JAMES23's Full Review: Romeo Dallaire and Brent Beardsley - Shake Hands W...
The tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s was supposed to bring a new era of peace and prosperity, a "peace dividend" to the world. What it brought instead was a decade of warfare around the world as old enemies and new factions no longer constrained by their super power masters sought to settle old grudges and create new ones.
To deal with this the United Nations found itself engaging in a variety of Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement missions around the world. Some of these were successful. Some were not. The UN mission to the tiny central African nation of Rwanda in the early 1990s, UNAMIR (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda) was not one the successful ones.
Shake Hands with the Devil is Lt General Romeo Dallaire's account of the ill fated 1994 Rwandan mission and his part in it. Dallaire was the military commander of the ill equipped, under funded mission.
Daillaire freely admits the mission was failure and as the military commander holds himself responsible. He also admits he may not have been the best person to command the mission even expressing ignorance as to where Rwanda was when first given the task. However the mission called for a French speaking General Officer and he was available so he was selected.
The political military situation in Rwanda in 1994 when Dallaire took command was tense to say the least. The country was involved in a civil war between the Government and the guerrilla forces the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). To make matter worse both factions were mostly based on the two tribal groups in the country, the Government for the most part belonging to the Hutus Tribe and the rebels representing the more populous Tutsi.
By the time the UN became actually involved the war was almost over and the rebels held most of the country and were in a position to attempt to take the capital Kigali.
The UN's mission was to assist in brokering a ceasefire and then monitor it. Dallaire was the military commander; his superior in charge of the overall mission was Jacques Roger Booh Booh a career UN diplomat.
The military side of the operation like everything else was woefully under funded and ill equipped. Dallaire had a contingent of unarmed military observer teams from European and African nations. For actual troop on the ground in and around Kigali he had a small battalion of Belgian paratroopers, another battalion of Bangladeshi troop and various other small contingents including a company of Tunisians whose main task was to guard Dalliare's HQ.
As Belgium was the former European power that had colonized Rwanda, they were seen by many as impartial and perhaps not a good choice for this mission. However they did represent Dallaire’s only well trained, disciplined professional unit. His requests for reinforcements of French speaking troops from either Canada and/or France were denied.
Shortly after the mission began the entire ceasefire fell apart when the Rwandan President was killed when his plane as shot down. Soon after hard line Hutu extremists began the Interahamwe the systematic killing of all of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the areas under their control. As the world watched the genocide would grow until over 900,000 people were massacred.
Dallaire was an eyewitness to this genocide and Shake Hands with the Devil is his literal day by day account of the massacre and of his futile attempts to curtail it. His increasingly frustrating reports to UN Headquarters in New York and their refusal to do more than monitor the situation are well documented.
Dallaire was aware of the coming Genocide. He had intelligence on it from his forces and those Rwandans who also wish to prevent it. He advised his superiors at UN headquarters in New York General Maurice Baril and Kofi Annan then heads of UN Peacekeeping that he knew where the weapons cache and the ringleaders are.
Given the order to do so he would use his limited troops to destroy the weapons and capture the leaders and thereby prevent what is coming. He was coldly advised that was beyond his mandate and to not intervene. The rest is tragic history.
One of the first acts of the extremists was to capture and then murder ten Belgian Peacekeepers. They have surmised that Belgium would then pull its troops out of Rwanda. They were correct; the Belgian contingent is soon withdrawn denying Dallaire of his best troops when he needs them most.
Those troops that remain are as noted of an indifferent quality. The Commander of the Bangladeshi Army basically tells Dalliare that his men are there to earn hard currency for their impoverished country and maybe gain some experience for their officers. They are not there to die for the Rwandans.
Later the Bangladeshi troops will take these orders to heart. When sent out on patrols to rescue endangered persons they drive to a safe location turn off their radios and then hide for several hours before returning with the excuse that they couldn’t get through the extremist militia lines.
As the massacres continue the United State, France and Belgium react quickly. Aircraft and troops are dispatched to Rwanda. They are not reinforcements for Dallaire’s beleaguered command. Rather they are there to oversee the evacuation of their nationals in the country. When that is done they leave as quickly as they came, leaving behind the tiny and ineffective UN contingent.
Dallaire and his contingent were literally on their own and despite their best efforts to intervene and save some of the endangered people; they were mostly witnesses to what as unfolding around them. Booh Booh the nominal person in charge of the mission was ineffective, that is when he was around.
Many have made comparisons between Dallaire’s performance to that of Major General Lewis McKenzie and the successful UN mission in Sarajevo that was unfolding at about the same time. Such comparisons are really not fair.
McKenzie was a seasoned veteran of UN missions having served on several throughout his career in Sinai, Cyprus, Vietnam and Central America before going to Sarajevo. As such he understood how the UN bureaucracy worked and more importantly how and when it didn’t work. He knew when and how to bend the rules to get the desired results.
Dallaire by comparison was on his first UN mission and was quickly discovering that its often self serving bureaucracy operated in a far different manner than the professional military organization he was used to dealing with.
At one point Dallaire had several thousand refugees under his protection and desperately needed water for them. He sent a request through proper channels pointing out he only had a few days supply and hoped that a UN cargo plane under his command could be dispatched to neighbouring Uganda to pick up a supply.
He was briskly informed that the proper procedure was for the UN to place out a tender for the water to neighbouring countries and then get competitive bids. With all the needed paperwork this would have taken weeks, if not months.
Dallaire left Rwanda a broken man, while he did return to duties in Canada, soon after he was forced to retire from the military for medical reasons. He was diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD). Writing Shake Hands with the Devil was part of his therapy in dealing with his inner demons. Now Dallier is a Canadian Senator and has become a leading advocate for PSTD, and to ensure the world never forgets what happened in Rwanda.
Dallaire's Writing style is straightforward but in no manner dry. One knows what is coming and still, or perhaps because of that knowledge there is an almost eerie foreboding on what comes on the next page. He pulls no punches laying the blame for what happened squarely on those he believed were at fault including himself. He also sings the praises of those who tried to prevent or minimize what happened.
A copy of Dallaires's book is in my bookcase, and naturally I referred to it while writing this. However it was a friend's copy that I first read. He like myself s a former soldier and followed the descent into madness that was Rwanda in 1994 in the papers and on TV.
His advice to me when he loaned me the book was this. This is a book that you really won't want to read a second time, and for that reason you have to read it once. He was right.
Canadian Gen. Romaeo Dallaire, force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, recreates the history of the most barbarous and chaotic civil ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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