Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

  The concept of operations that we developed under the direction of the DPKO stretched over a period of thirty months and called for four phases and a maximum force strength of 2,548, to be deployed only when absolutely needed.

  Phase one, as outlined in Arusha, would begin on the day the Security Council approved the mission and would last for ninety days, requiring a buildup to 1,200 personnel. The immediate task would be to provide security for the city of Kigali and ensure the withdrawal of the French troops in accordance with Arusha. This was extremely important as the RPF viewed the French as a partisan force allied with the RGF and would not enter the city if the French were still there.

  Then we would have to turn Kigali into a weapons-secure area, negotiating an agreement whereby the RGF and RPF would secure their weapons and only move them or armed troops with UN permission and under UN escort. As peacekeepers, we had to know where all the weapons were. With the French gone and Kigali declared a weapons-secure area, the RPF could move their political leaders and the battalion of soldiers necessary to protect them into Kigali, and the BBTG—whose members had already been negotiated in Arusha, though there was still much debate over the exact composition—could be sworn in.

  In phase one we also had to take over the monitoring of the demilitarized zone and establish teams of unarmed military observers to roam the ten prefectures (provinces) within the country to keep an eye out for possible flare-ups.

  Burundi, the country to the south of Rwanda, had just held its first democratic elections since independence and had seen the peaceful transition from a minority Tutsi military-run dictatorship to the installation of the first Hutu president to head a government in that country—I was not worried about security on Rwanda’s south flank. The south was generally held to be the most moderate area of the country, and I was sure my small teams of unarmed MILOBs would be effective there. Eastern Rwanda, toward Tanzania, was also fairly peaceful, but the west, close to the border with Zaire, would bear closer watching—the hardline heartland was in the northwest, and there were reports of weapons being smuggled into the country from Zaire. Nevertheless I was confident that I could do the job with that first contingent of 1,200 troops.

  After the transitional government was in place and Habyarimana was installed as temporary head of state, as directed by Arusha, we would roll out phase two, which would take another ninety days and require the deployment of the maximum 2,548-member force. I thought this would be the most dangerous part of the mission. A battalion group of about eight hundred, supported by an engineer company of another two hundred personnel, would be moved into the demilitarized zone to provide a buffer between the RPF and the RGF while each army retired from their defensive positions to demobilization centres. All weapons would be collected in cantonment points. I estimated that for this phase, I would need support elements such as eight helicopters equipped with night-vision capability to patrol the demilitarized zone (hence Brent’s huge file on the matter). The Ugandan border was hard to monitor because of its altitude, its terrain and mist-filled valleys, and I suspected that the RPF was already sneaking all kinds of supplies into the country, using an old Viet-Cong ploy: loading up bicycles and taking the stuff over the tiny mountain paths that criss-crossed the border. My UNOMUR mission was supposed to get a handle on these potential supply lines; for the peace process to succeed, we had to shut them down. If I was going to be able to get troops out fast to contain hostile situations, the force would also need twenty armoured personnel carriers (APCs), since most of the roads outside of the immediate vicinity of Kigali were a mess.

  I proposed a carrot-and-stick force structure to ensure that the climate of security would be maintained in the demilitarized zone. I would place the armed battalion between the belligerents. Then behind each force, I would station unarmed military observers. Both the battalion and the military observers would be non-threatening and would focus on building goodwill and good working relationships with and between the parties. The stick would be provided by the force reserve, which would intervene rapidly to deter aggression. The mission would need robust rules of engagement to give us the wherewithal to escalate force as required in support of our mandate.

  Phase three would be the actual demobilization and reintegration process and would last ten months. This phase would see the creation of the National Guard, a new force that would integrate elements of the RPF, RGF, and Gendarmerie. We would follow the Arusha guidelines when constructing the new army; the majority of soldiers from all three forces would be given pensions and retrained for jobs in civilian life. As this process wound down, my own force would decrease to about a thousand personnel, a recommendation I made as a result of pressure from the UN to keep costs down, not because I was entirely comfortable that it was the best course.

  The final phase of the mission would be the holding of the first democratic elections in Rwanda, bound to be an uneasy time within the country. My hope was that the thousand-member UN contingent would be reinforced by the new army and that it would have jelled sufficiently to withstand the potential return to ethnic conflict. Phase four was projected to last twelve months, after which we could pack our tents and go home.

  In UN terms, the mission was to be small, cheap, short and sweet.

  My technical report called for urgent deployment. To pull that off, we needed a commitment from a major Western military power with enough transport, or “lift,” capacity to deal with the fact that Rwanda was landlocked, airports were limited and the nearest seaport, Dar es Salaam, was about a thousand kilometres from Kigali on nearly impassible roads. No one but the Belgians had stepped forward. At the time, I wondered about the real reasons. This was supposed to be a straightforward little chapter-six mission, a win for the UN, a win all around. So what held them back? The story of the day in the DPKO, as passed on by the white officers from the Western-based troop-contributing nations, was that these countries were “peacekeepinged out” and had no more stomach for far-off missions. All very well, except that Maurice and his staff had continued to obtain substantial troops and equipment with relative ease for the Balkans and Somalia.

  When I’d met the diplomatic corps in August in Kigali, I had become familiar with other reasons. Rwanda was on nobody’s radar as a place of strategic interest. It had no natural resources and no geographical significance. It was already dependent on foreign aid just to sustain itself, and on international funding to avoid bankruptcy. Even if the mission were to succeed, as looked likely at the time, there would be no political gain for the contributing nations; the only real beneficiary internationally would be the UN. For most countries, serving the UN’s objectives has never seemed worth even the smallest of risks. Member nations do not want a large, reputable, strong and independent United Nations, no matter their hypocritical pronouncements otherwise. What they want is a weak, beholden, indebted scapegoat of an organization, which they can blame for their failures or steal victories from.

  Worst of all, I suspect that these powerful nations did not want to get involved because they had a firmer grasp on the threats to the success of the Arusha accords than the rest of us. Certainly France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and the United States, the permanent five of the Security Council, all had fully equipped and manned embassies in Rwanda, including both military and intelligence attachés. None of the means of communications used in Rwanda by the political or military hierarchies had encryption capabilities, except for a few communications assets within the RPF. Between human and signal intelligence on the ground and worldwide space- and air-based surveillance systems, these nations either knew in detail what was going on or they were totally asleep at the switch. I firmly doubt they were asleep. The French, the Belgians and the Germans had military advisers numbering in the dozens at all levels of the military and gendarme command and training structures in Rwanda.

  However, since leaving Kigali in August, I had had no means of intelligence on Rwanda. Not one country was willing to provide the UN or
even me personally with accurate and up-to-date information. One of the restrictions on a chapter-six mission is that it can’t run its own intelligence-gathering; in the spirit of openness and transparency, it has to be totally dependent on the goodwill of opposing sides to inform the mission command of problems and threats. Our lack of intelligence and basic operational information, and the reluctance of any nation to provide us with it, helped form my first suspicion that I might find myself out on a limb if I ever needed help in the field.

  So, despite the continued effort of the DPKO staff, out of all the developed nations, only the Belgians still wanted to sign up, with the French expressing political interest. The rest of the respondents came from several developing nations on three continents, and these troops had limited equipment capabilities and serious inherent logistic and financial problems. There was only a small list of peacekeeping nations who were capable of deploying units with all of the equipment and materials they needed to be independent of UN support while the UN built up its logistics base. These nations were primarily Western and First World. The slowly growing list of countries who were prepared to commit to a Rwandan mission came from a new generation of troop-contributing nations, who had large and untapped pools of soldiers but who were nearly completely deficient in matériel, sustainability and training specific to complex conflicts and vast humanitarian catastrophes. Furthermore, such troops sometimes came from nations that had little to no ethos regarding human rights, which raised a whole other set of problems.

  As September wore on, I became aware that my presence and my aggressive manner were beginning to grate on many of the senior staff in the FOD and the personnel department. The FOD had total control of the equipment we needed. Personnel established manning priorities and had the final authority for deployment of UN staff in the field. I worried that by pushing so hard, on a mission that hadn’t yet been mandated and of which I was not yet the force commander, I was actually hurting my cause.

  While I had been obsessing about the larger mission, Uganda had finally signed the SOMA for UNOMUR, and the first observers were already arriving in the field. My place was clearly with them. I had to trust the future of the Rwanda mission to the experts in New York, though I still wanted eyes and ears at the UN. I decided to leave Brent in place for at least a month to keep working with Miguel. Brent’s wife was due to give birth in November; by staying on in New York for a while, he could be closer to her.

  At the end of September, the UN appointed Dr. Abdul Hamid Kabia, a career diplomat and political expert from Sierra Leone, with considerable field and UN experience, as the Uganda mission’s political officer. I went to his office in the DPA immediately after the announcement to touch base with him. Expecting to find either a haughty, ambitious dandy or a crusty older politico who had seen it all and was not about to subordinate himself to a military chap, I encountered neither. Dr. Kabia greeted me warmly. His office was relatively sparse, its accoutrements the familiar grey metal, and his desk layered with what seemed like a pell-mell collection of documents—but I had the sense he knew where everything was.

  He confided that he was somewhat surprised to be chosen to go into the field, as he had been under the impression that he would finish his years with the UN at a desk job in New York. But he was neither reticent nor reluctant, and he was to become one of my most trusted advisers and colleagues. In mid-October he flew to Uganda and took up his post at the UNOMUR headquarters.

  Somehow the mood had shifted on the thirty-sixth floor, and the best corridor intelligence that Brent could pick up had me as the leading contender for force commander of the Rwanda mission. One of my last duties before leaving New York was to create the name of the mission. The “United Nations” part of it was a given. Since our task was to assist the parties in implementing the Arusha agreement, “Assist” seemed a good term. And lastly, we were doing it “for Rwanda.” “The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda” seemed the perfect title, except that as an acronym, it fell short. UNAMFR did not sound right. So I decided to take the I from the second letter of “Mission.” UNAMIR—the acronym was refined on a napkin in a Manhattan restaurant. For years I have heard UN officials, academics, bureaucrats—experts all—get the name wrong when they pontificate about the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda. But that “for” was all important.

  I met the DPKO triumvirate, along with Hedi Annabi, for my last instructions, and they told me to get the Uganda mission up and running and then be available for rapid deployment to Kigali should UNAMIR be approved. I was to keep in touch through Miguel and Maurice, and everyone wished me good luck. When Kofi Annan shook my hand, I felt a warmth and genuine caring from him that for a moment overwhelmed me. He was not a political boss sending off one of his generals with platitudes and the expected aplomb. Through the kindest of eyes and the calmest of demeanours, Annan projected a humanism and dedication to the plight of others that I have rarely experienced. It seemed clear to me from his very few phrases that my leader thought the mission was just, that I was the right choice as force commander and that we would help those Africans struggling for freedom and dignity.

  I left New York in the late afternoon of September 30. The sun was wearing its new fall tint, painting all those glass panes of the skyscrapers of Manhattan with orange light. I was beside myself with energy, optimism and a sense of purpose. I was finally going to be tested in my profession. I had an operational command. All those years of reading about the strategies and tactics of the great generals of history came to life in my mind. All my experience, from playing with lead soldiers on the living room rug to commanding the 5ième Brigade Group, would culminate in this field command.

  I headed for a brief leave in Quebec City to say my last goodbyes to my family and gather my personal effects and the enormous amount of equipment that the Canadian Army was issuing me for my journey to the tropical, disease-infested and dangerous place. I confess that when I visited my family, I saw what I wanted to see: they had settled into their new home and were managing well enough without me. I did not know that the atmosphere for Beth and the children at the garrison was already poisoned by jealousy over my getting an overseas command, and that only the highest-level interventions would improve their situation. During most of my time in Rwanda, Beth and the children were starved for real information about my safety and well-being and, fearful and isolated, ended up glued with the rest of the world to CNN.

  At the airport, ready to leave for an indefinite stay in Africa, I leaned over to Willem and, instead of giving him the good, tight hug he needed, offered him the type of speech soldiers typically give to their eldest son: “Son, I’m off on operations, so seeing you’re the senior male in the household, it’s up to you to keep the situation in hand. I want you to live up to your responsibility and help your mother out.” Little did I realize the effect those few ill-chosen remarks would have on my teenage son. As my plane took off, I mentally closed the door on family life to completely focus on my mission. This is what soldiers have to do.

  A dozen hours later, I was halfway across the world and transported almost twenty years back in time. As we landed in Entebbe, the aircraft made a pass over the old airport and there, parked on the runway, was the Air France DC8 that Palestinian terrorists had hijacked back in the summer of 1976. The sight sent a shiver up my spine as I recalled the Israeli commandos’ daring and successful raid all those years ago. I wondered why this eerie souvenir remained there untouched. Was it a memorial or perhaps a warning?

  I liked Uganda. Kampala bubbled with life and, though less grand than Addis Ababa, appeared to be thriving. I was met by the UNDP resident representative, who had very efficiently organized my schedule of meetings with political and military leaders, including the Ugandan president.

  We went to see Yoweri Museveni soon after I arrived. He received us at the former British governor general’s home, a huge white mansion overlooking Lake Victoria. We were led through large, airy rooms crammed with Afri
can artifacts, and outside again to the place where the president was holding court under a huge tree. Museveni was tall, completely bald and had a sizable paunch—a powerful presence to say the least. Although he appeared to be well-informed, he offered no special insights into the situation in Rwanda. I was puzzled and more than a little disappointed. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but I had the impression that he accorded me no more and no less of his attention than he would the head of a multinational corporation trying to set up shop in his country.

  The chief of staff of the Ugandan army was subtly unsettling. He was the soul of co-operation, assuring me that the Ugandans were very committed to UNOMUR, but I felt he was holding back some of the information I might need to do an effective job. That impression was borne out when I arrived in the Ugandan border town of Kabale, my mission headquarters. The very first item on my agenda was a meeting with the Ugandan army’s southern region commander to discuss my operational plan. We met at my temporary headquarters in the White Horse Inn, a pretty little place tucked into the side of a hill. He was serious and professional, and seemed committed to co-operating with UNOMUR. Afterwards, the liaison officer from Uganda’s National Resistance Army (NRA) who was assigned to my mission paid me a visit and informed me that all my patrols had to be planned ahead of time because he needed at least twelve hours’ notice to arrange for troops to escort us. I looked at him in absolute amazement. The whole point of the patrols was to use the element of surprise in order to flush out any undesirable cross-border activity. He looked me straight in the eye and, in his polite, soft-spoken way, insisted that there were all kinds of unmapped minefields in the area, and for safety’s sake, the UNOMUR patrols would have to be escorted by his soldiers. I told him we had to monitor five different crossing points twenty-four hours a day. He replied that he would try to have his soldiers there. I could protest, but it wouldn’t do any good.