silent. “I regret enormously the loss of your president and the chief of staff of the army in the crash last night,” I began. “I realize that some units very close to the president have been overwrought with grief, fear and anger and have conducted over the last twelve hours the gravest of crimes, which must be stopped now by you, the senior and unit commanders. We in
UNAMIR
are staying put. I will continue to support you in avoiding the destruction of the Arusha accords and will assist you in preventing another civil war with the
RPF
. It is the duty of the commanders of units in the
KWSA
to regain control of their units and return immediately to their garrisons to abide by the rules of the
KWSA
. It is crucial that you, the commanders of sectors and units around the country, maintain a
state of calm in your units and in the populations in your areas of responsibility until the political and the security situation is resolved.”

There was scattered applause at the end of my short speech. They'd heard from my lips that
UNAMIR
was staying; the implementation of Arusha was still my mission. I couldn't abandon the people who had trusted the international community to help them. I made the decision to stay in the final split second before making the most consequential speech of my life. As a result I had to accept that
UNAMIR
would be threatened and at risk.

I have been severely criticized in some quarters for the decisions that I took on April 7, 1994. I accept responsibility for every decision I made that day, on the days previously, on the days after—for my conduct during the entire mission. I will try to tell the story so that you understand that this was a day not of one or two isolated incidents and a few decisions. It was a day that felt like a year, where there were hundreds of incidents and decisions that had to be made in seconds.

I didn't raise the issue of the Belgian soldiers in that speech because I wanted to discuss it with Bagosora alone. I needed to assess its impact on the entire mission, and I wanted to talk to the senior army leadership, who I hoped might be able to save the situation. It was that decision, in part, that contributed to the deaths of ten soldiers under my command. I wanted to proceed by negotiation, as I realized I could not use force without the certainty of more casualties. I did not have the offensive force to take on a dug-in garrison of more than a thousand troops. I considered a rescue option irresponsible. If we used force against the
RGF
compound, we were then a legitimate target and we would become a third belligerent. My aim that morning was to do everything in my power to avoid a confrontation, regain control of the rogue units in Kigali and keep the dialogue and the prospects of the peace accord alive.

Commanders spend their careers preparing for the moment when they will have to choose between lose-lose propositions in the use of their troops. Regardless of the decision they make, some of their men will most certainly die. My decision took sons from their parents, husbands from their wives, fathers from their children. I knew the cost of
my decision: I was risking the lives of the Belgians in Camp Kigali, men whose names are listed on the dedication page of this book. They were and remain heroes of Rwanda.

It was clearly the fulfillment of the plot Jean-Pierre had told us about months earlier. The Belgian soldiers were being deliberately targeted by extremists to create fear. The aim was to secure first a Belgian, then a
UN
withdrawal. The extremists had taken their cue from the grim farces of Bosnia and Somalia. They knew that Western nations do not have the stomach or the will to sustain casualties in peace support operations. When confronted with casualties, as the United States was in Somalia or the Belgians in Rwanda, they will run, regardless of the consequences to the abandoned population.

I remained standing for a few minutes as Bagosora resumed centre stage. I heard him express his relief that
UNAMIR
was staying to help them through this terrible crisis. As the meeting ended, he disappeared through the mass of officers who rose from their seats and gathered at the front of the stage to greet me. A group of senior officers endorsed my stand. Among them were my
RGF
liaison, Ephrem Rwabalinda, and the head of the military college, Colonel Rusatira. Since I couldn't spot Bagosora, I confronted Ndindiliyimana: What was happening to my men in Camp Kigali? He didn't know for sure, he said, but
RTLM
had been broadcasting that the presidential plane had been shot down by Belgians, and soldiers and veterans were rioting inside the camp. He and the others insisted I let them try to secure the release of the Belgians. At the time I didn't realize that these were the soldiers who had been the escort and guard for Prime Minister Agathe. The officers asked me to attend the sub-committee that was drafting the communiqué to the nation while others intervened on behalf of my men, and we proceeded to a classroom on one side of the amphitheatre. I wondered whether Rusatira was going to make a move to coalesce the moderates. As the meeting began, Ndindiliyimana seemed to sink into a sullen lethargy and didn't take part in the discussions. The only men who were not morose and uncertain were two
RGF
lieutenant colonels whom I had never met, who kept urging Rusatira to make haste—obviously hard-liners planted there to keep an eye on things. If the
moderates in this room actually had the will to attempt to reverse the manipulations of Bagosora, they would have a difficult time of it.

It was around noon. Though I'd dismissed the idea of a rescue mission, I kept running scenarios in my head. The
RGF
units, particularly the Presidential Guard, had taken up defensive positions, set up barricades throughout the inner core of the capital, and were restricting movement as far away as the airport. The Presidential Guard had been reinforced by elements of the Reconnaissance Battalion and the Para-Commando Battalion. They were well-armed, experienced and well-trained. Camp Kigali was a walled and sprawling area, home to the Reconnaissance Battalion, the artillery unit, a maintenance and transport unit, the senior military academy, the military hospital and convalescent centre, and the
RGF
national headquarters. Hate radio had led everyone inside its gates to believe that our Belgians had killed their president.

To have any chance of success at storming a well-fortified camp, I'd need several hundred men, supported by light armour and mortars. My Quick Reaction Force was still woefully inadequate. Most of the Ghanaian contingent was in the demilitarized zone far to the north without vehicles or heavy weapons, let alone ammunition. They, too, were vulnerable. The Ghanaians we had moved into the city were dispersed on protection jobs all around Kigali. They and the Tunisians at the
CND
who were guarding the
RPF
were lightly armed, possessed no transport and already had essential duties. The Belgians were also spread all over town. Any attempt at taking the camp or even part of it would have been an irresponsible mission. Even if we had been able to assemble an intervention force, fight our way through several roadblocks and get into and out of the camp with our men, we would have had to withdraw through the city, past more roadblocks, and gain the airfield, as we had no place of retreat where we could realistically withstand the inevitable
RGF
counterattacks and bombardments from their 105- and 120-millimetre guns. I thought of Mogadishu, where a few months earlier the Americans—the most militarily capable force in the world—had botched the abduction attempt of a couple of aides to a Somali warlord and had suffered eighteen dead and more than seventy injured. The Malaysian and Pakistani peacekeepers who tried to rescue
the American troops took ninety casualties. And these forces were large, well-trained and well-equipped.