Shake Hands With the Devil (78 page)

The worsening picture finally seemed to prod the U.S. administration into making some public noise. On the morning of July 16 I got a cable from the
DPKO
to which was attached a “White House Press Statement Concerning Rwanda.” The statement announced that “the Clinton Administration has closed the Embassy of Rwanda and ordered all personnel to leave the country. Representatives of the so-called interim government of Rwanda must depart within five working days.” The Clinton administration announced that the U.S. government would “begin consultations with other
UN
Security Council members to remove representatives of the interim government from Rwanda's seat
on the council . . . [and that the U.S. has] denied access to any Rwandan government financial holdings in the United States. The United States cannot allow representatives of a regime that supports genocidal massacre to remain on our soil, President Clinton said.” The last set of surprises: the U.S. “has taken a leading role in efforts to protect the Rwandan people and ensure humanitarian assistance. . . . [It has] provided $9 million in relief, flown about 100 Defense Department missions . . . strongly supported an expanded
UNAMIR
, air-lifting 50 armoured personnel carriers to Kampala . . . [and is] equipping the
UN's
Ghanaian peacekeeping battalion.”

Clinton's fibbing dumbfounded me. The
DPKO
was still fighting with the Pentagon for military cargo planes to move
matériel
. The Pentagon had actually refused to equip the Ghanaians as they felt the bill was too high and that Ghana was trying to gouge them. And
who
exactly got the $9 million?

Luc Racine and his small team were back from their reconnaissance of the
HPZ
, where they had been looking for suitable sites for our battalions and firming up handover procedures with the local Turquoise commanders and civilian authorities. They had got around in French vehicles with armed Turquoise escorts, and had kept signs of their
UN
affiliation to a minimum. Most of the people in the area were either hostile to
UNAMIR
or fearful we wouldn't have the will to do the job of protecting them after the French left. Luc recommended that all
UNMO
s going into the
HPZ
travel with French units for protection; he judged that it was crucial that they be French-speakers in order to help build trust in the people. There was little aid coming in, so Luc also recommended that we couple our deployments with major food distributions, which would prove we had something we could offer. Lastly, he said the
RPF
had to stop their advance and quit probing the
HPZ
line so that people inside the zone would feel safer.

Luc confirmed that, in all areas inside the
HPZ
, the
RGF
were still moving about with their weapons. In only one of the three sub-zones of the
HPZ
were the militia unarmed. In another, they wore special bandanas and were assisting the French to maintain order. There were still
roadblocks all over the place, generally manned by the Gendarmerie. The best estimate was that there were over two million people in the zone, two thirds of them internally displaced persons; of those, about 800,000 were already on the west side of the forest, though still a good distance away from Cyangugu. Tutsis were being held in large numbers in at least three sites. The French had three light battalions in the zone and were patrolling vigorously day and night.

I was to meet with General Bizimungu in Goma at 1100 on the morning of July 16. I also wanted to touch base with the provincial governors of Goma and Bukavu districts to find out for myself what they planned to do about the refugees, and especially with the Rwandan military and militia in their midst. I was met at the airport by Lafourcade, who asked me to be discreet about how the meeting with Bizimungu had been arranged—it might not look so good that the
RGF
chief was inside the French military camp.

A French staff officer led me and my aide-de-camp, Babacar Faye Ndiaye, through the labyrinth of the Turquoise tent city and then left us alone to see the general. Bizimungu had just crossed the border that morning and he looked terrible. He was haggard, his left arm was injured, his uniform was dirty. He was incensed with the
RPF
for not stopping before Ruhengeri and proclaiming the ceasefire, which would have prevented the exodus. He had nothing with him—no kit, no money, no food—and he asked whether
UNAMIR
might assist him. I told him to stay in touch with my liaison team in Goma and to produce a list of what he needed. As we were leaving, he asked my
ADC
to send him cigarettes and soap.

We headed into Goma proper under French escort, driving past ash-covered squalor, dead bodies abandoned in the street, and suffocating crowds. We waited at least twenty minutes outside the governor's office before he was free to see me. The governor was a gracious man with a no-nonsense air about him. I asked him what he thought of this onslaught of refugees, militia and Rwandan army personnel. He said that he needed massive support from the
NGO
s and the
UN
; the influx had taxed the local infrastructure beyond its capacity and there was
suffering among his own people. Food and water were already scarce. Starvation and disease wouldn't be far behind.

Regarding the
RGF
, he said that their small arms and major weapons were being moved to secure compounds several kilometres north of the camps and the city, and that Zairean troops would provide protection for the refugees and the
NGO
s in Goma. I informed him that
UNAMIR
might find itself obliged to assist in the return of the refugees as well as escorting convoys of aid. He was not favourable to my forces entering his country.

As we made our way back to the helicopter, the sky seemed to darken though it was only early afternoon. The nearest volcano was spewing more ash, which was blocking out the sun. I suddenly felt claustrophobic, as if this scene were about to swallow me up. We escaped the airport without having to pay a landing fee.

In Bukavu, the governor had similar concerns about
UN
troops crossing the border. He said he could handle the 300,000 refugees so far who had fled into his province, but he hoped the French could hold the others across the river. I was surprised at the lack of
NGO
or
UN
agency presence in town, but I already knew that Turquoise did not have a solid humanitarian plan. There had been major looting in Cyangugu under the noses of the French. This was not looking good at all.

After Gisenyi fell on July 17,
RPF
artillery rounds began to land on the outskirts of Goma, principally along the escape routes among the foothills of the volcanos. Both Lafourcade and the Zairean authorities were outraged. A few rounds landed at the airport where the runway area was chockablock with a steady stream of incoming and outgoing aircraft. Panicked, some of the refugees started to move farther away from the border. What was the
RPF
trying to prove? I ordered Frank Kamenzi to inform his headquarters that they had to stop the shelling. A day or two later it did stop, but the psychological effect on the refugees was debilitating.

Ironically, the unilateral ceasefire—another name for total
RPF
victory—was announced the next day, though there were no crowds cheering the peace in the streets of Kigali. I don't think any of us except the humanitarian gang felt much relief, but Yaache and the MamaPapas
were happy that at last they would be able to deal with only one overall authority to coordinate emergency relief, and that the rebuilding of the nation's judicial, financial, medical, policing and government infrastructures could begin in earnest. And the atmosphere in the
HQ
eased a little. The fighting and the killing were officially over, but the exact nature of the horrors that were soon to afflict the Goma camps and the displaced people in the
HPZ
were waiting just around the corner.

On July 19, Khan and I set off to attend the official swearing-in of the new Broad-Based Government of National Unity at the
CND
. Having seen so many failed attempts in the months leading up to April 6, I felt a little strange sitting at the end of the front row of dignitaries on the lawn by the main entrance to the
CND
, under a canopy in the sun, with no responsibility except to be a witness. The
RPF
was taking care of security; the well-armed soldiers who stood between the hundreds of spectators and the dignitaries under the canopy, as well as all around the perimeter of the
CND
, detracted from the serenity or hope the swearing-in of a new government might have inspired. As a general rule, I thought, the larger and more overt the security precautions, the less safe one should feel.

So I watched as the ceremonial necessities were undertaken with solemn decorum. Rwanda's new president, Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu who had been tortured by the Habyarimana regime, was sworn in, followed by the rest of the eighteen-member cabinet. Khan and I didn't understand a word, as all the speeches were in Kinyarwanda, but Bizimungu looked almost regal. Then Paul Kagame took his oath as vice-president and minister of defence, followed by two more Hutus: Faustin as prime minister and Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe as vice–prime minister.

As the ceremony ended I thought, “So now they are the ones in charge, after nearly four years in the bush.” I wondered again about the nature of this less-than-perfect unilateral ceasefire and victory, and of Paul Kagame, so dignified as he accepted his new office. Was he haunted by the human cost of his victory? He and the rest of the
RPF
leadership had known what was going on behind the
RGF
lines. He and the movement had been relentlessly inflexible about any concession that
might have eased the tension in the country, both before the civil war broke out and later, when they had the
RGF
on the run. He had been reluctant to support
UNAMIR
2, whose specific duty was to stop the killing and the mass displacement of the population. Increasingly we could see the immaculate cars of Burundian returnees or the ox carts of the Ugandan Tutsi refugees in the streets of Kigali, as members of the scattered diaspora took up residence throughout the better parts of the capital, sometimes even throwing out legitimate owners who had survived the war and genocide. Kagame seemed to be doing little about it. Who exactly had been pulling his strings throughout the campaign? I found myself thinking such dire thoughts as whether the campaign and the genocide had been orchestrated to clear the way for Rwanda's return to the pre-1959 status quo in which Tutsis had called all the shots. Had the Hutu extremists been bigger dupes than I? Ten years later, I still can't put these troubling questions to rest, especially in light of what has happened to the region since.

Unsettled by my reflections about the
RPF
victory, I met with Vice-President Kagame in his walled bungalow at Camp Kanombe the next afternoon to discuss the pressing issues that faced his newly-won country. He agreed to all my
UNAMIR
2 deployments and to the force structure I envisioned, though both he and I recognized it would be tricky to achieve my tasks when the pace of
UN
deployment was still so slow. I also suggested that we move some of our forces into the Gisenyi area in order both to secure transient camps inside Rwanda for returnees and to be ready to go into Goma to help out. On stopping the outflow of displaced persons, Kagame agreed that there should be a major aid effort inside Rwanda, which could act as a magnet to draw people back into the country. He raised the idea of sending some of the new government ministers into the
HPZ
to start explaining to the populace what was going to happen and to encourage them not to flee to Bukavu.

He needed our help to repair the airport in order to persuade a commercial airline to start regular flights into Kigali. He wanted normalcy as fast as he could get it. He asked us to make every effort to meet the planned July 31 date for entry of formed units into the
HPZ
, and
was adamant that the French leave by August 22; he wanted us to work with the French to set up the bureaucratic infrastructure in the
HPZ
before the handover in order to avoid creating a vacuum of civil authority. He wanted Canada to provide a technical mission to help reconstruct his army because of our reputation for being able to accomplish such tasks and the fact that our forces were bilingual. He had yet another delicate job he wanted me to undertake: could I persuade Turquoise and the Zairean government to return all the heavy weapons and vehicles they had let into Zaire? I could hold onto them until things stabilized, he said, but he wanted them back. In the hands of his enemies they were a constant threat to Rwandan security. (That did not happen before I left.)

In that two-hour meeting over soft drinks in his bungalow, we built a program for the next two to three months at least. All I needed was my troops and the promised resources. I reinforced with Kagame that I was receiving reports that starvation and disease were beginning to cut a swath through the refugee camps. There was not a moment to waste.

After the installation of the new government, we were in a race against time, which was nothing new to me because
UNAMIR
had always been running to catch up to the situation on the ground. The French were making noises about seeking the authority to stay past August 22. As the
RPF
caught wind of those noises, they began to up the pressure on
UNAMIR
to replace the French and get them out of Rwanda. Our logistics situation was still erratic: we periodically ran out of water or food or fuel, and we never seemed to have enough working vehicles, radios or equipment to do anything the way it should be done. In many areas, we were regressing, not progressing.