Shake Hands With the Devil (73 page)

That afternoon, Don MacNeil chaired a meeting in the
HQ
between Frank Kamenzi and Dr. James Orbinski, the Rwandan team leader of Médecins Sans Frontières and the head of the King Faisal Hospital.
⁴
Armed
RPF
soldiers kept invading the hospital to take medical supplies, despite the fact that the site was
UN
-protected. The blue berets stationed there were itching to sort these guys out with “minimum use of force,” and the situation was becoming very dangerous.

Orbinski protested to Kamenzi that under the Geneva Convention, which Rwanda had signed, armed troops were not allowed in any hospital, let alone in one operating under the overarching protection of the Red Cross. Kamenzi replied that he had reason to believe there were militiamen and
RGF
personnel among the eight thousand or so protected civilians at the
King Faisal, and that the
RPF
troops needed their weapons to protect themselves. At a checkpoint search during a recent transfer of injured persons, under the banner of the Red Cross, the
RPF
had discovered grenades. As far as the
RPF
was concerned, the hospital belonged to them and the people of Rwanda. They were at war, and were justified in taking what they needed.

MacNeil then pointed out that everyone needed the medical resources, but that the displaced persons at the hospital were getting nervous about a possible massacre at the hands of the
RPF
. Using the Faisal to house thousands of displaced people hampered the medical staff's efforts to treat the never-ending flow of casualties. He proposed making a new compound for the Faisal refugees on a nearby golf course, which would give us the opportunity to conduct a total weapons check when they were moved. This would eliminate the need for the
RPF
to come into the hospital armed. Once
UNAMIR
2 was up and running, we would have more medical supplies and a dedicated field hospital, and the
RPF
could take over the Faisal. This solution was acceptable to everyone.

Don MacNeil achieved such results constantly in his humanitarian duties. He showed no fear (as the incident with the first disastrous transfer showed) and had imagination and a solid dose of common sense. His call sign on the radio net was MamaPapa One, and he lived up to it with his dedication to others and the example he set.
⁵
He was
committed but also fun-loving, and his spirit, along with the steady resolve of his commander, Clayton Yaache, welded the humanitarian action cell of
UNAMIR
into a unit where others hoped to serve, no matter how dangerous and thankless the tasks. MacNeil got along particularly well with the Polish officers, including the hardbitten Marek Pazik, who carried an AK-47, which he had lifted from a militiaman, wherever he went. Pazik's room became the focal point for entertainment and discussion, usually organized by MacNeil. Those gatherings were an escape valve for our humanitarian warriors. They faced down the militias to help people to safety. They risked their lives every day in tense confrontations, any one of which would have weakened the resolve of most other people. They carried blood-soaked elders, women and children to aid stations. As with Pazik, who witnessed one of the first instances of the genocide at the Polish Mission, they were haunted by what they'd experienced, but they carried on.

The
RPF
was mounting its assault on Kigali with renewed vigour. I hadn't seen too much of Ndindiliyimana lately, but Kouchner and the Gendarmerie were doing good work in moving and protecting some of the orphans caught in the
RGF
zones of Kigali. Other moderate
RGF
leaders had disappeared from the capital over the last week. They must have been worried about what might happen to them given the renewal of purpose that the French arrival was inspiring in the extremists.

Henry's father died, and as a result he needed to go on compassionate leave to Ghana for much of July. On June 26, I sent him to meet with Bizimungu at the Meridien hotel to lay the groundwork for resuming the ceasefire negotiations. I also wanted Henry to raise again the issue of how to stop
RTLM
from inciting the militias and the population to kill me. I was not directly blaming Bizimungu or the
RGF
. But they had to know the threats weren't working. I was not leaving. No one in New York was calling me back. If we were to go forward, the threats had to stop.

Henry filled Bizimungu in on the reasons why we had sent the Franco-Africans to Nairobi, and also on the status of the bodies of the churchmen killed by the
RPF
at Kabgayi. The
RPF
had buried the bishops and the priests themselves, and were not in favour of releasing them
to the interim government. He also requested that Bizimungu and the defence minister meet with me as soon as possible after I had seen the French commander, to clarify exactly what our roles were to be. Henry also informed Bizimungu that because of his father's death, he would be gone for a while, and that I would take over the ceasefire negotiations.

When he got back to Force
HQ
, Henry told me that Bizimungu had been in exceptionally good spirits and was serene and even friendly. (This was a major shift from the week before, when Bizimungu had behaved as though his cause was totally lost.) His condolences to Henry seemed genuine, which struck Henry as truly bizarre considering the army chief's apparent indifference to the hundreds of thousands of deaths all around him. Henry had also finally confirmed through Bizimungu that the interim government was holed up in Gisenyi, with some ministers possibly even in Goma; Bizimungu had told him that my upcoming trip to Goma to see General Lafourcade was an excellent opportunity to meet the minister of defence there.

Things were bustling in my headquarters now as reconnaissance parties from the various
UNAMIR
2 contingents began to arrive by the long land route from Entebbe to Kigali. The
RPF
border guards were not making life any easier on these incoming troops, insisting on inspecting them and all their gear as though they were tourists, not
UN
peacekeepers.
UNOMUR
was helpful in guiding and assisting these convoys through the hills and through the Ugandan side of the border; and after more interminable negotiations, we worked out a protocol with the
RPF
that smoothed the way. With the
APC
s and other force and humanitarian resources starting to move down the pipeline from Kampala, another company of the Ghanaian battalion arriving in a week or so, the Canadian Signals Regiment and the Ethiopian battalion reconnaissance parties already on the ground, the British Para field hospital and the Australian field hospital and protection force recce teams set to come in quick succession, and a possible Canadian field hospital also in the wings, Force
HQ
was absolutely awash with new people. We were no longer alone—which was both exhilarating and impossibly draining, since we had become used to being the embattled few.

Nothing was easy, of course. The
CAO
and
UN
bureaucratic procedures were still obdurate in the face of our needs. All kinds of logistics and infrastructure problems required extensive negotiations with both the
RPF
and the
RGF
. The mission was still without supply and transport contracts or an increased budget, let alone enough food, water and fuel. The Canadians, under Colonel Mike Hanrahan, would arrive fully equipped, as was the norm for developed countries with professional armies. For the next six to eight weeks at least, we would have to rely on the engineers, logisticians and support personnel of this experienced and professional contingent, and on the British as well, to tide the whole mission over.

The Ethiopians were at the other extreme of preparedness. They had just finished a protracted civil war, and the reconnaissance party, which included the chief of staff of the Ethiopian army, was clearly ill at ease in brand new uniforms. As I wrote earlier, this was their first experience in peacekeeping and they had no equipment to sustain themselves, let alone conduct operations. (However, these soldiers were incredibly resourceful. I once watched them use only long wooden switches to restrain a crowd that was trying to surge across the bridge at Cyangugu into Zaire. The switches were the kind that might have been used to herd cattle. The soldiers also had no compunction about getting into the fields to help local farmers harvest the rare planted field.) Most of the other African units were not much better off.

My days started to fill up with innumerable administrative demands, and we had even fewer
HQ
staff than we had had last November. We were in the centre of an ongoing genocide, and we could not let up at all. As the reconnaissance parties came through, I emphasized over and over again the sense of urgency in the acrid, often putrid, air. They were already late, I said—and we had been late all along. I know that Mike Hanrahan at least carried the urgency of my plea back to Canada; instead of deploying slowly by ship, as his commanders had intended, the Canadian contingent took commercial flights to Nairobi in order to get here faster.

Two troubling incidents had already occurred between the French and the
RPF
. The
RPF
had ambushed a section of at least ten Turquoise
soldiers who had moved too far into the Butare prefecture. No one was actually hurt in that ambush, but French pride suffered a blow—special forces had to negotiate the troops' release. The other incident happened on the road from Kibuye to Gikongoro. Shots were fired and two French soldiers were saved only by their flak jackets. Both patrols had been outwitted by the
RPF
and shamed in the process. This did nothing to dissuade the French from wanting to support their former colleagues and put the
RPF
in their place.

The mission medals finally arrived, and on June 26 we held a mission medals parade in the courtyard near the Force
HQ
's main entrance, surrounded by a pile of shot-up, broken-down and cannibalized
UN
four-by-fours. I had sent word home asking that either the Canadian chief of defence staff or the minister of national defence present Brent's medal to him in person.
⁶
Henry, Tiko and I proceeded to pin the mission medals on sixty
HQ
staff,
UNMO
s and the Tunisian contingent, who lined up in three rows, as spit and polished as they could manage while dressed in flak jackets. We had to keep the ceremony short in case of stray fire, but as we worked our way along the rows, looking in the eyes of every man and shaking his hand, I think all of us were reliving the darkest parts of the mission. I pinned medals on Henry and Tiko, and then they both pinned mine to my jacket.

The next day, I met Henry at the airport for the Ghanaian battalion's medals parade. Before we got started, he passed on the disturbing follow-up to his session with Bizimungu. Headquarters staff had made inquiries at the Kigali prefecture about resuming the transfers of displaced persons and orphans. A meeting had been held with the sous-prefect, who very matter of factly stated that the interim government did not see any value in carrying on with the transfers: the French forces would be in the capital soon and they would be able to provide proper protection for all. The sous-prefect also said he thought that when the
French arrived and saw people in the camps, it would prove to them that the Kigali authorities had seen to their welfare. Clearly the interim government and its underlings believed the French were actually making their way toward Kigali. As Henry said to me in a very low voice, these were “a very sick-in-the-head group of people.”

We proceeded along the ranks, pinning medals on the Ghanaian officers,
NCO
s and troops. The battalion sergeant major found recorded music to play, but I missed the sounds of the Ghanaian regimental band, whose members had been evacuated to Nairobi. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Adinkra promised me they would be on one of the first flights back in.

That day I spent time with the operations team and Henry, as well as the two Rwandan liaison officers, to come up with the most accurate demarcation line between Turquoise and the
RPF
. We had sent a few
UNMO
teams to scout the main routes and bring us news of the
RPF
front line. It was evident that Kagame was finally moving with speed—but not recklessly—into the western part of the country along two principal axes, one running to Butare and the border with Burundi, and the other aiming directly at Ruhengeri, to link with his forces there (soldiers who had kept many
RGF
battalions tied up in the heart of the extremist country). The fighting was getting stiffer by the day in Kigali; as Kagame had indicated to me, he aimed to take the city before any possible intervention from the French. We were losing the battle to keep displaced people inside Rwanda in the north; they were fleeing in front of Kagame's advance. The potential Turquoise area was becoming quite limited in that part of the country.

Overall I felt as though we were finally moving, or at least staggering, ahead. The same phrase kept running through my head:
we aren't alone anymore
.

The morning of June 28 was filled with finalizing the last-minute details on Turquoise and the front line of the
RPF
. There was a lot of action in the city and, whenever I could find the time, I went to the roof to check out our surroundings through my binoculars. All I was able to spot were plumes of smoke and a few
RPF
troops moving in the open. I left Kigali around 1300, heading under escort for the Merama
border and crossing into Uganda. I then flew by
UNOMUR
helicopter to Entebbe and caught a Hercules flight to Nairobi, arriving after supper. My aide-de-camp and four members of the media came with me, and on the trip to Goma we would be joined by the four-person
UNMO
liaison team who were to be our eyes and ears on the French force.