I Book Review: Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410502300313 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
I BOOK REVIEWS
Rome
´o Dallaire,
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in
Rwanda
, Random House of Canada, Toronto, 2003, xviii + 562 p., maps,
glossary, index, ISBN 0-679-31171-8*
General Romeo Dallaire is a hero in Canada. Recently appointed a Member of the
Canadian Senate, he was commander of UNAMIR (the United Nations Assistance
Mission for Rwanda) for almost a year. Dallaire was a career soldier, with no prior
African experience. His original mission was to oversee the transition to a new
Rwandan government, in compliance with the Arusha Accords, an agreement
between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), which
had invaded Rwanda from Uganda. Instead, Dallaire futilely tried to prevent
genocide as his masters at the United Nations consistently undercut his authority
and reduced his troops and resources. Traumatised and under medical care for
several years after he returned home, in 2003 Dallaire published his long-awaited
account of his time in Rwanda.
Dallaire avoids detailing the many atrocities he witnessed. Lest we forget,
however, the extremity of what happened in Rwanda, consider this account of one of
his excursions. ‘We had forded streams full of bodies and passed over bridges in
swamps that had been lifted by the force of the bodies piling up on the struts. We
had inched our way through villages of dead humans. We had walked our vehicles
through desperate mobs screaming for food and protection. We had created paths
among the dead and half-dead with our hands’ (p. 325). He witnessed people
‘erased from humanity’: after they were killed, their identity cards were destroyed
and their records removed from commune offices (p. 281).
The author recounts events of almost every day he spent in Rwanda, presumably
relying on his daily log. He negotiated with leaders of the genocidaires (whom he
had to treat as legitimate soldiers), with leaders of the remnants of the official army
of Rwanda, and with Paul Kagame, leader of the RPF. Dallaire presents Kagame as a
brilliant, disciplined soldier, willing to sacrifice fellow Tutsi to the genocide to
secure final victory. Kagame treated Dallaire and the UNAMIR troops with respect,
but he was not willing to defer to the United Nations. Nor can one blame him:
Kagame understood the UN as Dallaire did not.
Romeo Dallaire was a good man caught among cynical diplomats of the UN, an
organisation whose purpose is to do its Member States’ bidding. Dallaire recounts his
extreme frustration and disappointment as the number of troops he commanded
was cut. He was given more authority to help rescue expatriates than he was given to
try to stop the genocide of Rwandans (pp. 286 and 291). The UN did not even
properly support his tiny, reduced force. He and his troops ate rancid food, went
without clean water, and suffered from diarrhea. This was not from lack of capacity to
supply UNAMIR, as the Kigali airport was almost always open, but from lack of
institutional flexibility: UN bureaucrats insisted on proper procedure to obtain
PART D: DOCUMENTATION
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/3, 523-543, 2005.
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands. 523
* Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Canada Research Chair in Global Studies and Political Science,
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
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