Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

by Roméo Dallaire

  The French prime minister’s visit to Goma and Rwanda on July 31 had been an ill-timed comedy of errors. He had invited both Pasteur Bizimungu and me to come see him in Cyangugu at such short notice and with such a lack of respect for the new political reality of Rwanda that neither of us felt in the least compelled to accept. Bernard Kouchner, who was now a deputy of the European Union, had been in and out of Kigali recently and had gone public to criticize his homeland’s heavyhanded disdain for the new Rwandan government.1

  Rwandan politicians such as Seth Sendashonga (now the minister of the Interior) were travelling to Gisenyi with increasing regularity to try to persuade the refugees to come home. Khan was working closely with the government to get them access to the UNAMIR-held parts of the HPZ as soon as possible. We were providing helicopters, ground transport, fuel and minimal humanitarian aid to the Rwandan government, which was working throughout the country as best it could to support the populations who had remained and to help those who were coming back.

  Having fulfilled his duties as a son, and having seen his children, Henry was back and fresh for the fray. On the evening of his return, he and I sat down together and discussed our future with the mission. If I had to go, then my soldiers and officers deserved the best replacement commander I could get. That person was Henry Anyidoho. He knew the ground, the players, the situation, the plan, and what tasks had to be accomplished—and despite all the deprivation we had suffered and the scenes we had witnessed, he had not been worn down. I showed him the recommendation I had made to my chief of defence staff as well as to Maurice, and told him that the triumvirate backed his appointment. With permission from his government in hand, all that remained was the final confirmation and the handover.

  On August 2, I made my way to Entebbe to meet Schroeder in his HQ. The visit from Defense Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvilli and their large entourage had changed nothing, though Khan and I had taken our best shot at explaining the region’s imperatives. Once again, General Schroeder was most welcoming and he immediately had his staff bring me up to date. More of his forces were moving into Goma and he had sent Nix there semi-permanently. He would be sending a total of three hundred military police and airfield staff with off-loading equipment to Kigali over the next few days, and I could expect the C5 military cargo planes to start carrying in my troops by August 6.

  We then spoke privately as there were far too many busy people and boards and charts and crackling communications systems arrayed around us. When we were alone together in his office, I didn’t even have to ask the question. His orders, he said, were to operate out of Entebbe with his main effort concentrated on Goma. His people at the Kigali airport would not be allowed to leave the airfield perimeter. The political heat was on for him not to take any risks that might lead to the injury or death of his troops. When I left him to go visit my UNMOs in their unassuming quarters I was incensed, and Schroeder, who had criticized the course his bosses had decided upon, was ashamed. His political masters were being suckered into Goma and into a no-risk approach—shades of Mogadishu haunting us still. Such actions helped ensure lasting conflict in the area.

  I climbed to the top of the decrepit old terminal and looked out from the bullet-riddled tower. My camp at Entebbe looked like a tiny, amateur operation against the bustle of the American enterprise here. I could not believe that the outside world was finally coming into the Rwandan catastrophe en masse and screwing it up so totally—and for the same reasons that had prevented them from reacting properly to the genocide in the first place. I flew back to Kigali that night, knowing that without the Americans’ support for the Homeward Bound plan the road ahead was near-impassable.

  And so for the last weeks of my command the Americans, with all their resources, sat inside the perimeter of the Kigali airport, and though they helped us bring our troops in and out, they did little else. There were still casualties in Kigali as a result of crime (our UN civilian police were working hard with the new government, but there was a ways to go yet) and people were stumbling across land mines or other unexploded ordinance. The Americans had several well-equipped ambulances on the ground with medical staff, while we were making do with vans, pickup trucks, four-by-fours and sometimes even dump trucks. But when we asked the Americans if they could do emergency casualty evacuation to the hospitals in Kigali, they refused, evoking their standing orders.

  Then there was water. With the help of British and Canadian engineers, we were able to establish water purification points around the city but we did not have any bulk-water carriers to move the water to our locations or to the civilian population. As a result, we had to make endless water runs, which ate up fuel and time. Rwandans had to walk long distances to the water points each day to fill up buckets and cans. One day an American C5 landed at the airport and unloaded several huge bulk-water carrying trucks, some even painted in UN colours. Even though we knew about their restrictions, we asked if they could please drive the vehicles, under our escort and protection, and begin moving potable water to distribution sites for the population and UNAMIR within Kigali. They refused. We then asked if we could “borrow” the vehicles, as we suspected they were destined for us. They again refused, stating they had no authority to loan the vehicles and no, they weren’t coming to us, but were destined for Goma. Apparently, the water carriers had landed in Kigali by mistake.

  The original U.S. assessment for UNAMIR 1, which the Americans committed to pay to the UN but never did, would have been no more than $30 million. The cost of UNAMIR 2 would have been only slightly more. By deciding to support the refugee camps in Goma, the U.S. paid ten times that amount—$300 million—over the following two years. If we reduce to the petty grounds of cost effectiveness the entire argument over whether the U.S. should have supported the United Nations in Rwanda, the United States government could have saved a lot of money by backing UNAMIR. As to the value of the 800,000 lives in the balance books of Washington, during those last weeks we received a shocking call from an American staffer, whose name I have long forgotten. He was engaged in some sort of planning exercise and wanted to know how many Rwandans had died, how many were refugees, and how many were internally displaced. He told me that his estimates indicated that it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier. It was macabre, to say the least.

  A solicitous Canadian signals officer had found me a cot to replace my flimsy old mattress on the floor, but I found it difficult to sleep the night I came back from seeing Schroeder. I was haunted by the feeling that no matter how fast we moved we would never be a match for all that was required of us. Morning prayers that day showed that the rhythm of activity had increased exponentially. My daily list of things we had to accomplish had gone from an average of fifteen to a high of forty-nine. Looking back now at those daily lists, I see that I was often repeating myself and becoming unrealistically demanding. I was also continuing to lose my temper.

  Near the end of prayers I exploded again over our continuing difficulties in securing the basics for the mission, especially the water supply. Major John McComber, our harried chief logistician, had already solved so many problems so unobtrusively some of us had taken to calling him “the silent miracle worker.” He and his young partner, Major St-Denis, had worked hard to meet impossible milestones, but since the Canadian logisitics base was just opening up and contracts were still being negotiated, there were some problems we still couldn’t adequately fix. McComber felt I was attacking him directly, but he said nothing. Looking at my orders group, I realized that my manners and my sense of humor, two essentials of leadership, were fading fast.

  After prayers I climbed into my vehicle and took off without telling anyone. It wasn’t the first time. I had begun to suffocate in the headquarters, with its endless stream of problems and demands. I had been inventing trips to get me away from it, deciding that I had to see the troops in the field or just tour the country. In every village, along every road, i
n every church, in every school were unburied corpses. My dreams at night became my reality of the day and increasingly I could not distinguish between the two.

  By this point I wasn’t bothering to make excuses any more to disguise my quest for solitude. I would just sneak away and then drive around, thinking all manner of black thoughts that I couldn’t permit myself to say to anyone for fear of the effect on the morale of my troops. Without my marking the moment, death became a desired option. I hoped I would hit a mine or run into an ambush and just end it all. I think some part of me wanted to join the legions of the dead, whom I felt I had failed. I could not face the thought of leaving Rwanda alive after so many people had died. On my travels around the country, whole roads and villages were empty, as if they’d been hit by a nuclear bomb or the bubonic plague. You could drive for miles without seeing a single human being or a single living creature. Everything seemed so dead.

  On one of my solo wanderings, I ended up at the modern convent that belonged to the Soeurs du Bon Pasteur from Quebec City. I found it full of looters. Drawing my pistol, I ordered everybody out—and they went. I rescued the small wooden cross from the chapel to take back to the sisters. Though a lot of the doors were kicked in, the built-in beds and the nuns’ personal effects were still there, and the water and sewage systems and most of the windows were intact. I went back to my vehicle and called the Canadian contingent headquarters and requested that Mike Hanrahan meet me there. He arrived less than fifteen minutes later with Lebrun. I asked them to take care of the convent. Hanrahan called the order’s Mother Superior in Quebec and got her blessing to use the building as a rest area for his troops. Her only caveat was that the troops not establish the bar in the chapel. The signallers completely refurbished and protected the convent, and handed it back to the order some months later in a very emotional ceremony of mutual appreciation. One happy ending.

  Toward the end of July I had asked my Ghanaian escort to buy us a few goats—a ram, a nanny and a couple of kids—to bring some life into my days. I took immense pleasure in watering them, feeding them and watching them roam the Amahoro. The goats were not appreciated by the staff, as they left droppings all over, even inside the operations centre. One day my Ghanaian batman came running into my office and said for me to come quickly—a pack of wild dogs was attacking my goats. Without stopping to think I grabbed my pistol, raced outside and started shooting at the dogs as I ran across the parking lot. I fired my entire clip at them. I missed them all, but still the dogs fled and I felt satisfied that I had saved my goats. When I turned to go back to my office, I saw at least fifty pairs of surprised and concerned eyes staring at me intently: Khan, the civilian staff, my staff officers and my soldiers. They said nothing but the message was clear: “The General is losing it.”

  I informed Maurice on the night of August 3 that I needed to be relieved of my command sooner than planned. He checked with Annan and Riza, and they recommended that Maurice pursue the matter directly with the Secretary-General. He told me later that he warned Boutros-Ghali that if I wasn’t replaced, I would be dead in less than two weeks. Unknown to me, Phil had been laying the groundwork for Maurice’s swift response by keeping him informed as to my deteriorating state of health. Phil did this out of love and loyalty to his old friend and commander. When close subordinates realize that their commander is becoming a liability, the act of passing such information to the chain of command is not disloyal, but the epitome of loyalty. To have subordinates with the courage to act in such a way is a reward in itself.

  The next morning I told Khan I had to leave. He was sorry but also not surprised. The guilt I felt was incalculable.

  On August 4 I was given a copy of a code cable received in the night from the DPKO, which contained notes from the Security Council deliberations of the day before. Sometime during the meeting, the U.S. representative announced that General Dallaire would shortly be replaced by another Canadian of equal rank. This was the first I’d heard of it. Back home, Beth was on a trip to Halifax and when she returned to Quebec City with our two youngest children, the answering machine was blinking like a Christmas tree with messages from family and friends telling her how happy they were that I was finally coming home. None of the calls were from official channels, however, which didn’t impress Beth. She called the CDF operations centre herself, and they confirmed the news.

  I was extremely upset at hearing that Henry, who was away visiting the Ghanaians in the HPZ, would not be getting the command he so richly deserved. I called Maurice to find out what had happened and he told me that the DPKO had fully supported my recommendation, but that the Secretary-General’s office had rejected Henry. He quietly confided that they wanted a bilingual general from a Western nation. What type of criteria were those? While Henry could not speak or understand French, he worked extremely effectively through interpreters. And why should it matter where Henry came from when he had all of the requisite skills and more experience than anyone else in the world? The decision was final. The UN had turned to Canada for a replacement. Complimented by the unique opportunity to appoint back-to-back force commanders, Canada had readily agreed and named Major General Guy Tousignant to replace me.

  When Henry got back, I told him the bad news. He was stoic about it, and said he would carry on serving the mission loyally as deputy force commander if he was still needed. He was only sorry and embarrassed that he had already gone to his government to sound out whether Ghana would support his appointment and the required promotion.

  The next day, I headed to the HPZ for a last tour with my aide-de-camp, a driver and a guard. It was beautiful out, bright and cloudless. When we slowed down at the final RPF barrier before the HPZ, I noticed a truckload of people travelling back into Rwanda being waved to a dirt side road that led behind a hill surrounded by trees. I stopped my four-by-four, got out and asked where the truck was going. I got a mumbled and evasive answer. I decided we would follow the truck.

  I don’t think we had even edged our front wheels off the highway and onto the dirt road before we were stopped by RPF soldiers practically stuffing their AK-47s up our noses. The soldier who had his weapon trained on me yelled that we were to go no farther, and I yelled right back telling him with gestures to get his boss. We stayed like this until an NCO appeared. I asked him why I could not go and inspect what was around that hill. He told me his troops were conducting a security check of returnees, looking for weapons, ex-militia and RGF soldiers, and he refused to let me through. He warned me that, blue beret or not, he was authorized to use force if necessary.

  I withdrew. I now had personal proof that Kagame was allowing the security checks of returnees to go beyond what had been discussed with me, and I could only think the worst. I was putting my people at risk in the HPZ so that his troops could conduct purges as Rwandans tried to return home.

  We continued on our way to meet with Luc Racine and the local French commander, who were waiting for us by the side of the road near Gikongoro. In their opinion security was still very tenuous here. The Ghanaians were settling in with the locals and their patrols were generally well received. But many were worried about who else was coming to replace the French. Racine took me aside and emphasized that we had better get a lot of aid into this zone fast, as word was going around that the people in Coma were being well treated. I promised that Yaache and the HAC team would concentrate their efforts here as soon as trucks were available (we were still waiting for the fleets to be airlifted in).

  I then carried on with an escort party to visit the Ghanaians. The battalion HQ was in an abandoned school in a hilltop village, with one company quartered around it. They were making do, but the supply line from Kigali was still quite deficient and they were forced to buy on the local market. Most of the APCs were standing in a neat row and when I asked about them I was told that the newly trained drivers were not quite sure of themselves in these winding and hilly trails. Pressing further brought out the real reason. To navigate in the hills they nee
ded armoured jeeps or one-ton section trucks.

  On our return trip through the HPZ, I stopped in a village and waited for a group of journalists who had found out I was in the area and wanted to interview me. I wandered about twenty metres away from my vehicle, and elders from the village approached me. We started talking. Within minutes, the crowd grew to more than a hundred and its size soon attracted even more. The elders were concerned about the departure of the French and the eventual arrival of the RPF. The discussion at first was friendly, with a few people asking questions and the others listening intently. The rings of people around me kept increasing and the questions went on and on. The reaction of the crowd was starting to veer wildly. One moment there was laughter and in the blink of an eye things turned nasty. New interlocutors who were anti-UNAMIR and anti-RPF started to shout. I did not pull out my pistol but I was reaching for it when my ADC, with my vehicle on his heels, started to make his way toward me through the crowd. No one budged. With not very convincing thank-yous and goodbyes, I suddenly pushed toward him. When I reached him we both turned and forced our way back to our four-by-four. Once inside we beat a tactical retreat. I was still catching my breath when we met the gang from the press. We signalled for them to follow us and when we judged that we had reached a safe enough distance from the crowd we stopped and held the conference. For years afterward, I could not bear to be pressed close in a crowd.

  On August 61 was invited to meet with President Bizimungu. He seemed to have grown into his new job and the trappings of head of state. We discussed a rainbow of subjects from how to conduct political visits in the HPZ to water for the capital to fixing the hangars at the airport to old times. Top of my mind was the encounter I had had at the security checkpoint at the exit from the HPZ. I told Pasteur there was considerable pressure from the human rights people and New York for his government to ease off and be much more transparent. He acknowledged the bad position they were in and also the danger to his government if there were considerable delays in official recognition because of such practices. I made it clear that if UNAMIR ever had to declare RPF-held territory unsafe due to exactations without due process, then the people in the HPZ would head west by the fastest means possible. And UNAMIR would have no choice but to stop the RPF with force, in accordance with our mandate to protect people in danger. The Security Council would then most likely ask the French to stay on and the exiled interim government and its forces would gain some sympathy internationally.