About book Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda (2004)
My review, published in Metro, February 2004.Shake Hands with the DevilLt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire****If there was any doubt about the nature of Lt. Gen Roméo Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil, let me be clear: This is not casual reading.At 562 pages, this is an eyewitness account of the story behind the story of how at least 800,000 Rwandans were brutally slain at the hands of their countrymen in an orgy of killing through the spring and summer of 1994.As the force commander for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) peacekeeping mission, Dallaire describes in painstaking detail the actions of the players and the nationalist, political, bureaucratic, diplomatic, military, espionage and personal intrigues that plagued UNAMIR and ultimately doomed it to failure.The book would have benefited from tighter editing, but the content itself is riveting.Dallaire is not afraid to place blame squarely where it belongs. He paints a distressing picture of how decisions by careerist, indifferent and excessively cautious bureaucrats and diplomats more concerned with their status, working hours and lifestyle frustrated his attempts to bolster a shaky peace accord between Hutu and Tutsi political and paramilitary factions.He details how Western governments refused to contribute even meagre resources to support the chronically understaffed, underequipped, undersupplied and underappreciated mission. The reason: Rwanda was deemed to hold no strategic interest for the West.While Dallaire places the greatest responsibility for the genocide with the Rwandan génocidaires who planned and carried out the massacre, he also criticizes a number of countries — including Canada — for failing to give adequate support (if any) to UNAMIR.France and the United States are singled out as two of the key actors whose actions led to the Rwanda genocide. France “moved in too late and ended up protecting the génocidaires and permanently destabilizing the region”, and the U.S. government “actively worked against an effective UNAMIR.”For example, the U.S. repeatedly denied it knew anything of what was going on in Rwanda but occasionally supplied the UN detailed intelligence about the players. And once the killing began, U.S. officials refused to call it a genocide to avoid any legal consequences of avoiding intervention.But Dallaire reserves the greatest criticism for himself: “As the person charged with the military leadership of UNAMIR, I was unable to persuade the international community that this tiny, poor, overpopulated country and its people were worth saving from the horror of genocide.”He also warns that Rwanda should be an object lesson for the West.“Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future and no means to survive ... will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve.“If we cannot provide hope for the untold masses of the world, then the future will be nothing but a repeat of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Congo and September 11.”Words worth heeding.
General Dallaire recounts the events leading up to the Rwandan genocide from his perspective as a UN commandeer in charge of implementing a little known peace treaty between Rwandan parties - the implementation if it had been carried out could have prevented a deliberate carefully planned attempt by extremists to eradicate a portion of the country's population and come to power.As carefully spelled out in his narrative, this was not a "spontaneous spasm of horrific violence" as often characterized by the media at the time. It was a result of indifference by those countries who could have made a serious effort to bring about peace in this land, a timid UN leadership, intransigence on the more moderate RPF, though he carefully points out that the immediate cause was Hutu extremists.For want of a nail the shoe was lost.For want of a shoe the horse was lost.For want of a horse the rider was lost.For want of a rider the battle was lost.For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.This describes, from the General's perspective, the many small opportunities the UN had and ignored - but of course the UN being made up of nations who had the resources and ability to intervene. (The US, France, Belgium and the UK are not treated leniently.) Peacekeepers promised but not delivered, equipment sent but not working, security council proclamations watered down, delayed, discarded, etc, etc, - all of these acts of omission or negligence were watched closely by the extremists until they apparently agreed the West and UN would not react in the face of their own actions.It reminds me of an observation from a reader to the Christian Science Monitor in 1987 after an eruption of violence in Burundi where 20,000 lives were lost. His words were, as I remember, "if these had been zebras or elephants or some other exotic African animal, I suspect the outcry of the West would have been deafening, but for a frenzied killing of Africans themselves, relative silence. Why?"This story is also a pertinent example of the current French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's perspective (who is in this book and I wonder whether his experience with the genocide resulted in his later statement) who declared recently "if we do not take Iranian nuclear weapons buildup seriously, prepare for war!" His point, basically misunderstood, was that if nations are serious about peace (in this case analyzing Iran's record and intent), then they must act decisively for it, not wistfully think on what might have been later. The General himself (a Canadian Quebecois) suffered PTSD from his helpless experience there, and it took him 7-8 years after 1994 before sufficiently recovering. He eventually realized that what he could still do is bear witness as to why and how this genocide occurred. The book excels in doing just that.
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I have started several reviews for this book and I am simply at a loss for words for how to describe my feelings about it. I was profoundly affected by Dallaire's experience. His story changed my perception of the world, of government, and of myself. Dallaire feels he failed in his mission, he was undercut and thwarted on all sides. He could have walked away, turned his back on Rwanda the way the rest of the world did. He knew he couldn't succeed in preventing the genocide, from ending the aptathy of the UN and the USA, but he never,never,never gave up. He is,in my opinion, among the very best examples of humanity, courage, and loaylty to a righteous cause. The book is extremely graphic and difficult to read and internalize. Dallaire personally dealt with so much gore it's nearly impossible for me to fathom. In fact, I put the book down for months, too cowardly to continue, but I couldn't get Rwanda or Dallaire out of my head. I figured if Romeo Dallaire was willing to relive the hells and horrors he and his beloved soldiers and Rwandans faced in an effort to prevent such evil from happening again, I was honor bound to finish the book and make a difference in humanity myself.
—Marissa Pineda
This is such an important book, but a very tough one to get through because it is filled with stuff that will make you want to tear your hair out in frustration, hang your head in shame, and boil your brain in bleach to remove the terrible images seared into it. It is no wonder that General Dallaire is still traumatized after this experience, and he has my admiration for mustering his strength and courage to write it all down, just as he has my admiration for refusing to turn his back on the people of Rwanda even though he was unable to motivate the UN and the world to intervene in the civil war and genocide. By bearing witness to the horrors of Rwanda and by exposing all of the decisions and roadblocks made by the UN and western governments that hogtied him (and his brave troops), Dallaire may have helped to prevent this dark page of history from being repeated in another country. One can hope.My only quibble with this book, and it is extremely minor, is that Dallaire gives us an overview of his life in the military before his assignment to Rwanda, which slows the pace a bit and which is perhaps not really essential to know in order to approach the subject at hand. Rwanda first appears on page 40, and even then it seems to me the true "story" only really begins in chapter 3. However, as I said before, this complaint is extremely minor and should not dissuade any interested party from reading this book.A recommendation to the potential reader: the Frontline special, Ghosts of Rwanda, is an excellent supplement to this book, giving a general overview of the Rwanda tragedy as well as interviews with "power players", perpetrators, victims and onlookers, including General Dallaire himself. And a warning - if you plan to pick up this book, steel your spine first.
—Vanessa
Whew, that took me awhile. Not only because I've been busy and haven't had time to read, but also because this isn't the sort of book you can sit and read for hours at a time. More specifically, I could read about a dozen or so pages, then I found myself staring into space for minutes at a time, digesting the words.Or sobbing with rage, sadness, or a combination of both.I don't usually hold back tears when I'm reading in private, which is most of the time. I let myself laugh, sniffle, let out the occasional 'eww...', etc. whenever I feel the urge because I enjoy throwing myself fully into reading. It's part of the experience for me. But while I can remember many times I've let tears flow or cried for a solid half hour (Farewell to Arms, anyone?), I can't remember crying with a combination of sadness and fury as often as I did while reading this book.It's a moving account of the UN mission in Rwanada with bits about Daillaire's life, the political situation in Rwanada, the genocide itself, etc. I learned quite a bit about the conflict, and in the end, it left me with the burning question, "What the hell is wrong with people?!"It also made me kinda proud to be a Canadian, which is not a feeling I have often, because we're generally pretty quiet about out patriotism.
—Katie
