Shake Hands With the Devil (59 page)

May 5 was the fiercest day of artillery, rocket and mortar fire throughout the city so far. At about midday, the shells were flying in all directions from both belligerents—at the
CND
, the airport terminal (causing one flight to return to Nairobi without off-loading), the Mille Collines and Sainte Famille—and none of our sites were sufficiently protected because of the lack of defensive stores. My troops' nerves were being frayed to levels of considerable concern, worn down by their powerlessness to help the people they were protecting from these threats from the sky. I set off again to meet with the manipulating leaders and protest,
protest, protest. We were being targeted by both sides, yet both sides said they wanted us here. I did not want to abandon the field nor those under our protection, but unarmed military observers could not intimidate bombs.

Later that day I learned that José Ayala Lasso, the high commissioner for human rights, and an investigative team were coming to Kigali on May 9. That was excellent news. I instructed the commanders and staff to make available to him all personnel who had witnessed any crimes against humanity, and that he should be taken to see Kagame and, on the government side, Bizimungu at least. Ayala Lasso was going to get an earful.

I was also handed a copy of a letter from the foreign minister of Belgium—sent on to me by Riza, possibly as an expression of black humour. In the letter Willy Claes reminded the secretary-general that the
UN
had to provide protection for Rwandan hospitals and
NGO
staffs, as well as ensure that those who were responsible for the massacres did not go unpunished. Was there no decency at all in either Claes or his government? They certainly missed a good opportunity to remain quiet.

By late afternoon I was finally able to sign our “Proposed Future Mandate and Force Structure of
UNAMIR
,” which was an in-depth option analysis of what we needed if the Security Council decided to reinforce us on the military, humanitarian and political fronts. I could lay it all out here; experts have studied the plan since and have agreed that if enacted, it would have stopped the killing and even allowed stability to reappear in central Africa. All I can say is that forwarding the plan briefly allowed us to live again in hope that the world would do the right thing, but nothing I outlined in it ever happened. At the time I thought, “Now they cannot procrastinate anymore. My troops are under fire on a daily basis, the politicos have a detailed concept of operations and a plan, and all we need is approval from the Security Council.”

But I sent it in on a Thursday, the next day was Friday and then came the weekend. The fastest they would get to it would be Monday, and tens of thousands more Rwandans would be dead, and hundreds of thousands would be on the move to another possible campsite in the mountains, in the rain, the mud and the horror. We did not have another week to fiddle. When I expressed some of my despair to
Maurice, he told me to keep my head down and hope for the best. He had no power in the
UN
. He was the secretary-general's military adviser in an organization swamped and sinking under the dead weight of useless political sinecures, indifference and procrastination. Between the buildup of the former-Yugoslavia mission, the Somalia debacle and the near-total absence of funds and support from the
UN
Fifth (financial and budget) Committee,
UNAMIR
ended up being just another catastrophic failure that was simply getting worse.

I knew Maurice had seen first-hand the suffering and destruction caused by this new era of conflict, and at one point he had come very close to dying of malaria picked up in a war zone. How was it possible that he had not become jaded? I still held him in high regard even though we had had our serious differences over these many months. But where could I find the means to prod the world into action? Living with the constant stink of death in my nose, carried on the breezes I had once found so seductive, I was forced to keep thinking: What was the spark that lit the fuse that blew up into all this degradation and perversion? And why were we so feeble, fearful and self-centred in the face of atrocities committed against the innocent? I woke the next morning with my head on my desk, pulled out of my stupor by birds singing in the trees inside the compound, and with one thought in my head: more Rwandans would die today.

Booh-Booh sent a report to Annan on the status of the ceasefire meetings in Arusha, with a copy to Dr. Kabia (not me). What a circus. It turned out there were two copies of the ceasefire agreement. Tanzania and the
OAU
had signed both, but the interim government and the
RPF
had signed different copies. Booh-Booh and the diplomats had tried to get the
RPF
to sign the copy that had the interim government's signature on it, but of course the
RPF
stormed out. Why did all these fine people in authority not understand that they would never persuade the
RPF
to deal with the interim government? The
RPF
might sign such an agreement with the military directly, but Bizimungu was far too much of a Tutsi-hater, even killer, to give up on the interim government and negotiate with Kagame directly.

In the second part of the report, Booh-Booh complained bitterly about being accused by the
RPF
of being an ally of the interim government. He blamed me for not defending him to Kagame and argued that the
RPF
was framing him. I passed the news back to Annan that when I raised Booh-Booh's name with Kagame it inspired a torrent of expletives. That was an opinion of Booh-Booh that no one would be able to change.

It was Saturday, May 7. The
RPF
had now bypassed Kigali to the south and were consolidating. The
RGF
, still madly recruiting, had held off repeated assaults in Ruhengeri and the north side of Kigali. The fighting around the airport and the terminal was extremely heavy, and I had had enough of hollow promises from both sides about their attempts to “avoid” my positions. All of the helicopters with
UNOMUR
in Kabale were broken, and the wrong parts had been sent to repair them. With the
NRA
still feigning that they had no escorts available, my force there was limited to surveillance of the five main crossings. The
RPF
and the
NRA
were now in overt cahoots in prosecuting this war.

I decided to drive out to the airport to bring encouragement to the Ghanaians. The firing was so heavy that the morning cargo of much-needed water, medicine and food was still on pallets in the middle of the tarmac. On the way back to Force
HQ
, we ran into a new roadblock put up by some very scraggly militiamen. I was getting very tired of this; by signed agreement the road to the airport was supposed to be kept open. After slowing down to get a good look at the layout—a dozen youths milling about with a few plastic crates set up on the road—I pressed on the gas and smashed my way through. The crates flew into the air, and the militiamen jumped back in complete surprise. Back at the
HQ
, Tiko was looking for some action, and I decided to give him charge of my escort to go sort out the problem. The outraged militiamen became very subdued when Tiko approached, backed by my squad of burly muscle-men. Tiko sat down on one of the plastic crates and held court with the AK-47-toting kids, who were no older than sixteen. He was obviously quite persuasive, as the youths decided to withdraw, after shaking hands and promising not to come back to the area. They never did. I enjoyed the story, but it reinforced for me what we could have possibly done with even 5,000 troops and officers of this calibre.

Once more I returned to the Diplomates, this time to meet with Augustin Bizimana, the minister of defence, who had been conspicuously absent from Kigali for most of the month. He told me he had been wrapped up in cabinet affairs, but I knew he had been dealing with his personal losses of family and property in Byumba.

After what now seemed like a ritual of complaints and promises all around, I told him of the plans for the new
UNAMIR
. Though I was looking for major reinforcements, I said, we were not to be an intervention force. His immediate response was to announce that there would be only one Rwanda, not a country divided into Tutsi and Hutu territories. Where did he get that idea? Not from me and certainly not from Kagame. The only other people who knew of my musings on a Cyprus-style future for the country were in the
DPKO
. Had they shared that prospect with the Security Council, which still included the extremist Rwandan representative? I let it lie.

I promised Bizimana that when I was reinforced I would deploy a battalion to protect a neutral airport. He said this information would help him with the cabinet. He ended the meeting, heading for cover when a few mortar rounds started to fall in the area. Once again I was left with the feeling that the extremists were better informed than I was about what my superiors were planning.

Not long after, I was heading for my meeting with Kagame, rolling through the countryside with my escort, avoiding piles of clothes and abandoned household goods. We were in newly held
RPF
territory, and the scenes were as horrific as elsewhere. Several ambush or killing sites were old, not attributable to the
RPF
, but some huts were smouldering here and there. We arrived at a ford across a creek. There had once been a small bridge here but it had been blown up. For a minute I actually wondered why the
RPF
soldiers guarding the ford were fishing with long poles but no string. I then noticed large piles of bloated blue-black bodies heaped on the creek banks. The soldiers had been given the task of making sure the bodies would not block the passage, as the creek was very shallow here. The stink was suffocating, and my undigested lunch was soon added to the mess. The soldiers, either tired or having run out
of room, were poling the bodies past the ford to float their putrid way to the nearest river and possibly on to Lake Victoria. Mentally retreating behind the protective shield of command, I plunged my vehicle into the water and carried on along the trail to my objective: Byumba, where Kagame had set up a tactical headquarters that was much easier to reach than his compound in Mulindi.

I raised with the general my worries about the fate of the Tutsis and the moderate Hutus still marooned in the Mille Collines; Bizimungu had threatened to kill them if the
RPF
didn't stop shelling
RGF
positions in the city. Kagame was pragmatic, the complete portrait of the cool warrior: “They are practising their age-old blackmail methods and it will not work anymore. There will be many sacrifices in this war. If the refugees have to be killed for the cause, they will be considered as having been part of the sacrifice.” I instinctively asked if his forces would conduct any reprisals on the Hutus we were protecting in our sites. He told me to get those civilians out of Kigali because the fight would only get worse. On the airport problem, he said that he had given me all the time he could to sort out the neutrality agreement, but he could no longer hold up or change his operational plans. He was not targeting
UNAMIR
positions per se, but in the fog of the battle, my troops could get hit. In fact they already had been hit. I told him I had no choice but to stay at the airport to protect the field for humanitarian purposes and the Canadian mercy flights. He did not respond, just sat there impassive, so calm his thin chest barely moved with each breath.

I then explained the concept of the new
UNAMIR
. He listened attentively even though he probably had already been briefed in detail by his representatives at the
UN
. His reply stunned me. “No objection,” he said. “I suggest however that it be strong enough and ready to fight.” He promptly rose, shook hands and departed.

The sun was going down fast, and we sped off, hoping to get to the
HQ
before darkness fell completely. Although we arrived way past sunset, the trip back was without a wrong turn or a close shave. I finally sat down that night at a table in the operations room in the rotunda with a cup of tea from somewhere. My job was to study a draft of a “non-paper” being prepared for the secretary-general on the way forward for
UNAMIR
. A non-paper is essentially a means by which the
UN
considers a subject without treating the process as official business that has to lead to an official resolution. Here I was up to my armpits in bodies, and the
DPKO
was reduced to presenting a non-paper in order to garner possible support for a mandate debate. How in hell did they find themselves in such a position? They'd had my sitreps and assessments and military estimates and more staff analyses than they could shake a stick at. But still they wanted my input on the non-paper by early tomorrow.

Call me a wide-eyed optimist, but the draft of the non-paper looked good. It looked, in fact, very much like what I had been recommending (so much so that one of my staff had sarcastically noted on the draft, “This is excellent so let's get at it”). In my response, I approved the fact that they were proposing my “minimum viable” option of 5,500 troops, yet describing its function with the action verbs I'd attached to the 8,000-troop model. I congratulated them on essentially taking as a package my concept of operations, my plan and my layout of tasks and reported that both belligerents accepted the idea of the reinforced
UNAMIR
. I insisted that the non-paper stress the sense of urgency—there were still a lot of people at risk and we had to save as many as possible. It already went part of the way by recommending that the normal process of getting troops should be put aside and that nations should provide troops in operational brigade formations. There was no room for untrained and ill-equipped units from developing nations, even if some were ready to send them. The non-paper also endorsed reinforcing the mission even without a signed ceasefire or airport neutrality agreement: music to my ears.