A Rwanda question...

MacCaulay

Banned
...I'm reading Shake Hands With the Devil for about the millionth time, and also watching some docs on PMCs. So it turns out about a week into the genocide, while the rest of the Western world was complaning that they couldn't go to Rwanda because they had a yeast infection or their pussies hurt or something, ONE group stepped forward to go in.

Executive Outcomes contacted UNAMIR and through them the UN's DPKO (Department of Peace Keeping Operations) to get a contract to fly into Rwanda and stop the genocide.

Now as much as people want to imagine Executive Outcomes as just a bunch of white South Africans killing poor black people for sport, one has to remember how professional they were in the Sierra Leone Civil War a few years later.

I just thought I'd throw this out there. I normally don't start Rwanda threads because it's a little emotional for me, but with what I'm doing right now writing-wise it kind of put some thoughts into my head.
 
Executive Outcomes were pretty professional, and had they been sent into Rwanda I'm sure they'd have been more than a match for the Forces Armees Rwandaises and the Impuzamugambi and Interahamwe militia. Their helicopter gunships in particular could have brought devastating firepower to bear - look at how few helis in Sierra Leone were able to do so much against the RUF - and they'd have had uncontested control of Rwandan airspace. The Force Aerienne Rwandaise possessed a few light planes and helicopters, but never attempted to bomb or strafe Tutsis during the genocide, although some FAR helis were used to fly genocidaires to a part of the country where local Hutus had refused to turn against their Tutsi neighbors.
As I understand, three FAR units - the Paracommandos, Reconnaisance Battalion and Presidential Guard - were characterized as having participated in the genocide with the greatest enthusiasm. These men would probably have put up the strongest resistance to EO in the country. I don't know what heavy weapons and vehicles they possessed at the time; their victims were mostly defenseless and much of the killing was done with light arms or even machetes. I read "Shake Hands With the Devil" last year, and I believe General Dallaire recounts that his men had no military vehicles but some M-113s and trucks, and that the FAR was able to turn back UN APCs that tried to force their roadblocks, so whatever firepower they had, it was more than what the UN provided for the General.
 
I seem to remember a major mercenary provider (maybe even Blackwater) offering to sort out Darfur for the UN, and were rejected. Since 2001 the "International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries" has been in place, however, which I think prevents the UN from hiring mercenaries.
 
I think whether or not Executive Outcome's actions result in an ultimately orderly result depends on how they react to the invasion by Kagame's Patriotic Front. Do they attack the PF, perhaps thinking that they are preemptively preventing a Tutsi on Hutu genocide? Do they cooperate with the PF and try to maintain order as the rebels take over the country?

Basically, if it's the former, the war degenerates into a three way conflict between the PF, the Rwandan government, and Executive Outcomes, and the genocide risks degenerating into anarchy and turning Rwanda into Somalia (which is a very, very difficult prospect, but if there's any POD that can accomplish that, it's this one). If it's the latter, Executive Outcome's presence may actually become useful by reassuring Hutu civilians that they have nothing to fear from staying and by stopping and detaining Hutu genocidaires as they try to flee for the Congo.

Best possible outcome, Executive prevents the Hutu militias from reforming in the Congo, and actually puts a definitive stop to this war. Kagame will have to find some other excuse to invade the eastern Congo, assuming that he even does ITTL.
 
If using mercenaries is a publicity or legal problem could they officially be considered South Africa's contribution to the peace keeping force?

Has the UN actually gone to war since Korea?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I think whether or not Executive Outcome's actions result in an ultimately orderly result depends on how they react to the invasion by Kagame's Patriotic Front. Do they attack the PF, perhaps thinking that they are preemptively preventing a Tutsi on Hutu genocide? Do they cooperate with the PF and try to maintain order as the rebels take over the country?

They were offering their services as a quick reaction force, in essence a peacekeeping force that just happened to be made up of merceneries.

If using mercenaries is a publicity or legal problem could they officially be considered South Africa's contribution to the peace keeping force?

The problem with that is that they're not there at the behest of the South African government. They're there at the behest of a corporate entity. And South Africa has made some pretty draconian anti-PMC laws.

Actually, I just got done reading a book on the legalities of mercenery operations and it's a very interesting topic. There have been attempts (mostly either half-hearted by realists or unrealistic by wellmeaning politicians) to pass down national laws regarding their useage.

Honestly the present day is probably the first time that it would be actually possible to come up with realistic legislation: the PMCs are actually asking for regulation so they don't end up doing something in...say...2017 that becomes illegal and liable in 2018.
 
There was a controversy as an african union(?) general came out on the subject some years after, and blasted Romeo in a book, I heard - he called him an amateur salon general, and accused Dalaire of things like having taken a side, and disobeyed many orders...

I don't agree necessarly, but.. it does raise questions. WHAT happened, really?
 
Jacques-Roger Bouh Bouh. Le patron de Dallaire parle : Révélations sur les dérives d'un général de l'ONU au Rwanda, Éditions Duboiris, 2008, 207 pages.

Rwandan Genocide
Booh-Booh's role in Rwanda has been the subject of harsh criticism, primarily by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire and his supporters, contending that he played an instrumental role in forestalling any UN military preventive action against the Rwandan Genocide that appeared imminent in the country in mid-1994. For his part, in his 2005 book Le Patron de Dallaire Parle (Dallaire's Boss Speaks) Booh-Booh strongly criticized the account and actions of Dallaire, who was the commander of the UNAMIR forces on the ground in 1994.
In 1993, Booh-Booh was head of mission of a small force of UNAMIR military personnel (approximately 2,548) that was dispatched by the United Nations to Rwanda, in an effort to aid in the implementation of the Arusha Accords and to keep the peace between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. According to Dallaire's autobiography, Shake Hands With the Devil, Dallaire had been given warnings from a reliable government source of an impending extermination campaign by Hutu extremists against the country's Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. He passed this information along to the UN's headquarters in New York and reported his intent to inspect alleged arms caches. He was ordered not to intervene, and his later requests to increase the UNAMIR force by 5,000 peace-keeping soldiers were also denied.
Shortly before President Juvenal Habyarimana's assassination, Booh-Booh was also criticized for spending Easter weekend 1994 with Habyarimana, raising questions about the SRSG's impartiality. While Booh-Booh claimed this was purely for fact-finding purposes, the Rwandese Patriotic Front filed a formal complaint regarding Booh-Booh's neutrality. This further worsened the RPF's confidence in UNAMIR.[2]
The United Nations, restrained by the political interests of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and reluctance of the international community, remained passive before and throughout the predicted genocide of some 800,000 (some sources estimate one million) people that took place from April to July 1994, finally ending around the time the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front took the nation's capital, Kigali, on July 18, 1994. As the genocide was occurring, the UNAMIR peace-keeping force was reduced from over 2,500 to a mere 270 soldiers. Booh-Booh was replaced as Special Representative on 1 July 1994 by Shahryar Khan of Pakistan.[3]
 
How many mercenaries did Executive Operations have at the time? How quickly could they have assembled and sent a force into Rwanda? Would the UN peacekeeping forces have still been in Rwanda when EO arrives?

Mac, in all seriousness, do you think you could design a wargame based on what could have happened?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
There was a controversy as an african union(?) general came out on the subject some years after, and blasted Romeo in a book, I heard - he called him an amateur salon general, and accused Dalaire of things like having taken a side, and disobeyed many orders...

I don't agree necessarly, but.. it does raise questions. WHAT happened, really?

Well, you could write a book on what happened, but for my .02 I'll try and spell out how I perceive it, having read Dallaire's account and many others. (also, if it was a foreign general blasting Dallaire, it was probably someone from Belgium.)


So what you had on the ground at the time was two warring factions: the largely Anglophone RPF, which was mostly made up of Tutsis that weren't actually living in their country anymore, but rather in refugee camps across the northern border.
Then you had the Rwandan Army backed by the mostly Hutu government. The government itself was backed by French trainers.
The RPF, on the other hand, was largely a professional military with good fieldcraft that had managed to beat not just the Rwandan Army, but French paras in open combat.

Now, the RPF was on a good foot, and when it and the government came to a decision to begin a dialogue, they were separated by a DMZ made up mostly of abandoned villages and mine fields. (remember the mine fields, it comes in later)

So, the UN wasn't actually asked to go in to impose a peace (which falls under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, or "Korea"), but to police a peace already in place (which falls under Chapter SIX, read Suez 1956.)

Romeo Dallaire deployed to the country, stopping at several countries along the way to get more support. The initial deployment wasn't made up of troops: there were about a dozen people in there basically to pave the way logistically, politically, and tactfully, for the troops to come. Dallaire looked at the situation, visited the head of the RPF immediately: and at that point if shows just how weird things were there. The RPF was the only side that actually marked it's minefields. The Rwandan government just set them up higgledy-piggledy and waited for someone to step on them.

Dallaire went back to the DPKO and said: "We'll need at least 2000 peacekeepers, not counting the unarmed observers." Now, some folks will ask what UAOs can do in this situation. It's simple: the southern flank of the country is bordered by Burundi, which had just elected a popular democractic President. So he could safely assume it was going to be stable and could deploy his UAOs THERE while deploying the other armed peacekeepers to the western border with Zaire (or Congo or whatever it was that week) and in the north along the DMZ.

The UN, by which I mean the Security Council, replied: "You don't get 2000. You get 1000. That's the ceiling." So Dallaire went about finding signers. He got some second- and third-tier nations: Bangladesh, Ghana, and Tunisia, all of which could provide men but little in the way of reliable training or logistics.

Generally, the most important force in a UN peacekeeping operation is the so-called "anchor force," which is normally made up of a Western- or Western-style military that can provide leadership and a model for the other less-well-trained forces to emulate and thus buoy morale. So Dallaire and the rest of the team went looking for an anchor force. France said no. America said no. So did Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy, Greece, Russia, China, Greece, and India. Only one country stepped up to take the slot: Belgium.

Now, there's a big rule in UN peacekeeping operations in post-colonial countries: you never (NEVER) have your anchor force be the country that ruled the country before. It tends to throw the whole UN force into a bad light. But Dallaire had no choice: no one else was willing to send in troops. So he okayed the Belgians.

(now I could voice my opinion about why the West didn't want to send in troops but I'd sound like a bleeding heart leftist. Yeah. ME.)

UNAMIR deployed a full MONTH after the target date because of the difficultly in putting together the force and transporting them to Rwanda. UNAMIR's main base was in fact NOT in Rwanda but across the border in Zaire. And the government of Zaire, when Dallaire told them his projected ROEs and the way he intended on policing the border, was told: "You can't leave your compound without informing us at least 12 hours in advance so we can provide scouts to show you the minefields." Now this was an obvious attempt by the government to lend aid to the Rwandan government: the whole idea of policing the ceasefire intended on the ability of the UN to move unimpeded throughout the country.

So he ended up moving a lot of his force into Kigali, the capital, in the UN compound. His ground intelligence provided the locations of arms caches that the Hutus would later use in the Genocide, and he asked the UN for permission to go after them. The UN declined because they didn't want to make any "provocative actions."

Meanwhile, he was dealing with the unrealiability of his force: the Bangladeshis would regularly put paper bags over their exhaust pipes, then complain of engine trouble so they wouldn't have to go out on patrol. A Ghanain gaurd was so afraid of anyone with officer's stripes on that he actually peed himself when Dallaire approached the gaurd post.

Dallaire wanted to employ a US Commando Solo C-130 to jam the government radio station that was whipping the Hutus into a frenzy with hate speech: the US said it would be to costly to do it and he was also unable to hit it with a ground force.

Then the kickers: at a church north of the capitol, 10 Belgian paras were attacked by Rwandan government forces and killed after they handed over their weapons (due to the fact that the ROE they were under was so vague). Then the Burundian and Rwandan presidents with both killed in a plane crash that was caused by the Burundi-based opposition. The Rwandan government got what it wanted: the Belgian government under pressure and a reason to go on the warpath.

The genocide started, weapons came out of caches that were untouchable by the UN, and the Belgians promptly pulled out as people died. Now it's at this point where the South African-based PMC Executive Outcomes makes a brief cameo: they got ahold of the UNAMIR leadership in Kigali, and offered their services to attempt to separate the two sides and stop the Genocide if the UN would contract with them as legal peacekeepers. Dallaire pushed for it, as it at least meant that there would be SOME form of trained military presence to stop the slaughter. The UN disagreed. Perhaps they didn't want to cut into their Potted Plant or Modern Art budget for the UN HQ.

Then the UN decided it's mission there was unfeasible, saying it was "putting peacekeepers at risk." (gag.) So the UN prepared to pull out. At one point, a woman representing a group of refugees hiding in the compound walked up to a UN machine gunner and asked her that if they were going to leave, then she would rather they were machine gunned to death quickly en masse as opposed to what would happen at the hands of the government forces.

Dallaire tried to stop the carnage with what he had: he sent Bangladeshi troops out into the city to attempt to set up a road block with an armoured personnel carrier. They ended up being confronted by a mob and ABANDONING THE VEHICLE.

We left. A half a million people died. And when it was all over, we came back. The Canadian Airborne Regiment had to be deployed to recover the lost APC.

I've got my own opinions, honestly, and they're kind of sharp. But I was just trying to lay out the facts here so folks know what was going on.
 
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