Shake Hands With the Devil (46 page)

This stance made me furious. I told Moen that I was tired of the Bangladeshis' lack of courage and unprofessional behaviour. I expected orders to be obeyed. I assured him that I would not unnecessarily risk the lives of the Bangladeshi troops, but I expected them to take the same risks as the other
UNAMIR
soldiers. They were not here for a free ride. I directed Moen to order the unit commander to launch in force at dawn, clear mobs from the area around the stadium and the Force
HQ
and open the crossroads to traffic. I wanted this forward posture maintained. Any time a crowd formed to block a route, it was to be cleared immediately. This operation was to be conducted in overwhelming force with every man the unit could muster, with all the
APC
s they could put in the streets. It was to be led personally by the unit commander. Moen agreed and assured me he would speak to the unit commander. I felt sorry for him. He was an experienced officer, a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth. I knew he was ashamed of his compatriots' performance. As a
UN
commander, I could not fire any national officer over the rank of lieutenant colonel, and especially not a commanding officer, without permission from New York, but pressure from a countryman of equal rank might prod the contingent commander into action.

After Moen left, Brent encouraged me to call Beth and let her know I was fine. I'm glad I did. Earlier that day the regimental padre had been in touch with her to offer whatever help she might need, and she had immediately assumed the worst. She told me that she and the children
were praying for me and were holding up. Every day I was in theatre she and so many other wives and children of
UNAMIR
soldiers would live on a knife-edge, waiting for a phone call or a visit that would tell them their loved one was dead or injured. In this era of live twenty-four-hour broadcasting from war zones, our families had to live the missions with us—a new phenomenon that haunted them and haunted us.

I finished more written reports to New York before midnight and, still restless, left my office to walk the dark corridors. The Ghanaians had taken over the security of the Force
HQ
that day, and I decided to take a look at what they had deployed. I went onto the roof of the causeway to the rotunda and met with two Ghanaian soldiers who were manning a machine gun overlooking the parking lot. They had also been given the short-range anti-tank rocket, the M72, but were uncertain how to use it. I ran a short weapons lecture in the dark, then went to the roof of the hotel, where an observation post had been set up. I startled the lone Ghanaian observer so badly he soiled his pants. I sat down beside him to try to ease his embarrassment and reassure him he was all right and then sent him to change his pants while I replaced him at his post. The city was largely quiet. Sitting there in the dark, I studied the fence surrounding the compound and visualized hundreds of extremists swarming our headquarters, intent on getting to Faustin. The image made me think of the movie
Khartoum
, when swarms of dervishes rush the stairs to kill General Gordon and his men. Would my soldiers fight under a
UN
flag to defend Faustin? For the first time that day I felt truly hopeless and trapped, a feeling I determinedly shunted to one side when the young Ghanaian came back to relieve me.

Sometime after midnight, an
RPF
officer and a platoon of soldiers arrived at our main gate, and Brent was summoned by the Ghanaian guards to talk to the officer, who was cockily wearing a
UN
blue helmet like a war trophy and demanding to see Faustin. Brent told him to take off the helmet and leave his weapon and troops outside the gate. The officer said he had come to escort Faustin to safety, and we relayed the offer to the prime minister designate. Faustin refused to leave, saying he had to keep a distance from the
RPF
if he was to maintain credibility with the moderates and the people of Rwanda. He preferred to remain under our protection.

It was around two when I drifted into a fitful sleep. At about a quarter to three I was awakened by a phone call from Maurice to tell me that in forty-five minutes—around 0330—the French, followed by the Belgians, would begin landing a military force at the Kigali airport to conduct an evacuation of expatriates. I was livid, and not only because of the short notice. I reminded Maurice that I no longer controlled the airport. What if the
RGF
(or as they had threatened, the
RPF
) shot down the aircraft? Why was I only being informed when the planes were already in the air and possibly even entering Rwandan airspace? Maurice insisted that he had only just been told himself and directed me to help with the evacuation.

Since the phones were out, I had to use our insecure radio to get Luc to warn the airport company of the imminent arrival of the French. Luc himself had just gotten a call from General Charlier, the Belgian chief of staff. I radioed Ballis at the
CND
and told him to assure the
RPF
that the French forces were being deployed only to extract the expatriate community, and to request that they take no action.

With the lights off to avoid making a tempting silhouette, I stood by the small open window in my office, waiting for the call from Luc that would spell disaster or inform me that the planes had landed safely. A light breeze was blowing in through the screen. For a time I thought I heard human moaning, as if hundreds of distant voices were being carried on the wind. I do not recall how long I stood there, uneasily listening, but at last I heard the distinctive roar of aircraft landing at the airport, and to my relief there was no answering sound of gunfire or explosions.

Ignoring my pallet on the floor, I decided to rest in my armchair for a while while I tried to sort out how the various parties would perceive this action. The
RGF
would be suspicious, angry and concerned about the new Belgian troops. The
RPF
would be suspicious, angry and concerned about the French.
UNAMIR
would be caught in the middle. But perhaps it would also turn out to be an opportunity to assert my influence over both parties, as each would have to go through me as a conduit to the French and the Belgians. I prayed that there would be no confrontation between the French and the
RPF
in this already chaotic situation—or between the Belgians and the
RGF
. The
RPF
had anti-aircraft guns, mortars and possibly surface-to-air missiles in the
CND
, which was
only four kilometres from the airport—well within range. The tension was too much, and despite myself I fell asleep in my chair.

The Bangladeshi contingent never faced the test I'd set them. That night the
RPF
moved into our area. By dawn on April 9 there were no crowds, no mobs, no militia, only disciplined and co-operative
RPF
soldiers who had secured our area either to protect us (they later claimed they had intercepted a radio message ordering the para-commando unit at Camp Kanombe to assault the Force
HQ
and capture or kill Faustin) or more likely, to safeguard the thousands of terrified people in the stadium.

In the operations centre, the duty officer confirmed that three French aircraft had arrived, that there were already about three hundred French paratroopers on the ground at the airport, and that more aircraft were landing. Were the French going to get involved once again with the fight or were they really only here to evacuate their expatriates?

Luc arrived a few minutes later and jubilantly told me that Willy Claes, the Belgian foreign minister, was lobbying New York for immediate reinforcement of
UNAMIR
and a massive logistics resupply. If we were given a new mandate and the necessary force, we might be able to get the two parties back to the negotiating table. At morning prayers, I told Kigali Sector to carry on with as many rescue missions as could be managed and also ordered that our gates be kept open to anyone seeking asylum. I was told that the resupply route for our troops in the demilitarized zone was now cut; we would have to figure out whether we should, or even could, move them to Kigali. Given our resources, there was no way we could accomplish moving these troops in one lift. We'd have to shuttle them in over several days, and the effort would require most of our vehicles and fuel.

My first stop that morning was the
CND
. I knew I would be in for a cold reception. On top of the French landing at the airport, the radio had announced that
RGF
reserves should report for duty, and word was also out that the new government was being installed and the names of the ministers announced. To the
RPF
, these actions were an overt declaration of war. Seth stated categorically that there would be no recognition whatsoever of this illegitimate and clearly extremist government: this crisis was not an overreaction to the sudden death of the
president but a coup. The
RPF
would be prepared to open discussions with the military representatives of the
RGF
in areas related to stopping the killings and arresting the Presidential Guard, but only after the Crisis Committee had complied with their preconditions. I raised the possibility of local truces that would permit the foreign troops and
UNAMIR
to conduct humanitarian activities including the evacuation of the expatriates, and Seth was grudgingly open to the idea. He was clear, however, that this humanitarian effort had better not turn into military assistance to the
RGF
. If the French, the Belgians or
UNAMIR
got involved in such a way, the
RPF
would use force to stop us. I told him I wanted a forty-eight-hour truce to be in place in Kigali by 1600. Our goodbyes were sullen, suspicious and without pleasantries.

I headed for the Ministry of Defence to find Bagosora and get more information on this new “interim government.” The city was descending into chaos. Large numbers of people were moving toward the outskirts of Kigali carrying bundles of belongings. There were bodies on the street, surrounded by large pools of blood that had turned black in the heat of the sun, which made the corpses look burnt. Groups of Interahamwe and
RGF
soldiers were roaming between roadblocks, which were often simply a few stones or empty plastic crates. The guards at the barriers were aggressive, more like animals that have had the taste of blood than security officers legitimately seeking supposed
RPF
“infiltrators.” At each roadblack, portable radios blasted the music and exhortations of
RTLM
over the heads of Rwandans of all ages paralyzed with fear who were lined up to have their papers checked. Clearly more and more people were being drawn into acts of violence, as if a blood frenzy was multiplying exponentially.

There were only a few guards at the Ministry of Defence, and they told me that everybody was at the Diplomates. At the hotel, I encountered a number of ministers and their families packing their suitcases and belongings into vehicles. No one wanted to stop to talk to me, since they were concentrating on getting out of town. I found out later that they were heading for safety in Gitarama, which was about sixty kilometres west of the capital. The scene reminded me more of the fall of Saigon than of the supposed installation of a government determined to take control of the country. Bagosora was nowhere to be seen.

Gatsinzi, Ndindiliyimana and others on the Crisis Committee were still at army headquarters. They told me that the mobilization of the
RGF
reserves was a terrible mistake and that they had sent messages and telegrams to all units instructing that it was to cease. I could not see a way forward and neither could they. They couldn't guarantee the
RPF
preconditions. With the interim government now supposedly in place—Bagosora's doing, I was certain—the Crisis Committee was likely to dissolve. And what government? The ministers had decamped and there was no infrastructure left. Still I asked them for a truce so that the French and Belgians could evacuate their expatriates, another futile gesture since no one on the Crisis Committee controlled the elite units of the
RGF
. Bagosora did, and without his co-operation, the evacuation operations would be in jeopardy, especially when the Belgian troops Luc was expecting arrived later that day.

Returning to Force
HQ
, I saw more dead bodies discarded like piles of rags beside the road as displaced people streamed past them, looking to escape the same fate.

Brent and a team of
MILOB
s had spent the day conducting rescue missions in one of the
APC
s. On the first effort, he'd picked up several
UN
civilian staff and their families and also the Canadian chargé d'affairs, Linda Carroll, who was able to provide him with a list of addresses of Canadian expatriates in Kigali.
²

With Brent that day were Marek Pazik and Stefan Stec, both Polish officers who had briefly been billeted in the Gikondo Parish Church, known as the Polish Mission because it was run by priests from Poland. Pazik and Stefan had not lasted long under the austere regime at the mission, but two of their fellow Polish
MILOB
s had stayed on. That morning, a faint radio call had come from the men at the mission begging for help. The batteries on the radio were dying and all Brent could make out was that there had been killings at the church.

Not knowing what to expect, Brent, Pazik and Stec armed themselves and, hatches down, set off to Gikondo in the
APC
with a Bangladeshi officer and three men. Along the route, they passed through fighting between the
RGF
and the
RPF
, through Gendarmerie roadblocks and through the ever-increasing and chaotic militia roadblocks. They saw the bodies of men, women and children near these roadblocks. So many civilians were on the move, it looked like the entire population was abandoning Kigali.