Shake Hands With the Devil (15 page)

I remember that I settled back in my seat with some satisfaction as our plane left Africa. I felt that I had worked very hard and had come up with a mission plan that could work. I had taken into account all the major political, military and humanitarian concerns and had gotten positive feedback from all the major players of the Arusha process. Real peace and contentment washed over me. I truly did not realize that the devil was already afoot.

I did not understand that I had just met men in Rwanda who would become génocidaires. While I thought I was the one who had been doing the assessing, I was the one who had been carefully measured. I still thought that for the most part people said what they meant; I had no reason to think otherwise. But the hard-liners I had met on my reconnaissance of Rwanda had attended the same schools that we do in the West; they read the same books; they watched the same news; and they had already concluded that the developing world, as represented by the
OAU
, would not have the resources or the means to deploy in force to Rwanda. They had judged that the West was too obsessed with the former Yugoslavia and with its peace-dividend reductions of its military forces to get overly involved in central Africa. Were they in fact already betting that white Western nations had too much on their hands to attempt another foray into black Africa? Were the hard-liners playing us, and me, for fools? I think so. I believe they had already concluded that the West did not have the will, as it had already demonstrated in Bosnia, Croatia and Somalia, to police the world, to expend the resources or to take the necessary casualties. They had calculated that the West would deploy a token force and when threatened would duck or run. They knew us better than we knew ourselves.

I ARRIVED BACK
in New York on September 5, consumed with a sense of urgency. The first deadline of the Arusha accords was only six days away. The momentum of the peace process couldn't be allowed to dissipate: I believed the goodwill was there and those opposed to Arusha hadn't had time to consolidate their positions. The clock was running and the time to act was almost past.

The next morning, I met with Kofi Annan, Maurice Baril, Iqbal Riza and others in the
DPKO
to brief them on the situation in Rwanda. While they listened attentively and seemed to think I had a good handle on how to go forward, their response to my desire for immediate action was sobering. The process of mission approval and troop deployment could take up to three months or longer, they reminded me. This I already knew. What I wasn't prepared for was their near-impatience with the whole affair. Some of the people in the meeting made strong comments to the effect of, “Who let this irresponsible milestone of September 10 even get on the table?” It was clear that no one was looking forward to the work involved in manhandling the financial and administrative Goliath of the
UN
in order to launch another mission.

Over lunch that day, Maurice explained to me that we needed a committed “lead” national contingent of troops upon which we could set in motion the grinding slave work of
UN
bureaucratic procedures. Belgium had come forward, but as a former colonial power in Rwanda, its participation wasn't favoured by the
UN
. Baril told me that starting a mission from scratch, with only a few inexperienced but good-willed officers using their own paper, pencils and laptops in a borrowed conference
room required extraordinary zeal, willpower, the patience of Job, and luck. But my sense of dedication survived even that brutal dose of reality. I debriefed Brent and Miguel Martin with these words: “They are skeptical of it ever coming off, the sense of urgency is not quite there, and we have a hell of a lot of work ahead. So let's get at it.”

At a second meeting, the
DPKO
triumvirate directed me to complete the technical mission report and to include a recommendation calling for the immediate deployment of a small force in Rwanda. This document would form the basis of a formal report to the secretary-general, which in turn would form the basis for his report and recommendation to the Security Council, which in its turn (I hoped) would form the basis for a Security Council resolution mandating our mission.

I felt I had to find some way of accelerating the process, but this was to prove tricky. Brent and I had no access to models or any kind of doctrine covering the process for the development and approval of a peacekeeping mission at the
UN
, even though we asked repeatedly how it was supposed to be done. I was stuck in the tactical weeds just trying to put together a cogent, persuasive report to effectively argue the case for a
UN
-led mission, let alone spur it to a faster pace. As I'd suspected, when we got back to New York the other members of the reconnaissance team disappeared to their respective workplaces or went on leave. I was left with only Brent, the part-time help of Miguel and a lone political officer—but not Rivero, who had travelled to Rwanda with me. She, too, had taken leave.

Miguel continued to be a stalwart supporter of the mission. He was a commando officer with an unyielding sense of duty, which sustained him over months of fast-paced, pressured work with few clear victories. His usual frown reflected his true nature as a man who meant business; it said, “Stay out of my way.” But Miguel believed deeply in justice and human rights, despite his tough exterior. I don't think he ever initiated a joke, but he sure enjoyed hearing them. We assaulted him daily with our questions and problems, and he gave unstintingly of his time and expertise—whatever he could steal away from the other half dozen missions he was responsible for.

Brent and I relied on him heavily as we finished the technical
report, commenced the formal guidelines for troop-contributing nations and polished our rules of engagement and operational, logistics and personnel plans. Because I didn't have a permanent office, I had to continuously scrounge around for a phone to use. Brent and I were camped out in one of the large conference rooms on the thirty-sixth floor, as there was no place set aside for staff who were trying to mount new missions. We soon came to appreciate the silence, serenity and fresher air of very early mornings and weekends, compared to the chaotic noise and interruptions of the normal workday. Worn down by the constant swirl of people and noise in the
DPKO
, we usually stopped around six o'clock and took our work back to our hotel rooms for the evening.

I still felt that the “ideal” option of 5,500 troops and personnel was best, but there was no way to reopen that discussion. By the end of my first week back at
UN
headquarters, I realized that we had to go with the “reasonable viable” option. We needed to put together a small force of at most 2,600 soldiers, including a mobile reserve equipped with armoured personnel carriers and helicopters, which would be capable of quickly neutralizing violent flare-ups wherever they occurred in the country. A force of this size could handle monitoring the demilitarized zone and the Kigali area. I could cover the rest of the country with small, unarmed military observer teams instead of garrisons of armed peacekeepers. These military observers (
MILOB
s) could alert our small but highly trained and well-equipped rapid-reaction force to trouble. But I had to make serious compromises to achieve that force level and maximize the number of bayonets. I wanted a military headquarters and signals squadron, but Maurice told me that no troop-contributing nation would provide them. So I accepted the option of a small
UN
civilian communications section. This would mean that I would have no inherent headquarters support staff and communicators to run the command posts and operations centre. (This scenario would later cost me dearly.) The engineer and logistics companies would also be very weak and ill-equipped, which was risky for a force deployed in a mountainous country with limited hard roads and no infrastructure.

The questions that would haunt me later were, “Did I compromise too much?” and “Did I want the mission so badly that I took on an unacceptable risk?” In one of our chance encounters at the time, Maurice reassured
me that missions in general, and especially small ones like mine, had to exist on a shoestring; you had to fight for what little you could get. He advised me not to use a shortage of resources as an excuse to back off. There were many officers who would give their right arms for the job, and not necessarily because they believed in the Rwandan peace process. From that point on, I was sure to make clear in all my conversations and mission documents that this was
my
mission and that I was the one who would lead and be responsible and accountable. Instead of quitting an impossible task, I was determined to do the best I could to secure peace for Rwanda.

We finished our technical report and sent it in for distribution and consideration by Kofi Annan's staff on Friday, September 10. Later that day, the president of the Security Council issued a lukewarm statement, suggesting that the
UN
was still reviewing the options. His attitude obviously set off alarm bells in Kigali. On Wednesday, September 15, a joint delegation of the Rwandan government and the
RPF
arrived in New York to goad the
UN
into action. Patrick Mazimhaka headed the
RPF
contingent, and Anastase Gasana represented the interim government. I had not met Mazimhaka in Africa, but he was usually the chief negotiator for the
RPF
in sensitive situations. He also had Canadian ties. He had immigrated to Canada, taught at the University of Saskatchewan and been part of the anti-apartheid movement before going back to Africa to join the
RPF
. His wife and children were still living in Saskatoon, where she was a doctoral student.

Coming to the
UN
was a gutsy move, and the Rwandans were savvy enough not to overplay their hand. At a meeting with all the key
DPKO
players, held in the conference room adjacent to Kofi Annan's office, Gasana went on at length about the necessity for rapid approval and deployment of the international force. Mazimhaka was more succinct but just as eloquent. By the time they had finished, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. Visibly moved, Annan immediately swung into action, making rapid annotations on his copy of my mission plan as he urged the delegation to meet with the ambassadors who sat on the Security Council.

Given that the Rwandans had seized the initiative in such a dramatic way and had received a fair amount of press coverage for it, I expected that the approval process would kick into high gear. Nothing materialized. I was never invited to speak with Boutros Boutros-Ghali or any of the members of the Security Council. I didn't sit back, either; I actively lobbied for the mission. The doors to the people who held the most influence on the Security Council, the Americans and the British, remained firmly closed. I did end up speaking with the U.S. under-secretary of state for Africa, but his sole concern seemed to be the projected cost of the mission. In fact, the Americans never took Rwanda or me seriously; their position continued to be that the job could be done with much fewer personnel. I talked to the French, remembering the very positive response I had had from Ambassador Marlaud in Kigali, but it seemed that the military attaché had greater influence: France thought a force of a thousand was sufficient. The only
NATO
country willing to step forward with an aggressive commitment of troops was Belgium, whose offer was on Miguel Martin's desk before I had even gotten back from Rwanda. But given the Belgians' colonial past in the country, their offer of support was a mixed blessing. Still, they desperately wanted this mission—I suspect a deal may have been struck with the French for Belgian troops to protect their countries' interests in Kigali after the French battalion was shipped out.

In the second half of September, Brent and I got down to the business of creating a shopping list of the men and materials the mission would need; guidelines for donor nations, in effect. This quite detailed document stipulated down to the amount and type of ammunition what was required for each formed unit or battalion. If I was going to make do with such a small number of troops, I wanted them well-equipped. But I guess the list was too extravagant; Maurice took me aside and explained as diplomatically as he could that
UN
force commanders—and I was not yet one—depended on the generosity of donor nations for both troops and equipment. There were never any guarantees on the quality or quantity of either. The best one could hope for was to attract the attention of a
NATO
member with deep pockets, and so far only Belgium had volunteered.

I approached Canada, hoping that if I could grease the wheels at home, maybe other
NATO
members would jump on board. Louise Fréchette, then the Canadian ambassador to the
UN
, was enthusiastic. I had first met her in 1992 in Cambodia at a supper hosted by my troops in their camp on the outskirts of war-ravaged Phnom Penh. I had about 250 soldiers stationed there, providing heavy lift transport for the massive
UN
mission in that country. Fréchette spoke to the troops as if she had been working with the army for a long time. She was friendly and keen. (Later she would serve as deputy minister of national defence and, later still, as under-secretary general of the
UN
.) I always considered her a friend at court and believed she would back me to the hilt. So I was doubly shocked by the response I got back from the Department of National Defence. It rejected my modest request for a movement-control platoon of thirty troops to load, unload and dispatch personnel and material from aircraft, and refused to supply any more staff officers or military observers. Its reason: the Canadian military was overcommitted in the Balkans and on other missions.