ISSUE FIVE/2000 Shame on the world BY IBRAHIM GAMBARI Henry Kwame Anyidoho. GUNS OVER KIGALI: THE RWANDESE CIVIL WAR, Fountain Publishers, Kampala (with Woeli Publishing Services, Accra). 1997.13ipp. wHEN member states of the United Nations collectively mafee disastrous decisions such as in the conflict areas of Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda, there is a tendency to place the blame on the world body or. more especially, its Secretary-General. Yet the late Lord Caradon's remarfe. made a number of de- cades ago, that there is nothing wrong with the United Nations which is not attributable to its members, remains very relevant. The UN is nothing more than an aggrega- tion and tool of its members and can only be as effective and responsive to world crises as member states, especially the most power- ful ones, want it to be. And it is from this per- spective that 1 wish to review this simply writ- ten but fine, small boob. The author was deputy force commander of the UN peace beeping force, in Rwanda. And as a bey player on the ground, he witnessed unspeabable atrocities in Kigali. Despite diminished human and material resources available to UNAMIR, the residual force under his leadership per- formed heroic tasbs which, unfortunately, came too late for the hundreds of thousands who perished during the April 1994 Rwandese genocide. As ambassador and permanent represen- tative of my country, Nigeria, a non-perma- nent member of the UN Security Council during the events leading up to the Rwanda crisis in 1994 and the genocide that followed, I feel that I am in a position to explain things the way I saw them at close range. Without a doubt, it was the Security Council, especially its most powerful members, and the interna- tional community as a whole, which failed the people of Rwanda in their gravest hour of need. The controversy over the culpability of the international community for its failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda is one that would not go away. As recently as February 1998, in his testimony to the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania. General Romeo Dallaire, a former force com- mander of UNAMIR confessed that 'with a well-armed group of 5.000 men (and a proper mandate) the UN could have stopped the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans' (Christian Science Monitor Feb. 27. 1998, p.7). It must remain the eternal an- guish for General Dallaire that, despite his attempts to warn his superiors in New Yorb as early as January. 1994. and his belief that the Organisation had the means and power to stop the massacres, the tragedy in Rwanda which began on April 6, 1994, ended with the death of over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and some 'moderate' Hutus. General Dallaire did offer some excuses for the UN's reluctance to act to prevent or stem the genocide by pointing out that 'this was April, 1994: the Americans had lost eigh- teen soldiers in Mogadishu, the Pabistans had also lost several in Somalia while the UN (forces) were spread out in 16 or 17 different missions around the world'. The fact, none- theless, was that following the deaths in a suspicious aircraft crash of Rwandan Presi- dent Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and the President of Burundi who was accompany- ing him. Hutu extremists began the massa- cres. This triggered the resumption of fight- ing by the Tutsi-dominated RPF until the RPF troops put a stop to the billings after tabing over the capital, Kigali, in July, 1994. The full story of the massacres and the events which immediately preceded the civil war of April- July, 1994. the war itself and its immediate aftermath is very well told in chapter three through seven of the 'personal account' pro- vided by General Anyidoho. Dallaire's deputy. It is of interest that both Generals were graduates of the United States marine command and staff college in Quantico, Vir- ginia (Dallaire was of the class of 80/81 while the author belonged to the class of 1979/80). This coincidence definitely helped to estab- lish an extraordinary relationship between Glendoro Books Supplement 16 ISSUE FIVE/2000 • Glendoro Books Supplement 17 the Generals during the tragic events. Now. rather than act to prevent or halt the massacre, the UN peace-beepers unfor- tunately became a part of the problem. As the author observes, 'right from the begin- ning of the mission UNAM1R was beset with logistic problems... almost all the contingents came from developing countries with weab logistics base at home. UNAM1R was also op- erating under a shoe-string1 budget before the civil war brobe out'. The author further complains about dogmatic interpretation of UN regulations by UNAMIR administrators and of generally incompetent administration - issues which, he says, must be addressed squarely in future UN missions. Belgian forces should never have been part of the UN mission in Rwanda for the obvious reason that their country was not perceived as an impartial actor in the history and politics of Rwanda. And when the Bel- gian soldiers serving in UNAMIR were billed on the 7th of April, 1994.Belgium withdrew its battalion from the mission. Not content with the withdrawal of her own battalion, Belgium deployed her diplo- matic arsenals to en- sure the termination of the entire UNAMIR o p e r a t i o n. Bangladesh also de- cided to withdraw its own contingent and by April 19. 1994, the of first UNAMIR soldiers were batch evacuated to Nairobi. now The bombshell came April 21 1994 when by its infamous Resolution 912 (1994). the S e c u r i ty C o u n c il called for a reduction in U N A M IR forces from 2.548 to 270 - all ranbs. In q u e s t i o ns contained in his boob which must have cap- tured the frus- trations and anguish of U N A M IR force com- manders at the time. Anyidoho wonders what they on the ground could do 'with a force of 270 in the face of all the hostilities going on? What made the Security Council tabe such a decision? Was the world going to abandon Rwanda? Was it because the operation was in a typically developing country or more pointedly on the "darb continent"'? The reality in New Yorb was that many member states, especially those who were troop contributing countries to the UNAMIR seemed mainly concerned about their troops, and the potential political repercus- sions in their respective capitals of dead peace-beepers returning home in body bags. Justifiable and legitimate as these concerns were, it is my view that those countries, in large part ignored the moral and overriding duty to help save, hapless and defenseless civilians including innocent women and chil- dren who were being butchered by the most primitive of weapons including machetes and cutlasses. The Ghanaian battalion of less than 500 which stayed bacb demonstrated clearly how much difference a well equipped UN force with a robust mandate could have been able to accomplish in terms of saving human lives in the situation. Anyidoho was determined, and the Ghanaian government agreed with him, that UNAMIR should not shut down and that the Ghanaian battalion should remain as the bacbbone of the re- sidual UNAMIR force. The Ghanaians and the Tunisians of the residual force earn praise for their courageous dedication. So does, in Anyidoho's view, Dallaire himself. Nonetheless, given the critical situation that prevailed at that time, with no realistic prospect of the two opposing forces agree- ing on an effective ceasefire in the immedi- ate future, and the need for the UN to main- tain its efforts to help a people who, in the words of Boutros Boutros Ghali, have 'fallen into calamitous circumstances', the Secre- tary-General sent a report to the Security Council, (S/1994/470 of 20 April 1994). In it. he presented the Council with three alterna- tives for its consideration, before the deci- sion to reduce the UNAMIR force level was taben. The first alternative was the deployment of immediate and massive reinforcement of UNAMIR and a change in its mandate so that it would be equipped and authorised to co- erce opposing forces into a ceasefire, and attempt to restore law and order and put an end to billings. This alternative had the added advantage of 'preventing the repercussions of the violence' spreading to neighbouring countries and leading to regional instability. It would have required the Council to de- ploy several thousands additional troops and • ISSUE FIVE/2000 • << Glendoro Books Supplement 18 UNAMIR to be given enforcement powers under chapter Vl 1 of the Charter of the UN. Considering the fiasco in Somalia this was not a feasible option. The second alternative was essentially a reduction in the force strength down to a small group to be headed by the force com- mander and to remain in Kigali to act as in- termediary between the two parties in an attempt to bring them to an agreement on a ceasefire, in addition to assisting in the re- sumption of humanitarian relief operations. For this reduced mandate, the Secretary- General estimated a force strength of about 270. The third alternative, which the Secre- tary-General had stated clearly that he did not favour, was a complete withdrawal of UNAMIR. This he feared would amount to a complete abandonment of the people of Rwanda and a total betrayal of all the ideals of the UN and hopes of collective security. In the end. the Security Council by its resolution 912 (1994) authorised the reduc- tion in the force strength. I believe this was a collective failure of all members of the inter- national community and in particular mem- bers of the Security Council. One could ar- gue with a lot of justification that the Secre- tary-General did not identify his preferred alternative and push for its acceptance by the Council. Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali would have to live with that criticism. Nonetheless the Council had the option and, 1 believe, the responsibility, if there was the necessary political will on the part of its members, particularly the bey members, to have authorised the deployment of addi- tional troops which the situation desperately warranted, in order to put an end to the violence, before it became genocidal. Some delegations, lifee mine that was a non-per- manent member, argued hopelessly against cutting down and running from Rwanda. We were of course overwhelmed and presented with a fait accompli in the form of deserting peace-feeepers. and had to go along with the resolution. However, with the benefit of hind- sight the Nigerian delegation should have abstained. Its statement in the Council dur- ing the explanation of the vote pointed to a disagreement with the import of the resolu- tion. To underscore the point about Iacfe of political will, it is enough to consider how long it tool? it to get the force strength of UNAMIR 11 up to the authorised level of 5,500, following another Security Council resolution of May 1994. The Security Coun- cil resolution establishing UNAMIR 11 was adopted in May 1994 during Nigeria's presi- dency of the Council but it took more than three months to have the batch of troops put into the area. The anger of the present Government of Rwanda at the abandonment of their people by the UN is understandable and well justified. Nonetheless. logistic problems were also responsible for the time lag between the authorisation of the expanded UNAMIR, the contribution of sufficient numbers of troops and their actual deployment in Rwanda. The principal lesson here is that even when Afri- can States were persuaded to contribute troops to an international peace-beeping force (some countries outside the continent are reluctant to do so when conflicts in Af- rica are concerned), the constraints posed by logistic problems such as equipment for the troops, air-lifting, communication facili- ties, are enormous. For example, as Anyidoho has pointed out in his narration, the Zambian troops for the expanded UNAMIR toob a ridiculously long time in ar- riving Kigali (my italics). The elements of the Zambian troops trained on Dutch equipment arrived on August 26.1994 but their colleagues who proved less fortunate, the advanced party of the same battalion, did not arrive until October 30, 1994. Gambari, a professor of Political Science was Nigeria's ambassador and permanent representative to the UN The Lioness of Lisabi BY OMOWUMI SEGUN Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Nina Emma Mba. FOR WOMEN AND THE NATION: FUNMILAYO RANSOME- KUTI OF NIGERIA. University of Illinois Press, (Nigerian edition, Crucible Publishers, Lagos). 1998. 198pp. T HIS publication gives a general account of women's participa- tion in Nigerian politics over the years. Of greater significance is the fact that it chronicles the life of a remarkable, nay phenomenal Nigerian woman - Funmilayo Ransome Kuti (nee Tho-