On April 18, I awoke to machine-gun fire and the sound of exploding grenades. The Force HQ was under bombardment. Today was the day that Luc was leaving with the Belgian contingent. He had been one of the first on the ground, and his steady nerves and professionalism, his rock-solid moral sense, had provided me with a certain feeling of confidence, even security. He was handing over airport security to Colonel Yaache, the Ghanaian commander in the demilitarized zone, and Yaache and I met with Luc at 0800 to discuss the last details. Luc did not look well. The fatigue, the stress, the physical and mental pain and the crushing weight of his Kigali Sector command had finally worn him down, and he stood before me slightly hunched and short of breath. I could see the shame, sorrow and uncertainty of his position reflected in his eyes. But he soon straightened his back and got on with the job at hand, conveying the necessary information.
I had wanted to have a little leave-taking ceremony for Luc at the airport, but the RPF had vetoed that, so we made do at the Force HQ, presenting Luc with the UNAMIR VIP gift of a wooden statuette of a traditional Rwandan warrior. (We had bought a few of these impressive statuettes before the war; we later found the bodies of the Tutsi carvers slaughtered in their shop.) I know my words were inadequate to thank him for the services he had performed for the mission and for the people of Rwanda.
The Belgian government had offered Faustin sanctuary, and Luc had already stashed the prime minister designate in the APC. Before Luc left, I took him aside to try to express privately how sorry I was about the loss of KIBAT and to thank him for leaving us with Belgian equipment, weapons, supplies and ammunition. I was about to tell him how proud I was of him and how sad I was at his departure when several artillery and mortar rounds landed inside the Force HQ compound and the stadium. Glass broke all around us, and for a moment panic reigned. More than a dozen people were killed, and more than a hundred were wounded, including a Ghanaian blue beret, but the drills we had practised served the situation well and things calmed down.
Then Luc said his quick goodbyes and was gone.
As I sat down amongst the crowd of military and civilians waiting for either a direct hit or an end to the bombardment, the full realization of his departure struck me with a potent sense of loss, and something more bitter. Dewez and his two hundred paras would be gone tomorrow, as well. The former colonial masters were running from this fight with their tails between their legs.
People were huddling in every corner of the main hall. I’d been able to come up with enough sandbags to protect the satellite system, but we had not been able to reinforce the doors and windows. Around me were young children with tears in their eyes, trying to be brave; poorly clothed men and women, using their bodies to make human shields to protect their kids; soldiers smoking nervously, flinching slightly with each explosion. If a round were to hit the front or the back of the building, there would be a horrific mess of human arms, legs and brains.
The bombardment lasted an hour. When it stopped, Brent and I made a quick survey of the damage: broken windows, a part of the outside kitchen wall blasted away, a number of vehicles in the compound damaged but most still workable. As we made our way back to the office, Brent looked through a broken panel on the roof and saw an unexploded 120-millimetre mortar bomb wedged between some pipes. He passed on the job of safely removing it to one of the Polish engineer officers who had witnessed the Gikondo Parish Massacre. We found out later that he had simply picked up the unexploded bomb and carried it through the building, out of the compound and across the street where he set it down. It could have exploded at any time. Brent suspected he had suffered psychological damage and had a death wish after witnessing the Gikondo massacre. The officer was repatriated shortly afterwards, not the last psychological casualty of UNAMIR.
Rgf troops were still billeted at the airport and in Camp Kanombe nearby, but during the French and Belgian evacuation operations, they had been prevented from engaging in any military action at the airport by well-armed foreign troops. We now had neither the mandate nor the muscle of these troops, and when the Belgians flew away, the RGF moved back into the airport. If the RGF didn’t sign the airport neutrality agreement by the next day, April 19, we would have to cohabit with them in a worsening security situation. Their presence at the airport would also draw RPF fire, leaving us and any humanitarian resupply or evacuation flights much too vulnerable for comfort.
I had meetings with the RGF that day to move them toward turning the airport completely over to UNAMIR as neutral ground so that we could support our force and bring in humanitarian aid for Rwandans. The RPF would agree with the proposal only if the RGF complied with airport neutrality. Meanwhile, I was worried about the last two convoys of our Ghanaians coming in from the demilitarized zone. They were terribly exposed, driving slow-moving vehicles that were prone to breakdowns along a route that was open to ambush. An overnight stop would bring them in too late to arrive before the departure of the last of Dewez’s Belgian battalion.
At a ceasefire meeting late in the day, Gatsinzi and Ndindiliyimana took a new hardline stance. Previously they had both agreed on making the airport a neutral zone, and had even accepted participation by the RPF on a joint commission to supervise the application of the agreement. Now they rejected the neutrality proposal and objected to the RPF being part of the discussions. The airport was a national infrastructure, they argued, and must be under RGF control. They became particularly defensive about the RPF precondition that demanded the outright condemnation and imprisonment of all Presidential Guards; some weren’t involved in the massacres, they said. Ndindiliyimana even insisted that the slaughter had dramatically declined—a ridiculous statement. I suspected they were now being forced to dance to the extremist tune.
The possibility of a ceasefire started to recede. Someone had obviously got to the two generals. As for the RPF monolith, it was absolutely plain that they didn’t want a ceasefire. But why? They knew the slaughter was escalating. They knew that we were diminished by the departure of the Belgians and even more limited in our movement and interventions because of the militias. They knew now that the moderates had lost all possibility of influencing the outcome. Why destroy the ceasefire negotiations? It meant the killings wouldn’t stop, and any humanitarian aid would be in jeopardy. I had to confront Kagame.
Late that afternoon, I received a message from Dewez. He had been ordered to accelerate the departure of the remaining Belgian troops. To buy time for the Ghanaians to get down from the demilitarized zone, for three days Luc Marchal had ignored direct orders from the Belgian chief of staff to get out. Now Dewez was having to pull out and the Ghanaians had not yet taken over all of the Belgian positions at the airport. I was afraid that if there was a gap in occupation, the RGF would move in and take total control. The last aircraft would leave sometime early the next morning. Then we would be alone.
Code Cable 1173, signed by Riza for the triumvirate, arrived that night under the heading “Status of UNAMIR.” In essence, the message was simple: If the RPF and the RGF wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire by nine the next morning New York time, UNAMIR was to start its withdrawal. There was no discussion of any of the other options. The cable went on to ask for our assessment of the consequences of the withdrawal on those who had “taken refuge” at our sites. I noted the use of the phrase “taken refuge” as opposed to “under UN protection.” The cable stated, “We feel that appropriate handover arrangements should be negotiated with both sides.” I could not imagine how anyone at the UN could believe that these desperate Rwandans would be safe in the hands of either of the belligerents. I wondered about information Booh-Booh was sending to New York over his satellite phone.
I had no choice but to set Henry, Brent and our staff to the task of preparing for our evacuation, and turned my mind to producing a risk assessment for the DPKO on the consequences of total withdrawal. But I needed to know whether Booh-Booh and his staff had anything to do with this new turn and headed off in the pre-dawn with Dr. Kabia
to the Meridien hotel. There was considerable shelling going on around the airport, mostly directed at Camp Kanombe by the RPF. All was quiet in the hotel lobby; people were still sleeping or simply too weak to get up. We walked up to the top floor through crowded corridors and stairwells to find ourselves in the clean, dark solitude of Booh-Booh’s emptied floor, where a lone UN security officer stood guard at his door.
Booh-Booh looked troubled. When I started to review the cable with him, it was clear that he was already aware of its content. I told him that total withdrawal was out of the question—we needed to keep the UN flag flying in Kigali, even if only to bear witness. He replied that I was to stop arguing and prepare to withdraw as ordered to Kenya, where UNAMIR could operate out of Nairobi. What followed was a va-et-vient of opinion, spiced by Mamadou Kane’s interventions on the side of his master, including the charge that I was fear-mongering. Exasperated, Booh-Booh turned to Dr. Kabia and asked him point-blank to state his position on the matter. I suddenly saw that the future of UNAMIR hung totally on what Dr. Kabia would say.
It seemed to take an eternity for him to speak, but when he did, he wholeheartedly supported my proposal to retain a skeleton force of 250 inside the country. We could not totally abandon the Rwandans. To give him credit, Booh-Booh agreed without flinching, but Kane shot looks at me that could have killed. Dr. Kabia knew just how crucial his support had been, and over the roar of the car engine as we drove back to Force HQ, he told me that he had no regrets. We were doing the right thing, or as right a thing as we could do given the circumstances.
As if to drive home the stakes, before I left that morning for a last-ditch attempt to persuade both sides to agree to the ceasefire, Tiko asked to meet with Henry and me to brief us on the situation in Gisenyi, the tourist town on Lake Kivu that had been the killing ground of Hutu extremists since the night of April 6. These are notes from that briefing, taken for me by Major Diagne, an officer from Senegal and a new addition to my personal staff:4
. . . by noon on the 7th, they were going house to house . . . they killed some people on the spot but carried others away to a mass grave near the airport where they cut their arms and legs and finally massacred them, as observed by the UNMOs. The Army and Gendarmerie did nothing to stop these killer-groups . . . they closed the border with Goma, Zaire. The UNMOs were threatened and they regrouped at the Meridien hotel where foreigners were massing for protection. Stories of massacres all over the region were reported by these eyewitnesses. A priest assembled in the church with about 200 children for protection, after prayers the killers opened the doors and massacred all of them . . . another chapel was burned with hundreds of people inside. Children between the ages of 10 to 12 years old killed children. Mothers with babies on their backs killed mothers with babies on their backs. They threw babies into the air and mashed them on the ground. At Rsumbura, 3 Belgian teachers, 2 males and 1 female, and 3 local priests were killed. On the night of the 8th, an expatriate convoy was allowed passage to Goma. On the 10th, Madame Carr, famous because of the movie Gorillas in the Mist left her house for the first time. She has been in Rwanda for more than 45 years. The 85-year-old woman said that what she saw was terrible. Madame Carr and 68 Americans, many students, left the country. UNMOs provided food and aid to those Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, at the Meridien. Were able to conduct some patrols but streets too littered with roadblocks and dead people. Ordered to evacuate on the 13th, spent two nights between Rwandan and Zaire border posts. Finally made way to Mkumba and moved to Kigali. Communications very bad.
I listened to the report without moving a muscle. It wasn’t shock any more at the horrific descriptions. Instead I now entered a sort of trance state when I heard such information; I’d heard so much of it over the past two weeks that it simply seemed to pile up in my mind. No reaction any more. No tears, no vomit, no apparent disgust. Just more cords of wood piling up waiting to be sawed into pieces in my mind. Much later, back in Canada, I was taking a vacation with my wife and children, driving down a narrow road on the way to the beach. Road workers had cut a lot of trees down on either side of the road and piled the branches up to be picked up later. The cut trees had turned brown, and the sawn ends of the trunks, white and of a fair size, were stacked facing the road. Without being able to stop myself, I described to my wife in great detail a trip I had had to make to the RPF zone, where the route had taken me through the middle of a village. The sides of the road were littered with piles upon piles of Rwandan bodies drying in the sun, white bones jutting out. I was so sorry that my children had no choice but to listen to me. When we got to the beach, my kids swam and Beth read a book while I sat for more than two hours reliving the events reawakened in my mind. What terrible vulnerability we have all had to live with since Rwanda.
I got to the Diplomates at about 1130. I was not optimistic about the chances of making any headway with the RGF on the ceasefire, since Bizimungu had finally taken up his appointment as army chief of staff, replacing Gatsinzi, and no one would ever call Bizimungu a moderate. Bagosora was usually ensconced in an office at the hotel that had a clear view of the lobby, where petitioners and business people lined up to see him, but he was nowhere in sight.
Bizimungu, a short, well-rounded man with an aggressive expression and a well-kept uniform, came into the lobby to greet me. His eyes were bright, even shining, but they did not project confidence nor mastery of the situation. We shook hands and spoke niceties to one another as we headed to the conference room to the left of the lobby. We settled on separate sofas; at my back was a wall of windows giving out to the hotel gardens, where Presidential Guards were patrolling. I was surprised that he met with me alone, but nothing he said to me was the least bit surprising. Sitting on the edge of the sofa in order to maintain a certain height advantage over me, he launched into a litany of complaint. He was quite annoyed that the international media and press were being manipulated by the RPF propaganda machine, making the RGF and the interim government out to be the bad guys. Why was no one reporting the fact that the RPF had initiated considerable massacres behind their lines, a case in point being the wholesale slaughter of all the RGF officers’ families in the Byumba zone, including the family of the minister of defence. Bizimungu wanted to be interviewed and soon, as he had things to say. (And in fact the next day I brought the media with me to my meeting with him, but the only thing he showed himself to be was a hawk and a fighter and hardly a credible source of information that might change anyone’s mind about who might be the good guys in the situation.)
When I pressed him on the issues of stopping the atrocities, the ceasefire and airport neutrality, he said he was not totally au fait as of yet but that he would get me an answer from the government soon. I returned to the Force HQ full of an unreasonable disappointment. Bizimungu had merely confirmed the scenario I had already expected: he was going to fight, the massacres would continue, and between the self-interested powers dominating the Security Council and the gun-shy secretariat, the UN would do everything in its power to pull us out.
When I got back, Tiko called me on the net to brief me about the fate of the MILOBs and the nuns under their protection in Butare. A recent visit to Butare by Jean Kambanda and the Presidential Guard had stirred up the nastiest of fervours for eliminating the moderates and the Tutsis. The local (moderate) prefect had been fired and was probably already dead. The Interahamwe, under the supervision of Presidential Guards who had stayed on after the prime minister left, were killing indiscriminately. The MILOBs had been warned by some locals that their lives were in grave danger, and finally the MILOBs were asking to be pulled out. But they had about thirty Rwandan religious and locals under their wing and couldn’t leave them behind.
In the middle of the phone call, Brent waved at me urgently to tell Tiko that a Hercules aircraft was on its way to Butare. It would be there in an hour, so the MILOBs and their charges must make it to the short, grass runway at the edge of town. Tiko acknowledged this and ended the transmission.
Here is the resulting scene in Butare: Three UN SUVs, jam-packed with people, speed through town, crashing through a few minor barriers, and make it to the end of the runway. An angry crowd has given chase, hastening to the airfield clearly intending to slaughter everyone in the SUVs. With fear getting the better of them, the small unarmed band is scouting the sky desperately, looking for the Hercules. No sooner has the mob broken into the airport than they hear the sound of the four turboprop engines of the Herc, and the aircraft comes into view low to the ground, lining up for an emergency landing. The huge transport aircraft touches down, screaming to a grinding and slippery halt about two hundred metres from the UNMOs and their charges. With dust and dirt filling the air, the ramp is lowered, the engines loud and unforgiving to the ear, and the near-crazed troop—the MILOBs pulling, even carrying, nuns and children—rushes to the back of the plane.
At the other end of the airfield, the MILOBs can see that the crowd has grown significantly and can spot flashes of machine guns spitting bullets. The plane is taking some hits, and the loadmaster, vigorously waving for the passengers to hurry up, is ducking as the sharp crack of bullets surrounds him. The MILOBs want to bring their vehicles with them, but there’s no time to set up that ramp, so their furious drivers disable them. The aircraft is already turning and about to roll down the short grassy runway directly toward the crowd and the guns, with the last of the evacuees struggling to grab the ramp and be hauled into the plane. That the Herc could take off in the heat, with the increased load, on a shortened, unprepared runway, is a miracle. It was Stanleyville in the early sixties all over again. These scenes of heroism were happening all over the country.