Shake Hands With the Devil (83 page)

We continued on our way to meet with Luc Racine and the local French commander, who were waiting for us by the side of the road near Gikongoro. In their opinion security was still very tenuous here. The Ghanaians were settling in with the locals and their patrols were generally well received. But many were worried about who else was coming to replace the French. Racine took me aside and emphasized that we had better get a lot of aid into this zone fast, as word was going around that the people in Coma were being well treated. I promised that Yaache and the
HAC
team would concentrate their efforts here as soon as trucks were available (we were still waiting for the fleets to be airlifted in).

I then carried on with an escort party to visit the Ghanaians. The battalion
HQ
was in an abandoned school in a hilltop village, with one company quartered around it. They were making do, but the supply line from Kigali was still quite deficient and they were forced to buy on the local market. Most of the
APC
s were standing in a neat row and when I asked about them I was told that the newly trained drivers were not quite sure of themselves in these winding and hilly trails. Pressing further brought out the real reason. To navigate in the hills they needed armoured jeeps or one-ton section trucks.

On our return trip through the
HPZ
, I stopped in a village and waited for a group of journalists who had found out I was in the area and wanted to interview me. I wandered about twenty metres away from my vehicle, and elders from the village approached me. We started talking. Within minutes, the crowd grew to more than a hundred and its size soon attracted even more. The elders were concerned about the departure of the French and the eventual arrival of the
RPF
. The discussion at first was friendly, with a few people asking questions and the others listening
intently. The rings of people around me kept increasing and the questions went on and on. The reaction of the crowd was starting to veer wildly. One moment there was laughter and in the blink of an eye things turned nasty. New interlocutors who were anti-
UNAMIR
and anti-
RPF
started to shout. I did not pull out my pistol but I was reaching for it when my
ADC
, with my vehicle on his heels, started to make his way toward me through the crowd. No one budged. With not very convincing thank-yous and goodbyes, I suddenly pushed toward him. When I reached him we both turned and forced our way back to our four-by-four. Once inside we beat a tactical retreat. I was still catching my breath when we met the gang from the press. We signalled for them to follow us and when we judged that we had reached a safe enough distance from the crowd we stopped and held the conference. For years afterward, I could not bear to be pressed close in a crowd.

On August 61 was invited to meet with President Bizimungu. He seemed to have grown into his new job and the trappings of head of state. We discussed a rainbow of subjects from how to conduct political visits in the
HPZ
to water for the capital to fixing the hangars at the airport to old times. Top of my mind was the encounter I had had at the security checkpoint at the exit from the
HPZ
. I told Pasteur there was considerable pressure from the human rights people and New York for his government to ease off and be much more transparent. He acknowledged the bad position they were in and also the danger to his government if there were considerable delays in official recognition because of such practices. I made it clear that if
UNAMIR
ever had to declare
RPF
-held territory unsafe due to exactations without due process, then the people in the
HPZ
would head west by the fastest means possible. And
UNAMIR
would have no choice but to stop the
RPF
with force, in accordance with our mandate to protect people in danger. The Security Council would then most likely ask the French to stay on and the exiled interim government and its forces would gain some sympathy internationally.

He had heard I was leaving soon and said he was sorry and hoped to see me before I left. Though he and I both remembered our sessions
at Mulindi, talking as friends into the night, we ended our last session formally, as there were staffers all around.

Lieutenant General Gord Reay, the commander of the Canadian Army, came to Rwanda from August 6 to 8 to visit the troops, bringing with him an old friend of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Coleman, the army's public affairs officer. In private conversation General Reay confirmed that my replacement would be Guy Tousignant. I knew Guy as a bilingual logistician whose skill set and experience would certainly help Rwanda and
UNAMIR
2, but I told Reay that I still supported Henry for commander. Reay informed me that when I got back, my posting would be that of Deputy Commander of the Army and Commander of the 1” Canadian Division. I was pleased, as this would mean that I would stay in a command appointment. However, the former Deputy Commander had retired in late June, and the post had been vacant since, with the Chief of Staff doing both jobs. Reay wanted me back at work in Canada as soon as possible. He then spelled out a host of problems I'd have to deal with, including the need to handle the Somalia fallout, army reorganization driven by severe budget and personnel cuts, and an ever-increasing tempo of operations. I admit I wasn't as pleased at the end of the conversation as I had been at the beginning. I was physically and mentally exhausted and I needed a break. I asked for leave before I assumed my new duties and he readily agreed, but he gave me a look that implied “just not too much.”

Tousignant would arrive in Rwanda August 12 for a week's handover. I would relinquish the command of
UNAMIR
to him on August 19.

Until then, I stayed immersed in our non-stop work. By August 8, we had grown from 600 to about 1000, but we still had only a half-battalion and a company of line troops, the rest being
UNMO
s, staff and support. Every now and again I would break out in a cold sweat over the looming deadline of August 22, when my bluff might be called. Games at the Security Council continued apace. We had filed a three-month report the week before, and Madeleine Albright was leading the strong resistance to the wording of a new mandate that would include our
“ensuring” stability and security in the provinces of Rwanda. “In her view, it would be more practical to describe the task as the ‘promotion' of stability,” the code cable read. How far does one go up the scale in the use of force to achieve “promotion” without getting into “ensuring”? How would a junior officer understand the resultant new
ROE
in the field? Once again, we could end up with soldiers injured and dying, and more innocent people sacrificed, because of nuances in mandate that the politicos did not even fully comprehend. I had terribly mixed feelings about my departure but all it took was a code cable such as this or another frustrating session with the administration gang to reaffirm my total incapacity to accept any more excuses, delays or budget limitations.

I went to see Lafourcade to bring him up to speed and assure him we were still on net with the handovers and withdrawals of his forces. He was feeling the squeeze of getting all his people and equipment out in time, and still hearing some noises that his government might ask him to stay a bit longer. I told him that staying was out of the question—if he did, the
RPF
would break through the zone and confront him. I told him I would be back next week to personally introduce my replacement, and we parted amicably.

Lafourcade provided transport and escorts for me to go and meet Augustin Bizimungu, who had asked to see me. The former
RGF
chief of staff was now living in a comfortable bungalow on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, and seemed totally at home. He was surrounded by a few senior Zairean officers, a couple of French officers and, to my surprise, the same huge
RGF
lieutenant-colonel who had come into Bagosora's office on the afternoon of April 7 (his G-2, or intelligence officer, a man said to have been deeply involved in the genocide).

Bizimungu met me at the top of the long staircase up to the house. Both he and the lieutenant-colonel were in impeccable
RGF
uniforms down to their shiny boots, and Bizimungu looked relaxed, even ebullient, as we sat down to talk. Soon he had launched into his usual tirade against the
RPF
, accusing them of genocide and of targeting
RGF
officers and their families for execution. He did not ask me how things were inside Rwanda but gave me an earful about his desire to go back and sort
out the
RPF
once and for all. Before he had worked himself up to a complete lather—and perhaps before he could reveal anything more of their future operational plans—the lieutenant-colonel stepped in and effectively ended the meeting. We stood up to make our farewells. With a wry smile, Bizimungu told me that things were fine for him and he didn't need to meet anyone from
UNAMIR
anymore. Neither of us offered to shake hands.

When I got back to
UNAMIR
headquarters, after a brief stop in Entebbe and a visit with President Museveni (who gazed at me kindly and said, “Well, General, you have certainly aged during this last year”), I saw that a copy of a letter sent by the Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council was on my desk. My eye went to the crucial sentence: “ . . . his government has decided to reassign [Dallaire] to national duties . . . [Guy Tousignant] will assume his duties on 15 august 1994.” There it was, now official.

On August 13, Khan got a call from the
DPKO
asking him to go to the new government and ask to delay the departure of Turquoise by up to two weeks. I had argued against it, but New York was getting very nervous that my bluff was only a bluff and we would be too thin on the ground to safely conduct our mission. Kagame had at first agreed in principle, but Pasteur Bizimungu was adamant—no delay would be tolerated.

Guy Tousignant had arrived on schedule and we did the rounds and the prayer sessions and the decision meetings together. Another Canadian came with him; Colonel Jan Arp, a fellow gunner who made a real difference to the mission as its first dedicated chief of staff. At prayers a couple of days before I was to leave, a problem with lack of water came to the table again. I was about to be very nasty to the administration staff but Guy jumped in and said he would like to look into it. I realized then that I was truly out of a job.

When I took Guy to meet Lafourcade, the French commander broached the subject of keeping a small logistics component in Goma in order to ensure support for the Franco-African battalion. I emphatically replied that the
UN
would allow no remnants of Turquoise to remain in the area. He was a bit taken aback by my forceful manner but Guy backed me up.

I was invited to have lunch with Kagame on August 18 in his new
home in Kigali where he was living with his wife and children. It was a bit more formal than we had been used to, the conversation was light, and the menu actually included meat. All in all, it was a pleasant two hours. Kagame wished me well and thanked me very kindly. He said that he hoped I would return to Rwanda someday.

I do hope to return to Rwanda very soon, after I have finished my duties as the
UNAMIR
force commander by testifying for the prosecution at the International Tribunal on the Rwandan Genocide in Arusha, Tanzania, in the spring of 2004. The place where the Arsuha Peace Agreement was signed—the very same building in fact—is now the place where the tribunal meets to deliver justice to the extremists who destroyed that agreement.

How do you say goodbye to people who have bravely travelled through the inferno with you? On the night of August 18, all of the old gang, including Henry, Tikoka, my brave civilian secretary Suzanne, Yaache, Khan, Golo and the rest of the staff organized a farewell party for me in the damaged restaurant at Chez Lando. I won't think of what they had to do to clean it up given that the place had been closed since Hélène, Lando and the children had been killed. They plugged a large hole in the roof with some blue refugee tarps, and the
CO
of the Canadian logistics base had found a caterer just setting up shop in town who produced a meal the likes of which none of us had seen in Kigali in a number of months. Some of Lando's surviving relatives had come back, and the party was also designed to help them relaunch the business.

We drank a lot that night. We sang songs and even brought out the Stompin' Tom Conners tape for a while. Some of us quietly cried our hearts out. It was a rare celebration, and the emotions it unleashed ranged from deep hurt and anger to exaggerated laughter and even love. It is not too strong a word.

The next morning, I said a formal goodbye to my staff, and then in a slight rainfall we conducted a change-of-command parade in front of the main entrance to the
HQ
building, as Henry insisted was proper. A proud contingent of Ghanaians was waiting for me, joined by many of the staff officers. While Guy, Khan and I inspected the ranks and pinned
UNAMIR
medals on everyone, my favourite band from the
Ghanaian battalion played for us. I cannot remember my speech, though I know I was grateful that the rain shortened it. Following Ghanaian military tradition, Guy and I exchanged a white baton of command.

Then I was escorted off the dais into an open four-by-four. Two long ropes were stretched before the vehicle and all the officers took up positions along them. They pulled me out of the compound to the music of “Auld lang syne.” I called to Tiko, hauling on the rope, to come and join me, because I would need his support one last time when I reached the end of this ride. He climbed in with me and propped me up like a brother. We laughed and yelled to the men on the ropes and waved to the crowd who'd gathered to see me off. When we came to a halt, Tiko helped me out of the four-by-four for the ride to the airport. After a flurry of fraternal hugs all around I was gone.