Lessons from Rwanda V: Recognise a mistake and react quickly

When Gen. Dallaire was first sent to Rwanda to plan the UNAMIR mission, he was told by Maurice Baril, the senior military officer at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), not to recommend a brigade-sized deployment (4,000-5,000 personnel). The UN finally settled on 2,500, but it took many months to approach full strength, and even then the quality of the troops was mixed and lacked logistics support – they had too few vehicles, almost no working Armoured Personnel Carriers, only a couple of helicopters for only a part of the mission, and no heavy lift capability. As the war recommenced and the genocide began, rather than reinforce the mission, the UN wound it down.

A fortnight after the bloodshed had begun, and with tens of thousands already slaughtered in the streets and tens of thousands more cowering in UN compounds being protected by lightly-armed troops and unarmed military observers, Gen. Dallaire again reported to the DPKO:

“I received no solace when I raised the reinforcement option. Maurice [Annan and
Riza] simply responded that I should not expect anyone to wade into the mess in
Rwanda. The reinforcement option would never see the light of day, and that was
it… Early in the morning of April 22, [my military assistant] brought me… Security Council Resolution 912. The Council had finally voted for the skeleton force option. The resolution’s phrases were pure UN-ese: ‘…having considered…express regret… shocked… appalled… deeply concerned… stressing… expressing deep concern… concerns… strongly condemns… demands… decides… reiterates… reaffirms… calls upon… invites… decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

“As I write these words I am listening to Samuel Baber’s Adagio for Strings, which strikes me as the purest expression in music of the suffering, mutilation, rape, and murder of 800,000 Rwandans, with the help of the member nations of the only supposedly impartial world body. Ultimately, led by the United States, France and the United Kingdom, this world body aided and abetted genocide in Rwanda. No amount of its cash and aid will ever wash its hands clean of Rwandan blood.” (Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, pp322-3)

The slaughter would go on for 100 days, yet 15 days in the UN passed up the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Both Dallaire and Colonel Luc Marchel, the Belgian contingent commander, are clear that with four or five thousand well-equipped troops they could have imposed order on the warring parties and intervened to stop the slaughter. Marchel goes further: had the NATO nations that evacuated their troops in the second week then transferred the 1,500 well-equipped Belgian, French and Italian troops (plus 250 US marines to which Dallaire refers), “It was enough people to cease the situation inherent and to save the peace and to save the life from thousands of human beings.” (Frontline: The Triumph of Evil, interview with Col. Luc Marchel).

Marchel’s solution (I have not yet reached the conclusion and established whether Dallaire agrees) is “to have a standing force ready to move and ready to be on the ground as soon as possible.” But as even he admits, “we need a political will.” It is unlikely that national governments will hand their troops over to the UN with a clear writ to use them as they will, but if they would at least be more willing to deploy them when emergencies arose – be more willing to expend “blood and treasure” for the sake of peace and humanity – such terrible crises could be avoided in the future.

Lessons from Rwanda IV: force discipline is essential

In any multinational mission, it helps if there is a clear chain of command and all the national forces are singing from the same song-sheet. Sadly, that all too often fails to happen. UK and Canadian and Dutch troops in Southern Afghanistan have taken the brunt of the fighting there because other NATO nations refuse to deploy their forces to the South, to engage in peace enforcement or (in the case of the Germans) to leave their compounds after dark.

One particular problem is when national contingents contact their home nations to seek clarification of (or over-ride) the orders of their commanders. This, and some simple cowardice, hamstrung UNAMIR’s efforts in the opening day of the Rwandan genocide:

“[Brigadier General] Henry [Anyidoho, deputy force commander of UNAMIR,] was totally frustrated with the Bangladeshi troops. Their APCs [Armoured Personnel Carriers] were either mysteriously breaking down (we later found out that the crews were sabotaging the vehicles by placing rags in the exhaust pipes) or they couldn’t be reached (a confirmed tactic by some of the crews was to move a short distance from the headquarters, shut down the radio and return later, claiming they had been held at a roadblock.) Those who actually arrived at the place to which they had been sent exhibited a lack of zeal in pursuing their missions.

“A mob of angry locals, fired up by extremists, were blocking the entrances to the Amahoro Staduim complex [which was the UNAMIR force HQ and main base, and] to which thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were attempting to flee. Henry kept urging the Bangladeshi [contingent of UNAMIR] to clear the area, but their commander was not responding to his orders and was seeking direction from Dhaka. The couple of APCs that had returned to the stadium were sitting idle while Kigali Sector was pleading for them to respond to calls for help from other UNAMIR personnel and Rwandans at risk. I ordered Henry to inform the Bangladeshi commander that he was contributing to the potential deaths of Rwandans and UNAMIR personnel and that he would be held accountable. That night I found out that he had received direct orders from his chief of staff in Dhaka to stop taking risks, stay buttoned down, close the gates and stop carrying Rwandans in the APCs. He did exactly as he was ordered, ignoring the UNAMIR chain of command and the tragedies caused by his decisions.” (Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, pp243-4)

Lest the reader think that this was a problem among the developing nation’s troops alone, however, Dallaire was equally scathing of aspects of the Belgian forces that were his most capable troops. Upon arrival the Belgian Para-Commandos, fresh from Somalia, were caught “bragging at the local bars that their troops had killed two hundred Somalis and that they knew how to kick ‘nigger’ ass in Africa” (p112). Later, during a visit from the Belgian army’s inspector general and the commander of the Para-Commando Brigade from whom the troops were drawn, Dallaire “broached the serious deficiencies in leadership, discipline and training of the Belgian battalion… Belgian soldiers were often frustrated by the patient negotiations required of peacekeepers… They saw themselves as the crème de la crème, as vastly superior soldiers to their UNAMIR colleagues. They seemed to view the mission as a sort of Club Med assignment…

“There had been dozens of incidents of disciplinary infractions. The Belgians were constantly being caught out of bounds in nightclubs that had been restricted for their own safety. They drank on patrol and got into barroom brawls…dancing and drinking in… the local hot spot, with their personal weapons… The Belgians often refused to salute or pay proper respect to officers of other contingents, especially officers of colour. There were Belgian soldiers who went absent without leave to Zaire and got up to heaven knows what until they were detained by the authorities…
“At the beginning of February, on of my Belgian patrols had roughed up [a senior Rwandan army officer and leading hard-liner, and later a] group of Belgian soldiers in civilian dress forced their way into the home of one of the heads of the extremist CDR party… assaulted him in front of his family… and, just before they left, one of them aimed a gun at his head and warned him that if he or his party or the local media ever again insulted or threatened Belgium, Belgian expatriates or the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR, they would return and kill him.” (ibid. p182-4)

Later, these men would order the murder of ten Belgian prisoners.

These contingents were not uniformly terrible: he describes both the Bangladeshis and the Belgians as “immensely impressive” for an operation they conducted before the conflict began (p195); Colonel Luc Marchal, the senior Belgian officer and Kigali sector commander, “understood and lived the mission” and stayed on for an extra six months following Dallaire’s personal request to the Belgian defence ministry (p205-6); and the Belgian troops who died during the mission “were and remain heroes of Rwanda” (p240).

But all too often a failure to treat the mission and its commanders with the same military professionalism that soldiers and officers would automatically show in a national operation hamstrung the mission, undermined the safety of UN personnel and abandoned Rwandans to their fate.

Not candidates but leaders: The London leadership hustings

Tonight’s London hustings were excellent, and there is no doubt that the Liberal Democrats, no matter what their individual views, can rest assured that their next leader will take the party forward into a positive future. Having lured many bloggers to the pub, I’m hoping that at lest some of them will have taken the night off and not blogged yet, so I’ll get my comments in first. (Fat chance!).

The more interesting part of the evening was undoubtedly the speeches; the answers to questions from the floor (and this blogger was cruelly ignored) were less (though still) edifying.

Chris Huhne “won the toss” and got to speak first, and started with a (populist, if only because I’ve heard it so often in the last few weeks) “Draft Vince” gag – which, to be (un)fair, is an easy crack once nominations are closed. He then proceeded to give one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard him make, and easily the best I’ve heard this campaign.

Chris started by stressing his liberal values and the need to set the tone for C21st; the Tories and Labour having no big ideas or radical solutions. Brown was the “Patron saint of tax accountants”; Labour had required real talent and hard work to engineer the first bank collapse in 140 years; Labour are a corrupt party, every one of their >£1n donors having received a peerage or a knighthood; he emphasised the David Abrahams case. As for the Tories: David Cameron was a career politician with no background outside politics, unlike Chris, who has an extensive pre-politician career; and Labour and the Tories were now one-and-the-same, and what Britain needed was “not a third conservative party but a first radical party.” He emphasised that a rich society should be a fair society, and that tough choices were necessary (such as abandoning Trident so as to fund our armed forces better). He stressed the need to end child poverty which blights the future chances of all the 3.8m children born into poor families. Sadly, he then re-used a tied old Huhne line: “Not just the open road…. but the fair start.”

Here a pause is required. Both Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne were guilty of re-using old lines. I joked to Mrs. Polemic that Nick would begin his speech by saying that “I want to lead the Liberal Democrats because I want to live in a more liberal Britain” but he surprised me by leaving that quote to the end. Chris cited not only the above well-used line but also the old chestnut (re-cycled from his last bid for the leadership) about changing “not only the faces in the back of the ministerial limo” but also the whole nature of politics.

Chris also pushed the anti-school choice and anti-social insurance line, one which I must admit makes me cross. He stressed “If I am elected leader there will be no question that journalists will be confused about where I stand”. This is a reference to articles about Nick in certain newspapers. Ignoring my own proclivities, this is a clear attempt (used by Chris before) to position himself as opposed to something of which he has accused his opponent, but which Nick has consistently denied supporting. It is therefore a false issue that he is using as dog-whistle politics, and it makes me very uncomfortable.

Chris went on to emphasise his belief that climate change is the “greatest challenge of our time”, and that we were mortgaging our children’s future by ignoring it; it was the central theme of his political life. He noted that the Lib Dems had been setting the political agenda and winning the4 argument on this issue for some time. To conclude he stressed his ambition willingness to take risks, (confusingly) that “boldest measures are also the safest” (I really have no idea what that means) and reiterated (with that limo comment) the desire to change the system.

It was the best I have ever heard his speak, and as I noted to Mrs. Polemic as Nick stood up and had to wait for the applause to die down, “That wasn’t a candidate’s speech; that was a leader’s speech”. I felt like it was Thursday at the Autumn conference. As somebody who was previously strongly in the Clegg camp, I was genuinely impressed and thought that that was going to be a hard act to follow.

So when Nick stood up to speak (without notes), and had to wait for the applause do die down, I did think that something more than the average was going to be called for. What we were then treated to was the most passionate, most impressive and most convincing speech that I’ve heard from any would-be or actual leader (and I attended the leadership hustings in the same room nearly two years before).

Nick started by using the “Friends” line (all speakers at conference seem to address their audience as “Friends” or “Conference” and I suspect that there is a code to it that is lost on me, though I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that one hails from the Liberals and the other from the SDP – if others can correct me I’d welcome the knowledge) and warmed the room with a couple of jokes. He was altogether more jovial, though an MP noted to me afterwards that joking at the expense of the journalists wasn’t his cleverest move.

But, having clearly learned from his Question Time experience, he then launched directly into the passionate politics that has previously served him so well in this campaign. Some of it was a bit familiar, but what was clever was his deliberate use of London as an example: replacing his already-used example of the 14 year life-expectancy gap between Sheffield’s richest and poorest with Newham’s 16 years; the third of London’s children in workless families; and yet the amazing diversity in London (he also referred to the “arrogance about what is wrong” which I totally failed to understand). He was ambitious for our party, and wanted within two years to break the two party grip on elections. But we needed to start from where people were, not where we though they should be; we needed to be a party of hopes and dreams; of ideas and genius.

He then when to define five key policy areas that would shape the future. These were:

1) The “Epidemic of Powerlessness” that saw people shut out by the giganticness of both government and business; where (doing a classic Clegg and citing a personal example to highlight a point) he described the elderly couple that had struggled just to have a phone line in their house moved; where government advises us to shred our bank statements and then loses 26m people’s bank details; and (most importantly) where power should be handed not just “from Whitehall to the Town Hall” but also beyond to individual
2) “Social stagnation and exclusion” that led to unequal life expectancy and school performance based upon starting circumstances, that (and here I confess I’m sharpening his sound-bite) state schools “suck up the disadvantaged kids and pit out disadvantaged adults”; he would spend more money on less advantaged children to ensure that all got a decent education.
3) “Fear”, an issue the Lib Dems may have neglected and which affected the poorest most of all; and which required us to find practical solutions to real day-to-day problems
4) the environment (spreading good Lib Dem policies among Vince Cable and Norman Baker as well as Chris Huhne, diluting his opponent’s record), where we had spent too much time hectoring individuals while business, government and local authorities had to take a lead; and
5) Globalisation, which he noted (correctly) brought both positive and negative effects but which he (wrongly) would seek to “limit and control”. He was correct to note, however, that unaddressed, globalisation could lead to disenfranchisement, thence to apathy and so open the door to extremism. This had to be countered.

Nick concluded by noting that “Liberalism was the creed of our age”, that he was proud of our past but wanted a better future, and stressed that third place was not good enough. It was a winning speech, and the applause was deservedly prolonged.

Inevitably, after two such good speeches, the question-and-answer session was less good, and undoubtedly both need to learn to tighten up their answers. Having waxed above already I may leave that until tomorrow, but the Q&A did not change the overall sense of success – though it helped clarify particular policy issues. It was Nick’s night – no doubt about it – but whoever wins, the Lib Dems will have an excellent leader. Neither of them sounded like candidates this evening; they both sounded like leaders.

Lessons from Rwanda III: A crushing lack of political will

“Rwanda was on nobody’s radar as a place of strategic interest. It had no natural resources and no geographical significance. It was already dependent on foreign aid just to sustain itself, and on international funding to avoid bankruptcy. Even if the mission were to succeed, as looked likely at the time, there would be no political gain for the contributing nations; the only real beneficiary internationally would be the UN. For most countries, serving the UN’s objectives has never seemed worth even the smallest of risks. Member nations do not want a large, reputable and strong United Nations, no matter their hypocritical pronouncements otherwise. What they want is a weak, beholden, pathetic scapegoat of an organisation, which they can blame for their failures or steal victories from.

"Worst of all, I suspect that some of these powerful nations did not want to get involved because they had a firmer grip on the threats to the Arusha Accords than did the rest of us… [T]he permanent five of the security council, all had fully equipped and manned embassies in Rwanda, including both military and intelligence attaches… [T]hese nations either new in detail what was going on or were totally asleep at the switch. I firmly doubt they were asleep.” (Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, pp89-90)

This is a damning assessment. Rwanda was so unimportant that even though the leading nations in the international community knew what was brewing, they did nothing to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission. Rather, they continued to starve the UN of the resources and political will it needed to do its job properly, primarily because a successful UN is a strong UN, and a strong UN not in these nation’s interests.

Dallaire was, of course, a long way from New York, and can only guess at the motivations of the great powers or their knowledge or motivations. But it is pretty clear that he was never given the resources he needed to do his job; not one whole battalion of troops was contributed by any nation, and one cannot simply add units from different nations to make up a whole. While the nations may not have known the full extent of the horror planned, it is clear that they were playing fast and loose with African lives. Eight hundred thousand of those lives would be lost.

What I believe in a (slightly spooky) nutshell

Sometimes I struggle to explain why I am a liberal and what it is all about.

That might sound crazy, but the conversation almost always either gets lost in blue-skies philosophical maxims ("the greatest amount of individual freedom possible that does not constrain the freedom of others"), or else becomes bogged down in specifics (school choice; welfare reform). I guess the fact that I'm usually in a pub does not help, but the simple explanation has always failed me.

Thanks to Rob Knight (who takes his lead from The Devil - read into that what you will!) I am remineded that at the heart of liberalism is self-ownership: "I own my life and all that results from it. Therefore nobody may take my life or its product from me, nor impose their will upon me; neither may I do so to others." Tristan Mills mentioned this six months ago, but it seems it takes a cartoon to help me remember.

This 8 minute Flash film sums it up brilliantly. Sadly, it is also slightly spooky: as I commented to Rob,

"I agree with everything they say, but I do feel like a 6 year old in Brave New
World, getting my latest lesson in how to be a constructive citizen. Pass me the
Soma!"

Still, it's a good basic introduction to the premis of liberalism. Having explained the bases, it should be easier to move on to the specifics without assuming I'm mean, selfish or a Tory.

Praise doesn't pay for flak-jackets, Gordon.

"I have nothing but praise for our armed forces..." said Gordon Brown today, responding to criticism of his miserly defence budget.

I'm sure that the army will welcome the praise, but it would be nice if he had explained where they can trade it in for the equipment that they so desperately need. Not at the MoD, obviously.

Perhaps if he had said "I have something other than praise..." the army might have felt a little less abandoned.

Lessons from Rwanda II: A half-hearted commitment gives a half-baked outcome

Too often we hear the cry that "Something must be done", but all too often what we do is more about making ourselves feel better than allieviating the problem. We want to feel that we've done out bit, but we lack the necessary committment to do it properly. We do a half-harted job, and when the chips are down, we run away.

Thus, while the UN were planning their mission to stabalise Rwanda and uphold the peace, the member states were not really committed to the task.

'...the hard-liners I had met on my reconnaissance of Rwanda had attended the same schools that we do in the West; they read the same books; they watched the same news; and they had already concluded that... the West did not have the will, as it had already demonstrated in Bosnia, Croatia and Somalia, to police the world, to expend the resources or to take the necessary casualties. They had calcultated that the West would deploy a token force and when threatened would duck or run. They knew us better than we knew ourselves.' (Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, p79)