Shake Hands with the Devil

Mobs caused violence and the RPF tried to take control of the CND complex. Rwandans took shelter at various UN compounds, the Hôtel de Mille Collines, and Amahoro Stadium. Dallaire tried to get the RPF to negotiate with the Crisis Committee. Among the RPF’s demands were: to stop the slaughter; disarm and arrest the Presidential Guards; a denunciation of the extremists by the Crisis Committee; a joint address to the nation by the Crisis Committee and the RPF. They also demanded that the Crisis Committee produce an account of all the politicians who were killed or disappeared. The Crisis Committee agreed to negotiate with the RPF, but since the Crisis Committee claimed it was no longer in control of RGF forces, there was only so much they could do.

Dallaire confronted a group of Interahamwe soldiers who were blocking the Hôtel de Mille Collines, refusing to allow people to leave but allowing anyone to enter: “They were herding people into the hotel, which would be a convenient place to kill them” (268). Dallaire declared the hotel was now under UN protection and ordered an officer to forbid entry to any armed person, even though it was completely a bluff.

UNAMIR was hampered by their lack of resources, especially since electricity, water, and telephone services were down in Kigali. The situation worsened as 15,000 Rwandans took shelter in their compounds, especially the King Faisal Hospital and the Amahoro Stadium. Dallaire describes going into Kigali as “a road into hell” (285), filled with fleeing civilians and corpses.

Amman directed Dallaire to negotiate a ceasefire while the UNIMAR went into defensive positions in the demilitarized zone. Until withdrawal was ordered, “we had a responsibility to all the people of Rwanda” (272). Faustin was optimistic the RPF would win since its “soldiers were fighting for a cause they believed in, whereas the RGF soldiers were killing for the sake of killing, not knowing or caring why” (272). As Faustin suggested, civil war broke out again. The RGF sought to erect an extremist government that the RPF refused to recognize. The early stages of the fighting saw RPF victories, with the RPF securing the crucial border between Rwanda and Uganda.

As civilians kept being killed or fleeing Kigali, Dallaire scrambled to convince the RPF to recognize temporary truces to allow humanitarian aid into Rwanda. What Dallaire views as the first evidence of genocide took place at the Polish Mission in Kigali where they saw “an entire alleyway was littered with the bodies of women and children near a hastily abandoned school” (279). Two Polish MILOBs told UNAMIR that the RGF blocked off the area and the Gendarmerie went door to door to check IDs. Tutsi men, women, and children were rounded up and taken to the church. When the priests came to help, they saw the gendarmes burn the adults’ identity cards and then hand the Tutsis over to a militia who killed them with machetes: “There was no mercy, no hesitation and no compassion” (280).

The priests refused to leave, saying they had to tend to the wounded whom UNAMIR could not take with them. Later, the priests contacted UNAMIR through the radio, saying the militia returned to kill the wounded and destroy the bodies of their victims. Of this incident, Dallaire reflects, “The decision to leave the priests and the victims had had disastrous consequences, but such are the decisions that soldiers make in war. Some days you make decisions and people live, other days people die” (281).

The French operation to evacuate foreign nationals, Opération Amarylis, had no interest in protecting the Rwandans. Dallaire saw French soldiers push back Rwandans seeking asylum at the residence of the Belgian ambassador, who was managing the expatriate evacuation plan: “The whites, who had made their money in Rwanda and who had hired so many Rwandans to be their servants and laborers, were now abandoning them” (286). French forces also withdrew from a school once all the expatriates had been evacuated, leaving 2,000 Rwandans to be slaughtered by the Interahamwe. UNAMIR was also struggling, since “[m]any observer teams were off the radio net and had either become hostages, casualties or had decided to run” (283).

Dallaire asked for reinforcements, but the violence made Western governments even less willing to commit soldiers and resources to Rwanda. Without direction from the UN, Dallaire decided to allow troops to disarm belligerents, intervene against violence with force after warning shots, and allowed local commanders to decide to use force. There was a sliver of hope when the moderates among the RGF tried to make an unconditional surrender to the RPF and establish a BBTG that would meet the requirements of the Arusha Accords. However, many politicians were killed or missing, and the generals could not guarantee their soldiers would obey, so these plans failed. The RGF leadership then quickly demoted the moderates and replaced them with extremists.

Belgium decided to withdraw its troops from UNAMIR. Dallaire wanted UNAMIR to stay operational in Rwanda “to be a witness to events and to pursue ceasefire negotiations” (295). Dallaire was ordered to try to get both the RPF and RGF to agree to a ceasefire and to make the airport neutral territory so humanitarian aid could get into the country. If no agreement could be reached, UNAMIR would either withdraw completely or leave behind a small security force to continue helping with negotiations. The UN still did not give permission to protect civilians, and only the New Zealand representative on the Security Council thought UNAMIR’s mission should be expanded to restore order in Rwanda.

Canada decided to reinforce the mission to make up for the loss of the Belgian battalion. The hospitals in Kigali remained operational thanks to the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). However, 56 Rwandans working for the Red Cross would be killed over the course of the conflict (297). The atrocities traumatized the staff at UNAMIR.

Reluctantly, Dallaire made plans for a UNAMIR withdrawal and left a small force of 250 people in Rwanda, reasoning, “We were doing the right thing, or as right a thing as we could do given the circumstances” (313). The reputation of UNAMIR was hurt by a picture conveyed in the Washington Post of Bangladeshi soldiers rushing to meet a plane, although overall the withdrawal had been orderly: “We were portrayed as scared rats abandoning a sinking ship” (324). Finally, Dallaire traveled out to the countryside to talk with Kagame. He found that across the countryside there were signs of fighting and battlefield casualties, refugee camps, and massacred villages. Dallaire found Kagame preparing to march into Kigali.

Once he returned to Kigali, Dallaire told the UN he insisted on coordinating any NGOs and humanitarian agencies coming into Rwanda. He met with the pro-RGF interim government headed by a new declared prime minister, Jean Kambanda. Dallaire insisted on talking on RTLM, which continued to rail against the Tutsis and the RPF. During the interview, the RTLM spokespeople said they believed Habyarimana had been protecting the Tutsis and that the massacres were justified to purge the people involved in the conspiracy. Dallaire was also dissatisfied with how the global media neglected offering sustained coverage of the Rwandan Genocide. To counter this neglect, he did what he could to support and encourage the international media presence in Rwanda, offering a place for the BBC journalist Mark Doyle.

On the international stage, the NGO Oxfam became the first organization to use the term “genocide” to describe what was happening in Rwanda. Following a massacre in the town of Butare, Doctors Without Borders left the country temporarily. Meanwhile, one night, Dallaire saw a group of refugees fleeing Kigali while guided quietly by RPF guides. UNAMIR struggled with a reduced staff and work-related traumas.

Massacres against Tutsis and moderate Hutus continued, spreading further into the Rwandan countryside: 500,000 refugees went into Tanzania and 40,000 corpses were found in Lake Victoria in Uganda. The United States government warned Dallaire through the UN that there was a plan to assassinate him, leading him to take troops as bodyguards wherever he went. He continued rescue missions despite a lack of resources, and was annoyed when world leaders or foreign bureaucrats would try to force him to rescue a Rwandan they knew.

Kagame refused to recognize Booh-Booh and declared that the RPF would break off relations with the UN if he remained. Dallaire met with the leaders of the Interahamwe, including Robert Kajuga. Kajuga offered to help UNAMIR and allow the Red Cross access to RGF-held territories. Meanwhile, an investigation was finally launched into the plane crash, but was inconclusive.

The UN agreed to establish UNAMIR 2, which would have more logistical support. Dallaire insisted that UNAMIR 2’s “first task [. . .] would be to address the humanitarian crisis” (359). The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Ayala Lasso, also toured Rwanda, “declar[ing] that what he saw in Rwanda was a genocide” (363). The violence continued to escalate with a massacre of thousands at the religious center of Kabgayi near Gitarama, the capital of the interim government.

However, at the UN, the United States stood in the way of Dallaire’s recommendations. Instead of establishing safe cites for refugees, they wanted a large safe zone at the periphery of the country. He suspected this stance may have come from covert U.S. support for the RPF. Dallaire met Bernard Kouchner, a former French minister of health and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, and they discussed plans to take orphans out of Interahamwe-held territory and return them when peace was established. The French public was demanding action. Dallaire opposed the export of Rwandan children, arguing, “They were not a means for some French people to feel a little less guilty about the genocide” (368). He was especially displeased when he realized Kouchner’s plans would improve the public image of the interim government.

Annan informed Dallaire that the United States had pushed through a resolution calling for the redeployment of nearly 200 UNMOs and more troops, but it would take two months or more: “The Security Council, under the overbearing weight of the United States, had once again sold us out” (373).