Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  * These accusations and the fallout have been dealt with in chapters 13 and 19 of this book.

  21: Roméo Dallaire: A Leadership

  Disagreement

  “If it was a Bagasora-led coup by the hardliners, aimed at derailing the Arusha accords, I had no more mandate.”

  GENERAL ROMÉ ODALLAIRE, IN SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

  1N 1997, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL Roméo Dallaire was invited to the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College in Toronto to speak to the students, mostly senior majors destined to be promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the near future, on the subject of leadership. During his presentation General Dallaire explained that a military leader frequently faces a dilemma associated with assigning priorities. He made it clear that it was his opinion that a leader’s priorities should and must always be mission first, then soldiers and, lastly, self.

  During the question period that followed the presentation, a student rose and commented along the lines of: “General Dallaire, General MacKenzie spoke to us a couple of weeks ago on the same subject, and while his priorities matched yours most of the time, he made the point that there will be occasions, albeit rare, when orders are received that make no sense whatsoever or are impossible to carry out because the resources to do so are not available, at which time his priorities changed to soldiers first then mission and self.” The student’s comment was somewhat unfair, because guest presentations at the Staff College are not for attribution, and to use one speaker’s comments to put another speaker on the spot is considered inappropriate; however, a critical disagreement between Dallaire and me regarding leadership was now exposed to the very audience that would provide some of the Canadian Forces’ general officers within the next ten years.

  The jungle drums work extremely well within the Profession of Arms, and I was telephoned at my home within minutes of the completion of Dallaire’s presentation and told that the general had not responded convincingly to the student’s comment and that his response had gone off on a tangent bearing no relationship to the question he had been asked. In the next few months, after he had made additional presentations, I received many calls from mid-rank officers who believed that someone of equal or superior rank should try to convince the chief of defence staff to stop General Dallaire from making presentations on leadership that appeared to justify always making mission the number one priority for a leader. Since Dallaire was serving in the Canadian Forces at the time and I had been retired for four years, I decided to try to rescue both of us from future embarrassments. I made an appointment to see his boss and our mutual friend, Chief of Defence Staff Maurice Baril.

  I explained to Maurice what had happened at the Staff College when Dallaire had made his presentation and related the gist of the calls I was receiving in the wake of his more recent presentations. I suggested it might be a good idea to advise his subordinate commanders that I should not be invited to speak to their personnel on the subject of leadership, and to consider limiting Dallaire’s presentations to subjects other than leadership. The disagreement between Dallaire and me regarding priorities was obviously confusing for aspiring senior leaders in the Canadian Forces, and I felt that perhaps the best thing to do was eliminate the debate altogether. To his credit, Maurice thought otherwise. He viewed it as a healthy disagreement for future colonels and generals to hear.

  Unfortunately the disagreement was far from healthy, and it was never resolved. As sides formed up on each side of the issue, my qualifier, “in rare circumstances,” which was critical to my argument that loyalty to soldiers should occasionally come before mission, was conveniently ignored by some, particularly my critics. What resulted was a simplistic representation of the disagreement which indicated that I would always put soldiers first, no matter what the circumstances.

  I hold to my opinion that in some circumstances, ill-conceived and impossible-to-execute orders must be evaluated by the leader, and if warranted, they should be ignored or disobeyed. During the early 1990s, as the United Nations in New York (UNNY) was experiencing great difficulty in adapting to the post–Cold War world, some of the orders issued to its commanders in the field were ludicrous. For example, early on during the humanitarian airlift into Sarajevo in 1992, we were held up for hours at various armed roadblocks as we attempted to deliver food and medicine. Without any discussion or analysis, UNNY directed us to “use such force as necessary to guarantee the safe delivery of humanitarian aid (medical supplies and food).” Being good soldiers, my staff were keen to issue instructions to our troops to fight their way through the multitude of armed roadblocks that interfered with our delivery of aid. At the time, we had fewer than 1,000 personnel, including headquarters staff and unarmed UN observers, in Sector Sarajevo. We were in a city of over 300,000 people, many of whom were less than sympathetic to our efforts to help them. We were surrounded by a heavily armed First World military force numbering in the tens of thousands who hated our guts because they saw a UN force that they knew had a mandate to be impartial in delivering humanitarian aid to their enemies. I realized that although we would be able to force our way through the first roadblock we encountered, there would nevertheless be about twenty more to deal with on the same route, and by that time our opponents would easily outnumber us one hundred to one. I placed my soldiers first in my priorities, ignored the mission order from the UN and continued to negotiate our freedom of movement, a tactic that proved to be successful even in the short term.

  Considering the importance of our disagreement and being at a loss to understand General Dallaire’s rationale for insisting on placing the mission first, no matter what the risk to his soldiers, I spent considerable time researching his only overseas command: the military component of the UN’s ill-fated mission in Rwanda in 1993–94. Fortunately, the general’s wildly successful, best-selling book, Shake Hands with the Devil, written in collaboration with his assistant, Major Brent Beardsley (who, in my opinion, received too little public credit for his extensive contributions although he is amply acknowledged in the book), proved to be an invaluable source of first-hand accounts. It was during this research that I unearthed some clues that might explain General Dallaire’s inflexibility on such a critical issue and I learned some lessons that may be of value for future leaders who are faced with similar dilemmas.

  Whether by choice or by chance, Roméo Dallaire never served on overseas operational duty with the UN before he achieved the rank of general. During the Cold War, it was generally accepted that volunteering for peacekeeping duty with the UN or certain other multinational organizations was not beneficial for your career. In fact, many senior decision makers in the military leadership regarded peacekeeping duty as “avoiding real work.” Real work was deemed to be tours of duty at army headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec, or at National Defence HQ in Ottawa, where you would be “exposed” to the minister and the senior military brass. I know this to be a fact, as I served in NDHQ for only sixteen months out of thirty-six years, and twelve of those months were as the director of personnel careers officers. As such, I witnessed up close the workings of various boards that decided which officers would be promoted in the following year. Reports of Canadian officers who performed outstandingly on peacekeeping missions were deemed to be chronically inflated, for two reasons. First, peacekeeping was considered to be pretty safe and routine stuff, so it really wasn’t all that challenging. Although frequently this couldn’t be further from the truth, perception trumped performance. Second, reports on Canadians were frequently written by senior foreign military officers who, according to the myth, always inflated their assessments. Many promotion board members actually admitted they believed that just about any Canadian would be rated highly by a foreigner.

  Fortunately (particularly for me), the status of the operationally experienced officer, that chronic avoider of “real work,” changed dramatically at the end of the Cold War, when such experience was all too rare and much in demand. The deployment of the United Nations Protection Force i
n the former Yugoslavia in 1992 was front-page news and the lead story on international television for most of two years. In spite of all the problems inherent in the ill-conceived mandate and its bizarre command and control arrangements, the media coverage of our soldiers’ efforts and sacrifices was generally positive, particularly in Canada. This was dangerous work—soldiers were being killed and seriously injured—and Canada was playing a leading role on the international stage for the first time since the Korean War. Officers who aspired to the highest ranks of the Canadian Forces recognized the sea change and sought out a tour of operational duty with the UN, particularly in a command role if at all possible. Perhaps that is why, in spite of having no operational experience with the UN in earlier ranks, General Roméo Dallaire volunteered for overseas duty.

  A long-overdue attempt by the international community in general and the UN in particular to resolve the conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in both Rwanda and Uganda came to a head in June 1993. The UN Security Council authorized a modest mission of some one hundred military and civilian personnel, the United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda and Rwanda (UNOMUR), which would be deployed to the Ugandan side of the border with Rwanda. The UN force would be unarmed, and it would be responsible for monitoring the border and verifying that weapons, ammunition and Tutsi reinforcements did not make their way into Rwanda. Then, in spite of the availability of a large number of fluently bilingual, operationally experienced Canadian general officers, Brigadier-General Dallaire was offered to the UN as the chief military observer for UNOMUR—in civilian terms, the man in charge of the military component.

  General Dallaire has been criticized by some for accepting the appointment even though he was aware of his inexperience. In his book, he admits that his first response to the notification of his UN appointment was: “Rwanda, that’s somewhere in Africa, isn’t it?” 22 It has to be mentioned in his defence, though, that the tiny mission was anticipated to be a quiet, safe and routine challenge, well out of the public eye and easily within his capability to command.

  Three months later, the UN’s Security Council found some backbone and authorized the creation of a much larger mission that would facilitate the implementation of the recently signed Arusha Accords. The new UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) would be responsible for helping with the security of the capital city of Kigali; monitoring the peace agreement, including supporting the transitional government; establishing an expanded demilitarized zone; developing demobilization procedures, and assisting with mine-clearance. UNOMUR personnel would be absorbed by UNAMIR, and the strength of the new mission was authorized at 2,548 souls.

  Brigadier-General Dallaire was promoted to the rank of major-general and appointed force commander of UNAMIR, that is, commander of the military personnel in UNAMIR. Contrary to popular opinion, Dallaire was not in charge of the mission. As is the norm in most large UN operations, the UN secretary-general appoints a civilian to represent him—the special representative of the secretary-general (SRSG), who has the responsibility to oversee the mission and its mandate. In the case of UNAMIR, Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s unfortunate choice was a Cameroon diplomat and personal friend, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh.

  The UN’s member nations were characteristically slow to respond to the call for soldiers, and five months passed before the authorized strength was reached. Soldiers from Belgium and Bangladesh made up the majority of the UN force responsible for assisting with the security of the capital. Unresolved issues between the parties to the Arusha Accords and subsequent events meant that the inauguration of the Rwandan transitional government never took place, thereby eliminating one of UNAMIR’s key responsibilities.

  On April 6, 1994, at approximately 8 PM, the spark that led to the slaughter of some 800,000 Rwandans was observed by the unarmed UNAMIR observers at the Kigali airport. The plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both of whom were returning from continuing peace talks in Tanzania, exploded into a ball of flame while attempting to land at the airport. The cause of the crash has never been determined; at the time, everyone had an opinion and the one that counted the most and that led to the genocide was the one held by the Hutu majority: the Tutsi minority would be held responsible for the crash. The killings started with the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutu senior government officials.

  Following the crash, General Dallaire had a series of meetings with the Hutu-dominated military led by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. Dallaire discovered that they were making plans to assume control of the government following the death of their president. There was also a midnight meeting with the SRSG at his residence, during which Booh-Booh confirmed by phone with New York that the UN considered Prime Minister Madame Agathe Uwilingiyimana to be the legitimate head of government and that the Rwandan military leadership should consult with her. Bagosora scoffed at the idea.

  Even though senior Rwandan government officials were being slaughtered throughout the capital city of Kigali, a senior official in the UN’s peacekeeping department insisted by phone at 3 AM the following day that Dallaire’s troops return fire only if fired upon—despite UNAMIR’s rules of engagement allowing the use of deadly force “to prevent crimes against humanity.” For a commander who had previous experience with the UN, this would be the time that he would indicate the telephone connection had gone bad and he couldn’t understand what was being said at the other end—and then hang up. It is interesting to note that it was “timely” that the slaughter started during the night in Rwanda. If it had occurred during the day, when it was nighttime in New York, the odds are that in 1994 no one would have been on duty at the UN to answer the phone.

  Whenever I called the UN from Sarajevo in 1992, I got an answering machine. In fact, it was sometimes worse than that— there was no answer at all. During a speech I made shortly after I returned to Canada in late 1992, I said in frustration that “If you are a UN commander in the field, don’t phone the UN after 5 PM New York time or on the weekends because there probably won’t be anyone there to take your call!” I might have been exaggerating to make a point, but at least the comment woke up the UN. Two things happened following my speech: I was required to sign a “formal warning” by the acting chief of defence staff agreeing that I would stop saying things like that or be fired, and the UN established a twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week situation room at UNHQ in New York. It wasn’t the operations centre that I would like to have seen and that the UN needs, but it manned the phones 24 hours a day—and now they knew who and where their UN commanders were in the field. When I visited the situation room soon after its creation, a handwritten sign on the entrance door read: “The General MacKenzie Memorial Situation Room—We work 24/7.” That alone was worth the formal warning.

  By mid-morning, Kigali was in chaos and movement was both difficult and dangerous. All local UN attempts at meetings with ambassadors and the Crisis Committee had failed. Elements of the presidential guard and the army were going from house to house with a list of names and were killing at will. UNAMIR’s Belgian soldiers at the airport were being held prisoner, but UNHQ was still insisting that deadly force was not authorized unless UNAMIR was fired upon. Calls came to Dallaire’s headquarters from senior Rwandan officials pleading for protection, and duty officers could hear the caller’s family being killed before the caller himself was slaughtered. At this point, Dallaire states in his book that the possibilty of a moderate government was utterly lost: “If it was a Bagosora-led coup by the hardliners, aimed at derailing the Arusha accords, I had no more mandate.”23 In fact, that’s exactly what was unfolding.

  Dallaire left his HQ with two of his staff, looking for an alleged meeting taking place between Bagosora and the gendarmerie. He had a handheld Motorola radio, another radio mounted in the vehicle and one pistol among the three of them. Soon their vehicle was refused passage at a roadblock, and Dallaire and one of his staff proceeded on foot. Their communication with Dallaire’s HQ was now reduced to the handhe
ld radio. After walking for a few kilometres they were picked up by a Rwandan major, who after some consultation at Rwandan army HQ determined the meeting they were looking for was being held at the École Supérieure Militaire.

  The route to the meeting took them past an entrance gate to Camp Kigali. As they drove by, Dallaire saw two of his Belgian soldiers lying on the ground at the far end of the compound. He ordered the Rwandan major to stop the vehicle but was ignored, and the driver carried on to the grounds of the École. While it would have been possible to reach over and turn off the ignition in order to stop the vehicle, any venture into the camp alone and unarmed would probably have proven suicidal. As Dallaire approached the building where the meeting was taking place, an UNAMIR military observer from Ghana was momentarily released by the Rwandan soldiers who were forcefully detaining him. He explained to Dallaire that five of his soldiers were being held nearby and that a group of Belgian soldiers had been assaulted in Camp Kigali. Dallaire immediately proceeded to the École for the meeting. Surprisingly, it would appear from his own account, that he did so without advising his HQ of the fact that a number of his soldiers were detained and were being abused or worse. With over four hundred tough Belgian paracommandos dispersed around the city, the potential existed for a UN show of force that would have been more than a little intimidating to the unruly mobs doing the killing.

  On entering the meeting, Bagosora was in full flight, fine-tuning the military’s response to the ongoing violence, including the preparation of a communiqué designed to “calm the nation.” He asked Dallaire to address the meeting, and when Dallaire agreed he stressed that his force would try to keep the Arusha peace process alive—even though earlier in the day he had indicated that he “had no more mandate” if Bagosora was taking over. He further called for calm within the army units, but he did not immediately raise the issue of his captured Belgian soldiers. This, in spite of the fact that he was meeting with the very Rwandan military leaders who commanded the troops that were capturing and abusing his soldiers as he spoke. He had hoped to raise the issue with Bagosora privately, but the opportunity never came, so he mentioned it to the chief of staff of the Gendarmerie, Major-General Augustin Ndindilyimana, who said he would look into it. Inexplicably setting the issue of his captured soldiers aside, Dallaire then assisted with the preparation of the communiqué.