Shake Hands With the Devil (17 page)

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 African 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.

Even so, I was glad to be away from the
UN
headquarters and in the field, commanding troops and getting on with the job of surveillance along the 193 kilometres of unmarked border. Kabale is set amid rolling hills, a little bit of heaven on earth. There is one main street with a few shops and more churches than you can count. The local population seemed very appreciative of the U.S. dollars that we were pumping into the economy. We rented a large bungalow from one of the local businessmen to serve as our headquarters. It was on the edge of town and had enough land around it for us to construct a small heliport.

My second-in-command was a Zimbabwean colonel named Ben Matiwaza, a Zulu who had fought for several years against the Rhodesians in his country's war of independence and a veteran of the
OAU
mission to the demilitarized zone in Rwanda. As a former member of a rebel force, he knew how to sniff out
RPF
movements and offered terrific insights into their psychology. Willem de Kant, a young Dutch captain and a staff officer in the mission's operations room, briefed me on the status of the mission shortly after I arrived. I was immediately impressed by him.

The border was a sieve, riddled with little mountain trails that had been there for millennia. Given my tiny force of eighty-one observers and the fact that we had no access to helicopters with night-vision capability, the task of keeping the border under surveillance was at best symbolic. The troops, who were from the Netherlands, Hungary, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and nine other nations, worked with great determination and courage for months with or without the support of the
NRA
and the
RPF
.

There was one other snag, and maybe I should have taken it as a sign of things to come. My mandate, signed by the government, permitted me to range a hundred kilometres into Uganda, which put the town of Embarara within my area of verification. The Ugandan army was now insisting on a twenty-kilometre limit. I kept on negotiating. Embarara looked like a town out of the Wild West, with its wide dusty streets lined with one-storey buildings, large warehouses and a few bars. It was a transportation hub, and key to stopping the cross-border arms traffic. Intelligence reports had alerted us to weapons caches in the area. If we went after them, not only would we go a long way to securing the border and helping President Museveni detach himself from any implication that he was aiding the resupply of the
RPF
, but such an action was well within the mandate and the competence of my troops. After much futile talk and many messages to the
DPKO
, I was ordered to back off. I would have to let Embarara go.

Unamir's mandate was approved by the Security Council on October 5, and I was officially appointed force commander. I had been told and told again that the
UN
usually took up to six months to get a mission on the ground
after
the approval of the mandate and
if
there was a reasonable infrastructure to work with in the field. That was certainly not the case with Rwanda: fuel, food and spare parts were in the hands of a few well-placed individuals who expected the
UN
to pay through the nose for what it needed. As far as I was concerned, we had already missed the first Arusha deadline by almost a month and this wouldn't do. I had spent time in Kabale, overseeing
UNOMUR
. I had a strong team in place and could rely on it to do what it was able to do within the limitations and with the few resources we had. It was time I turned my attention to Rwanda.

I had no headquarters in Kigali, no chief of staff, and the political head of the mission had yet to be appointed. With me in Kabale, however, were some fine officers already familiar with the players in the conflict and who would surely be a help to me. I thought that if I could get a few of us on the ground in Kigali, I might be able to force the pace at which the
UN
moved and get the mission up and running faster. Since I was already in theatre, I insisted that my
DPKO
superiors allow me to go in.

I booked a flight out of Kampala for the morning of October 21
and planned to take Captain Willem de Kant as my aide-de-camp, along with a few carefully selected, capable officers. Before heading to the hotel, we went to the airport to check on the schedule and our status and found out that we'd been put on some kind of standby list, even though we all had tickets in our hands. I searched out an airport chap and threw down fifty dollars, telling him, “We've got to be on that plane, make it happen!” Later that night, we got a phone call confirming that all four of us were on the plane.

When we got to the airport the next day, we were told that the flight had all kinds of room now. Overnight there had been a
coup d'état
in Burundi, and as a result, the plane was not going to continue on from Kigali. Everything had changed. Not only would the coup in Burundi shake the fragile political situation in Rwanda, but the stable southern flank, which I had relied on in my mission plan, had vanished.

On the plane, on the last leg of a trip that would change my whole life and that of my young family, I was neither melancholy nor fearful. I wanted this command and I would throw everything I had at it. As we landed at Kigali's bright and modern airport, I thought of my father and also of Beth's dad, the colonel, and I wondered about what must have gone through their minds fifty-odd years ago as they were about to land in England and enter their first theatre of war.