Why is the man who was France's second in command at the United Nations during the Rwandan genocide, while France was actively engaged in arms smuggling to the genocidaires, now in charge of peacekeeping in the same region? Can he reasonably be trusted with peacekeeping in the tinder boxes of Central Africa and the Middle East? Are Herve Ladous's hands clean?

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(Article changed on September 15, 2013 at 23:38)

Memo Shows Ladsous Defended Refuge for Rwanda Genocidaires & Radio Mille Colline ~~Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press 

Why is the man who was France's second in command at the United Nations during the Rwandan genocide, while France was actively engaged in arms smuggling to the genocidaires, now in charge of UN peacekeeping? Can he reasonably be trusted with peacekeeping in the tinder boxes of Central Africa and the Middle East? Are Herve Ladsous's hands clean? 

Almost 20 years after the fact, no one wants to revisit the horrors of April 1994. However, a refocusing of the lens of history is necessary.

Who is Herve Ladsous?

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed French national Herve Ladsous as Under Secretary General of the UN for Peacekeeping Operations in September of 2011. The guidelines for the execution of this office are embodied in this 2008 document, which is referred to as peacekeeping "doctrine" in diplomatic circles. While the UN is traditionally considered as the international organization charged with peacekeeping in conflict areas, dig deeper into the "doctrine" and find a series of Venn diagrams and political obfuscations linking peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace building. The subtitle "Linkages and Grey Areas" offers the optional mandate for the UN to participate in conflict.  

In elaborate language tied to this "linkage," this doctrine not only allows for UN actions to be carried out by "non-United Nations actors," but also authorizes the UN to "use force at the tactical level, with the authorization of the Security Council, to defend themselves and their mandate, particularly in situations where the State is unable to provide security and maintain public order."  

As noted here:  

While robust peacekeeping involves the use of force at the tactical level with the consent of the host authorities and/or the main parties to the conflict, peace enforcement may involve the use of force at the strategic or international level, which is normally prohibited for Member States under Article 2 (4) of the Charter unless authorized by the Security Council.

And it is this loophole; at least in the example of the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, that has caused nothing but ongoing misery. This misery and slaughter can be traced back to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and bizarre and deadly "peacekeeping" efforts led by the French while Ladsous was France's Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Permanent Representative (DPR) to the United Nations. 

The Security Council, with Ladsous at the helm as chief peacekeeper, approved an unprecedented "Force Intervention Brigade" with a mandate of neutralizing armed groups in Eastern Congo. "To date, the FIB has only targeted the M23 rebels, and not the FDLR which is linked to the genocide in Rwanda," writes Lee. 

Unbelievably, given the historical record, France is considered the "penholder" on the Democratic Republic of Congo. This term refers to the delegation that is the author of the first draft of a resolution.

As noted here:   

The permanent representative is the head of a permanent mission. He/she has the same rank as an ambassador. The deputy permanent representative (DPR) is the number 2 of the mission.

 

This title puts Ladsous squarely in the middle of Security Council discussions, decisions, action, and lack of action that led to the massacre of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. It also puts Ladsous in the build-up to the genocide in which France was actively involved in arming and training Hutu Interahamwe (the militia wing of President Juvenal Habyarimana's Hutu ruling party) genocidaires.  

Genocide Memorial Ntarama Chrurch Rwanda (2009) by Georgianne Nienaber

In recent months, and during the new tenure of Ladsous as head peacekeeper (DPKO), the United Nations has been involved in a series of atrocities, including the recent bombing and killing of innocent villagers, as well as mass rapes in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo at Minova. These atrocities have been either under-reported, not reported at all, or ignored once they have been reported. Ladsous has consistently refused to answer questions.

Why does Ladsous refuse, on numerous occasions, to answer questions about Minova?   

The Congolese Army, "raped women with extreme brutatlity." The UN works in support of the Congolese army under the acronym MONUSCO.  

Ladsous has always been a murky figure, and trying to track his history as a diplomat finds Ladsous working mostly behind the scenes as France's Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in the period from 1992-97, when central Africa first experienced a continuing holocaust of unbelievable proportions, beginning with the genocide in Rwanda.  

Ignoring for now France's covert role of arming and training Hutu Interahamwe in Rwanda during this period, it is important to understand how the United Nations first became involved.  

In 1993 Rwanda and Uganda requested the deployment of UN observers along the border to monitor the activities of the Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) who were fighting with the Hutu Armed Forces of Rwanda along the Ugandan border. Food shortages, economic collapse, and frustration over 30 years of exile for the Tutsi added to the volatile equation, which began when the exiled RPF invaded Rwanda in 1991.  

As a result, the Security Council, of which France and the United States were and continue to be permanent members, established the UN Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (UNOMUR) in June 1993 to make sure that no military assistance reached Rwanda from Uganda.  

Tanzania and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) eventually brokered a peace agreement in August 1993 that came to be known as the Arusha Peace Accord, named for the city in Tanzania where the talks took place. The peace agreement called for free elections in Rwanda, the return of refugees to their homelands, a transitional government, and the all-but-impossible integration of the opposing armies.  

October of 1993 marked the creation of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to monitor the implementation of the Arusha agreements. Resolution 872 authorized the deployment of a battalion composed of soldiers from Belgium and Bangladesh, along with a "weapons secure" area in the capitol city of Kigali. Troop build-up was slow and the transitional government and secure area never materialized.  

In April 1994, genocidal forces were unleashed when the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down by still unknown entities while returning from Tanzania. See the PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda for a chilling chronology of events leading to ethic killings that included Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the moderate Hutu Prime Minister of Rwanda, unarmed Belgian peacekeepers, and eventually up to 1,000,000 others.  

UNAMIR, under Canadian Major General Romeo Dallaire, and through a series of Security Council Resolutions, was decapitated. Dallaire's troop strength was reduced from 2,548 to 270 during the height of the genocide. See April Resolution 912 and May Resolution 918, which called for an increase of 5,500 troops after the extent of the slaughter became evident. The troops never arrived, since none were available.  

Again remember that Ladsous was second in command at the United Nations during these events. Yet there is no extensive paper trail linking him to his tenure. The reasons will become clear.  

In an interview with leJDD in May of 2012, Ladsous spoke briefly about the genocide.

"On the surface, yes, they are failures of the UN," Ladsous confessed, "but it is above all the failures of the community of states that make up the UN, because the term was not defined clearly, realistic or reasonable. [The UN] "should have the courage to tell states that they can not ask us to do miracles."

France, Arms, and the Man  

What Ladsous did not mention was that France was actively training members of the Interahamwe in the years and months leading up to the genocide. Given his position as DPR at the United Nations, it is difficult to believe that he did not have some understanding of France's role in arming Rwanda--an accepted fact in historical circles and in the volumes that have been written post-genocide.  

In "Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide," investigative journalist Linda Melvern methodically outlines a series of arms deals from the years 1991-1992. By 1994, Rwanda was receiving $4 million annually from France, and in 1993 Rwanda cut a $12 million independent arms deal from an independent French company, DYL-Invest.  $4 million in armaments disappeared during the transaction.   

Rwandan historian Philip Gourevitch details arms shipments from France to Rwanda via the Goma airport as late as June 1994 and also during the height of the French "rescue mission," Operation Turquoise.    

Melvern details that most of Rwanda's arms deals (meaning the government of Juvenal Habyarimana) were negotiated through the Rwandan embassy in Paris. After the genocide, it was discovered that all documents relating to France's relationship with Rwanda had been shredded. (page 57)  

Melvern also quotes French journalist, Stephen Smith, who reported in the February 9, 1993 edition of "Liberation."  

Smith writes:

In the far hills of Rwanda"France is supporting a regime which for two years, with a militia and death squads, has been trying to organize the extermination of the minority Tutsi"the death squads, organized in a Reseau Zero [Zero network] by the President's clan, are operating a genocide against the Tutsi as though it were a public service.

Also see footnotes 37, 38 and 39 in "The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide,"  by Gerard Prunier. The involvement of France is carefully documented.

Melvern and Prunier set the stage for a French conspiracy. But other voices emerged.

As noted here: 

Janvier Africa, son of a Rwandan diplomat, and a former Interahamwe member, described French involvement:  

 "We had two French military who helped train the Interahamwe. A lot of other Interahamwe were sent for training in Egypt. The French military taught us how to catch people and tie them. It was at the Affichier Central base in the centre of Kigali. It's where people were tortured. That's where the French military office was... The French also went with us Interahamwe to Mount Kigali, where they gave us training with guns. We didn't know how to use the arms which had been brought from France so the French military were obliged to show us." (Quoted in The Age, 23.6.94 p12)  

As noted in "Human Rights Watch, Arming Rwanda - The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War" key findings: 

The Arms Project has obtained confidential documents concerning a $6 million arms sale to Rwanda by Egypt. The Arms Project has also received information that France's nationalized bank, Credit Lyonnais, made the $6 million deal possible through provision of a bank guarantee. The terms of this purchase, including the roles of Credit Lyonnais and France, had been secret. It included automatic rifles, mortars, long-range artillery, shoulder-fired rocket launchers, munitions, landmines, and plastic explosives.

In the book, "Hope For Rwanda," the late Andre Sibomana offers an accounting of the events leading up to the atrocities of 1994 to journalists Laure Guilbert and Herve Deguine. Sibomana was a Rwandan priest, the editor of Rwanda's oldest newspaper, Kinyamateka, and a leading human rights activist who chose to remain in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.  

He raises questions about drug and arms trafficking by French arms dealers at the Kigali airport. They were allegedly supplying Iran.  And it is here is where the French ties become impossible to ignore.  

Operation Turquoise  

Just as Canadian General Dallaire had his troop strength reduced to 260 men by Resolution 912, the magnitude of the genocide was becoming clear. For reference, try to imagine 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute for 100 days. Still Dallaire and his troops were credited with saving at least 32,000 lives when he refused a direct order to leave Rwanda. His book, "Shake Hands With the Devil," is emotionally draining and long reading, but it tells the story in an unforgettable manner.  

Foreign Policy Magazine termed Resolution 912 "The Genocide Rescue Brigade That Never Was."  

As noted here: 

In April 1994, as Rwandan extremists unleashed the largest mass killing operation in modern history, the Security Council reached agreement on Resolution 912, which called for the reduction in the size of an already under-equipped U.N. peacekeeping force. In a compromise, the United States allowed the resolution to include a provision that stated the council's willingness to consider any recommendations by then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali concerning the size and the mandate of the mission. Eight days later, Boutros-Ghali appealed to the council to reverse its decision, saying the U.N. mandate was insufficient to confront mass killings. But the United States blocked any decision by the council to expand the mission.

In June, France's number one at the UN, Jean-Bernard Merimee, sent a letter to the Security Council suggesting that France and Senegal send in a military force to combat the "ongoing disaster" in Rwanda. He cited the slow implementation of Security Council Resolutions 918 and 925  that called for expansion of the just-gutted UNAMIR forces. France was requesting an interim intervention force, eventually to be known as Operation Turquoise.  

But was France and its number one, Merimee, and number two, Ladsous, acting for purely humanitarian reasons?  Recall that the Kigali airport was being used as a hub for French arms dealers supplying Iran. Investigations  into the United Nations scandal "oil for Food," link  Merimee, to "commercial contact" with the regime of Saddam Hussein at this time.  

There is no doubt that France was the main ally of the Habyarimana government until July 1994.  

As noted here by the investigation by Human Rights Watch, "Rearming with Impunity: International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide:"  

It (France) sent in 300 troops to support the government after the invasion by the RPF in October 1990 - a force later reduced to 170 soldiers - and provided military training to the FAR (Rwandan Army). In early 1993, after a new offensive by the RPF, France increased its military presence in Rwanda to 680 troops, ostensibly to "protect French citizens and other foreigners," although French troops were seen assisting the FAR in combat against the RPF. Even after the departure of French uniformed soldiers with the arrival of U.N. forces in December 1993 (under the Arusha Accords), France continued to provide training to the militias. After the start of the genocide on April 6, 1994, France dispatched 460 troops to evacuate its citizens, but failed to take action against its allies (Rwandan government) who had launched a genocidal rampage against the Tutsi population.

So, what was the truth behind Operation Turquoise?

Part II: "Fear Not. The French Army Watches Over Your Safety"

Authors Website: http://www.georgianne-nienaber.com

Authors Bio:

Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online Quill Magazine, the Huffington Post, The Ugandan Independent, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, Glide Magazine, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, Bitch Magazine, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction expose of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and was living in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction and getting to know the people there in 2007. Nienaber is continuing "to explore the magic of the Deep South." She was a member of the Memphis Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and is a current member of Investigative Rorters and Editors.