The Humanitarian and Military Interface:

Reflections on the Rwanda Experience

by

Larry Minear*

More than two years after the genocide in Rwanda, the world is only beginning to come to terms with the well-orchestrated events unleashed in Kigali in early April 1994. That is as it should be. Given the horrific nature of the blood bath and the nearly total paralysis in international action at the time, any more fast-paced postmortems would be less than commensurate with the seriousness of the failures.

The most wide-ranging and detailed study of the international response to genocide, a five-volume series commissioned by a host of humanitarian organizations and released this spring, has triggered some noteworthy reactions.1 The finding that the United Nations took no action in response to "unequivocal warnings [of] detailed plans for genocide" which it had received in January 1994 has brought angry and defensive reactions from gatekeepers at UN headquarters. Well-documented criticisms of the performance of humanitarian organizations have also been received with a certain defensiveness, although initial efforts by individual aid agencies to set straight the records of their own performances have given way to more serious interagency review of the problems identified.

As a contribution to the reflection process, a colleague and I have also done a study -- necessarily more modest in scale and more focused in nature than the multi-volume effort -- on the roles of international military forces in responding to the genocide and the suffering which flowed from it. Soldiers to the Rescue situates our review and analysis of those roles in the Rwanda crisis within the context of the trend in the early post-Cold War era to deputize the military to carry out a widening array of humanitarian tasks.2 We address the issue of whether the performance of the military will and should expand or constrict its role as a major actor in future humanitarian emergencies.

Our study takes as a point of departure the perception of my co-author and I as we watched events unravel in 1994 from our respective vantage points in the United States and France. We sensed that an exceptional number of military forces were becoming involved in the international response. Philippe Guillot's background in international peacekeeping and humanitarian law and my own in humanitarian policy and operations ensured diverse analytical lenses, as did our U.S. and French nationalities. We soon agreed that the Rwanda crisis would gain a niche in modern history not only for the sheer horror of the inhumanity unleashed but also for the multiple roles played by the many international military contingents which stepped into the breach.

On the ground in Kigali on April 6 when the genocide commenced were UN peacekeeping troops serving under the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). These were first reduced in number by Security Council action --and then, well after the genocide had run its course, augmented later in the year. Soon joining the action in two separate stand-alone initiatives of two months' duration each were French soldiers in Operation Turquoise in June and U.S. troops in Operation Support Hope in July. Responding to the deteriorating situation in the latter half of the year was a third configuration of forces: national contingents deployed to the region in support of, and at the request of, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The legal authorities under which these various contingents served were varied, as were the numbers of the troops committed, ranging from dozens in the case of the Germans and New Zealanders to thousands in the case of the French and Americans. UNAMIR troops had a mandate under Chapter VI of the UN Charter: that is, they were present with the consent of the Rwandan political authorities and authorized to use force only in self-defense. French troops in Operation Turquoise had more robust rules of engagement under Chapter VII. US troops in Operation Support Hope and many of the national contingents which responded to appeals from UNHCR had explicitly humanitarian terms of reference.

The tasks performed varied from contingent to contingent and evolved in response to the crisis. Broadly speaking, there were three sets of roles played by the military. The first was to foster a secure environment to protect civilians. While this was an area of clear comparative advantage, we concluded that, ironically, the military were least effective at precisely this function, particularly during the genocide period when such protection was most desperately needed. The military were conspicuous by their absence later in 1994 and in 1995 when insecurity in the camps threatened refugees and aid operatives alike. The inherent caution of the military and the concern among the national governments which sent them into the fray exercised a brake on their ability in providing security.

The military were more successful at a second set of tasks: supporting the work of humanitarian organizations. All of the troops deployed to the Rwanda theatre, including those who served in Zaire and in support roles elsewhere in East Africa, made important contributions such as assisting ferrying aid personnel and materiel, using the unexcelled logistical and organizational resources at their disposal. The limitation here was that such assistance was available largely during the time of the mass exodus later in the year rather than at the time of the genocide itself. The services rendered were also expensive, although the exact cost is unknown given differences in accounting practices and in degrees of transparency among military establishments.

The third set of tasks, that of providing direct assistance to people in need, engaged military forces to a degree unknown in earlier crises. The work of French and US troops in Goma in burying bodies, digging latrines, purifying water, and providing inoculations and other emergency medical services made a major difference to the overall effort. Throughout the humanitarian theatre, national contingents from countries such as Canada, Israel, Japan, and the Netherlands rolled up their sleeves to help out, both as part of their assigned duties and on their own time as volunteers. Reflecting the military's ability to attract media coverage, such hands-on activities dramatized the crisis and accelerated the scale of resources committed to the aid effort. In retrospect, however, some of the troops' contributions were less pivotal in gaining control of the runaway situation than they appeared at the time. Epidemiological data indicates that death rates in Goma had already begun to decrease by the time the U.S. troops deployed.

From interviews with military and humanitarian personnel conducted in Rwanda and Zaire in October 1994 and in the United States and France before and after our time in the region, we pieced together a variegated picture of the contributions of the various military units deployed. There were many examples of creative problem-solving. For example, UNAMIR troops in Kigali, despite their limited ranks and lack of political support, did their best to protect civilians and aid personnel in the early days of the violence. French troops utilized their more expansive mandate to bring calm to a highly volatile situation in southwestern Rwanda. The Irish government, pressed by the Irish public and media to become involved but itself unprepared to provide Irish troops, seconded military and civilian government personnel to work within humanitarian agencies on the scene.

On balance, however, I came away from the data and analysis less impressed by problem-solving than struck by how cumbersome and blunt an instrument the military proved, given the emergency faced. At issue was not any lack of energy or good will on the part of the troops but rather the ill-suitedness of the military apparatus for humanitarian-support roles. Not surprisingly, the military carried with it considerable institutional baggage and functioned within highly political terms of reference.

Indeed, the military's interaction with some humanitarian organizations had distorting efforts on their performance. Doctors without Borders-Holland, having initially welcomed transport by the Dutch military for its own personnel and relief supplies and having enlisted Dutch military personnel in its own medical activities, has subsequently laid down more restrictive groundrules for future collaboration. These reflect the perceived need for greater clarity in such crises about "where the military identity and mandate would stop and the humanitarian identity and mandate would start."

Also troubling were indications that the availability of humanitarian roles for the troops may have discouraged acceptance of tougher, security-related chores by the military. To be sure, it does not follow that politicians around the world would necessarily have been more willing to commit troops to do what they are uniquely suited to do -- provide security -- in the absence of the easier option of engaging directly in humanitarian activities. Nevertheless, the Rwanda experience suggests the seductive appeal of sending soldiers as succourers rather than as sentries. Indeed, the multi-volume study concluded that had political decisions strengthened rather than undercut UNAMIR at the first outbreak of violence, the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe might have been nipped in the bud.

From my own perspective, therefore, the agenda for the humanitarian-military interface in the aftermath of Rwanda should not focus on training the military to perform humanitarian tasks better and cheaper. It should emphasize the importance of a clearer delineation of the military's comparative advantage in providing security and of the political limitations within which troops will always function. Soldiers in Rwanda did well what they were told to do, and they are now learning how to do it even better. Yet they will always take their orders from politicians, for few of whom humanitarian imperatives will ever be controlling.

Beyond the question of the utilization of military forces in Rwanda lurks the larger policy issue of the use of military force itself in support of humanitarian action. On this point the process and outcomes of post-Rwanda reflection remain in their infancy. The widespread assumptions are that military means can appropriately be enlisted in the service of humanitarian ends and that the United Nations Security Council has, and should have, broad discretion in invoking force to ensure humanitarian access to distressed civilian populations. "Humanitarian intervention" has become a household word, even though its exercise may be less cavalier in the wake of difficulties encountered in places such as Somalia and Bosnia.

The most helpful commentary on broader questions of law, coercion, and humane values has come from the- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). That commentary is informed by the ICRC's own extensive on-the-ground experience in crises around the world and by its struggle over the period of more than a century to be faithful to international humanitarian law as the ICRC understands it. Running counter to conventional "wisdom," the ICRC's viewpoint has yet to be taken seriously by those who -- whether from the ranks of the military or humanitarian agencies, politicians or the media -- regard suiting up the military for humanitarian chores as the wave of the future.

Perhaps the ICRC viewpoint, itself evolving over time and the subject of much recent reflection within this flagship humanitarian organization, is too nuanced and counterintuitive ever to become mainstream thinking. That would be a tall order in a world of muscular actors prepared to dip readily, if selectively, into their arsenals in search of weapons of economic and military coercion. Why not go the route of least resistance, many ask, acknowledging that the peace dividend from the Cold War has evaporated and that the availability of military forces for humanitarian chores is about the extent of any likely such "dividend?" Why not simply connect overwhelming human needs with abundant military resources and get on with the relief of suffering?

The ICRC has observed that international humanitarian law "does not permit the imposition of humanitarian assistance by the use of force," however legitimate may be the use of force for other purposes sanctioned by international law. It has also expressed the view that UN operations involving the use of force should comply with international humanitarian law and that activities undertaken by UN humanitarian organizations in conflicts in which the United Nations itself is engaged in peace enforcement operations by definition lack the requisite neutrality.3

Our own study of Rwanda underscores the extent to which military activities -- no less than humanitarian ones -- can be compromised by the political and diplomatic context in which they are framed. Based on other conflicts earlier reviewed by the Humanitarianism and War Project, we ourselves have suggested that where coercive military action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter is introduced, traditional UN agencies should not necessarily be expected to deliver humanitarian aid.4 As expected, that possibility has not been well received by such agencies.

In any event, functioning in dire settings such as Rwanda, military and humanitarian actors share a common complaint. Neither are allowed by the politicians who are their stakeholders to do their respective jobs with integrity. Both sets of actors now regularly lament the extent to which they are "set up" as substitutes for tough political action and then scapegoated for the failures which result.

More frequent interaction between humanitarian and military actors has thus brought a keener and shared sense of the limitations experienced by both. Both have come to take issues of policy as well as of operations with greater seriousness. Gone are the days of telephone calls such as the one several years ago from someone in the military. The caller had just received as assignment to "play" a nongovernmental organization in a "humanitarian war game" exercise being staged by the military. "What's an NGO?", he asked. Neither aid groups nor the military are as enthusiastic about fulsome collaboration as they were only a few short years ago. That, indeed, is a step in what I would consider the right direction.

The Rwanda experience, set in the context of similar if somewhat different experiences in other major emergencies, underscores the extent to which such crises -- and there are more on the horizon -- are generated by forces which, in the final analysis, respond to neither humanitarian nor military remedies. Understanding the limitations on coercion and kindness alike may be the beginning of wisdom in the post-Cold War era.