Shake Hands With the Devil (66 page)

The transfer the other way was also successful, though the convoy was fired upon at the Kadafi Crossroads. The
RPF
held the hills on the east side, overlooking the bridge, and the
RGF
was dug in on the west. There was no welcoming party to greet these souls when they reached the drop-off point, which was just a spot on the road to Gitarama, about seven kilometres outside Kigali. The
RGF
personnel simply told the people to start walking.

We had another transfer planned for the next day, but we decided to postpone it. We needed to improve protection on the trucks and arrange for
RGF
observers to scrutinize the selection of their people at the Amahoro Stadium so that they could be sure the transfer was done fairly and freely. I found it ironic that we had gotten the undisciplined Interahamwe to observe the transfer truce only to have the other transfer fired upon by the
RPF
.

I kept my
UNMO
s busy trying to fill in all the blanks regarding what was happening in Rwanda and making regular rounds to all our protected sites. There were two areas of the country where information was really sketchy. One was in and around Gisenyi, close to the Zairean border. That area was significant because I had been told that the interim government was moving its members there. The second area was in Cyangugu, on the western side of the huge southern forest. We'd heard that large pockets of Tutsis were hiding out in the forest and that others had been massacred. I needed to know where the government was moving to and what was happening at the border at Goma because I'd also heard that large quantities of arms and ammunition were coming
through the border. In the south I was concerned mostly about keeping some kind of handle on the humanitarian situation, though I also wanted to check out a rumour that there had been some French-speaking white males spotted in Cyangugu. I wondered whether we might see an increase in white mercenaries being brought in on the
RGF
side. In order to get more hard data, I sent two large reconnaissance teams of
UNMO
s to both places. Later I would find out that the gang going to Gisenyi encountered thirty-eight major roadblocks where the militia members were barely able to restrain their hatred of all things
UN
. The team headed to Cyangugu had to negotiate through fifty-two roadblocks.

We didn't have the manpower to guard most of the sites around Kigali where people were gathered in an effort to be safe. I sent patrols several times a day to the orphanages, schools and churches to check on security and drop off food and supplies, but finally the need was so dire, especially at the orphanages, that I ordered
MILOB
s to start spending the nights with the most-threatened refugees. My hope was that the
MILOB
s' presence would deter the killers and, just as at the Mille Collines, it seemed to work. We also safely evacuated some seven hundred Zaireans and Tanzanians who had been holed up at their embassies and had run out of food.

On May 30, at our headquarters, we held the first ceasefire negotiation meeting aimed at gaining consensus on Riza's idea of declaring an intent to reach a ceasefire. Like old times, it was a security nightmare, but at least we had finally gotten the belligerents to meet face to face and to profess good intentions. The most surprising development of the day came from Ephrem Rwabalinda, the
RGF
liaison officer to
UNAMIR
, who asked whether
UNAMIR
could help find ways to reduce the tensions between the factions, including taking action against hate radio. He said he wanted all radio broadcasts toned down, which was an incredible statement to be uttered on behalf of the
RGF
. (Later, Rwabalinda was killed in an ambush while going over to the
RPF
.)

That day I also received word that Brian Atwood, the U.S. undersecretary for foreign aid, was in Nairobi, and I insisted that he needed to meet with me. His schedule was tight, but I arranged to see him for a couple of hours in the
VIP
lounge at the airport in Nairobi. I flew out
early on the morning of May 31, climbing aboard a Hercules aircraft for the first time since being in Rwanda. My uniform was relatively clean and pressed but did not smell all that wonderful. About the rest of me, all I can say is that I'd washed my neck and my arms up to the elbows.

At takeoff, instead of climbing into the air, the Hercules immediately swooped off the edge of the plateau and down into a valley. The passengers, all from
UNAMIR
, were crammed in the aircraft and sitting on flak jackets and blankets; some even wore their steel helmets to protect them from stray bullets. Sitting up in the cockpit, I got my initiation in nap-of-the-earth flying. We followed valleys and skimmed the tops of mountains, nearly picking bananas off the trees, until we hit the Tanzanian border. We then flew northeast to Kenya at a normal altitude. I was queasy, and the people in the back were throwing up. The pilots were clearly proud of themselves—I hope for their flying skills and not for how many of us got sick as a result of their evasion tactics.

At the airport in Nairobi, I nearly had to fight my way into the
VIP
lounge because I was apparently missing certain papers I hadn't known I needed. The mix-up only reinforced my opinion of the airport staff—the same ones to whom I had paid several U.S. dollars the previous October to be able to board an aircraft to take over command of my mission.

Atwood arrived about fifteen minutes after I did, trailing a large entourage. I launched into him, laying out on the table between us my commander's tactical map. There was no substitute for U.S. logistical capacity and no doubt in my mind of the dominance of the United States in the Security Council, I said. I insisted that the United States should provide the equipment and the airlift capability for
UNAMIR
2. I then proceeded to describe my concept of operations in detail, and for one of the first times in public, I warned that if the millions of Rwandans on the move to the west pushed into Zaire and Burundi, the world would end up with a cataclysmic regional problem, not a Rwandan problem. I needed immediately the means to prevent that vast exodus. I told him that the fighting in Kigali was not over and that heavy ammunition was still coming into Rwanda, particularly on the
RGF
side—the embargo that had been established on May 17 was useless, as it was not being implemented. Atwood was a friendly, easygoing chap,
but the keeners travelling with him kept pushing me for “clarification.”

Finally Atwood asked me for my bottom line, as Americans are wont to do. I replied, “Send the equipment to put the peacekeeping troops effectively on the ground last week. Without the equipment,
UNAMIR
can do nothing. Without the strategic lift of the United States, no one will ever get there.”

We shook hands, and as he left, he told me he would do his best. I sat for a time in the dark, wood-panelled lounge, feeling as if I had just been interrogated by the court and was now awaiting my sentence. One of my
UNMO
s had gone down to the canteen and bought me a sandwich—I had not tasted fresh bread for nearly two months. I got on the Hercules and flew back to Kigali willing that sandwich to stay down.

Mid-afternoon that day, to the now usual cacophony of small-arms fire and artillery noise, I completed my thirty-four-page reassessment of the situation and sent it off to New York. And then I found out that Captain Diagne Mbaye of Senegal had been hit by mortar fragments fired by the
RPF
at an
RGF
roadblock while he was bringing back a message for me from Bizimungu. Diagne was dead before he hit the dashboard. He was the
MILOB
who had saved Prime Minister Agathe's children, and in the weeks since, he had personally saved the lives of dozens upon dozens of Rwandans. Braving direct and indirect fire, mines, mobs, disease and any number of other threats, he eagerly accepted any mission that would save lives. In our
HQ
we observed a minute of silence in his honour, and on June 1 we held a small parade for him at the airport, behind sandbags, with the sound of artillery fire in our ears. His body was flown home, wrapped in a blue refugee tarp, another hero of Rwanda. As one of his fellow
MILOB
s said, “He was the bravest of us all.” The
BBC
's Mark Doyle, who considered Diagne a friend, recently wrote to me, “Can you imagine the blanket media coverage that a dead British or American peacekeeper of Mbaye's bravery and stature would have received? He got almost none.” (Doyle did write about him much later in
Granta
magazine.)

June 1. I decided to enlist the help of the Gendarmerie to go look for a safer westward route out of the city, one that would avoid the
RPF
gauntlet and the
RGF
no man's land. We took a fairly large loop through some pretty rough trails. The rain fell so hard during the rainy season that it didn't have time to sink in, eroding the roads and leaving behind inches of slippery mud. On our trek we reached a washout on the slope of a hill and tried to run it. One of the vehicles slid and tumbled away down the hill. Luckily, nobody was injured.

We abandoned the vehicle that had tumbled, taking the distributor cap out of it so it couldn't be easily appropriated. About a week later, one of my
UNMO
s saw the truck in the hands of the
RPF
. The vehicle had been smeared with mud to try to camouflage the
UN
markings. The
RGF
also spotted the vehicle and concluded that this was simply another way that
UNAMIR
was favouring the
RPF
. Eight of our vehicles had been abandoned in various parts of the country by this point, and I had to commence a campaign of negotiation to get the
RPF
not to use them.

We continued along lanes and paths that often took us through the middle of villages that did not appear on any map. In one village, we stopped to wait for all the vehicles to catch up to us. The path we were on had been one of the exit trails used by people fleeing Kigali. There were remnants of a barrier here, and many people had been killed and thrown in the ditches and on the sides of the road. As I got out to wait, I looked at the bodies, which seemed relatively fresh. Just as I glimpsed the body of a child, it moved. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, but I saw the twitching of the child and wanted to help. I leaned down to pick the child up, and suddenly I was holding a little body that was both tingling and mushy in my hands. In a second I realized that the movement was not the child but the action of maggots. I was frozen, not wanting to fling the child away from me but also not wanting to hold it for a second longer. I managed to set the body down and then stood there, shaky, not wanting to think about what was on my hands.

We carried on with the reconnaissance of the road. In the early afternoon we crested a hill and before us stretched a huge encampment of the internally displaced, people who had managed to pass through all the roadblocks out of Kigali. The sky was lowering with dark rain clouds, and a blue wave of refugee tarps rose up to greet it; it was as if we were looking out at an ocean of the displaced. We drove very slowly
down the hill and up through the camp, heading for the aid station that was set up near the top of the next rise. There were so many people jammed together on these hills that every little motion caused ripples of movement in every direction. The masses were so great it was hard to perceive the individuality of the people—there were so many faces, so many eyes. Clothing that had once been bright was drained of colour and smeared with dirt so that everything was a uniform brown.

The Red Cross workers here were locals, and they were overwhelmed by the demands on them. I told them how courageous they were and how impressed I was that the Red Cross was able to deliver some assistance in all parts of Rwanda. One of the elders in the crowd surrounding us began to speak. He told me that many of them had had to leave in such haste that they had left behind essentials. Since they'd arrived here, he said, they had received aid in the form of maize, and he held out a bit to show me. It was cattle corn, recognizable by its large, hard, jagged kernels. He said that they did not have the tools they needed to grind the kernels. They did not have the pots to cook the corn in to make it softer. They didn't have the water to put into the pot or the wood to build a fire to heat it. The uncooked maize was not edible, yet some of the children were so hungry they ate it. The jagged kernels ripped their digestive tracts and caused internal bleeding. The children were dying of it, bleeding through their bowels. With an ineffably sad face, this man asked me what I could do. I couldn't find an answer. In shame, I went back to my vehicle and we drove back to Kigali.

The road back was just as difficult and circuitous as the road in, but it did provide me with time to think with bitterness about how slow the humanitarian response had been. Rome, Paris, Geneva and New York were still demanding assessment upon assessment. Instead of coming to the aid of roughly two million people, the international community and aid groups were still conducting analyses of what was really needed. That night at evening prayers, I received Yaache's report on the situation, along with one from the new
UNREO
representative, Charles Petrie. Petrie was in despair about the continuous demands for assessments. I turned to him and said that in his next assessment, he could quote me: “Tell them to send me food, fuel, medical supplies and water for two
million people, and we will work out the details of distributing it, but for God's sake tell them to start sending it!”

A couple of years later I met some of those decision-makers and assessment-demanders, who took the opportunity to tell me that I had been looking at the situation in a “simplistic fashion.”