The History of a Verified Genocide

To please the United States and France the UN Secretariat deliberately withheld information on the impending genocide in Rwanda - also after it had started

By Gunnar Willum and Bjørn Willum

On 10 January 1994 at 7.30 pm NYC time a fax ticks in at the UN headquarters in New York from the Commander-in-Chief of the UN forces in Rwanda, Major-General Romeo Dallaire. Even though it is after working hours the content of the cable is considered of such importance that two superiors are called in: The personal military adviser of Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, Major-General Maurice Baril, and Undersecretary-General Kofi Annan, Chief of the Department of Peacekeeping (DPKO). Before midnight Annan has sent an answer.

In the cable Dallaire tells how a Hutu militia leader has revealed a conspiracy, that aims not only to sabotage the year-long peace process in Rwanda, but also to exterminate all Tutsis. A part of the plan directly involves the DPKO: The militia is planning to murder Belgian UN soldiers and by that scare the UN out of Rwanda - so that the genocide can proceed undisturbed. The 450-men big Belgian section of the UN contingent is the backbone of the UN force: Ghana has contributed more than 500 troops and Bangladesh more than 700 - but the Belgians are the best equipped, only they have the decisive armoured personnel carriers and only they speak French, the leading foreign language in Rwanda.

General Dallaire from Rwanda asks for permission to confiscate the weapons of the militia. Annan’s answer is a denial. By telephone the reason is given that such a confiscation is “beyond the philosophy of Peacekeeping.” Dallaire is instructed to await further orders. Furiously, he obeys his orders.

The duties of the UN force

The duties of the UN forces are the following: In August the leader of the Tutsi-dominated rebel army RPF signed a ceasefire agreement with Rwandan President Habyarimana (Hutu). This agreement is supposed to pave the way for a sharing of powers between the President’s party the MRND, RPF as well as internal opposition parties. For the first time in decades a peaceful solution is vaguely in sight in the country. To ensure peace and to carry through the agreed sharing of powers the UN force is sent to Rwanda.

When the army in 1990 attacked the government army it proceeded with flashing speed and the army was discredited in its own ranks. Among the Hutus a militia was formed, whose original aim was to act as a homeguard to back up the army and to keep the RPF away. The militia, Interahamwe, is however now in the hands of Hutu extremists, who wish to use it as a tool to eliminate their enemies. This means anybody against the power clique around the President, which they believe include all of the one million Tutsis in the country.

After hardly having arrived during the last half of November 1993, the UN forces have already received a warning from high-ranking officers in Rwanda’s army, who in a letter to Dallaire warn against murders that have been planned on opposition politicians. At the same time the UN forces have, via an informer working at the headquarters of the presidential MRND party, received detailed information about the contents of a series of meetings in the party top.

Tutsis are to be eliminated!

Intelligence reports from a Belgian officer in the UN forces (which Information has in its possession), which are based upon these meetings and others, refer to a meeting led by Rwandan President Habyarimana on 5 November in which it has been decided that Tutsis and others who do not support MRND and Interahamwe are to be eliminated.

During December and the first days of January a series of reports follow from meetings between well-known, named top politicians and the President of Interhamwe, who discuss arming of the militia and actions to be taken against the UN forces. The problem with this information is that it cannot be verified.

The at that time Chief of the Department of Political Affairs, Undersecretary-General James Jonah, tells Information that the Secretary-General from other sources than the UN forces already at the beginning of December had heard rumours about a subversion of the peace process, planned by extremist elements close to the President.

Dallaire’s cable is therefore not the first piece of information to reach the UN about these plans. But it is the first time somebody can deliver proof of the accusations, as one of Dallaire’s intelligence officers, Major Clayes, expresses it.

Dallaire’s top secret informer is not just anybody. He is the leader of Interahamwe in the capital Kigali and has 1700 men under his command, divided into 40 cells. His motive to speak up: He thinks the situation has gone too far - he does not want to contribute to genocide.

The ticking bomb

Dallaire’s cable is a problem, a ticking bomb in the top of the Secretariat. Genocide is a serious matter: The UN convention obliges its member states to intervene. But after the failure in Somalia, the United States is pulling out and it is not prepared to enter into any UN action at the moment, not in Bosnia and not at all in Africa. Apart from that Boutros-Ghali is under severe pressure from the United States, which does not want him to continue as Secretary-General.

France, another permanent member of the Security Council, has close connections to President Habyarimana and has supplied him with those weapons that are now being passed on to the Interahamwe.

What is to be done with this unpleasant piece of information from this small African country whose name is not part of ordinary people's vocabulary? Because something has to be done. If the information is not passed on, the UN Secretariat will afterwards, in the very likely case that actually things turn out as described in the cable, be held responsible.

On 11 January after the Secretariat leadership has weighed its possibilities, it sends a coded cable labelled “Contact with Informer” to Dallaire. He receives the following orders: He is to inform the embassies of the United States, France and Belgium in Rwanda about the content of his cable from the night before and ask for political asylum for the informer. By that they try to transfer the responsibility to the three embassies to try if they - contrary to expectation - want to do something. At the same time these countries, whose embassies have been briefed, cannot afterwards blame the Secretariat for not having warned them. Dallaire is at the same time instructed to go to President Habyarimana to persuade him to stop the plans. If the President does not do this, then the UN threatens that the information will be given to the Security Council.

The order is signed by Annan.

Information is withheld

Four days later, on 15 January, Dallaire reports back that all the embassies have declined to give the informer asylum. Before this, on 12 January, Dallaire had visited President Habyarimana. About the meeting Dallaire says, ”He seemed mad as if we had revealed his plans. He said that he would look after it, but of cause he did the opposite.”

US ambassador Rawson does not inform his government about the forthcoming genocide and the preparations. This is told to Information by sources in the American intelligence community that had access to embassy correspondence. Himself Rawson says “that he did not see it as his duty to interfere with internal affairs”.

As neither the American nor the French embassy reacts, the Secretariat chooses to interpret the silence in the way that the information pleases neither the United States nor France. “We had to consider what the traffic can bear”, as a high placed DPKO-source expresses it - accordingly: Do not bother the two countries with information whose consequences they are not interested in drawing. The Secretariat does not carry out the threat of informing the Security Council. However, not everybody seems to agree with this way of reasoning: One of the officers in the DPKO (who wishes to stay anonymous) desperately starts to circulate the cable in the Secretariat outside the DPKO in a certain black folder designated for very important information. But nothing reaches the Security Council - though Boutros-Ghali afterwards has tried to persuade the world that he did.

As the possibility for the informer to bring himself in safety is missed, Dallaire indicates towards a part of his personnel that he cuts the contact. Only a very few persons know that the contact is sustained.

Dallaire asks the informer to provide further evidence so they can make the Secretariat react. The next day on January 16th an opportunity arises. MRND holds a big meeting at Kigali Nyamirambo stadium and at night hours as the whole MRND and militia leadership is at the meeting, the informer uses the opportunity to take Clayes black assistant into the MRND headquarters, while Clayes waits in the car outside. “Here my Senegalese assistant counted 125 Kalashnikov riffles hidden away in the cellar”, Clayes tells Information.

From Rwanda Annan is informed directly through Baril that Dallaire’s intelligence officers have checked the matter. They can therefore see that the weapons distribution continues with increased speed after Dallaire has been to the President.

The Belgians react

At this point Belgium starts to react. Belgian diplomats informed by Belgium military intelligence go to the DPKO to warn. After Foreign Minister Claes in Brussels have had relayed lists of people to be killed, he travels to Rwanda in February. He is briefed by Dallaire and during his visit people are murdered on the street.

Claes hereafter instructs his UN-mission to go to the UN-Secretariat, but Annan declines Secretariat action and instead asks the Belgium government to “make sure these elements be tackled”. Finally Claes personally calls Boutros-Ghali to brief him on the situation and as this does not help he writes a letter to the Secretary-General on March 14th wherein he explicitly mentions the stocked weapons and encourages that the UN takes precautions so that the peace process does not sink in violence.

Instead Boutros-Ghali writes to the Security Council on March 30th that it should consider its support to the peace process if sufficient progress is not made, implying: then the UN should pull out. This is conveyed by the special representative of the Secretary-General although they both know that a withdrawal is exactly what the extremist forces are looking for.

The situation explodes

On April 6th, 1994 the genocide is triggered off. After a long time of international pressure President Habyarimana has signed the agreement of powersharing in the capital of Tanzania. As his plane approaches Kigali airport it is shot down. Interahamwe moves out into the streets and the most effective genocide of the history commences.

“The situation was very clear. On April 8th we could from the airport see people being slaughtered by the militia with our own eyes”, Clayes says. “To us it was just a continuation of the episodes we had seen earlier”, says Luc Marchal, second-in-command of the UN-forces. “Before it only lasted some hours or a day, then the militias withdrew, this time it did not stop”.

DPKO is from Dallaire by telephone kept up-dated on the situation and Dallaire on April 8th sends a cable to among others Annan wherein he clearly describes what is about to happen. This does not make the Secretariat change course either. Despite knowledge to the contrary Boutros-Ghali through his DPKO-top-people starts describing the bloodbath to the Security Council and in press reports in terms like “deep-rooted ethnic hatred” - a natural disaster nobody controls. Dallaire is asked to prepare for withdrawal of the UN-forces.

Belgium withdraws

After the assasination of ten Belgian peacekeepers in the night following the downing of the plane, a part of the extremist strategy to have the UN forces withdraw, Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes, after ordering the immediate pull out of the Belgian contingent, starts to lobby to have the rest of the troops withdrawn. This is done to make the Belgian decision look less cowardly. Following two weeks of negotiation and evacuation of ex-patriates the Security Council votes to scale down the UN force drastically leaving Rwanda to the will of the extremist militias.

But as the word genocide begins to appear in press reports the Czech representative in the Security Council becomes suspicious of what he calls "one-sided information from the Secretariat". He therefore calls for an informal briefing of the non-permanent members of the Security Council where Allison Des Forges from Human Rights Watch describes the planned genocide the Rwandese government is executing. Few days after the New Zealand representative forces upon the Council to adopt a statement using language from the UN Genocide Convention, bidding its member states to intervene.

UN intervenes     

Forced by the Council Boutros-Ghali declares that a genocide is taking place in Rwanda but simultaneously with the words "Hutus killing Tutsis and Tutsis killing Hutus" implies that responsibility rests with the Rwandan people. The denial of facts no longer an option as excuse for inaction the Security Council in mid-May adopts a resolution to send troops to stop the genocide. But due to reluctance by the major powers to provide the troops the resolution is not fulfilled until the arrival of French troops in mid-June. At this point it is too late. Facing all out military victory by the RPF the government forces and the militias are fleeing the country to neighbouring Zaire.

Meanwhile the Hutu extremist plans for extermination of their enemies are almost completed. The exact number of people killed in the weeks after April 6th will never be known but the number is estimated to be about 800.000.

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