At the tail end of February, one of our African MILOBs, who had been a teacher before joining the army, began visiting schools in remote parts of the country. At one school, he noticed the teachers undertaking an administrative exercise: they were registering the ethnic identities of their pupils and seating them according to who was Tutsi and who was Hutu. This struck him as bizarre, since children in Rwanda were not required to carry identity cards. As he visited other schools, he discovered that the same procedure was taking place. We mistakenly assumed that this was just another example of ethnicity at play in Rwanda.
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1. This was a body that UNAMIR had set up back in November, according to the Arusha agreement and chapter six procedures. It brought together the heads of the RGF, the Gendarmerie, and the RPF with UNAMIR in order to set the agenda and plan and approve such things as the details of the disengagement, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration of the security forces as called for in the Arusha accords.
9
EASTER WITHOUT A RESURRECTION OF HOPE
IN MARCH, THE rainy season began—welcome, soothing. It seemed to extend the lull in the violence sparked by Gatabazi’s assassination. The eight o’clock curfew was moved back to ten, and life returned to the city, but it was still clearly a time of covert preparations and hidden agendas.
The RGF was improving its defensive positions in garrisons just below the demilitarized zone and within the ten-kilometre radius of the KWSA. On a Sunday in late February, I had taken a helicopter to check up on an intelligence report. One of Tikoka’s Southern Sector observers who had been scouting around the refugee camps south of Butare had seen two green Kigali city buses being loaded with young men and boys. He followed the buses for as long as he could and speculated that they were headed toward the RGF camp at Gabiro, on the eastern side of the demilitarized zone close to Kagera National Park, the most secluded government forces outpost in the area.
I told the pilot to land just outside the Gabiro camp gates. The major who opened up for me was especially nervous about the surprise visit as his commander was away. He led me on a relatively deliberate tour of the camp; the day was balmy and there was absolutely nothing going on. In the medical dispensary, the shelves were bare save for a few bottles of alcohol and rolls of gauze. There were used bandages on the floor, dirty and fly-infested. The major told me that the camp had received no medical supplies and that up to 20 per cent of his troops were succumbing to malaria every month and had to be rotated out. As we walked by the barracks, I noticed a group of about a hundred young men dressed in civilian clothes sitting off to one side. I asked the major who they were, and he explained with a shrug that it was Sunday and many of the troops elected to wear civilian clothes.
We proceeded to the camp kitchen, which was under a canopy of thatch. The facilities consisted of four open fireplaces; suspended above each one was a huge, dirty, black cooking pot. By this time, some soldiers had drifted toward the kitchen from the barracks. Unkempt and dressed in worn fatigues, they looked bored and listless. They watched as I peeked into one of the evil-looking pots to find it filled with a lumpy, grey-brown gruel. I made a face and they all laughed.
Behind the canopy, a hole had been dug for the kitchen slops and waste water, and I caught a glimpse of something moving. I gave the puddle a stir with my shoe, and the muddy water churned. Startled, I found myself on top of an enormous pig. I nudged it with my foot, and it let out a grunt before subsiding again to its comatose state. Turning toward the soldiers, I asked if they planned to have him for Sunday dinner, and again they laughed. But the funniest thing they’d ever heard was when I asked them if the pig had a name. “Charles, Henri or perhaps Pierre?” I asked, as they cracked up over the notion of any animal sharing the name of a human.
At the edge of the camp, I spotted two green Kigali buses.
There was increased activity on the RPF side as well. On February 28, I took one of the Belgian helicopters for an aerial reconnaissance of the RPF zone. As I flew over the green hills—sometimes low enough that I came eye to eye with startled RPF soldiers—I saw large concentrations of troops being trained, as well as evidence of defensive positions being dug on the northwest border of the demilitarized zone, near the presidential stronghold of Ruhengeri. In the middle of the zone, where it narrowed to less than a kilometre near Byumba, I spotted soldiers swarming around the rich sienna of freshly turned mounds of earth; they were like giant anthills bracketing the city on both flanks. It looked like Kagame was realigning his forces, pushing for a good secure start line from which he could launch an offensive.
I confronted Kagame with my findings, making the trip to his headquarters in Mulindi alone. When I raised with him the number of ceasefire breaches caused by his troops, their further incursions into the demilitarized zone and the movement of arms and ammunition between Uganda and Rwanda, obviously supplying his troops, he coolly explained that he was still having discipline problems due to the stagnant political situation. Until the BBTG was in place and UNAMIR began to play its part in sustaining his force, he would continue having problems. I responded that yes, he was in a tough spot, but that I thought the intransigence of his politicos was in part the cause of the impasse. He would have to keep a tighter rein on his troops, dismantle his defences and withdraw his incursions into the demilitarized zone. He agreed. But as a military man, he said, he had to be prepared in case the political process broke down completely.
I reminded him that I had close to a thousand soldiers scattered throughout the demilitarized zone and that if Kagame launched an offensive, they would be caught in the middle. He promised me that should the situation ever deteriorate to that point, he would give me a twenty-four-hour warning—he did not want to injure any UN personnel. But I knew that the Belgians’ disgraceful behaviour during the Kadafi Crossroads ambush had broken a fundamental trust between Kagame’s force and mine, and I wasn’t sure if I could take him at his word.
The next day, I received a report from the new commander of the UNOMUR Sector, Colonel Azrul Haque, confirming that shipments of weapons and ammunition were going from the NRA to the RPF. At the same time, Claeys’s intelligence team reported that Ugandan army officers had held meetings about supporting an RPF offensive to be launched at either Byumba or Ruhengeri. Claeys had also sniffed out information about a boatload of arms destined for the RPF that had been seized by authorities in Goma, on the Zairean shore of Lake Kivu. Apparently, Tutsi refugees living just inside the Zairean border near Gisenyi had approached the soldiers guarding the four-tonne shipment and tried to bribe them to release the arms. Local Hutus had foiled the attempt by making a counter-offer.
On March 1, I received a call from the president’s office saying Habyarimana had some urgent security concerns he wanted to discuss. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we had actually sat down and talked, and I decided to bring along Henry and Luc as ballast. We found the president seated on the palace patio with Bizimana, Nsabimana and Ndindiliyimana. He said he had heard I was moving some of my troops from the demilitarized zone into Kigali. I was a little startled. Henry, Luc and I had recently discussed relocating 225 Ghanaians from Byumba to Kigali, but we hadn’t yet acted on it. I knew our headquarters was as leaky as a sieve, and here was another bit of evidence.
Habyarimana thought such a shift would leave my troops too thinly spread out in the demilitarized zone, and that this would be unwise considering the number of ceasefire violations there had been—all the fault of the increasingly aggressive RPF, according to him. I said I was more worried about the volatile situation inside the KWSA. If the RPF did launch an attack, my force had neither the mandate nor the means to stop them.
It was, however, within my mandate to provide security for the citizens of Kigali. Here Bizimana jumped in: he was receiving reports that the RPF were massively reinforcing the CND compound, turning it into a fortress. This was not only true but hardly a surprise given that everyone who was
a party to the KWSA agreement expected that the RPF contingent would defend their compound once they moved into Kigali. Then Ndindiliyimana again tried to insist that since his Gendarmerie was overtaxed, I should allow him to beef up his force with RGF troops. That would breach the KWSA agreement, and I said no.
Bizimana thought he could persuade me to release to the RGF the air shipment of artillery and mortar ammunition that we had impounded at Kigali airport in January, insisting that the shipment had been ordered prior to the signing of the peace agreement and showing me the relevant documents. “No way,” I said. Such an action would only further destabilize the ceasefire and, as demobilization was imminent, there was really no need. We were all supposed to be moving toward peace, not preparing for war.
A few days after the meeting, Nsabimana developed an uncharacteristic interest in my force. He and Bizimana began visiting Luc at his Kigali headquarters, something they had never done before, and dropping in on the Bangladeshi and Belgian battalions. Perhaps they were just countering my unannounced visits to their camps, or perhaps they were assessing the capabilities of my force. I didn’t mind at all—I wanted to operate in an open and transparent manner. But this sudden interest after months of indifference was unsettling, especially when my unarmed observers were picking up information that the heavy weapon systems that we knew were located within the presidential compound near Ruhengeri were being moved (though we were not able to verify this, as Booh-Booh had specifically forbidden me to conduct searches there).
As both sides continued their military buildup, I reviewed our own capabilities. With the arrival of the Ghanaian battalion, I was able to cover the increased demands of the KWSA agreement by shifting the Tunisian contingent, along with the 225 Ghanaians, to Kigali full-time. But I continued to be plagued with transport and logistical problems and still couldn’t fully equip the force. It was difficult to get messages to troops in the field. Most of the civilian staff were only capable of providing basic secretarial work, and the staff officers I could spare to oversee the headquarters were Bangladeshis who were fluent in neither English nor French.
Getting messages to headquarters was equally difficult. They either had to be hand-delivered—a problem when both fuel and vehicles were at a premium—or relayed over our radio net. Unfortunately, our Motorola radios (unlike those carried by both the RPF and the RGF) had no encryption capability. Though most of the troops were aware of this, there were times when sensitive information was radioed in and could have been overheard. Sometimes my observers were forced to borrow a phone from the RGF or the RPF in order to call in their positions to their command posts. Added to this security worry was the fact that a number of the local civilian employees weren’t properly screened before they were hired and, as was clear from the president’s familiarity with my plans, some of them turned out to be informers.
I still had only ten trucks for almost a thousand troops in the demilitarized zone. It took close to ten days to pull the 225 Ghanaians into the city. The vehicle squeeze meant that the bulk of my troops in the zone were forced into static guard posts, observation posts and checkpoints. And I had no way to make up for that immobility: my helicopters still hadn’t arrived.
Then there was the ongoing problem of the lack of competency of the Bangladeshi troops. On March 8, Luc invited me to a demonstration of the Quick Reaction Force, which had been training since December in order to be able to smoothly extract VIPs from an armed and angry mob—the kind of situation most of my Kigali Sector forces had already confronted.
The Bangladeshis set up the exercise in a military training field not far from Kigali airport, even erecting a canopy on a knoll for me and Luc to sit under as we watched and were served iced beverages. The commanding officer described how the platoon of thirty-five soldiers (not the 120-man force I really needed, I can’t help but point out) would rush in with our five functional APCs to surround the crowd (the eight promised APCs had arrived in February, but three of them were out of commission). When they were in position, the soldiers would leap out and form a tight cordon, confronting the crowd and pushing it back. They would isolate the VIPs, load them into one of the vehicles and then pull away. The idea was to shock and surprise the crowd with a show of overwhelming force but also to conduct the whole exercise without firing a single shot.
As Luc and I watched, the troops hesitantly drove toward the pretend mob of volunteer soldiers, taking far too long to position the vehicles. This was only the beginning of the comedy. The Bangladeshis were equipped with very long, outdated SKS rifles, and the APCs were not easy vehicles to get out of. Instead of streaming out of them in a river of force, they stumbled out, tripping over their equipment and each other. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I knew at that moment that there was no way these soldiers would ever be able to perform in a real emergency.
I reflected bitterly on what the Bangladeshi army chief of staff had said to me when he’d come to Rwanda in February for an inspection: “You realize that your mission here is to see to it that all of my men get home safely.” He said that he intended that their experience in Rwanda would help to “mature” his officers and NCOs. He was too proud to come out and say that he would prefer that his troops not be drafted for the Quick Reaction Force. He had shocked me to the core. Putting the safety of soldiers above the mission was heresy in my professional ethos, and his view confirmed for me that Bangladesh had only deployed its contingent for selfish aims: the training, the financial compensation and the equipment they intended to take home with them. I would have to rely on the Tunisians instead.
While the military situation was tense, there was some hope on the political front. Gatabazi’s assassination had galvanized the international community into seriously trying to sort out the mess. Nobody backed Habyarimana’s solution to the impasse; the diplomatic community in Kigali, seconded by New York, was convinced the president was simply trying to hang on to some vestiges of power if only to avoid jail or worse. Instead the diplomats focused their efforts on the RPF and also on pressuring Lando to sort out the rift in the PL. By the second week of March, there seemed to be some movement toward a political solution, which involved postponing the healing of the PL split until after the transitional government was installed. A new date of March 25 was set for the installation ceremony.
With this improvement on the political front, I decided to take two weeks’ leave. I had been putting it off since Christmas, as one swearing-in ceremony after another failed or was postponed, knowing that if the BBTG was actually installed we would finally begin demobilizing close to forty thousand troops. Although all of the funds, plans and other resources were not yet in place, a contract had been signed to provide food for the demobilized troops, and shipments had already begun to arrive in Dar es Salaam. We had plans for temporary housing and areas for storing surrendered weapons. The actual reintegration process of pensioning and retraining was still at an embryonic stage, but once the BBTG was sworn in, I hoped the international community would start to invest. I didn’t think either army would take any action if the political process continued to move forward, and I trusted Henry to keep the operation running smoothly in my absence—though I have to confess he was a little surprised when I handed him a list of thirty-nine action points to carry out while I was gone, including briefing the Belgian minister of defence, Léo Delcroix, who was arriving in Kigali the night I was flying out. I wanted Henry to confirm with Delcroix my written request that Luc stay on as Kigali Sector commander for another six months, even though he was due to be rotated out. Like Henry, Luc understood and lived the mission, and I couldn’t afford to lose him now.
When on March 10 I stepped on the plane out of Rwanda, I felt I was being transported to another dimension, one of happy families and warm sunny beaches. In twelve hours I was hugging my wife and children, but I felt oddly artificial. Before leaving Rwanda, all I could think about was them, but when I was with them, all I could think about was Rwanda. I called Henry p
ractically every day during my first week away, then finally gave in to exhaustion and stopped calling. I think I slept most of the second week, which I spent at home in Quebec City. My only Rwandan obligation was to walk five blocks from our apartment to hand-deliver a letter from President Habyarimana to his daughter.
I was to return to Rwanda by way of Ottawa and New York. In Ottawa I tried to drum up more Canadian support and lobby for the ten bilingual staff officers I desperately needed. On March 28, I addressed the daily executive meeting attended by the deputy minister of defence, Bob Fowler; the chief of the defence staff, General John de Chastelain; all of the three-star generals in Ottawa; the head of military intelligence; and the civilian assistant deputy ministers. I had ten minutes to make my case. As a symbol of Rwanda’s poverty and spirit, I had brought with me one of the soccer balls that the Rwandan kids made out of banana leaves. I startled de Chastelain by tossing it to him as I started to speak. I explained that I wanted to take a Hercules-load of real soccer balls emblazoned with the Canadian maple leaf or the UN logo back to Rwanda for the troops to hand out as a gesture of goodwill. The current situation was stable though tense, I said, but if no political solution was found soon, I was sure that something catastrophic would happen: the peace agreement would fail and the civil war would resume.
They gave me my ten minutes, but I felt that my briefing was viewed as a sideshow to other crises. It was a difficult time for the Defence Department. A new Liberal government had just come to power with an aggressive cost-cutting budget and the Armed Forces were going to be hard hit. We also had major troop commitments to the former Yugoslavia, where the situation was very grave. And there were the soul-destroying details, which were just beginning to surface, of the murder of a Somali teenager, Shidane Arone, by Canadian peacekeepers in the ill-fated Somalia mission. However, before the meeting was over, I was told that my request for ten staff officers was finally being processed and that I would see them in the mission area by June.1 I had to settle for this because it was dear it was all I was going to get. No one volunteered to send the soccer balls.