[1] The piecemeal peacekeeping force on the ground was both unable and unauthorised to make any real attempt at stopping the violence, and their role was reduced to seeking a political agreement between the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Interim Hutu Power government, as well as protecting selected havens for Tutsi who were seeking refuge, such as Amahoro Stadium and the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
The movement recruited and pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons and encouraged them to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property.
As Rwanda expert Alison Des Forges put it, in her report for Human Rights Watch, "the preparations for violence took place in full view of a U.N. peacekeeping force".
[17] His request to raid weapons caches, the locations of which had been revealed by his informant, was turned down by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO),[19] which felt that Dallaire was exceeding his mandate and had to be kept "on a leash".
[20][21] [22] Officials from within the UN Secretariat have testified that there was a concerted effort to minimise reports of imminent tragedy in Rwanda by the office of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
[23] Michael Barnett, who was a senior official at the UN at that time, has provided evidence that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) failed to pass on to the Security Council information that could have bolstered a case for intervention.
[23] The January 11 fax, for instance, "was not delivered to the council members nor were its contents communicated" according to researchers at Human Rights Watch.
"[23] Instead, the international community resorted to focusing on democratic channels to prevent a crisis from unfolding in Rwanda, and devoted its efforts to the implementation of the Arusha Accords and the creation and maintenance of a transitional government.
[14] Among the first people killed in the Genocide, early on the morning of 7 April, were ten Belgian members of 2nd Commando Battalion, the Paracommando Regiment operating as part of UNAMIR and protecting then-Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
[27] The Guardian stated that viewing a woman "being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete",[28] The scale of the massacres was quickly evident to troops on the ground.
"Within five days" of the downing of Habyarimana's plane, "Dallaire clearly understood that Hutu extremists were carrying out ethnic cleansing in Kigali and elsewhere" wrote Michael Barnett.
[34] According to Philip Gourevitch, the United States, having recently suffered losses in the UN mission in Somalia, was particularly keen to "get out of Rwanda" and "leave it to its fate".
[38] The new soldiers did not start arriving until June,[39] and following the end of the genocide in July, the role of UNAMIR II was largely confined to maintaining security and stability.
[40] Unfortunately, in the face of the mayhem in Rwanda and this diplomatic watering down of UNAMIR's mandate, many UN member states delayed contributing personnel for some time, until the main wave of killings ceased.
[41] After the assassination of President Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, the Radio des Milles Collines spread a rumour that Belgian soldiers from UNAMIR had caused the attack - mobilizing the widespread resentment for Belgium amongst Rwandans, on account of the colonial past.
[42] Foreign Minister Willy Claes warned of the possibility of "widespread massacres", and argued that "if there should be many deaths, public opinion would not understand if UNAMIR remained passive, hiding behind the limitation of its mandate.
[citation needed] On 8 April 1994, two days after the attack against Habyarimana, France launched Opération Amaryllis to permit the secured evacuation of 1500 residents, mainly Westerners.
UNAMIR's Kigali sector commander, Belgian Col. Luc Marchal, reported to the BBC that one of the French planes that was supposedly participating in the evacuation operation arrived at 0345 on 9 April with several boxes of ammunition.
The system was humanitarian in some cases, notably during a cholera epidemic in refugee camps in Zaïre, now Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it was the source of many distinct controversies surrounding the French role at the time of Operation Noroit and the criticism of France facilitating the desertion of those responsible for the genocide and a massive refugee movement of the population to Congo (around two million people).
RNZAF personnel returned to New Zealand 2 months later having delivered 3.5 million pounds of freight transporting various aid, food, water and 250 refugees.
After the events surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia one year earlier, the United States refused to provide requested material aid to Rwanda.
Dallaire was directly "taken to task", in his words, for even suggesting that UNAMIR should raid Hutu militants' weapons caches, whose location had been disclosed to him by a government informant.
Intelligence reports obtained using the Freedom of Information Act show that the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter had reached its peak.
In the early morning of January 22, 1994, a DC-8 aircraft loaded with armaments from France, including 90 boxes of Belgian-made 60 mm mortars, was confiscated by UNAMIR at Kigali International Airport.
The manager of Mil-Tec, Anoop Vidyarthi, was described as a Kenyan Asian who owned a travel company in North London and was in business with Rakeesh Kumar Gupta.
[60] Some French Non-governmental organisations that specialise in Rwanda would have preferred a parliamentary enquiry mission, whose judicial powers would have been more extensive, to find the truth.
[citation needed] After several months of work, the president of the parliamentary mission, former Defence Minister Paul Quilès, concluded that France was "not guilty" (December 1998).
[citation needed] Ten years later, in 2004, books, films and radio and television programmes brought the controversies surrounding France's role in Rwanda back to life.
After a week of work in Paris, their "provisional conclusions" were read on 27 March 2004 at a conference that they organised the enclave of the French Assemblée nationale in the presence of one of two of the original people who had publicly stated the findings of the parliamentary mission, the former deputy Pierre Brana.
[63] On 5 August 2008, an independent Rwandan commission said that France was aware of preparations for the 1994 Rwanda genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators.