Shake Hands With the Devil (77 page)

The first small batch of Ghanaian reinforcements had been dropped off at Entebbe only to find that our supposed reception and training site was non-functional (we still had no budget for it, just a million administrative excuses from
UN
staff). They were eventually bused to Rwanda and we put them up in the military school in Camp Kigali, where they dug themselves in.

Later that day, Lafourcade sent me an urgent message that he wanted me to deliver immediately to Kagame. He had serious concerns about the northwestern part of the country, essentially the
RGF
area from Ruhengeri west to the Zairean border. There were hundreds of thousands of displaced people in that area and they were fidgety from fear of the
RPF
. He wanted Kagame to stop his advance. An exodus to Goma would complicate things with the Zaireans and make it impossible for the belligerents to reach a political accord.

Kagame reacted as if Lafourcade's letter confirmed every suspicion he had of Turquoise's agenda—clearly it was political, not humanitarian, he charged. He told me to remind Lafourcade that all the
RGF
had to do to stop his advance was agree to the unilateral ceasefire—unlike his opponents, Kagame said, he was not targeting civilians. As far as he was concerned, the movement of displaced persons was a reaction to extremist propaganda and therefore not his responsibility. Lafourcade was furious.

Kagame did acquiesce to the request to move a French liaison team into Force
HQ
, perhaps realizing how much more effective it would make me as intermediary between himself and Turquoise. Lieutenant Colonel Francis and Commandant Pierre arrived on July 11 on a Canadian Hercules flight with their vehicles and equipment. They were immediately escorted to my
HQ
, where they set up shop not far from my office. Although they received curious looks from the heavy
RPF
presence at the airport and along the route to headquarters, all went smoothly. The two officers were friendly, cooperative and respectful, but since my Force
HQ
was in
RPF
territory, the officers agreed to be confined to the headquarters for the time being, both to keep them safe and because I did not want them to conduct intelligence operations against the
RPF
that would violate
UNAMIR
's neutrality. Within hours of their arrival, we had a dependable and secure communications link between Turquoise and
UNAMIR
2.

As the
RPF
had moved in, Kigali had been nearly abandoned, save for the militia-populated communes in the poorest suburbs of the city. Now increasing numbers of displaced persons were starting to enter the city. Some were coming home but others seemed to be squatters. It was not unusual to see
RPF
soldiers evicting people from an abandoned home and then moving others into it. (We didn't know whether they were original owners who had survived the genocide, or whether they were merely friends of the
RPF
movement.) As the days went by, a large number of Tutsi refugees and diaspora came to Kigali and settled in.

The influx worried Khan, who thought it would destabilize the country. I took him on an extensive tour of all the nearby hellholes. Neither he nor I enjoyed swerving around corpses and bundles of rags left on the streets, but the vestiges of the barbaric handiwork of the militias was everywhere. Though the Amahoro Stadium was still full, several of our protected sites were now empty or occupied by only a few hundred people still in dire need of aid. One orphanage in the Butare area still harboured over six hundred children along with a makeshift hospital that had thirty-five casualties confined to beds and a large number of ambulatory patients. One German doctor and two nurses
were running the place with assistance from some of the healthier adults. Yaache and the MamaPapas had been in contact with
UNICEF
to arrange deliveries of food and water. Many of the kids were so psychologically damaged that they were immobile, sitting here, there and everywhere and reacting to nothing, even the hundreds of flies that clustered at every orifice of their bruised, dirty and frail bodies. The eyes in their thin faces seemed to blaze at you like lasers, projecting beams of energy that burned right into your heart.

Around this time the little sleep I got at night began to be completely invaded by nightmares of these children's accusing eyes, or gruesome scenes that I'd blocked out of my mind shortly after I'd witnessed them, or the ugly consequences of decisions I'd taken. My dreams often brought back in ghastly detail the ten dead Belgian soldiers piled in a bloody heap by the morgue door in that terrible hospital courtyard.

July 12 began with a major political statement from the
RPF
, the “Declaration of the
RPF
for the Installation of the Formal Institutions of Government.” The three-page document laid out modifications to the Arusha Agreement that generously favoured the
RPF
. Those ministerial and legislative positions previously held by the extremist parties would now accrue to the
RPF
. There would be no amnesty for members of the old regime or the military implicated in the genocide—they would face the full penalty of the law. Faustin Twagiramungu would be the new prime minister. Since the leaders of the other political parties had been murdered, it would be up to Faustin to propose suitable replacements in consultation with the president, who would be nominated by the
RPF
. The leaders of the
RPF
were moving very rapidly to build a government and a national army that would be instruments of their movement. Although they professed the new institutions would not be ethnic-based, it was becoming harder and harder to accept that line of argument when some of them quietly expressed disdain for the millions of Hutus now being pushed into living as both refugees and potential pawns to another round of war.

Faustin, back from Belgium, had made contact with the
UNAMIR
liaison team in Nairobi and asked for transport into Kigali. He came
home on July 14 on one of our Hercules flights. We had cleaned out a couple of the floors in the Meridien for the new mission staff. When Faustin said he had no accommodations in the capital and that the
RPF
had nothing to offer him, we set aside a suite for him, which he had to use as an office as well as living quarters for a while. We provided him with office supplies, typing support, long distance phone calls, food and even some transport. His surviving family was still scattered and he had to scavenge to survive, because the
RPF
was not yet supporting him in any way. His situation was not unique. As more of the surviving Rwandan officials came back to the city, we found ourselves putting up several of them in the Meridien. Everything in Kigali was either burned or otherwise destroyed, or had been looted, and with the
RPF
still sorting itself out, these officials needed help to open up their offices. Even the Supreme Court justice was operating out of his bedroom at the Meridien hotel.

Things were hopping on all fronts. Yaache and the humanitarian team were meeting with the bigger
NGO
s and agencies such as
UNICEF
,
WFP
,
MSF
and the
ICRC
to sort out how to restore the water system in Kigali. The civilian humanitarian staff moved to the
UNDP
building downtown, as space and communications were at a premium in the Force
HQ
. MamaPapa teams were moving over two hundred Hutu displaced persons from the Byumba camp into our Kigali safe sites for protection. Our
UNMO
s in Entebbe were having a hard time getting support from the airport authorities, who threatened to throw us out of the main complex because we were not paying our bills. The
UNMO
s were also having arguments with Brown and Root regarding the state of the American
APC
s and the contractor's logistics support plan for our battalions to be deployed across the country. A bright note was that the Australian recce party was still here, and busy considering where to put their field hospital. Since we agreed they had to serve the force but also be of maximum aid to the civilian population, they were looking at the main Kigali hospital. I immediately requested that the head of the recce party, Colonel Ramsay, contact his leaders back home and ask that he be given authority to take on—in fact, create—the position of
UNAMIR
's chief medical officer. Ramsay was keen. For the first time since the departure
of the Belgian medical field hospital, we would have a professional medical plan with the assets needed to support the force. The Australians were also bringing a company of infantry for close protection.

On July 14, my intelligence officer reported at morning prayers that the
RPF
was running two interrogation centres in Kigali and that summary executions were being conducted all day long. He could not get close to the well-guarded centres himself but believed his informants were reliable. Also, new recruits were being trained in Camp Kanombe—we were seeing more and more of them at the checkpoints. In eastern Rwanda, soldiers speaking only Swahili were conducting security checks and patrols. My intelligence officer believed they were
NRA
soldiers from Uganda.

On a trip that day to Bukavu and Goma, I met with five of the
RGF
moderates who had signed the “Kigame Nine” declaration, among them Gatsinzi and Rusatira, whom I was relieved to see again. They and their families had been evacuated to Zaire by the French after their declaration made them even more of a target for Hutu hard-liners. But the French were not supporting them, and they asked if I could give them some cash so they could buy food. They wanted to come back to Kigali and work on the reconciliation of the country; they insisted that they were not defectors to the
RPF
, but men who loved Rwanda. I promised to speak with Kagame about them. This time I offered my services as their guarantor if he let them back into the country. A couple of weeks later we brought them to Kigali, and the
RPF
set them up in the Milles Collines, where we fed them and provided security. The
RPF
left them to stew for a while, but finally integrated them into the new national army.

As we flew over Goma, I could see the massive movements of people flowing across the border (technically Gisenyi fell to the
RPF
on July 17, but it had already been under attack by the
RPF
). Lafourcade and I met for an hour or so in his logistics base. He estimated that about 300,000 people had already crossed into Zaire—Gendarmerie and militia groups among them—and were being directed to camps just north of the city. Neither he nor the government of Zaire had the capacity to aid them, and Lafourcade thought the number of refugees would soon hit one million.

Back at my helicopter, I was told that we could not take off from
the airport unless we paid a landing fee of $800 U.S.
UN
aircraft were supposed to be exempt from such fees, and I went into the tower building to negotiate with the manager. He told me to pay up in cash or we wouldn't be allowed to leave—and there were enough Zairean guards around the airport, armed to the teeth, to indicate his threat was very real. We pooled our money, but the bulk of the cash came from Phil. He was never reimbursed—the manager gave us no receipt and the
UN
did not accept our explanation of the expense, insisting that we should have refused to pay.

Late that night Khan and I received a code cable from the
DPKO
describing the Security Council deliberations on the new humanitarian catastrophe that was upon us. The French had requested that pressure be put on the
RPF
to stop its campaign and sign a ceasefire immediately, for humanitarian reasons. From the briefing notes prepared by Boutros-Ghali's senior adviser, Chinmaya Gharekhan, they all seemed to think that there was still a fight going on. But by now Ruhengeri had fallen and the
RGF
were on the run. It was too late to stop the debacle but more support for building up
UNAMIR
2 could prevent the same refugee scenario from happening in the south. The French had agreed to close the only road through the southwestern forest and mountains to try to stem the movement toward Cyangugu. I thought to myself that night that the way things were going, we were doomed to fail this operation as totally as we had failed the last one.

By this time the pressure of my absence and the nature of my mission were weighing far too heavily on my family and they hoped to see me before the end of summer, at least on leave. Boutros-Ghali did not want to change force commanders at this critical juncture, and wanted me to stay on until my scheduled end date in October. I proposed to go on leave near the end of August, so that I could have time with my kids before they went back to school, and then return to Rwanda until late September, when I'd hand over my job. I wanted Henry Anyidoho to replace me, and the
DPKO
was unanimous in its support of his candidacy. In the meantime, I proposed that a new deputy force commander and chief of staff be recruited in order to understudy Henry just before I went on leave.

Three days after I made my request, having first run it by Maurice, General de Chastelain approved my proposal, and supported my recommendation that Henry take over from me. I passed on the news to Khan, who was aware of my request to leave Kigali a few weeks early. He regretted my departure, but certainly understood the reasons, and thought that Henry would make a fine replacement.

Word arrived from our liaison team in Goma that the situation was very tense and the flow of refugees was increasing. The Zairean army had moved a parachute battalion to Goma to increase security. The French reported that the
RPF
were shooting into their advance positions east of Gisenyi with heavy weapons including artillery, and that the French had responded with a show of force using their close-attack fighter jets. The Zaireans were finally disarming the
RGF
at the border, stripping some of them of items such as machetes and rifles, but large weapon systems—artillery, heavy mortars, anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank systems—were being waved through and escorted north of the city. Neither the Zaireans nor the French were taking any measures to separate the militia, gendarmes or soldiers from the civilians as they crossed the border. Yaache spent the day in Goma with the
HAC
team,
UNREO
and the Turquoise humanitarian cell, attempting to coordinate efforts.
UNREO
formally passed the task of caring for the refugees outside Rwanda to the
UNHCR
, which bothered me. As media cameras were being drawn to the massive movement across the border, even less attention would be paid to the survivors of the genocide inside Rwanda.