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

All Available Formats + Editions

$1.49

$13.14

Paperback

$1.49

$13.14

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Reprint) Pub. Date: 12/21/2004 Publisher: Da Capo Press
$7.39

——

Hardcover

$7.39

——

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda Pub. Date: 10/10/2004 Publisher: Da Capo Press

Want to read this on your NOOK? Request as NOOK Book from the publisher

Thank you for requesting this book as a NOOK book from the publisher.

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Overview

For the first time in the United States comes the tragic and profoundly important story of the legendary Canadian general who "watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect." When Romeo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he believed that his assignment was to help two warring parties achieve the peace they both wanted. Instead, he was exposed to the most barbarous and chaotic display of civil war and genocide in the past decade, observing in just one hundred days the killings of more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans. With only a few troops, his own ingenuity and courage to direct his efforts, Dallaire rescued thousands, but his call for more support from the world body fell on deaf ears. In Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire recreates the awful history the world community chose to ignore. He also chronicles his own progression from confident Cold Warrior to devastated UN commander, and finally to retired general struggling painfully, and publicly, to overcome posttraumatic stress disorder-the highest-ranking officer ever to share such experiences with readers.

Editorial Reviews

Madeleine Albright

If the American right, left and center can agree to work with international partners to prevent future genocides, that alone would carry us further than we have ever been. And if anyone doubts the worthiness of the goal, I invite them to read Roméo Dallaire's profoundly sad and moving book.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

As former head of the late 1993 U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, Canadian general Dallaire's initial proposal called for 5,000 soldiers to permit orderly elections and the return of the refugees. Nothing like this number was supplied, and the result was an outright attempt at genocide against the Tutsis that nearly succeeded, with 800,000 dead over three months. The failure of the U.N.'s wealthier members to act as the tragedy unfolded obliged the author to leave military service to recover from PTSD (as well as the near breakdown of his family). While much of the account is a thickly described I-went-here, I went-there, I-met-X, I-said-this, one learns much more about the author's emotional states when making decisions than in a conventional military history, making this an important document of service-one that has been awarded Canada's Governor General's Award. And his descriptions of Rwanda's unraveling are disturbing, to say the least ("I then noticed large piles of blue-black bodies heaped on the creek banks"). Dallaire's argument that Rwanda-like situations are fires that can be put out with a small force if caught early enough will certainly draw debate, but the book documents in horrifying detail what happens when no serious effort is made. Agent, Nicole Winstanley at Westwood Creative Artists. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

Library Journal

Canadian Dallaire was the first commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1993-94. He and his staff worked long hours to try to keep the peace and provide protection for civilians; yet, no matter how carefully he explained the situation on the ground, the UN bureaucrats were only interested in more situation reports. Member states (with a few exceptions) failed to send necessary troops and supplies. As a result, ten percent of the Rwandan population was killed in only three months, and many more became refugees. This account is based on the author's diaries and files. After a futile year, Dallaire received a medical leave. A similar story has been told by Michael Barnett in Eyewitness to a Genocide, which attempts to explain the moral dilemma within the UN; local stories have been told by Philip Gourevitch in We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. A discomfiting book to read, partly because the author remains very emotional about his experiences but primarily because the truth in Rwanda reflects so poorly on the international community. Academic and larger public libraries should consider this thought-provoking title.-Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A haunted account by Lt.-Gen. Dallaire, a former UN force commander, of the ethnic slaughter that ten years ago consumed a nation. Favoring the light-skinned, indigenous Tutsi people over the short, dark farmers of the Hutu nation, the Belgians who colonized Rwanda gave Tutsi leaders privileged positions in the government. Following independence, the Hutu rose up against the Tutsi, many of whom fled to neighboring countries and organized a rebel army. The back-and-forth killings eventually brought UN intervention, which did little to stem the bloodshed; in a period of only 100 days, some 800,000 Rwandans died. "Let there be no doubt," writes Dallaire, "the Rwandan genocide was the ultimate responsibility of those Rwandans who planned, ordered, supervised and eventually conducted it." But, he adds, responsibility also lies with the international community: the UN posted an inadequate force in Rwanda and failed to support the soldiers on the ground; France sent troops only to protect the Hutu genocidaires; the US, stung by the debacle in Somalia the year before, actively opposed intervention. Throughout, Dallaire is clearly anguished by his personal inability to stop the killing. In one affecting passage, he recounts fording a river choked with dead bodies: " . . . my stomach heaved and I struggled for composure. I couldn't bear the movement of the bridge, up and down on the slaughtered hundreds." His guilt also centers on UN soldiers who died in the field, at least once as a result of "my poor operational decision." In her introduction, Samantha Power ("A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide) observes that Dallaire experienced post-traumatic stress disorder; coupled with hisinsistence on testifying against the killers at an international war-crimes tribunal, it led to his dismissal from the Canadian army. A stirring indictment, with a warning that there are likely to be other massacres and that "the UN must undergo a renaissance if it is to be involved in conflict resolution . . . . Otherwise the hope that we will ever truly enter an age of humanity will die as the UN continues to decline into irrelevance." Agent: Ashton Westwood/Westwood Creative Artists Film & TV

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780786715107
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication date: 12/21/2004
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 592
Sales rank: 125,605
Product dimensions: 5.96 (w) x 9.04 (h) x 0.93 (d)

Meet the Author

Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire joined the Canadian army in 1964. Upon his return from serving as Force Commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, he served as Commander of the 1st Canadian Division and Deputy-Commander of the Canadian Army. Promoted to Three-Star General, he was appointed to various senior positions including Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources-Military) in the Ministry of Defence. He continues to assist the Canadian Forces and Veterans’ Affairs in matters related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. General Dallaire was medically released from the Armed Forces in April 2000 due to PTSD, and is now Special Adviser to the Canadian Government on War Affected Children and the Prohibition of Small Arms Distribution. He is married and the father of three children.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

It was an absolutely magnificent day in May 1994. The blue sky was cloudless, and there was a whiff of breeze stirring the trees. It was hard to believe that in the past weeks an unimaginable evil had turned Rwanda’s gentle green valleys and mist-capped hills into a stinking nightmare of rotting corpses. A nightmare we all had to negotiate every day. A nightmare that, as commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, I could not help but feel deeply responsible for.

In relative terms, that day had been a good one. Under the protection of a limited and fragile ceasefire, my troops had successfully escorted about two hundred civilians — a few of the thousands who had sought refuge with us in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda — through many government- and militia-manned checkpoints to reach safety behind the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) lines. We were seven weeks into the genocide, and the RPF, the disciplined rebel army (composed largely of the sons of Rwandan refugees who had lived over the border in camps in Uganda since being forced out of their homeland at independence), was making a curved sweep toward Kigali from the north, adding civil war to the chaos and butchery in the country.

Having delivered our precious cargo of innocent souls, we were headed back to Kigali in a white UN Land Cruiser with my force commander pennant on the front hood and the blue UN flag on a staff attached to the right rear. My Ghanaian sharpshooter, armed with a new Canadian C-7 rifle, rode behind me, and my new Senegalese aide-de-camp, Captain Ndiaye, sat to my right. We were driving a particularly dangerous stretch of road, open to sniper fire. Most of the people in the surrounding villages had been slaughtered, the few survivors escaping with little more than the clothes on their backs. In a few short weeks, it had become a lonely and forlorn place.

Suddenly up ahead we saw a child wandering across the road. I stopped the vehicle close to the little boy, worried about scaring him off, but he was quite unfazed. He was about three years old, dressed in a filthy, torn T-shirt, the ragged remnants of underwear, little more than a loincloth, drooping from under his distended belly. He was caked in dirt, his hair white and matted with dust, and he was enveloped in a cloud of flies, which were greedily attacking the open sores that covered him. He stared at us silently, sucking on what I realized was a high-protein biscuit. Where had the boy found food in this wasteland?

I got out of the vehicle and walked toward him. Maybe it was the condition I was in, but to me this child had the face of an angel and eyes of pure innocence. I had seen so many children hacked to pieces that this small, whole, bewildered boy was a vision of hope. Surely he could not have survived all on his own? I motioned for my aide-de-camp to honk the horn, hoping to summon up his parents, but the sound echoed over the empty landscape, startling a few birds and little else. The boy remained transfixed. He did not speak or cry, just stood sucking on his biscuit and staring up at us with his huge, solemn eyes. Still hoping that he wasn’t all alone, I sent my aide-de-camp and the sharpshooter to look for signs of life.

We were in a ravine lush with banana trees and bamboo shoots, which created a dense canopy of foliage. A long straggle of deserted huts stood on either side of the road. As I stood alone with the boy, I felt an anxious knot in my stomach: this would be a perfect place to stage an ambush. My colleagues returned, having found no one. Then a rustling in the undergrowth made us jump. I grabbed the boy and held him firmly to my side as we instinctively took up defensive positions around the vehicle and in the ditch. The bushes parted to reveal a well-armed RPF soldier about fifteen years old. He recognized my uniform and gave me a smart salute and introduced himself. He was part of an advance observation post in the nearby hills. I asked him who the boy was and whether there was anyone left alive in the village who could take care of him. The soldier answered that the boy had no name and no family but that he and his buddies were looking after him. That explained the biscuit but did nothing to allay my concerns over the security and health of the boy. I protested that the child needed proper care and that I could give it to him: we were protecting and supporting orphanages in Kigali where he would be much better off. The soldier quietly insisted that the boy stay where he was, among his own people.

I continued to argue, but this child soldier was in no mood to discuss the situation and with haughty finality stated that his unit would care and provide for the child. I could feel my face flush with anger and frustration, but then noticed that the boy himself had slipped away while we had been arguing over him, and God only knew where he had gone. My aide-de-camp spotted him at the entrance to a hut a short distance away, clambering over a log that had fallen across the doorway. I ran after him, closely followed by my aide-de-camp and the RPF child soldier. By the time I had caught up to the boy, he had disappeared inside. The log in the doorway turned out to be the body of a man, obviously dead for some weeks, his flesh rotten with maggots and beginning to fall away from the bones.

As I stumbled over the body and into the hut, a swarm of flies invaded my nose and mouth. It was so dark inside that at first I smelled rather than saw the horror that lay before me. The hut was a two-room affair, one room serving as a kitchen and living room and the other as a communal bedroom; two rough windows had been cut into the mud-and-stick wall. Very little light penetrated the gloom, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw strewn around the living room in a rough circle the decayed bodies of a man, a woman and two children, stark white bone poking through the desiccated, leather-like covering that had once been skin. The little boy was crouched beside what was left of his mother, still sucking on his biscuit. I made my way over to him as slowly and quietly as I could and, lifting him into my arms, carried him out of the hut.

The warmth of his tiny body snuggled against mine filled me with a peace and serenity that elevated me above the chaos. This child was alive yet terribly hungry, beautiful but covered in dirt, bewildered but not fearful. I made up my mind: this boy would be the fourth child in the Dallaire family. I couldn’t save Rwanda, but I could save this child.

Before I had held this boy, I had agreed with the aid workers and representatives of both the warring armies that I would not permit any exporting of Rwandan orphans to foreign places. When confronted by such requests from humanitarian organizations, I would argue that the money to move a hundred kids by plane to France or Belgium could help build, staff and sustain Rwandan orphanages that could house three thousand children. This one boy eradicated all my arguments. I could see myself arriving at the terminal in Montreal like a latter-day St. Christopher with the boy cradled in my arms, and my wife, Beth, there ready to embrace him.

That dream was abruptly destroyed when the young soldier, fast as a wolf, yanked the child from my arms and carried him directly into the bush. Not knowing how many members of his unit might already have their gunsights on us, we reluctantly climbed back into the Land Cruiser. As I slowly drove away, I had much on my mind.

By withdrawing, I had undoubtedly done the wise thing: I had avoided risking the lives of my two soldiers in what would have been a fruitless struggle over one small boy. But in that moment, it seemed to me that I had backed away from a fight for what was right, that this failure stood for all our failures in Rwanda.

Whatever happened to that beautiful child? Did he make it to an orphanage deep behind the RPF lines? Did he survive the following battles? Is he dead or is he now a child soldier himself, caught in the seemingly endless conflict that plagues his homeland?

That moment, when the boy, in the arms of a soldier young enough to be his brother, was swallowed whole by the forest, haunts me. It’s a memory that never lets me forget how ineffective and irresponsible we were when we promised the Rwandans that we would establish an atmosphere of security that would allow them to achieve a lasting peace. It has been almost nine years since I left Rwanda, but as I write this, the sounds, smells and colours come flooding back in digital clarity. It’s as if someone has sliced into my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my cortex. I could not forget even if I wanted to. For many of these years, I have yearned to return to Rwanda and disappear into the blue-green hills with my ghosts. A simple pilgrim seeking forgiveness and pardon. But as I slowly begin to piece my life back together, I know the time has come for me to make a more difficult pilgrimage: to travel back through all those terrible memories and retrieve my soul.

I did try to write this story soon after I came back from Rwanda in September 1994, hoping to find some respite for myself in sorting out how my own role as Force Commander of UNAMIR interconnected with the international apathy, the complex political manoeuvres, the deep well of hatred and barbarity that resulted in a genocide in which over 800,000 people lost their lives. Instead, I plunged into a disastrous mental health spiral that led me to suicide attempts, a medical release from the Armed Forces, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and dozens upon dozens of therapy sessions and extensive medication, which still have a place in my daily life.

It took me seven years to finally have the desire, the willpower and the stamina to begin to describe in detail the events of that year in Rwanda. To recount, from my insider’s point of view, how a country moved from the promise of a certain peace to intrigue, the fomenting of racial hatred, assassinations, civil war and genocide. And how the international community, through an inept UN mandate and what can only be described as indifference, self-interest and racism, aided and abetted these crimes against humanity — how we all helped create the mess that has murdered and displaced millions and destabilized the whole central African region.

A growing library of books and articles is exploring the tragic events in Rwanda from many angles: eyewitness accounts, media analyses, assaults on the actions of the American administration at the time, condemnations of the UN’s apparent ineptitude. But even in the international and national inquiries launched in the wake of the genocide, the blame somehow slides away from the individual member nations of the un, and in particular those influential countries with permanent representatives on the Security Council, such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom, who sat back and watched it all happen, who pulled their troops or didn’t offer any troops in the first place. A few Belgian officers were brought to court to pay for the sins of Rwanda. When my sector commander in Kigali, Colonel Luc Marchal, was courtmartialled in Brussels, the charges against him were clearly designed to deflect any responsibility away from the Belgian government for the deaths of the ten Belgian peacekeepers under my command. The judge eventually threw out all the charges, accepting the fact that Marchal had performed his duties magnificently in a near-impossible situation. But the spotlight never turned to the reasons why he and the rest of the UNAMIR force were in such a dangerous situation in the first place.

It is time that I tell the story from where I stood — literally in the middle of the slaughter for weeks on end. A public account of my actions, my decisions and my failings during that most terrible year may be a crucial missing link for those attempting to understand the tragedy both intellectually and in their hearts. I know that I will never end my mourning for all those Rwandans who placed their faith in us, who thought the UN peacekeeping force was there to stop extremism, to stop the killings and help them through the perilous journey to a lasting peace. That mission, UNAMIR, failed. I know intimately the cost in human lives of the inflexible UN Security Council mandate, the penny-pinching financial management of the mission, the UN red tape, the political manipulations and my own personal limitations. What I have come to realize as the root of it all, however, is the fundamental indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black Africans in a tiny country that had no strategic or resource value to any world power. An overpopulated little country that turned in on itself and destroyed its own people, as the world watched and yet could not manage to find the political will to intervene. Engraved still in my brain is the judgment of a small group of bureaucrats who came to “assess” the situation in the first weeks of the genocide: “We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans.”

My story is not a strictly military account nor a clinical, academic study of the breakdown of Rwanda. It is not a simplistic indictment of the many failures of the UN as a force for peace in the world. It is not a story of heroes and villains, although such a work could easily be written. This book is a cri de coeur for the slaughtered thousands, a tribute to the souls hacked apart by machetes because of their supposed difference from those who sought to hang on to power. It is the story of a commander who, faced with a challenge that didn’t fit the classic Cold War-era peacekeeper’s rule book, failed to find an effective solution and witnessed, as if in punishment, the loss of some of his own troops, the attempted annihilation of an ethnicity, the butchery of children barely out of the womb, the stacking of severed limbs like cordwood, the mounds of decomposing bodies being eaten by the sun.

This book is nothing more nor less than the account of a few humans who were entrusted with the role of helping others taste the fruits of peace. Instead, we watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.

1	My father told me three things	8
2	"Rwanda, that's in Africa isn't it?"	28
3	"Check out Rwanda and you're in charge"	43
4	Enemies holding hands	57
5	The clock is ticking	80
6	The first milestones	98
7	The shadow force	135
8	Assassination and ambush	168
9	Easter without a resurrection of hope	199
10	An explosion at Kigali Airport	221
11	To go or to stay?	263
12	Lack of resolution	328
13	Accountants of the slaughter	374
14	The turquoise invasion	421
15	Too much, too late	461

First Chapter

Introduction

It was an absolutely magnificent day in May 1994. The blue sky was cloudless, and there was a whiff of breeze stirring the trees. It was hard to believe that in the past weeks an unimaginable evil had turned Rwanda's gentle green valleys and mist-capped hills into a stinking nightmare of rotting corpses. A nightmare we all had to negotiate every day. A nightmare that, as commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, I could not help but feel deeply responsible for.

In relative terms, that day had been a good one. Under the protection of a limited and fragile ceasefire, my troops had successfully escorted about two hundred civilians -- a few of the thousands who had sought refuge with us in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda -- through many government- and militia-manned checkpoints to reach safety behind the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) lines. We were seven weeks into the genocide, and the RPF, the disciplined rebel army (composed largely of the sons of Rwandan refugees who had lived over the border in camps in Uganda since being forced out of their homeland at independence), was making a curved sweep toward Kigali from the north, adding civil war to the chaos and butchery in the country.

Having delivered our precious cargo of innocent souls, we were headed back to Kigali in a white UN Land Cruiser with my force commander pennant on the front hood and the blue UN flag on a staff attached to the right rear. My Ghanaian sharpshooter, armed with a new Canadian C-7 rifle, rode behind me, and my new Senegalese aide-de-camp, Captain Ndiaye, sat to my right. We were driving a particularly dangerous stretch of road, open to sniper fire. Most of thepeople in the surrounding villages had been slaughtered, the few survivors escaping with little more than the clothes on their backs. In a few short weeks, it had become a lonely and forlorn place.

Suddenly up ahead we saw a child wandering across the road. I stopped the vehicle close to the little boy, worried about scaring him off, but he was quite unfazed. He was about three years old, dressed in a filthy, torn T-shirt, the ragged remnants of underwear, little more than a loincloth, drooping from under his distended belly. He was caked in dirt, his hair white and matted with dust, and he was enveloped in a cloud of flies, which were greedily attacking the open sores that covered him. He stared at us silently, sucking on what I realized was a high-protein biscuit. Where had the boy found food in this wasteland?

I got out of the vehicle and walked toward him. Maybe it was the condition I was in, but to me this child had the face of an angel and eyes of pure innocence. I had seen so many children hacked to pieces that this small, whole, bewildered boy was a vision of hope. Surely he could not have survived all on his own? I motioned for my aide-de-camp to honk the horn, hoping to summon up his parents, but the sound echoed over the empty landscape, startling a few birds and little else. The boy remained transfixed. He did not speak or cry, just stood sucking on his biscuit and staring up at us with his huge, solemn eyes. Still hoping that he wasn't all alone, I sent my aide-de-camp and the sharpshooter to look for signs of life.

We were in a ravine lush with banana trees and bamboo shoots, which created a dense canopy of foliage. A long straggle of deserted huts stood on either side of the road. As I stood alone with the boy, I felt an anxious knot in my stomach: this would be a perfect place to stage an ambush. My colleagues returned, having found no one. Then a rustling in the undergrowth made us jump. I grabbed the boy and held him firmly to my side as we instinctively took up defensive positions around the vehicle and in the ditch. The bushes parted to reveal a well-armed RPF soldier about fifteen years old. He recognized my uniform and gave me a smart salute and introduced himself. He was part of an advance observation post in the nearby hills. I asked him who the boy was and whether there was anyone left alive in the village who could take care of him. The soldier answered that the boy had no name and no family but that he and his buddies were looking after him. That explained the biscuit but did nothing to allay my concerns over the security and health of the boy. I protested that the child needed proper care and that I could give it to him: we were protecting and supporting orphanages in Kigali where he would be much better off. The soldier quietly insisted that the boy stay where he was, among his own people.

I continued to argue, but this child soldier was in no mood to discuss the situation and with haughty finality stated that his unit would care and provide for the child. I could feel my face flush with anger and frustration, but then noticed that the boy himself had slipped away while we had been arguing over him, and God only knew where he had gone. My aide-de-camp spotted him at the entrance to a hut a short distance away, clambering over a log that had fallen across the doorway. I ran after him, closely followed by my aide-de-camp and the RPF child soldier. By the time I had caught up to the boy, he had disappeared inside. The log in the doorway turned out to be the body of a man, obviously dead for some weeks, his flesh rotten with maggots and beginning to fall away from the bones.

As I stumbled over the body and into the hut, a swarm of flies invaded my nose and mouth. It was so dark inside that at first I smelled rather than saw the horror that lay before me. The hut was a two-room affair, one room serving as a kitchen and living room and the other as a communal bedroom; two rough windows had been cut into the mud-and-stick wall. Very little light penetrated the gloom, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw strewn around the living room in a rough circle the decayed bodies of a man, a woman and two children, stark white bone poking through the desiccated, leather-like covering that had once been skin. The little boy was crouched beside what was left of his mother, still sucking on his biscuit. I made my way over to him as slowly and quietly as I could and, lifting him into my arms, carried him out of the hut.

The warmth of his tiny body snuggled against mine filled me with a peace and serenity that elevated me above the chaos. This child was alive yet terribly hungry, beautiful but covered in dirt, bewildered but not fearful. I made up my mind: this boy would be the fourth child in the Dallaire family. I couldn't save Rwanda, but I could save this child.

Before I had held this boy, I had agreed with the aid workers and representatives of both the warring armies that I would not permit any exporting of Rwandan orphans to foreign places. When confronted by such requests from humanitarian organizations, I would argue that the money to move a hundred kids by plane to France or Belgium could help build, staff and sustain Rwandan orphanages that could house three thousand children. This one boy eradicated all my arguments. I could see myself arriving at the terminal in Montreal like a latter-day St. Christopher with the boy cradled in my arms, and my wife, Beth, there ready to embrace him.

That dream was abruptly destroyed when the young soldier, fast as a wolf, yanked the child from my arms and carried him directly into the bush. Not knowing how many members of his unit might already have their gunsights on us, we reluctantly climbed back into the Land Cruiser. As I slowly drove away, I had much on my mind.

By withdrawing, I had undoubtedly done the wise thing: I had avoided risking the lives of my two soldiers in what would have been a fruitless struggle over one small boy. But in that moment, it seemed to me that I had backed away from a fight for what was right, that this failure stood for all our failures in Rwanda.

Whatever happened to that beautiful child? Did he make it to an orphanage deep behind the RPF lines? Did he survive the following battles? Is he dead or is he now a child soldier himself, caught in the seemingly endless conflict that plagues his homeland?

That moment, when the boy, in the arms of a soldier young enough to be his brother, was swallowed whole by the forest, haunts me. It's a memory that never lets me forget how ineffective and irresponsible we were when we promised the Rwandans that we would establish an atmosphere of security that would allow them to achieve a lasting peace. It has been almost nine years since I left Rwanda, but as I write this, the sounds, smells and colours come flooding back in digital clarity. It's as if someone has sliced into my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my cortex. I could not forget even if I wanted to. For many of these years, I have yearned to return to Rwanda and disappear into the blue-green hills with my ghosts. A simple pilgrim seeking forgiveness and pardon. But as I slowly begin to piece my life back together, I know the time has come for me to make a more difficult pilgrimage: to travel back through all those terrible memories and retrieve my soul.

I did try to write this story soon after I came back from Rwanda in September 1994, hoping to find some respite for myself in sorting out how my own role as Force Commander of UNAMIR interconnected with the international apathy, the complex political manoeuvres, the deep well of hatred and barbarity that resulted in a genocide in which over 800,000 people lost their lives. Instead, I plunged into a disastrous mental health spiral that led me to suicide attempts, a medical release from the Armed Forces, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and dozens upon dozens of therapy sessions and extensive medication, which still have a place in my daily life.

It took me seven years to finally have the desire, the willpower and the stamina to begin to describe in detail the events of that year in Rwanda. To recount, from my insider's point of view, how a country moved from the promise of a certain peace to intrigue, the fomenting of racial hatred, assassinations, civil war and genocide. And how the international community, through an inept UN mandate and what can only be described as indifference, self-interest and racism, aided and abetted these crimes against humanity -- how we all helped create the mess that has murdered and displaced millions and destabilized the whole central African region.

A growing library of books and articles is exploring the tragic events in Rwanda from many angles: eyewitness accounts, media analyses, assaults on the actions of the American administration at the time, condemnations of the UN's apparent ineptitude. But even in the international and national inquiries launched in the wake of the genocide, the blame somehow slides away from the individual member nations of the un, and in particular those influential countries with permanent representatives on the Security Council, such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom, who sat back and watched it all happen, who pulled their troops or didn't offer any troops in the first place. A few Belgian officers were brought to court to pay for the sins of Rwanda. When my sector commander in Kigali, Colonel Luc Marchal, was courtmartialled in Brussels, the charges against him were clearly designed to deflect any responsibility away from the Belgian government for the deaths of the ten Belgian peacekeepers under my command. The judge eventually threw out all the charges, accepting the fact that Marchal had performed his duties magnificently in a near-impossible situation. But the spotlight never turned to the reasons why he and the rest of the UNAMIR force were in such a dangerous situation in the first place.

It is time that I tell the story from where I stood -- literally in the middle of the slaughter for weeks on end. A public account of my actions, my decisions and my failings during that most terrible year may be a crucial missing link for those attempting to understand the tragedy both intellectually and in their hearts. I know that I will never end my mourning for all those Rwandans who placed their faith in us, who thought the UN peacekeeping force was there to stop extremism, to stop the killings and help them through the perilous journey to a lasting peace. That mission, UNAMIR, failed. I know intimately the cost in human lives of the inflexible UN Security Council mandate, the penny-pinching financial management of the mission, the UN red tape, the political manipulations and my own personal limitations. What I have come to realize as the root of it all, however, is the fundamental indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black Africans in a tiny country that had no strategic or resource value to any world power. An overpopulated little country that turned in on itself and destroyed its own people, as the world watched and yet could not manage to find the political will to intervene. Engraved still in my brain is the judgment of a small group of bureaucrats who came to "assess" the situation in the first weeks of the genocide: "We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."

My story is not a strictly military account nor a clinical, academic study of the breakdown of Rwanda. It is not a simplistic indictment of the many failures of the UN as a force for peace in the world. It is not a story of heroes and villains, although such a work could easily be written. This book is a cri de coeur for the slaughtered thousands, a tribute to the souls hacked apart by machetes because of their supposed difference from those who sought to hang on to power. It is the story of a commander who, faced with a challenge that didn't fit the classic Cold War-era peacekeeper's rule book, failed to find an effective solution and witnessed, as if in punishment, the loss of some of his own troops, the attempted annihilation of an ethnicity, the butchery of children barely out of the womb, the stacking of severed limbs like cordwood, the mounds of decomposing bodies being eaten by the sun.

This book is nothing more nor less than the account of a few humans who were entrusted with the role of helping others taste the fruits of peace. Instead, we watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5

( 20 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(13)

4 Star

(4)

3 Star

(2)

2 Star

(1)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

kamas716

Posted January 15, 2012

more from this reviewer

Very disturbing

I read this several years ago but was very impressed with it. It's the account by the man in charge of the UN mission in Rwanda during its genocide. It's a very disturbing story of inhumanity and bureaucratic rules/red tape that can allow such atrocities to happen. It's one of the few books I've cried while reading.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted January 27, 2008

A reviewer

What this book set out to accomplish is simple: telling the tragic and soul rending story of the Rwandan genocide through the eyes of General Romeo Dallaire, the man in charge of the UN mission for Rwanda back in 1994. Despite repeated warnings to his bosses back in New York 'one of them being Kofi Annan' and sending the now famous ''genocide fax'' he was ignored and had to watch along with his 400 peacekeepers the murder of over a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. His discription of those 3 months are nothing less but intence, heart breaking, and horrifing. This book has opened my eyes toward the tragedy of Rwanda and the man whom not only was in the middle of it all, but one of the few people who saved countless lives. I urge t everyone to read this book!!!!!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted May 3, 2007

Shake Hands with the Devil

In the book Shake Hands with the Devil Romeo Dallaire talks about the UN mission in Rwanda. Dallaire felt that the genocide in Rwanda could have been avoided if he had been given the support he needed. By writing about everything he saw in Rwanda it is easy to see the fault of the UN. This is a good book in which the author holds nothing back and tells us who is at fault in the Rwandan genocide. The author, Romeo Dallaire, was the Force Commander for the UN assistance mission in Rwanda. He arrived in Rwanda in 1993 and he stayed until the end of the genocide in 1994. His job was to be a peacekeeper and to assist in creating a new government. The book does a great job to show the failure of the UN and the rest of the world in the Rwandan genocide. It is convincing to anyone that reads it because of the numerous examples it gives. Romeo Dallaire shares even the smallest details of his time in Rwanda. He even talked about his Christmas tree. Compared with other books on this subject you hear pretty much the same thing you would hear anywhere else a large number of examples where the world has failed to keep its moral obligations. In conclusion Dallaire shows the failure of the UN and the rest of the world in the Rwandan genocide. He wrote about everything he saw in his time in Rwanda and about the lack of support that he needed to do his job. This is a good book but there are other books out there just like it. All this book does is give examples of where humanity failed to prevent genocide. I would not recommend this book since there are other books on genocide that tell the same thing.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted May 3, 2007

Opening the eyes of the world

Many people might see this book as informative. It relays the facts of what happened during the conflict in Rwanda. Yes it takes a day after day account of what United Nations Assistance Mission For Rwanda (UNAMIR) contributed in the attempt to solve the genocide. Shake Hands with the Devil tells of the Force Commander, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire¿s perspective, and what he went through while in Rwanda. Instead of the events that unfolded I think this books main purpose was to tell the world of their own blindness or caution when the situation was developing. The devastating outbreak of genocide in Rwanda took over 800,000 lives. It is obvious that the conflict was a horrible and immoral episode. The diplomatic complexity of the situation caused it to only escalate further. Hate radio was the main propaganda to motivate the killings of Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Many militias were out of control and killed them but couldn¿t be stopped. Not only did UNAMIR be asked to pull out of Rwanda because of a few casualties, it happened at the most inopportune time. UNAMIR was reduced to the size of a very small miniscule force all when the genocide began. They didn¿t have the personnel or materials to do anything to diminish the problem of the genocide in Rwanda. No country answered their calls for help and only delayed a reinforcement mission. Shake Hands with the Devil, however on top of telling the world how wrong it was, tries to get the message out that everyone sat and watched. The pleas and permissions UNAMIR had that were thrown out by the world and were unanswered are too many to count. Dallaire gives an understanding of what can happen even under the world¿s super powers watch. After reading Shake Hands with the Devil, genocide could happen again and the same powers could turn their broad shoulders like they did in Rwanda. This book is a great non-fiction account of what genocide is about and what steps should be taken to stop it. I recommend this book to any person who values human rights at any level.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted March 8, 2007

Understanding hell on earth

If we can learn from history, this book is a must read. We can learn how this happend and how to prevent it, from this mans memory of the genocide and the hell that was created here on earth. It could happen anywhere in the world.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted June 16, 2006

Dallaire, Hero Trying to Save Huminity From Itself.

From assassination, through slaughter upon slaughter of both Hutus and Tutsis to a ghastly genocide, General Dallaire led the UN peacekeepers from crisis to crisis in attempting to save humanity from itself. From neither the UN nor the great powers did he receive anything like adequate support -- until the tide had turned. Then he was awash with too much too late, and it may have been in fact counter productive by propping up the losers long enough to kill for another month or so. If our goal is to understand peacekeeping in the modern world, this is an important book to read. So, also, the military types interested in peace keeping or problem resolution will find a wealth of experience here. In historical perspective, this ultimate tragedy was only one of several in the Great Lakes region of Africa. In psychological perspective, it is a revelation in how humanity can turn on itself in such devastating ways, ignoring the principles of society, even those of Nature itself. His book title reflects his feelings when he had to cooperate with the genocidaires, however briefly. He felt he was compromising his basic being and betraying humankind. Dallaire paid a terrible personal price as a consequence. He discusses his own internal stress so vivdly one feels his pain walking through the pages. Three features stand out in sharp relief: 1) Part of humanity reverting to its jungle inheritance of predation. 2) The rest of humanity ignoring or manipulating the protagonists to their own advantage. 3) A very small part of humanity doing what they could to help, but with too little organization to be of the kind of help actually required. History now has a red flag waving, employing fear motivation to drive people to extremes. Nevertheless, Dallaire ends his notable book with optimism that humanity can still find its way.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted April 24, 2006

Incredible

This book was the most in depth account of Rwanda's massacre I have ever read. It is truly heartbreaking, and yet inspiring that in the midst of these horrible acts...someone was willing to stand strong. I was so impacted by this book that I actually went to see Gen Romeo Dallaire speak at a local University. He is as eloquent in person as he is on paper. I hope that he will find peace someday, and that this tragedy will never take place again!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted March 1, 2006

Mind buggling

Shake Hands with the Devil In this account of the Rwandan genocide, General Romeo Dallaire vividly reveals to the reader the total failure of the international community to stop the genocide. He gives a succinct outline of the failures of the international community, including the United Nations, the UN Security Council, and many NGOs, and bravely holds nations like France responsible for doing nothing despite the strong influence they had on the Hutu extremist Rwandan government which ended up killing over 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Dallaire distinguished himself as someone with a great deal of courage who went through hell without breaking and goes further to relive the hell in this book so that we might learn from it.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted February 20, 2006

GREATEST ACCOUNT EVER WRITTEN

Whoever has not laid their hands on this account, or doesn't know what book to read about the crisis in Rwanda should read this book first. All other books shy away from the details in this book, I was able to smell the corspe of the dead in this book. Litteraly!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted February 16, 2006

we must NEVER let this happen AGAIN!!!

I just finished this book and could understand why the author was so traumatized. To want to help so badly, and be unable to do so was agonizing for him. Very well written and clear, with vivid descriptions of what he and the Rwandans were going through. My only complaints were that all the people involved made hard to keep track of everyone-though the glossary helped. Also, does not give a comprehensive history as to where this hatred came from. Overall, highly recommended. And to Romeo Daillaire I am so sorry we in the U.S. did not help.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted December 9, 2005

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

It¿s almost fitting that the task of reviewing, and therefore reading, Shake Hands with the Devil, Roméo Dallaire¿s wrenching first-hand account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was a task studiously avoided by many of us around the offices of ascent. Fitting, as it mirrors in a microcosm how Dallaire¿s cries for help were also largely ignored at the time by the West. Shake Hands with the Devil is a haunted survivor¿s attempt to assess responsibility in ¿the failure of humanity in Rwanda,¿ wherein 800,000 people were massacred over a period of 100 days. Dallaire¿s point is not merely to point fingers, but rather to learn where mistakes were made so that future interventions by the world community into conflicts might render these intercessions more facile. While highly emotional, this book is also fair and balanced in its criticism, never confusing true emotion with sentimentality. One example is Dallaire¿s criticism of the Belgian government, which has a long and shameful colonial history in Rwanda. Although the Belgians lost ten soldiers in a massacre, Dallaire doesn¿t allow that tragedy to temper his disapproval of their behaviour during the genocide. In fact, no one escapes Dallaire¿s just criticism, from United Nations and world leaders arguing semantics over UN decrees while hundreds of thousands of people were being slaughtered, to US army assessors¿ macabre accounting that the life of one US soldier was valued equal to the lives of 80,000 Rwandans, and of course, the perpetrators of the genocide themselves ¿ the normal people who just woke up one morning and joined in the killing of their former neighbours. Shake Hands with the Devil is a great guttural wail of humanity coming from one who has witnessed its worst possible behaviour. It is telling that while Dallaire paints his account of the atrocities in broad strokes, he reserves more detailed accounts to quoting other observers: his second-in-command, UNHCR commanders and other NGO workers. It is as if he himself cannot find a voice to speak of things that no one should ever see. Ultimately, this book stands as Roméo Dallaire¿s confession and self-indictment. This seeming paradox of a man ¿ a career soldier who is a gentle, eloquent spokesman for peace ¿ still cannot forgive himself for what he sees as his failure in being unable to stop the killing a decade ago. The horrors witnessed in Rwanda, coupled with the impotence of his UN mandate and scarce resources of an ill-equipped force of only 500, have left this brave man scarred, prematurely aged, forced into early retirement from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a survivor of multiple suicide attempts. This book filled me with an overpowering moral outrage, but ultimately it allows a small glimpse of hope. The survivors of the Rwandan genocide have attempted to rebuild their country with a non-partisan government not based upon ethnic lines. Roméo Dallaire came back from the edge of hell with hope that the new century will be what he calls the ¿century of humanity.¿ Where human beings will rise above violence, while recognizing that the poverty that leaves much of the world without hope is the source of most violent conflict and therefore must be eliminated to help bring peace. Dallaire believes that we can rise above notions of race that led Hutu to kill Tutsi ¿ notions that raise the question of whether Western nations would have stood by while a nation of non-Africans were slaughtered en masse. In all this uncertainty, Roméo Dallaire is still able to entertain these hopes, and the fact that a hardened, former high-level military leader who has witnessed the ultimate savage potential of human beings can still have faith in mankind helped restore my own hope for humanity, flawed as we are.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted October 23, 2005

Hypocrisy

The story of a failed UN mission that was poorly supplied and poorly armed with indifferent and poorly motivated third world soldiers, and... poorly led. It could have done more only with an inspired commander which the author shows abundantly he is not. Professional soldiers reading this book must be aghast at his command decisions. The author makes a mistake in thinking that the USA or Canada or Nato could have done anything to help him. Hypocritical types who decry Western inaction are the very ones who would never consent to send themselves or their children into harms way in some African hellhole. Even the third world soldiers had governments requiring basically no casualties. There is no will in the West to take casualties in this kind of endeavor... as exemplified totally by a General who refused to fight at all. The General should have acknowledged this in his book. An organically impotent man should not say that his partner isn't pretty enough when he can't perform. Hypocrisy! A more interesting approach would have been to use this sordid experience as a springboard to discussion of modern 'unionized' miltaries, like Canada's and whether any government should expend blood and treasure when its vital interests are not threatened. Macchiavelli and Hobbes would have predicted rightly that no one would care, and no one did. What's the surprise?
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted May 5, 2005

The world is crazy

This book helped to solidify for me my philosophy that all men are evil. These men and women were ordinary people who were underdeveloped intellectually and spiritually. The book was well written and even though it gave me nightmares I was sad when I realized I was at the end. If you are interested in world affairs, governments, and the nature of man, read this book. EXCELLENT READ.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted January 7, 2009

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted October 26, 2008

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted June 18, 2011

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted March 25, 2010

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted May 27, 2010

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted February 10, 2010

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted January 5, 2009

No text was provided for this review.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble

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

Pick Up in Store

Overview

All Available Formats + Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Madeleine Albright

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

Meet the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

First Chapter

Customer Reviews

Rating Distribution

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

Your Rating:

Your Recommendations:

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

What to exclude from your review:

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

Reminder:

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Very disturbing

A reviewer

Shake Hands with the Devil

Opening the eyes of the world

Understanding hell on earth

Dallaire, Hero Trying to Save Huminity From Itself.

Incredible

Mind buggling

GREATEST ACCOUNT EVER WRITTEN

we must NEVER let this happen AGAIN!!!

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

Hypocrisy

The world is crazy