Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Abstract

Romeo DallaireToronto: Random House Canada, 2003. xxii, 562 pp, $39.95 cloth (ISBN 0-679-31171-8)This is General Romeo Dallaire's day-by-day account of his command of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1993-1994. The immediate roots of the conflict in that small nation date back to the First World War, when Belgium took trusteeship over the former German colony. The Belgians promoted the minority Tutsi tribe as the elite administrative class until revolution by the majority brought national independence in 1962. Violent repression by the new Hutu-dominated government caused hundreds of thousands of Tutsis to flee, mainly to neighbouring Uganda. The Tutsi repeatedly mounted cross-border attacks in an effort to bring down the regime and allow a return of the refugees to their homes. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Tutsis who had become capable soldiers in Uganda's internal conflicts, launched an offensive that would have defeated the Rwandan Government Forces but for the important military assistance the latter received from France, especially, and Belgium. French and Belgian support recognized the de facto authority of the majority, but also, to some extent, the politics of language: The Rwandan Patriotic Front, raised among Tutsis who had lived most of their lives in the former British colony of Uganda, was mainly English speaking.The United Nations Assistance Mission was conceived in great hope in 1993. Following stalemate on the battlefield, the warring parties committed themselves to the rapid creation of a joint transitional government and military demobilization. Both parties requested a UN force to supervise these undertakings. Nevertheless, from the moment Dallaire's command started operations in the fall of 1993, it became clear that agreement--if, in fact, it had ever existed--was crumbling, despite the best efforts of the mission, which stretched its restricted mandate and meagre resources to the very limit in order to curb violence.Rwandan government forces officers of extraordinary courage warned Dallaire that extremist Hutu Power elements within the government were assembling weapons caches and secretly training militia systematically to slaughter political moderates (the key element in the peace accords) and massacre the Tutsi population. Dallaire passed this information, much of which he was able to verify, to UN headquarters in New York and announced his intention to seize the weapons caches. Headquarters instantly instructed him to desist, and, as required under his limited mandate, to inform the Rwandan government--the very body implicated in the scheme--of all that he knew.With the hideous inevitability of a Greek tragedy, the massacres began to take place on the night of 6 April 1994. The trigger was the mysterious crash of the president's aircraft that night as it landed at Kigali airport, killing all on board. Dallaire's information was that the president, although an architect of Power, had already been usurped by more extreme elements. Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, whom Dallaire suspected of leading the extremist elements (and has since been indicted for crimes against humanity), barely suppressed a smirk as he delivered the news of the crash. Even as Dallaire negotiated with Bagosora at the government forces headquarters for the return of ten Belgian soldiers who had been seized by the Rwandan military, these peacekeepers were butchered.Although it was under a state of siege as militia and mobs took over the streets of Kigali and the Rwandan Patriotic Front and government forces reopened hostilities, the UN mission remained in place to keep communications open between the warring parties and provide such protection as it could to civilians. The mission ultimately sheltered perhaps 30,000 people, as compared to the estimated 800,000 tortured and murdered in the genocide. Dallaire finally departed in August 1994, after his most trusted officers had warned he was perilously close to collapse. …