Shake Hands With the Devil (12 page)

Twagiramungu had studied in Quebec from 1968 to about 1976, living through the War Measures Act and René Lévesque's separatist Parti Québécois taking power democratically. He had participated in the great rally for a McGill University
français.
He felt that that experience had assisted him greatly in his political life. He was not as inspiring as Madame Agathe, and less prone to be front and centre, but he was very keen on the establishment of the
BBTG
. Before entering politics, he had been the general manager of a state-run company that had a monopoly on all of Rwanda's international freight movements. Twagiramungu had at one time been accused of pocketing bribes and was briefly incarcerated, an episode he attributed to political persecution. Perhaps that accounted for his cool, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude. Although he seconded Madame Agathe's support of the
UN
, he did so without her passion.

I found the circuitous talk of the Rwandan politicians whom I met a little trying at times, but I soon realized that if I stopped asking questions and listened, I was often rewarded with amazing insights into the history and culture of the country and what ailed it. For example, individuals from both sides of the ethnic divide betrayed a fear of the future, all the while expressing their desire for the peace accords to be implemented. Their lingering sense of injustice over their treatment in the past, the chaotic uncertainty and their mistrust of authorities, could be potential
impediments to grasping the incredible opportunity that the peace process held out. Overall they were a people suffering from psychological depression because of legitimate or imagined past grievances. They had a pessimistic, though perhaps realistic, view of the future.

I was surprised at how many of the people I met had either studied in Canada or had had Canadian teachers in Rwanda. People also had very close ties with the Belgians, the old colonial power, and with the French academic and military milieu. The scanty information I'd collected before arriving in Kigali did not quite describe the decades-long relationship between francophone Rwandans, mostly of Hutu extraction, and Quebec, especially its two largest French universities, Laval and the Université de Montréal. The head of the moderate Parti libéral, Landoald Ndasingwa, was married to a Québécoise, Hélène Pinsky. They made an odd but charismatic couple, Lando with his gentle charm and easy laugh, and Hélène, who called to mind a turbocharged Bella Abzug. He was the minister of social affairs in the interim government, and he expected to be a minister in the
BBTG
. Hélène ran the family business, which was Chez Lando, a hotel, bar and restaurant, popular with European expatriates and Rwandans alike.

With Hélène it was easy to see how well French-Canadian culture—the language, music, literature and appetite for intense social and political discussion—translated to Rwanda. As the mission continued, I became more and more at ease in this francophone nation. Perhaps I was a willing victim of Rwanda's charms, but the struggles of this little African country began to stir a passionately sympathetic response in me. My eyes were being opened to realities far from my usual military sphere, and I was attempting to absorb every nuance of the culture, every distortion of the double-talk of its political leaders.

“While Boutros Boutros-Ghali had not assigned a new political head of the mission after Pédanou dropped out, the
DPKO
had sent along Rivero as well as Martin to accompany me on all my diplomatic and political meetings. And the
DPA
had sent a junior political officer to assist me. She was an assistant to Under-Secretary-General James Jonah and was soignée and haughty, a fixer and arranger who thrived in the diplomatic
social milieu, filling my diary with a constant stream of meetings and attempts at cocktail parties. We saw the Germans, the Belgians, the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, the papal nuncio, the Burundian ambassador and, of course, the French—twice, at their insistence. None of them offered me any in-depth political analysis. All of them seemed to be singing from the same song sheet: the
UN
had to get on the ground as soon as possible. None of them put any troops on the table, however, and most permitted themselves to quibble about the potential size and cost of such a mission.

Our junior political officer, who happened to be French, booked me the two appointments with the French ambassador, one at the beginning of the trip and one on the day before I left. The French had a relationship with the Habyarimana regime that stretched back to the mid-seventies. Over the years, the French government had made a significant investment in French-speaking Rwanda, supplying it with arms and military expertise, support that had escalated to outright intervention against the
RPF
insurgent force in October 1990 and again in February 1993. But the
RPF
proved to be a stubborn and persistent foe, and the French finally joined the United States in a diplomatic effort that led to a series of ceasefires and, eventually, the Arusha accords. The French still had a half a para-battalion in Kigali, supposedly to protect the European expatriate community, and they also provided military advisers, both in and out of uniform, to the major units of the
RGF
. France was the only member on the
UN
Security Council that had demonstrated a clear interest in Rwanda. Keeping the French ambassador informed was important—the possibility of a
UN
deployment hung in the balance.

To my delight, during our first meeting at his residence, Ambassador Jean-Phillippe Marlaud was open and friendly, showing none of the usual arrogance that I had encountered with French officials on other occasions. He had only been in Rwanda since March 1993, and he seemed determined to further the objectives of the Arusha accords. He listened to me carefully, expressed genuine enthusiasm for my nascent ideas and even looked over my reconnaissance plan. He was the only person in Rwanda other than Ly to demonstrate more than a superficial interest in my work and its details. He believed
that it was imperative to find some means of reassuring the Rwandan people on September 10. Even a simple gesture might allay their fears.

As I survived the rounds of political meetings, Brent and Tiko were busy assessing the military situation. The huge Fijian, who had served in Kashmir, Sinai, Lebanon and Somalia, among other places, had a seemingly inexhaustible stock of war stories and equally inexhaustible good humour. A few days into the trip, we travelled together to meet with the senior leadership of the
RPF
north of the demilitarized zone in Mulindi, sixty kilometres north of Kigali. As we drove through the blue-green countryside, my thoughts turned to Major Paul Kagame, the military leader of the
RPF
. I was curious to meet the man who had turned a ragtag group of guerrilla fighters into a force capable of holding its own against French soldiers in the field, not once but twice.

We passed a constant stream of pedestrians, women in brightly coloured dresses, swaying gracefully under the large parcels balanced on their heads, often with small children tucked into shawls slung across their backs. Men pedalled handmade bicycles, fashioned from scrap wood and draped with all manner of vegetables. Gaggles of smiling boys in baggy cotton shorts drove cattle. The route was dotted with neat villages of terracotta, mud-brick cottages, the beauty of the landscape masking what I knew was desperate poverty.

And then, in the middle of this rural idyll, we came across a hellish reminder of the long civil war.

We smelled the camp before we saw it, a toxic mixture of feces, urine, vomit and death. A forest of blue plastic tarps covered an entire hillside where 60,000 displaced persons from the demilitarized zone and the
RPF
sector were tightly packed into a few square kilometres. When we stopped and got out of our vehicles, we were swarmed by a thick cloud of flies, which stuck to our eyes and mouths and crawled into our ears and noses. It was hard not to gag with the smell, but breathing through the mouth was difficult with the flies. A young Belgian Red Cross worker spotted us and interrupted her rounds to guide us through the camp. The refugees huddled around small open fires, a silent,
ghostlike throng that followed us listlessly with their eyes as we picked our way gingerly through the filth of the camp. I was deeply impressed by the young Belgian woman's calm compassion as she gently administered what aid she could to these desperate souls. It was obvious that she could see through the dirt and despair to their humanity.

The scene was deeply disturbing, and it was the first time I had witnessed such suffering unmediated by the artifice of
TV
news. Most shocking of all was the sight of an old woman lying alone, quietly waiting to die. She couldn't have weighed more than a dozen kilos. Pain and despair etched every line of her face as she lay amid the ruins of her shelter, which had already been stripped of its tarp and picked clean of its possessions. In the grim reality of the camp, she had been given up for dead and her meagre belongings redistributed among her healthier neighbours. The aid worker whispered that the old woman likely would not last the night. Tears stung my eyes at the thought of her dying alone with no one to love or comfort her.

As I stood struggling to regain my composure, I was surrounded by a group of the camp children, who were either laughing outright or smiling shyly at this strange white man in their midst. They had been playing soccer with a ball made out of dried twigs and vines, and they tugged at my pants, eager to have me join their game. I was awed by their resilience. It was too late for the old woman, but these children had a right to a future. I am not being melodramatic when I say that this was the moment when I personally dedicated myself to bringing a
UN
peacekeeping mission to Rwanda. Until that point, the exercise had been an interesting challenge and a potential route to a field command. As I climbed back into my vehicle, I knew that my primary mission now was to do my best to ensure Rwanda's peace for the sake of these children, and ease this suffering.

We soon passed the
RGF
checkpoint, eased our way through a marked minefield that delineated the front lines, and entered the demilitarized zone, which was an eerie place, dotted with villages that had been deserted by the displaced persons we had seen in the camp. They had been driven out by fighting in 1990, and their fields and farms were
beginning to be reclaimed by the luxuriant native plants and wildflowers. The air was filled with the raucous yet lonely cries of flycatchers and warblers. I would have loved to have gotten out of the vehicle and gone exploring, but we had been warned that this area was heavily mined. So we stuck to the road until we crossed the zone to
RPF
territory.

The
RPF
greeted us with an honour guard of about thirty Intore, or warrior dancers. Each of them wore a short underskirt of scarlet cotton draped with a piece of leopard-patterned cloth, and huge flowing headdresses made to resemble lions' manes. Their bare chests were ornamented with beads, around their ankles were clusters of tiny bells, and in their hands, they carried ceremonial shields and spears. Tossing their heads and twisting their bodies, they leapt effortlessly into the air like a flock of giant birds, their sweat-streaked torsos gleaming in the sunlight. They danced, drummed and sang for about twenty minutes and ended with a flourish, presenting their weapons to us. Their display wove the discipline and precision of a well-trained modern army with an ancient warrior tradition, setting the tone for what was to follow.

The
RPF
was using the large complex of buildings belonging to a deserted tea plantation as its headquarters. We drove up a hill lush with unharvested tea and halted in front of a graceful old house with a huge veranda overlooking a formal garden slowly going to ruin. The air was laden with the fragrance of flowers. Inside, we were given a warm welcome by the
RPF
political and military leadership, including its chairman, Alexis Kanyarengwe, who was plump and bright-eyed and wore a difficult smile; its senior political officer, Pasteur Bizimungu, who was both impatient and eloquent; and Paul Kagame, who seemed more like a stern college professor than a rebel army commander. They led us to a large living room that had been stripped of its domestic furnishings and now functioned as a meeting place.

The trio of Kanyarengwe, Bizimungu and Kagame presented an interesting study in contrasts, and each was very effective in his own way. Kanyarengwe, the
RPF
's titular head, was a Hutu and seemed a little uneasy with his leadership role, constantly checking for the reactions of the others after making a remark. Still, he proved to be solid, serious and well-organized. Bizimungu was the
RPF
's public political
face. He had been a senior civil servant during Habyarimana's regime and as such had been jailed and tortured when he sought to expose its worst excesses. He, too, was a Hutu, passionate, argumentative and inflexible, devoid of real charisma. Then there was Kagame, easily the most interesting of the three, although he was the most self-contained. Almost stereotypically Tutsi, he was incredibly thin and well over six feet tall; he towered over the gathering with a studious air that didn't quite disguise his hawk-like intensity. Behind his spectacles, his glistening charcoal eyes were penetrating, projecting his mastery of the situation.

Most of the group, senior officers included, behaved with quiet confidence and dignity. When we took breaks, they were never idle but talked over points among themselves. The atmosphere was Spartan: there were no flags, pictures or decorations of any kind and no indulgences like alcohol or cigars. We sat at a long table in the centre of the room; three rows of benches were filled with staff officers and civilian leaders observing the meeting.

The
RPF
was unanimous in its support for Arusha. The chairman stressed that we had to act rapidly to avoid the “gangrene,” or wasting away, of the agreement. He also conveyed his concern over the growth and activities of paramilitary groups within Rwanda. He said that if the
UN
was to form the neutral peacekeeping force mandated by Arusha, the
UN
had to guarantee the security of the
RPF
leaders when they came to Kigali to join the transitional government. He also insisted that the
UN
should pressure France to remove its soldiers from the country as soon as possible. He politely did not mention that the
RPF
, proudly African, actually preferred the notion of a peacekeeping force run by the
OAU
to one from the
UN
.