Shake Hands With the Devil (9 page)

We were sending our soldiers, who were ready for classic chapter-six peacekeeping missions, into a world that seemed increasingly less amenable to such interventions. Chapter six of the
UN
Charter deals with threats to international peace and security. In the fifties, Lester
Pearson, Canada's minister of foreign affairs at the time, had come up with a concept of peacekeeping that had been implemented in conflict areas throughout the Cold War (and had won Pearson a Nobel Peace Prize). In these operations, lightly-armed, multinational, blue-helmeted, impartial and neutral peacekeepers were deployed and interposed between two former warring factions, with their consent, either to maintain the status quo, as in Sinai from 1956 to 1967, or to assist the parties in implementing a peace accord, as was at that time the case in Cambodia. The key principles of these operations are impartiality, neutrality and consent. Classic peacekeeping had worked well during the Cold War, where the two camps had used peacekeeping to diffuse conflicts that could draw in the major superpowers and lead to nuclear Armageddon. This was the type of peacekeeping that I had been trained in and the principles with which I was most familiar.

But we were increasingly less certain of the effectiveness of the classic approach. Not only were we stretched in finding enough personnel, but on top of everything else, we started to receive casualties—some even killed in action. On June 18, 1993, one of the soldiers from the brigade, Corporal Daniel Gunther, died on active duty in Bosnia. The report I was given at the time suggested that a mortar bomb had exploded near his armoured personnel carrier and that he had been killed by flying shrapnel. Beth and I attended his funeral, which I found simple to the point of disrespect. Corporal Gunther was buried with a minimum of peacetime honours, and he and his family were treated as if he had been killed in a road accident. I remember his devastated father coming up to me after the service and asking me what, if anything, his son had died for? I had no answer to offer him and the rest of the shocked and grieving family.

According to the often gut-wrenching testimony of my young troops, the situations they found themselves in in the field were far more dangerous and complex than we were being led to expect. For instance, I found out much later that Gunther had actually been hit in the chest by an anti-tank rocket that had been fired from a shoulder-held grenade launcher. He had been deliberately targeted, and murdered. And yet the kind of training I was supposed to offer
these troops before they went into the theatre was based on a hopelessly outdated model of lightly-armed blue berets monitoring a stable ceasefire. Lessons learned were slowly beginning to emerge, but not fast enough or with the force needed to stimulate any real changes. I was deeply concerned about the impact the combined effects of extreme stress and brutal violence encountered in the field were having on my troops. I harassed army headquarters to send some clinical psychology experts out to try to come up with solutions. The response that came back? Because of troop limitations, there were barely enough bayonets to do the job, let alone resources for such a low-priority effort. A commander should know how to do what needed to be done.

On June 27, 1993, I attended a change-of-command parade for one of my units, the 430th Tactical Helicopter Squadron. It was a lovely, cloudless day with just enough of a breeze that the soldiers were not too uncomfortable in their dress greens. I had made my speech of thanks to the departing commander and of welcome to the incoming one and was coming off the dais when an aide rushed up to me and said that Major-General Armand Roy, the Military Area Commander for Quebec and my boss at that time, was on the phone in my staff car and needed to speak with me immediately. I hurried to the car and picked up the phone. General Roy asked me if there was any reason why I couldn't be deployed overseas in a peacekeeping mission. I said none whatsoever. He said that
UN
Headquarters was contemplating a mission to Rwanda. I could feel my heart pounding with excitement. I managed to stammer out, “Rwanda, that's somewhere in Africa, isn't it?” He laughed and told me he would call the following day with more details. I almost floated back to the ceremony, I was that exhilarated. I leaned over to Beth and whispered, “I think I'm going to Africa!”

I CONFESS THAT
when General Roy called, I didn't know where Rwanda was or exactly what kind of trouble the country was in. The next day, he told me more about the tiny, heavily populated African nation. Rwanda was in the midst of negotiating a peace agreement to end a vicious two-and-a-half-year civil war between a rebel force, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (
RPF
), and the government. The rebel movement had grown out of a refugee population of Rwandans who had fled north to Uganda in the early sixties, after independence had changed the political balance in their homeland. In the early nineties, the rebel army had twice pushed into the northern region of Rwanda and was now hunkered down behind a demilitarized zone monitored by a group of neutral military observers under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (
OAU
). While the parties negotiated the terms of a peace agreement in Arusha, Tanzania, the
UN
had been asked by the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, to send in a small force to monitor the border to ensure that weapons and soldiers were not crossing from Uganda into Rwanda to reinforce the
RPF
.

This was to be my mission, dubbed the United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda and Rwanda (
UNOMUR
). General Roy described it as a classic peacekeeping operation, a confidence-building exercise designed to encourage the belligerents to get down to the serious business of peace. It was extremely modest in scope and size: I would have under my command a total of eighty-one unarmed military observers, who would operate on the Ugandan side of the border.

Why pick me to lead this tiny mission in a place I'd barely heard of?
I was about to begin an unprecedented third year as commander of the 5ième Brigade Group; in four days we were going to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding with more than a thousand troops on parade. The 5th still faced plenty of challenges, many of them in the area of peacekeeping. We were still too ad hoc in our preparation of troops for deployment on ever more challenging missions. Much of our training was still focused on classic war-fighting, even though the conflicts we were sending troops into usually were not unfolding like classic wars. As far as I was concerned, it wasn't yet time for me to leave, but I was being asked—ordered—to deploy. Whether it was a big force, a small force or just me alone, I was going over. Knowing that Major General Maurice Baril was heading up the military component of the
UN
Department of Peace-keeping Operations (
DPKO
), I surmised that there must be more to this mission than met the eye. In the end I decided that this was my chance to learn first-hand what would work in the changing nature of conflict in the post–Cold War world.

However, I was stunned to find out that Canada was only willing to supply me, and not a single soldier more, to the mission. I protested to the defence department, which remained adamant about the decision until I noticed a tiny loophole in the arrangement. I was being hired by the
UN
under a civilian contract—in essence being seconded by the government of Canada to
UN
service—and so the defence department was still on the hook to supply the one Canadian officer it had approved for
UNOMUR
. The director of Canadian peacekeeping operations at National Defence Headquarters gave me a list of ten names from which to choose the officer who would become my military assistant. Since the mission was so tiny, picking the right
MA
was crucial: he would take care of a large portion of the paperwork and the administrative burden so that I could concentrate on operations, training and political matters.

I didn't recognize any of the names on the list of ten, and truth be told I was miffed that none of the officers from my brigade was on it. The people of Rwanda spoke French as well as Kinyarwanda; the
RPF
spoke English. I wanted my
MA
to be bilingual, but none of the officers on the list met that requirement—short notice and a lack of volunteers
was the department's lame excuse. I finally stopped at one name: Major Brent Beardsley of the Royal Canadian Regiment, the senior infantry regiment in the army. At thirty-nine, he was older than most of the others on the list and he was currently involved in drafting the Canadian Forces peacekeeping manual. On paper he seemed to have the background to balance off my limited experience with
UN
headquarters and with peacekeeping. Luckily, his boss was my old colleague, Howie Marsh, and I knew he'd give me the straight goods. When I phoned, he told me that Brent was a solid soldier with a tremendous work ethic, but more important, he was
perspicace
—he had that magic combination of insight and foresight.

On July 1, 1993, I handed over my command to my successor, Brigadier General Alain Forand, in front of a surprised audience at the anniversary celebrations of the 5ième. Since my family would have to move from the commander's official residence, Beth launched a search for a new place, hoping to find one in the same area so that the children wouldn't have to switch schools. With my future uncertain, we didn't want to buy a home, so we decided to move into military married quarters next to the old Garrison Club.

As for me, I was already in the Rwandan mission body and soul. I set aside as my temporary headquarters the Artillery Room in the Garrison Club, which had been built in the 1820s by British engineers as their headquaters for the massive defensive works of the old capital. The windows look out toward the lush green of the Plains of Abraham, where generations of French, English and Canadian military leaders plotted campaigns, and beyond the plains to the St. Lawrence River. This room, with its heavy, old oak furniture and yellowing nineteenth-century prints depicting training and fighting scenes in the garrison, always sent a thrill through me. I could almost feel the presence of the military and political leaders who came before me, pacing in front of the fireplace as they pondered strategies and worked through knotty tactical problems.

My mission was hardly on the level of their campaigns, but still I was carried away by the romance of it, by the idea of adventure that Africa represented to me. Growing up Catholic in Quebec in the fifties, I had been captivated by missionary tales from “the dark continent.” As
a result, my notions of Africa were outdated and Eurocentric. I combed the library for anything I could find on Rwanda and the Great Lakes region of central Africa. There wasn't much. But serious work was afoot, and time was of the essence.

I had spoken to Major Beardsley only once on the phone and had asked him to bring to Quebec City the most up-to-date technical peacekeeping data, after-actions reports and doctrine, along with the results of the
DPKO
's two brief reconnaissance missions to Rwanda, and any general information he could obtain on the country. I hoped we would receive a very detailed intelligence briefing later on at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. As soon as I laid eyes on Brent, I knew I had chosen well. He is the quintessential quiet Canadian, thoughtful, modest to a fault, but with a sparkle in his calm hazel eyes that signals the presence of plenty of fire, determination and humour. With a few faxes from New York on the mission's concept of operations, which had been presented to the
UN
Security Council only a few days earlier, we set to work. By the end of our first afternoon together, we had become a team of two. Brent had an appetite for work and an ability to anticipate upcoming objectives that was awe-inspiring. But I think the quality that impressed me most about him was his unassuming confidence.

For the next three weeks. Brent produced staff work and gathered material for us in Ottawa. I travelled to New York and Ottawa a couple of times, but I received very limited briefings in both places. I worked with the
DPKO
desk officer, Major Miguel Martin, an Argentinian who was also the desk officer for missions in Angola, Mozambique, Central America, Liberia and any number of other places, and Isel Rivero, an ex–Cuban freedom fighter who served as the political desk officer for central Africa. The four of us were the entire staff effort devoted to
UNOMUR
by the
UN
, and Martin and Rivero were only with us part-time. It was clear that this small mission would not sway anyone, either at the
UN
or at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, away from the many other missions, crises, problems and budget cuts that were overwhelming them on a daily basis.

We tried to cram in as much knowledge about the Great Lakes region of central Africa as we could. Tiny, landlocked Rwanda was
tucked between Zaire on the west and Tanzania on the east, with Uganda to the north and Burundi to the south. Rwanda had never been considered important enough by scholars in the West to warrant extensive study. Brent and I managed to piece together a rough history from newspaper accounts and a few scholarly articles, which reduced a highly complex social and political situation to a simple inter-tribal conflict. With a confidence born of ignorance, we soldiered on.

We traced the roots of the current hostilities back to the early twentieth century and Belgian colonial rule. When the Belgians chased the Germans out of the territory in 1916, they discovered that two groups of people shared the land. The Tutsis, who were tall and quite light-skinned, herded cattle; the shorter, darker Hutus farmed vegetable plots. The Belgians viewed the minority Tutsis as closer in kind to Europeans and elevated them to positions of power over the majority Hutu, which exacerbated the feudal state of peasant Hutus and overlord Tutsis. Enlisting the Tutsis allowed the Belgians to develop and exploit a vast network of coffee and tea plantations without the inconvenience of war or the expense of deploying a large colonial service.