Global Policy Forum

[I am posting the lead story in International Documents Review this week in an effort to call attention to the need for an international inquiry into the working of the Security Council. After what happened in Rwanda and what has continued to happen in Central Africa, it is essential that the work of the Council be publicly examined. The article proposes that an expert panel be established by the General Assembly. Some sort of public Grand Jury proceeding is the minimum that should be envisaged. -- B.M.]

Secretary-General Kofi Annan got an extremely rough ride in Rwanda this week. After an unceremonious reception at Kigali airport on 7 May, he was subjected, before the assembled Parliament, to a blunt review of UN failures by Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana. He was questioned about his own responsibility for the lack of action by the UN during the 1994 genocide that killed about a million people. Later the same day, he was snubbed by the country's President, Vice President and Prime Minister, who boycotted a dinner in his honour. They were angered by what a spokesman for President Pasteur Bizimungu said was the "arrogance" of Mr. Annan's speech to the Rwandan Parliament, in which he said he had come "on a mission of healing".

The government's displeasure with the United Nations was made clear also in the expulsion notice served on Jose-Luis Herrero, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda (UNHRFOR). On the day that Mr. Annan arrived in Kigali, Mr. Herrero was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told that he was being declared an undesirable on security grounds.

On visits to sites commemorating the 1994 genocide - grisly collections of thousands of skulls and bones - Mr. Annan was also coldly received by ordinary people. One survivor recounted how his group had hoped in vain for rescue by UN peacekeepers as they battled for eight days with stones and sticks to keep attackers at bay. He told Mr. Annan that his speech in the Parliament had "made us suffer". At another event, a group of survivors that was to meet with the Secretary-General did not show up at all.

The Secretary-General soldiered on through the flak with considerable dignity. Taking the floor after Foreign Minister Gasana in the Parliament, he acknowledged the legitimacy of some of the complaints, but declared that he would not be drawn into polemics. He recalled "the old proverb that the guest is always the prisoner of the host". In response to a questioner, he said "I said I did not regret my actions, I regretted I could not achieve more". Privately, the Secretary-General and his party were said to be taken aback by the virulence of Rwandan feelings, even though, as spokesman Fred Eckhard said, they had expected "a rough time". But Mr. Eckhard's assessment that Rwandans had "been through a lot, they have a lot of anger to vent" and that the "Secretary-general has become their "lightning rod" seemed to indicate a certain insensitivity to the outrage at the UN's role and the many unanswered questions. As it happened, an article in the 11 May issue of The New Yorker magazine, which hit the newsstands just before the Secretary-General arrived in Kigali, raised those questions pointedly.

New Yorker Article

The article in The New Yorker by Philip Gourevitch, recounted how General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) had got wind, in January 1994, some three months before it occurred, of preparations for the genocide. An informant who was formerly on the security staff of President Juvenal Habyarimana had provided details of a plan by the Interhamwe, the radical Hutu militia, to precipitate a crisis that would cause the withdrawal of the UN force and initiate the slaughter. The informant had been told to compile lists of Tutsis in Kigali and feared it was for their "extermination". (The genocide was directed at the Tutsi minority - some 9 per cent of the population - which had ruled the country for centuries before the period of European colonialism, and at "moderate" Hutus willing to work politically with the Tutsis. It is important to note that the Tutsi-Hutu split is not traditional. It dates back only to the last period of colonial rule under Belgium, which got the territory as a League of Nations "mandate" at the end of the First World War. Belgian authorities - including the Catholic Church - helped found the Hutu supremacist organizations which set in motion successive waves of violence that culminated in the 1994 genocide.) General Dallaire urged UN headquarters on 11 January 1994 to take action, specifically by raiding arms caches that were being built up by the Interhamwe in Kigali, in violation of an agreement to keep the city a weapons-free zone. The response from New York, also on the 11th, was a fax sent in the name of the then Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Kofi Annan, signed by Assistant-Secretary-General Iqbal Riza. General Dallaire was told not to take the action he had proposed, but to inform President Habyarimana and the ambassadors in Kigali of Belgium, France and the United States, the three sponsors of the "peace process" that had led to the introduction of the UN peacekeeping force into Rwanda. He did as he was told, but nothing was done to prevent the fateful course of events. On 6 April, President Habyarimana (a "moderate" Hutu who it is presumed, did not know of the Interhamwe plans) was killed when his aircraft was brought down by a Stinger missile, and this served as the excuse for initiating the genocide.

Mr. Gourevitch was told by Mr. Riza that while Mr. Annan was not "oblivious of what was going on", he himself was responsible for the specific response from New York. Mr. Riza is also said to have described the message from Dallaire as just one piece of an ongoing daily communication, the warning in which was not corroborated by events in the months that followed. Would the Belgian, French and US governments have kept quiet if they knew what was going to happen? Mr. Riza is quoted as asking. Just three months after 18 American soldiers had been killed in Somalia, would any government have provided forces for an offensive operation in Rwanda? An unnamed UN source is cited, saying this applied particularly to Washington. Mr. Gourevitch does not question this perspective, and indeed supports it by referring to the Clinton Administration's Presidential Decision Directive 25, "which amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid involvement in UN peacekeeping missions". See IDR Vol 5 #16 p 1. The article winds up with a description of General Dallaire on television, putting the blame for inaction on the member States, not on the United Nations, and contrasting the level of mobilization to deal with the crisis in the Balkans with the lack of attention for Rwanda. The root of the problem, he is quoted as saying, is that the international community has not decided what the UN is to do. The article concludes with Mr. Gourevitch wondering what would happen if a fax similar to the one sent by General Dallaire were to arrive at United Nations headquarters today.

Secretary-General's Response

The UN response to The New Yorker article came from the Secretary-General directly and from a spokesman in New York. A 4 May statement by the Secretary- General, then in Kenya, said: "Philip Gourevitch's article on Rwanda in the current issue of The New Yorker raises important questions. The failure to prevent the 1994 genocide was local, national and international, including Member States with important capability. The fundamental failure was the lack of political will, not the lack of information. No one can deny that the world failed the people of Rwanda. But the crucial issue today is not how to apportion blame with the benefit of hindsight. Rather, we should be asking how we can ensure that such a tragedy can never happen again, and how the international community can best assist the people and Government of Rwanda in the enormously difficult process of rebuilding a united community and healing the wounds of the past".

Nairobi Press Conference

At a Press conference in Nairobi on 4 May, the Secretary-General was asked a number of questions about Rwanda. The following excerpts are from a UN transcript (in which at critical points the record seems to have been inaudible):

Will The New Yorker article affect his credibility? "Not at all. First of all, this is an old story which is being rehashed. Secondly, the leaders of the region and the Member States of the United Nations, the Council, the troop contributing countries, all … [the transcript says this portion is inaudible; it could be 'were aware'] of my role. And so let me say that the failure to prevent the 1994 genocide was local, national, international, including Member States with capacity. It was the failure of all of us. It was our collective failure, the list I have given. We all failed Rwanda. The fundamental failure was lack of political will, not the lack of information. If it is lack of information that prevents action, that prevents the solution of crises, then I think we would have very few crises in the world today". Mr. Annan then repeated the gist of his written statement.

On the public executions of Rwandans convicted of genocide: "First of all, let me say that each country has its own system of justice and that of course there are quite a lot of us who are concerned about the public execution of the convicts. I had an opportunity to write to the Government, and I think that all of us believe that there must be justice and that without justice after the genocide, the healing cannot begin. But I also believe that the justice has to be administered in a manner that will facilitate healing, and not in a manner that can exacerbate the situation. I think the Government has a difficult task on its hands with many accused prisoners in jail, with a judiciary system that is struggling. The other tribunal in Arusha has also been slow in indicting people. We just had the first major indictment. But international tribunals are very difficult things to set up and very difficult procedures. But at least we have made one major step. I think I will have a chance to discuss with the authorities what the future holds for this issue when I get to Kigali".

Do you have any [inaudible] back in 1994 about Rwanda? Deducing from the reply, the inaudible word would seem to be "regrets" .

"No, I do not, because perhaps I knew more about the situation, and also I know the struggle. In fact, it was one of those issues on which my predecessor, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, pushed the Member States so hard to give the United Nations the capacity and the facility to do something in Rwanda, and we did not get it. I agree with General Dallaire when he says, "If I had had one reinforced brigade - 5,000 men - well trained and well equipped, I could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives". That capacity he did not have, not because the capacity did not exist in the world and no government had it or could have provided it, but because the will to provide, the will to act, was not there, and that is the crux of the matter.

Does he think an investigation is required? And why did he refuse permission to General Dallaire to testify before the Belgian panel of inquiry? "I think the explanations were very clear, given in the letter to the Belgian authorities. First, based on the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, we could not lift his immunity to go and address the Belgian Government, but Dallaire answered lots of questions in writing, and I think a lot has been written on this, and the material has been made open. I think I have given you an answer this afternoon, and that is why... I think the [inaudible] who are initiated (sic) about peacekeeping operations and how these things are done do not see the problems in the terms you seem to see them - black and white terms.

In peacekeeping operations, a whole series of information comes to the commander, which has to be analyzed by the commander to decide whether it is legitimate or not. In some situations, you decide that this is important information, share it with key people on the ground, get them all to act collectively and try to see what you can do to nip the problem in the bud. When a commander decides to act or goes to the headquarters for them to assess, you have to make the judgement whether you have the capacity to act, if by acting you are not placing more people at risk and if indeed you can act.

Not only that, some of the reports seem to forget the incredible circumstances under which Dallaire and the peacekeepers operated. They seem to forget that he had very limited resources at his disposal, and given the size and the magnitude of the operation we all saw, for anyone to think that his force of several hundred men could have contained and stopped all of this, when additional resources were not being offered, and that they could go in and stop all this without putting other people and themselves at risk...

Secondly, we should remember that in the crisis, Dallaire and his men - at one point he was left with only the Ghanaian battalion, when the Belgians had withdrawn and the Bangla-deshis had gone too - [inaudible] to protect people at the stadium, at Hotel Milles Collines, putting themselves in harm's way. We do not hear anything about that. [inaudible] the troops arrived, but then the killing had been done. This is why the question of troops and capacity arriving at the critical time is essential.

I think it is something I would encourage you to look at. We have done our - we have a lessons-learned unit - we have done analyses, and you can come and talk to us. But I think too much has been made of one cable, as if that one cable were the only information one had, and one acted on the basis of a cable. If it were that easy or that simple, I think our work would have been much easier. We would be [inaudible] early-warning systems all around, and we would not be having problems with Kosovo, because everybody knows. We would not have had a problem in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, because everybody knew that we had to separate the troops and the refugees. Why didn't it happen, despite the information? Everybody knew that there were refugees left behind when a million went back to Rwanda. Why didn't that information make us go and save them? Everybody knew with the fighting going on between the democratic alliance and the Mobutu forces the people were [inaudible] reaching the vulnerable refugees. The information was there. Why didn't we [inaudible]? I think we have to be logical.

Unanswered Questions

The UN list of failures to act in the face of massive need is not short. In Rwanda-Burundi itself, there have been three major waves of killings before and after the countries became independent in 1962. In the 1970s, several hundred thousand people are estimated to have been killed in Bangladesh as it sought to free itself from Pakistan. In Cambodia, the genocidal purges of the Khmer Rouge not only went without UN response, the party of Pol Pot was in the coalition that occupied the country's seat in the General Assembly long after Vietnamese intervention had driven it from power in Phnom Penh. In each case, the Security Council was unable to act, not because the events were within the bounds of national jurisdiction, but because one or other permanent member of the Security Council considered action by the UN to be against its interests.

The questions that Mr. Annan raised in his heated response to the last question above, should not be allowed to remain merely rhetorical. They deserve to be added to the list of issues that need full and impartial investigation, perhaps by an expert panel appointed under General Assembly auspices. Such an investigation would serve the following valuable purposes:

** It would cast light on the interaction of major Powers within the Security Council and on the nature of their interests, the legitimacy of which needs to be publicly examined and understood. Unless this is done, the big-Power attitudes of a past era can be increasingly dangerous in a globalizing world. For instance, the involvement of Belgium, France and the United States in Rwanda during the genocide was more complex than would first appear. Belgium, in addition to its karmic burden as former colonial power, was providing the critically important logistical component of UNAMIR. France was supporting the government with arms and training in its losing battle with the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front that had emerged from Uganda in 1993 and was driving towards Kigali. (The initial UN intervention in Rwanda was to monitor a cease- fire in that conflict.) The United States, which in the post Cold War period has been leaning on France to vacate its neo-colonial role in Africa, was supportive of Uganda's backing of the RPF.

** It would point to specific ways in which the Security Council should change its methods of work, giving substance to UN reform efforts in a way that the endless closed-door debates in the ad hoc Working Group of the General Assembly cannot do.

** It could examine the continued relevance of the traditional pattern of UN peacekeeping, involving the insertion of a neutered military force into a conflict situation in order to freeze it and allow negotiators an opportunity to work things out. That pattern was an improvisational response under Cold War conditions, and it has worked only when parties to a conflict want a settlement or a freeze of the status quo. In all other situations, it has been either ineffective or counterproductive, perpetuating conflict situations and disproportionately empowering the most recalcitrant group or groups. The open- ended commitments imposed on UN member States by this pattern of peacekeeping have become burdensome for many. Under such circumstances the credibility of UN peacekeeping has suffered and in the Security Council there has been growing reluctance to approve significant initiatives. This is not a situation that can be changed by such improvements in UN peacekeeping capacity as early warning, "rapid deployment" or improved coordination. A paradigm shift, away from the Cold War model of UN peacekeeping is necessary, and that can happen only if the political underpinnings of the current paralysis are fully exposed. It might be time to consider a return to the prescriptions in the UN Charter, with a much more intensive focus on pacific settlement of disputes, backed by military enforcement action against any party resorting to violence. Bhaskar Menon Editor International Documents Review Tel: 212-355-5510 or 201-833-1881