The crowd that surrounded us stopped moving and stared at us menacingly: we were three non-African gentlemen, in dry clothes, sitting in an air-conditioned vehicle. As far as they were concerned, we had been elbowing them off the road down a rather steep slope or squeezing them against the side of the muddy hill. And now we had hit a cow.
But before I could open the door (still debating if I should), the cow staggered up in front of us, shaking its head and leaning slightly on the hood. It then dragged its owner off to the ravine side of the road, to the sudden laughter of everyone around.
I took a few very deep breaths before pushing on. My colleagues had been silent throughout the incident, but soon similar war stories from other conflict zones came pouring out of both of them, laced with black humour.
One last note on that visit: Riza and Baril had to leave as they had come, circuitously by road, because I still couldn’t guarantee their safety on the main route north to Kabale. They were picked up by helicopter at the Ugandan border and flown to Entebbe. There, a UN plane was supposed to carry them to Nairobi and beyond. Booh-Booh was now established in Nairobi and was hopping all over the continent, contacting African governments to ask for troops, even though that was a job that needed to be coordinated out of the DPKO. He had demanded that staff in Nairobi rent him a house so he could live in proper ambassadorial style but was ordered to make do on his various trips with only one aide. Riza and Maurice were temporarily stranded in Entebbe because Booh-Booh had commandeered the aircraft that was supposed to be seconded for their use.
Heavy negotiations were in full swing in New York regarding the problems of scrounging equipment and finalizing the troop-contributing nations. Ethiopia was still in, though I was very surprised that the Ethiopians were capable of sending a peacekeeping force, given that they were just finishing their own civil war and were not trained in peacekeeping—in fact, they were a rebel army, not a professional one. (Moen also passed on to me his concern that Rwandan Hutus might take Ethiopian peacekeepers the wrong way, as they were viewed as being genetically linked to the Tutsis, though neither the interim government nor the RGF ultimately raised any objections.) But the days of calling upon the dozen or so veteran troop-contributing nations were over and, in desperation, complete neophytes were being thrust into some of the most complex operations ever managed by the UN. I thought this was not only technically wrong, but ethically wrong in some cases. Booh-Booh had even gone looking for troops in some nations where I’d be surprised if the politicians could spell the words “human rights.”
Between the visit of Riza and Maurice and June 6, I sent the DPKO three separate assessments regarding the way events could unfold and how that might affect the mission and future deployment. For days on end I sent reconnaissance teams out in large numbers to gather any possible field intelligence. I even created a small fifth column of four UNMO teams chosen by Tiko, who received orders from me personally. They were exceptionally courageous officers who became precious assets in my search for operational information. They also conducted delicate missions between the various players, including the RGF moderates, Kagame and me.
I again reported to the DPKO my fear that the RGF, faced with defeat, might receive instructions from the interim government to commence a slow thinning out and withdrawal of military and militia forces west into Zaire in order to fight another day. By making a strategic withdrawal westward, they could pursue their policy of scorched humans while moving the bulk of the Hutu population ahead of them into exile in the surrounding provinces of Zaire. Many powerful members of the extremist regime were alive and well in France and even Belgium. They were in touch with the interim government as well as the Rwandan ambassador to the UN and could be tapped to come to the aid of extremists at home. Half a million Rwandans had already flowed into Tanzania, where they lived under the tacit control of the extremists; I thought we could expect four to five times that number to move into the Kivu province of Zaire. I needed up-to-date information on the movements of large numbers of internally displaced persons in the western part of the country in order to help them in situ and prevent this massive human exodus. Repeated requests to Western nations for aerial photographs and satellite pictures fell on deaf ears. (Later, the Russians were prepared to sell me satellite images, but I had no budget for such an expenditure and could persuade no one to give me one.) I had no choice but to employ my UNMOs, putting their lives at risk every day, in order to keep up with the interim government and the state of the masses of displaced Rwandans, who were dying in droves from hunger, fatigue and sickness along the escape routes or were being weeded out and executed by the machete strokes of the extremists. If the refugees made it to Zaire, the extremists most likely would be running the camps in no time, preparing for revenge. If such a scenario came to pass, it would not only guarantee instability in Rwanda for years to come but destabilize the entire region.
Still, for a brief time I felt as if we were on a bit of a roll. The day after Maurice and Riza left, carrying with them a report that basically endorsed everything I had been saying about how to proceed, I got a copy of the report of the UN Human Rights Commission’s Special Session on Rwanda in Geneva. The session recognized without hesitation that this horror show in Rwanda was a human rights violation and that the world should be acting to stop it. The session agreed to send in a team, which would arrive in early June, to begin the investigation to determine who the perpetrators of the genocide were.
I was fascinated to find out that at the Geneva meeting (which happened at the same time as Riza and Maurice were with me in Kigali), the United States, France, Germany and Australia had all issued statements that acknowledged the horrors taking place in Rwanda, but none of them offered concrete help. Geraldine Ferraro, who led the U.S. delegation, actually announced that she supported UNAMIR’s efforts. The French claimed that the word “genocide” was not too strong to classify the events in Rwanda. Lucette Michaux-Chevry, the French minister of human rights, declaimed to the assembled diplomats, “As requested by France, the Security Council had significantly expanded UNAMIR.” She patted her nation on the back shamelessly: “Without delay, France had provided exceptional assistance to the victims of the conflict.” Yes, I thought, to the French expatriates who wanted to flee and to members of the Habyarimana family.
Around this time we received a fax from the Canadian Association of African Studies in Montreal informing us that members of Faustin’s family were still alive in Kigali and asking if UNAMIR could do something. This request may seem unusual seven weeks into the genocide, but during the last week of May, General Kagame also sent word to me that ten members of his extended family were still in hiding in the city. How was it possible that he, the bitterest foe of the extremists, still had surviving family in this extremist-controlled ghost town? We sent UNMOs to the places where Faustin’s and Kagame’s relatives were hiding. We managed to save Faustin’s brother-in-law with help from the Red Cross. In the case of Kagame’s relatives, my MILOBs went to the house, knocked on the door, checked around and found no one. They decided to try again the next day, but when they returned they discovered only bodies lying on the floor. Somebody had obviously noticed the MILOBs’ visit and had staked out the house, flushing out the family. These were the kind of situations that absolutely haunted us: by going to help we sometimes imperilled those we hoped to save.
As I had guessed from my private session with Ndindiliyimana, late May marked the last gasp of the moderates. One day at the HQ I received a letter from Rusatira and Gatsinzi, passed to me in secret. They told me they were living in the south with some former students of the military school, and they wanted me to tell Kagame that when the RPF got to them, they would not resist and did not want to be attacked. When I conveyed the message, Kagame was not impressed. As far as he was concerned, these men should have publicly resisted the extremists right from the start and now had to accept the consequences for themselves, their few living supporters and their families.
The first successful transfer happened on May 27, organized impeccably by Clayton Yaache and the humanitarian cell. We moved RPF sympathizers from the Mille Collines to a town southeast of Kigali, and Hutus from the Amahoro to a drop-off point outside the city, which was still in RGF hands—about three hundred people in total. I wanted to be part of the first transfer and joined the RPF convoy because we thought it might run into the most trouble. I made sure that everyone knew I was part of that convoy, and we passed through checkpoints without incident. When we got to the town where the refugees were to be handed over, crowds were waiting to greet them. There was such an explosion of pent up emotion—so much hugging and crying—that these hungry people hadn’t even touched the meal that had been laid out for them as I headed back to my headquarters. (On my way back to Kigali that day, I met the little boy who so deeply tested my resolve about orphans, an encounter I described in the introduction of this book.)
The transfer the other way was also successful, though the convoy was fired upon at the Kadafi Crossroads. The RPF held the hills on the east side, overlooking the bridge, and the RGF was dug in on the west. There was no welcoming party to greet these souls when they reached the drop-off point, which was just a spot on the road to Gitarama, about seven kilometres outside Kigali. The RGF personnel simply told the people to start walking.
We had another transfer planned for the next day, but we decided to postpone it. We needed to improve protection on the trucks and arrange for RGF observers to scrutinize the selection of their people at the Amahoro Stadium so that they could be sure the transfer was done fairly and freely. I found it ironic that we had gotten the undisciplined Interahamwe to observe the transfer truce only to have the other transfer fired upon by the RPF.
I kept my UNMOs busy trying to fill in all the blanks regarding what was happening in Rwanda and making regular rounds to all our protected sites. There were two areas of the country where information was really sketchy. One was in and around Gisenyi, close to the Zairean border. That area was significant because I had been told that the interim government was moving its members there. The second area was in Cyangugu, on the western side of the huge southern forest. We’d heard that large pockets of Tutsis were hiding out in the forest and that others had been massacred. I needed to know where the government was moving to and what was happening at the border at Goma because I’d also heard that large quantities of arms and ammunition were coming through the border. In the south I was concerned mostly about keeping some kind of handle on the humanitarian situation, though I also wanted to check out a rumour that there had been some French-speaking white males spotted in Cyangugu. I wondered whether we might see an increase in white mercenaries being brought in on the RGF side. In order to get more hard data, I sent two large reconnaissance teams of UNMOs to both places. Later I would find out that the gang going to Gisenyi encountered thirty-eight major roadblocks where the militia members were barely able to restrain their hatred of all things UN. The team headed to Cyangugu had to negotiate through fifty-two roadblocks.
We didn’t have the manpower to guard most of the sites around Kigali where people were gathered in an effort to be safe. I sent patrols several times a day to the orphanages, schools and churches to check on security and drop off food and supplies, but finally the need was so dire, especially at the orphanages, that I ordered MILOBs to start spending the nights with the most-threatened refugees. My hope was that the MILOBs’ presence would deter the killers and, just as at the Mille Collines, it seemed to work. We also safely evacuated some seven hundred Zaireans and Tanzanians who had been holed up at their embassies and had run out of food.
On May 30, at our headquarters, we held the first ceasefire negotiation meeting aimed at gaining consensus on Riza’s idea of declaring an intent to reach a ceasefire. Like old times, it was a security nightmare, but at least we had finally gotten the belligerents to meet face to face and to profess good intentions. The most surprising development of the day came from Ephrem Rwabalinda, the RGF liaison officer to UNAMIR, who asked whether UNAMIR could help find ways to reduce the tensions between the factions, including taking action against hate radio. He said he wanted all radio broadcasts toned down, which was an incredible statement to be uttered on behalf of the RGF. (Later, Rwabalinda was killed in an ambush while going over to the RPF.)
That day I also received word that Brian Atwood, the U.S. undersecretary for foreign aid, was in Nairobi, and I insisted that he needed to meet with me. His schedule was tight, but I arranged to see him for a couple of hours in the VIP lounge at the airport in Nairobi. I flew out early on the morning of May 31, climbing aboard a Hercules aircraft for the first time since being in Rwanda. My uniform was relatively clean and pressed but did not smell all that wonderful. About the rest of me, all I can say is that I’d washed my neck and my arms up to the elbows.
At takeoff, instead of climbing into the air, the Hercules immediately swooped off the edge of the plateau and down into a valley. The passengers, all from UNAMIR, were crammed in the aircraft and sitting on flak jackets and blankets; some even wore their steel helmets to protect them from stray bullets. Sitting up in the cockpit, I got my initiation in nap-of-the-earth flying. We followed valleys and skimmed the tops of mountains, nearly picking bananas off the trees, until we hit the Tanzanian border. We then flew northeast to Kenya at a normal altitude. I was queasy, and the people in the back were throwing up. The pilots were clearly proud of themselves—I hope for their flying skills and not for how many of us got sick as a result of their evasion tactics.
At the airport in Nairobi, I nearly had to fight my way into the VIP lounge because I was apparently missing certain papers I hadn’t known I needed. The mix-up only reinforced my opinion of the airport staff—the same ones to whom I had paid several U.S. dollars the previous October to be able to board an aircraft to take over command of my mission.
Atwood arrived about fifteen minutes after I did, trailing a large entourage. I launched into him, laying out on the table between us my commander’s tactical map. There was no substitute for U.S. logistical capacity and no doubt in my mind of the dominance of the United States in the Security Council, I said. I insisted that the United States should provide the equipment and the airlift capability for UNAMIR 2. I then proceeded to describe my concept of operations in detail, and for one of the first times in public, I warned that if the millions of Rwandans on the move to the west pushed into Zaire and Burundi, the world would end up with a cataclysmic regional problem, not a Rwandan problem. I needed immediately the means to prevent that vast exodus. I told him that the fighting in Kigali was not over and that heavy ammunition was still coming into Rwanda, particularly on the RGF side—the embargo that had been established on May 17 was useless, as it was not being implemented. Atwood was a friendly, easygoing chap, but the keeners travelling with him kept pushing me for “clarification.”
Finally Atwood asked me for my bottom line, as Americans are wont to do. I replied, “Send the equipment to put the peacekeeping troops effectively on the ground last week. Without the equipment, UNAMIR can do nothing. Without the strategic lift of the United States, no one will ever get there.”
We shook hands, and as he left, he told me he would do his best. I sat for a time in the dark, wood-panelled lounge, feeling as if I had just been interrogated by the court and was now awaiting my sentence. One of my UNMOs had gone down to the canteen and bought me a sandwich—I had not tasted fresh bread for nearly two months. I got on the Hercules and flew back to Kigali willing that sandwich to stay down.
Mid-afternoon that day, to the now usual cacophony of small-arms fire and artillery noise, I completed my thirty-four-page reassessment of the situation and sent it off to New York. And then I found out that Captain Diagne Mbaye of Senegal had been hit by mortar fragments fired by the RPF at an RGF roadblock while he was bringing back a message for me from Bizimungu. Diagne was dead before he hit the dashboard. He was the MILOB who had saved Prime Minister Ag
athe’s children, and in the weeks since, he had personally saved the lives of dozens upon dozens of Rwandans. Braving direct and indirect fire, mines, mobs, disease and any number of other threats, he eagerly accepted any mission that would save lives. In our HQ we observed a minute of silence in his honour, and on June 1 we held a small parade for him at the airport, behind sandbags, with the sound of artillery fire in our ears. His body was flown home, wrapped in a blue refugee tarp, another hero of Rwanda. As one of his fellow MILOBs said, “He was the bravest of us all.” The BBC’s Mark Doyle, who considered Diagne a friend, recently wrote to me, “Can you imagine the blanket media coverage that a dead British or American peacekeeper of Mbaye’s bravery and stature would have received? He got almost none.” (Doyle did write about him much later in Granta magazine.)
June 1. I decided to enlist the help of the Gendarmerie to go look for a safer westward route out of the city, one that would avoid the RPF gauntlet and the RGF no man’s land. We took a fairly large loop through some pretty rough trails. The rain fell so hard during the rainy season that it didn’t have time to sink in, eroding the roads and leaving behind inches of slippery mud. On our trek we reached a washout on the slope of a hill and tried to run it. One of the vehicles slid and tumbled away down the hill. Luckily, nobody was injured.
We abandoned the vehicle that had tumbled, taking the distributor cap out of it so it couldn’t be easily appropriated. About a week later, one of my UNMOs saw the truck in the hands of the RPF. The vehicle had been smeared with mud to try to camouflage the UN markings. The RGF also spotted the vehicle and concluded that this was simply another way that UNAMIR was favouring the RPF. Eight of our vehicles had been abandoned in various parts of the country by this point, and I had to commence a campaign of negotiation to get the RPF not to use them.