Things Could Have Gone Worse for the Blue Berets in
Syria
In Rwanda, soldiers butchered captured Belgian
peacekeepers
On Sept.
12, Syrian militants released 45 Fijian peacekeepers they
had captured two weeks ago. Bad, yes. But things could have gone much, much
worse for the blue beret-wearing troops.
Worse—like
what happened in Rwanda in 1994.
Back here
in 2014, the Fijian peacekeepers were stationed in the tiny Golan Heights
region, most of which Israel captured from Syria during a 1967 war. The U.N.
has watched over the armistice line since 1974.
The
hostage crisis began on Aug. 28, when Syrian rebels from the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusrah
Front captured the Fijians. The Al Nusrah militants then encircled nearby
peacekeepers from the Philippine army’s 81st Infantry division under the
command of Col. Ezra Enriquez.
The
militants demanded the Filipinos to surrender. Enriquez’s force of 40 troops
responded with a hail of bullets. A seven-hour gunfight with the militants
ensued.
Allegedly,
Indian army general Iqbal Singh Singha ordered Enriquez and his men to
surrender, out of concern that militants might harm the Fijians captives if
they didn’t. Enriquez—not keen on surrendering his men to an Al Qaeda affiliate
and giving the rebels more prisoners—disobeyed the order.
Instead,
he rallied his forces and sneaked away from militants under the cover of
darkness.
Enriquez
said afterwords that he would have been happy to help rescue the Fijians once
his men were safe. But he said that he wouldn’t surrender his soldiers without
a fight for the sake of Fijian prisoners whom—at the time—he couldn’t verify
were even still alive.
His
actions have made him and his soldiers heroes in The Philippines. Some
Philippine military officials have subsequently claimed that the U.N. didn’t
allow them to properly equip their troops, preventing them from sending heavy
equipment deemed “unnecessary” for a peacekeeping mission.
Ultimately,
U.N. negotiators successfully arranged for the Fijians’ release. Both the
Fijians and the Filipinos made it out mostly unscathed—this time. The
incident has led to questions—particularly from Philippine officials—about how
much U.N. leadership truly values the lives of soldiers that member states have
lent to the world body to wear the blue beret.
But this
isn’t the first time that higher-ups have ordered peacekeepers not to fight
back, nor the first time belligerents have taken them prisoner.
Surprisingly
it wasn’t an Al Qaeda-linked jihadist group that caused the most harm. The
worst case was in Rwanda, one of history’s prime examples of a peacekeeping
disaster.
Massacre
In 1994,
the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda, known by its French acronym
UNAMIR, was in the country to oversee the Arusha Accords, an effort to create
coalition government combining warring Hutu and Tutsi factions.
Canadian
general Romeo Dallaire led the multinational force. A unit of Belgian
parachute-commandos under Col. Luc Marchal represented UNAMIR’s best-equipped,
best-trained contingent.
Early on,
an informant approached Capt. Amadou Deme—UNAMIR’s Moroccan intelligence
officer—with evidence of a conspiracy by high-ranking Rwandan government
officials to carry out a large-scale campaign of ethnic violence against Tutsis
around the country.
The
informant gave the peacekeepers the locations of several arms caches. But as
peacekeepers laid plans to raid these caches, their bosses in New York told
them to halt the operation.
Marchal’s
troops also uncovered intel that Hutu extremists were plotting to attack the
Belgian contingent, in the belief that killing just a few soldiers could force
a Belgian withdrawal and dissuade other Western powers from interfering.
Dallaire
believed the previous year’s Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia—where the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers
resulted in a speedy American departure—had informed the Hutu radicals’ line of
thinking.
On April
7, a pair of Russian-made missiles shot down a plane carrying Rwanda’s Pres.
Juvénal Habyarimana—a Hutu—at Kigali International Airport.
Who
exactly fired the missiles is still hotly debated. The most widely accepted
explanation is that the attack was part of a coup orchestrated by retired army
colonel Theoneste Bagasora—one of the chief planners of the genocide.
But
some—like former rebel secretary general Theogene Rudasingwa—have accused then-Tutsi rebel
leader Paul Kagame, now Rwanda’s controversial president.
The crash
was the spark that set Rwanda aflame. The Rwandan army’s elite Presidential
Guard and extremist Hutu militias—armed with weapons from caches the informant
had warned the U.N. about—began a violent campaign against Tutsis in Kigali.
They also targeted Hutu
moderates. Though the world didn’t realize at the time, the genocide had begun.
Dallaire
feared Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu moderate, was in danger. He
sent 10 peacekeepers—a Belgian mortar section under the command of Lt. Thierry
Lotin—to reinforce the five-man Ghanaian team led by Sgt. George Aboagye
guarding Uwilingyimana’s home. She planned to deliver a radio address calling
for calm.
But
Presidential Guard troops under Rwandan major Bernard Ntuyahaga stormed the
house and demanded that the Belgians surrender. The Presidential Guard badly
outnumbered the peacekeepers.
Lotin
called for support. But U.N. headquarters in New York explicitly forbade the
peacekeepers from using force. And with UNAMIR’s troops scattered all over the
city, there was little hope of sending reinforcements.
UNAMIR HQ
ordered Belgians and the Ghanaians not to fight back. Ntuyahaga’s men took the
peacekeepers into custody … then killed Uwilingiyimana. Somehow, they missed
her children, hiding in a closet.
Capt.
Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese officer serving as an unarmed military observer with
UNAMIR, managed to find and rescue the children after the presidential guard
left.
Ntuyahaga
took the captured peacekeepers to Camp Kigali, a Rwandan army base. The
Presidential Guard separated the Belgians from the Ghanaians. The guards began beating
the Belgians, according to Aboagye and his men.
There are
conflicting accounts of what exactly happened in the Belgians’ last moments.
Some say the Rwandans summarily hacked the Europeans to death. Others claim the
Belgians made a valiant last stand.
In this
version of the story, Lotin hid his service revolver under his vest before
surrendering. When a machete-wielding mob attacked his men, killing three to
four of them on the spot, he drew his pistol and fought off the peacekeepers’
captors.
He then
led his surviving soldiers to a nearby building, where they barricaded
themselves, hoping for rescue. But no rescuers came. Rwandan soldiers opened
fire with machine guns then charged inside, killing and mutilating the
Belgians.
Togolese
Capt. Apedo Kodjo—an unarmed military observer that Rwandan troops had nabbed
and taken to Camp Kigali with the Ghanaians and the Belgians—partially backs
this account.
He
radioed to a superior afterwards that he and the Ghanaians heard gunshots as
they were leaving the room where the Rwandans were keeping them, and that he
suspected it was other Rwandans killing the Belgians.
Bullet
holes on the walls of the building in Camp Kigali where the last stand
reportedly took place also lend credence to this account.
The search
Regardless
of how they died, what happened next is clear. As Gen. Dallaire was on his way
to the Rwandan Military Academy to meet with Rwandan leaders, he passed Camp
Kigali.
Inside
one of the gates he saw two bodies on the ground wearing blue helmets. He told
the Rwandan army major driving him to stop, but the officer sped up. He told
Dallaire that the troops at the base were out of control—and to stay away. It’s
unclear if this happened as or after Lotin and the rest made
their stand
While at
the academy, Dallaire approached Rwandan military leaders and demanded that
they account for his men. Maj. Gen. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, chief of staff of
the Rwandan gendarmerie, made several calls and eventually told Dallaire
that they had found the Belgians at the Kigali hospital.
When they
arrived, a Rwandan officer told Ndindiliyimana and Dallaire that the Belgians’
bodies were in the courtyard near the morgue. They approached the mutilated
corpses.
“At
first, I saw what seemed to be sacks of potatoes to the right of the morgue
door,” Dallaire wrote in his memoir Shake Hands with the Devil.
“It slowly resolved in my vision into a heap of mangled and bloodied white
flesh in tattered Belgian para-commando uniforms.”
“The men
were piled on top of each other, and we couldn’t tell how many were in the pile,”
Dallaire continued. “The light was faint and it was hard to identify any of the
faces or find specific markings. We counted them twice: 11 soldiers. In the end
it turned out to be 10.”
Later,
Dallaire called Marchal to inform him of his soldiers’ fates. Dallaire tried to
console Marchal, and commended him for successfully saving Faustin
Twagiramungu—another Hutu moderate. But the damage had been done.
The Belgian public was horrified.
Sentiment turned sharply against the mission. Marchal’s superiors ordered him
to get his soldiers ready to leave.
On April
18, the Belgian commandos withdrew. The Belgian government offered Twagiramungu
sanctuary, so Marchal stowed him in the back of one his armored vehicles as his
soldiers moved to Kigali airport. Machine guns chattered and mortars exploded
as Dallaire bid farewell to the Belgians.
Many of
the other troop contributing nations followed suit, withdrawing their
contingents. The mission continued, but reduced to a skeleton force of mostly
Ghanaian light infantry and a handful of international staff officers and
observers.
There was
little UNAMIR could do to stop the killing. Ultimately, around 800,000 people
died.
Several
more peacekeepers perished, as well. A piece of shrapnel from a stray mortar
round killed Capt. Mbaye Diagne, the Senegalese officer
who’d rescued the prime minister’s children after the Belgians’ capture. In
all, 15 peacekeepers died in Rwanda.
Aftermath
Back in
Belgium, the public demanded answers. How—and why—had their soldiers been put
in such a hopeless situation? They wanted to know who was responsible.
In 1996,
a Belgian court charged Marchal with negligence leading to his men’s deaths.
Many of his comrades, both Belgians and international peacekeepers he served
with in Rwanda, believed the Belgian government was making him into a
scapegoat. The judge ultimately agreed and threw out the charges.
Lotin’s
widow Sandrine Lotin was pregnant when her husband died in Rwanda. She and the
other widows wanted answers. “I could understand my husband dying on a
mission,” she told an Associated Press reporter in 1997. “But they didn’t die
as soldiers. They were murdered.”
Later that
year, a Belgian court demanded that Dallaire explain the deaths of the Belgian
soldiers under his command. The general explained that his force was lightly
equipped, scattered around the country, hampered by restrictive rules of
engagement and generally lacked a realistic way to save the Belgians.
In 1998,
Ntuyahaga—the man who had actually killed the prime minister and captured the
Belgians—surrendered himself to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
in Arusha, Tanzania. A battle ensued between Belgium and Rwanda over who would
get custody. Rwanda wanted to put him on trial for Uwilingiyimana’s murder.
Eventually,
he volunteered to face trial in Belgium in 2004, a full decade after the
killings. The same year, the Belgian government unveiled a memorial for the
peacekeepers near the building in Camp Kigali where their captors butchered
them. The families of the peacekeepers attended the dedication.
In 2007,
a Belgian court finally convicted Ntuyahaga of the murders.
But the
long painful legacy of that failed peacekeeping mission continues. Marchal was
back in court again in 2010, this time to answer Rwandans
charging he didn’t do enough to save their relatives.
Self-defense
Today
there are more peacekeepers deployed under the U.N. banner than ever before.
It’s not hard to see why. The world’s a mess. Recent events in South Sudan
proved that with the proper motivation and just a little bit of international
support, blue helmeted soldiers can save lives.
Peacekeeping
is a delicate balance. It’s hard to know when force will prevent or halt
violence—and when it will incite or exacerbate it. But when peacekeepers lack
the ability—or even the authority—to protect themselves, how can they
possibly enforce a ceasefire or protect civilians?
If the
U.N. expects member states to pledge troops to risk their lives in peace ops,
donor countries need to know that their soldiers won’t be subject to stupid risks.
Like getting kidnapped and killed because the rules said not to fight back.
The U.N.
got lucky in Syria—all the peacekeepers made it out alive. No such luck in
Rwanda 20 years ago. Or next time, maybe.
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