Shake Hands with the Devil by Samantha Power

Shake Hands with the Devil Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo

  SOMETIMES IN APRIL
  
  
  
  Grande personalità il generale Romeo Dallaire: lucido e appassionato al contempo, si porta dentro un senso di colpa e un classico disturbo post-traumatico da stress che gli hanno cambiato la vita per sempre e che riesce ad arginare solo con l'uso di psicofarmaci, che comunque non hanno impedito che tentasse il suicidio.
  Era lì durante il genocidio in Rwanda, avrebbe voluto e potuto fermarlo prima ancora che si scatenasse l'inferno: ma l'hanno lasciato impotente ad assistere alle carneficine.
  A Dallaire sono dedicati un albero e un cippo al Giardino dei Giusti di tutto il Mondo di Milano.
  
  
  Roy Dupuis che interpreta il generale Dallaire nel film di Roger Spottiswoode del 2007, stesso titolo del memoir di Dallaire. Esiste anche un documentario con lo stesso titolo che fu girato durante le commemorazioni del 2004, quando Dallaire tornò in Rwanda per la prima volta dopo il 1994. Le due foto che seguono sono di quei giorni.
  
  L’altra sera parlavo con un amico, uno di quelli illuminati, di quelli che se il mondo fosse abitato solo da gente come lui sarebbe senz’altro un posto migliore, e gli ricordavo un frase di Diop, che entrambi abbiamo avuto il piacere e la fortuna di conoscere: “Il Rwanda è forse l’unico paese africano dove non esiste problema etnico”.
  E di fronte alla sua sorpresa, ho dovuto ribadire concetti che credevo ormai scontati: hutu e tutsi sono due etnie inventate dai missionari belgi, imposte con la forza, con metodi lombrosiani, con la prevaricazione del padrone colonialista; hutu e tutsi potrebbero al massimo essere due categorie diverse di lavoratori, agricoltori i primi, allevatori i secondi, e quindi forse anche due diverse classi sociali; hutu e tutsi hanno convissuto per secoli in un minuscolo paese (poco più grande della Sicilia), fianco a fianco, condividendo lingua e religione, sposandosi, incrociandosi, mischiandosi; hutu e tutsi, in base alle tipologie fisiche stabilite dai missionari belgi, sono difficili da riconoscere nelle tante foto che a distanza di un paio di decenni affiancano vittima e carnefice.
  
  
  Il generale Dallaire insieme al rettore dell’Università di Butare nell’aprile del 2004.
  
  Il genocidio iniziò proprio oggi, la sera del 6 aprile 1994, e il giorno dopo esplose.
  Quello che segue è l’inizio dell’articolo pubblicato su Internazionale online pochi giorni fa (3 aprile) scritto da Daniele Scaglione, autore del più esauriente testo su quei fatti e sulla loro genesi (‘Rwanda: Istruzioni per un genocidio’, pubblicato del 2003 dalle Edizioni Gruppo Abele, e poi di nuovo nel 2010 da Infinito Edizioni con una prefazione di Ascanio Celestini):
  A distanza di 23 anni, la conoscenza del genocidio compiuto dagli estremisti hutu contro i tutsi – di cui sono state vittime anche numerosi tra i cosiddetti hutu moderati – non è ancora diventata patrimonio comune. Il trascorrere del tempo, in teoria, potrebbe avere una funzione positiva: l’enormità del massacro, la sua dinamica complicata, la storia precedente e le cronache successive, richiedono studi e analisi approfondite. Ma la sensazione è che il passare degli anni giochi contro la costruzione di una memoria collettiva di quel genocidio. La stessa giornata istituita dalle Nazioni Unite per ricordarne l’inizio, il 7 aprile, sembra appassionare sempre meno.
  
  
  La gente ascolta il generale Dallaire che all’Università di Butare racconta la sua versione dei fatti. Aprile 2004, decennale del genocidio. Per molti presenti fu la prima volta che sentirono da un occidentale, per di più coinvolto negli eventi, come l’ONU se ne lavò le mani e si voltò dall’altra parte.
  
  Inizialmente, mezzi d’informazione e leader mondiali raccontarono quel genocidio come lo scoppio di una violenza improvvisa e imprevedibile. Poi, nel novembre del 1995, il quotidiano belga De Morgen pubblicò estratti di un fax che Romeo Dallaire, capo dei caschi blu a Kigali, aveva mandato ai suoi capi all’Onu, la notte dell’11 gennaio 1994.
  Da quel documento risultava chiaro che si stava preparando un massacro. Ma Dallaire, che si apprestava a requisire un deposito di armi, ricevette l’ordine di non fare nulla. Fu la prima di una lunga serie di decisioni vergognose. Dopo l’omicidio del presidente ruandese – l’hutu Juvénal Habyarimana, ucciso il 6 aprile 1994 – e le violenze che ne seguirono, Dallaire chiese rinforzi, ma il Consiglio di sicurezza rispose riducendo il contingente a sua disposizione da 2.500 a 270 caschi blu.
  Qui il link all’articolo:
  
  http://www.internazionale.it/notizie/...
  
  
  Il miglior film sul genocidio del 1994, dell’haitiano Raoul Peck, 2005.
• 
  Vanessa

  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.
  
  
• 
  Paul Bryant

  I imagine many copies of this bestselling book lie around unread or abandoned. I did not read all 548 pages. It's huge and vastly detailed and extremely narrowly focussed on what Romeo Dallaire did on a day to day hour by hour basis during the terrible period of the genocide.
  
  This is what the whole heart and soul of the book is about - it's not about WHY the genocide happened, and how some Rwandans could slaughter 800,000 of their fellow citizens, it's about how the rest of the world, having been informed of the ongoing mass killings, didn't respond. This is from page 240:
  
  The extremists had taken their cue from the grim farces of Bosnia and Somalia. They knew that Western nations do not have the stomach of the will to sustain casualties in peace support operations. When confronted with casualties, as the United States was in Somalia or the Belgians in Rwanda, they will run, regardless of the consequences to the abandoned population.
  
  So much of this book is about Dallaire rushing about trying to get more resources for the pitiful UN peacekeeping force he was commanding, trying to do deals here and there, like a guy frantically trying to prop up a roof which is visibly caving in by cellotaping chopsticks together. It's just pitiful.
  
  Here's where I stopped reading. Page 406 - at the height of the genocide:
  
  That night I wrote a sharp letter of protest to Kagame over the mortar fire at the crossroads.
  
  This is what the poor guy was reduced to. Sharp letters of protest, while the bodies piled up in the killing fields.
• 
  Kevin

  The Fog of War and Liberal Interventionism...
  
  Preamble:
  --My previous review spent too long unpacking ideologies (esp. “liberalism”: rhetoric vs. economics), which I acknowledge is too abstract/triggering for those raised on a contrasting vocabulary (let alone worldview) to start with; we just end up talking past each other, wasting both our times. Let me try a different approach...
  
  1) A Soldier’s Account vs. the Fog of War:
  --Before we get to this book by Canadian forces lieutenant-general Dallaire, let us start with the ultimate bridge in differing vocabulary/worldviews: US Major General
  Smedley D. Butler, the most decorated US marine who fought for the US in interventions all over the world (ex. Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Banana Wars in the Caribbean, the Mexican Revolution, WWI in France) when the US was still in transition (formally replacing the British empire as the world hegemon during/after WWII).
  --With this unparalleled US patriotism, let’s hear the reflections of the Major General:

  War is a racket. It always has been.
  
  It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
  
  A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. […]
  
  For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out. […]
  
  The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. […]
  
  [-
  War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier; emphases added]

  --The inconvenient question: if a most-decorated Major General can be caught up in the fog of war for so long (33+ years, see later), how do we now evaluate lieutenant-general Dallaire’s account of the UN intervention in Rwanda? Especially considering Dallaire’s constant complaints of being kept in the dark: “Our lack of intelligence and basic operational information, and the reluctance of any nation to provide us with it, helped form my first suspicion that I might find myself out on a limb if I ever needed help in the field.”
  --I stay away from dissecting/blaming individual soldiers’ actions, instead focusing on the big picture forces (esp. political economy) behind the war. Thus, my review/rating is not on Dallaire’s individual actions (unlike many who read the book, I worry), but instead on Dallaire's analysis of the roots of the crisis and the role of intervention. Here is Dallaire’s conclusion on the latter:

  If September 11 taught us that we have to fight and win the “war on terrorism,” it should also have taught us that if we do not immediately address the underlying (even if misguided) causes of those young terrorists’ rage, we will not win the war. […]
  
  Where does this rage come from? This book has demonstrated some of the causes. A heightened tribalism, the absence of human rights, economic collapses, brutal and corrupt military dictatorships, the AIDS pandemic, the effect of debt on nations, environmental degradation, overpopulation, poverty, hunger: the list goes on and on.

  --This conclusion’s Western liberalism in its symptomatic diagnosis and structural omissions is my critique.
  
  2) Interventionism in context (of Imperialism):
  --Dallaire does mention the colonial roots of the Rwandan “heightened tribalism” (Belgian colonizers using colonialism’s #1 tactic of divide-and-rule to administer the colonial coffee/tea plantations, enlisting the lighter-skinned Tutsis minority to rule over the darker Hutus majority). However, Dallaire is stuck with:
  i) A disconnect between prior colonialism and today,
  ii) Missing broader structures (esp. global capitalism) driving today’s listed symptoms,
  iii) Assumption of the need for liberal intervention, despite the ongoing list of interventions crushing alternatives (decolonization movements and regionalism, i.e. regional cooperation; always omitted, how can there be alternatives from the un-enlightened? See
  The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World) while supporting convenient puppets/reactionary rebels (ex. “we have to fight and win”, but who is the “we”? How can “we” win the “war on terror” when the US and Canadian governments sell weapons to the Saudi monarchy, the US propping them up since WWII, etc.?)
  --Let us return to Major General Butler reflecting on the interventions he was involved in:

  I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force ��� the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. […] Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. […] I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. […] During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.
  
  [-Common Sense, Vol. 4, No. 11 (November, 1935), p. 8; bold emphasis added]

  --Mere words have a great influence. For the interventions Butler critiques here, the foreign lands received a physical bombardment while domestic discourse received a verbal bombardment of Orwellian “freedom” phrases (“free trade”, “free market”). For us to reverse this, we can now introduce “imperialism” to describe these interventions to secure capitalist control (freedom for Western corporations/banks/intellectual property rents/debt instruments) over countries struggling with the messy/contradictory task of “decolonization”. Just how much are these countries “post-colonial”?
  
  3) From European Colonialism to the US Military Industrial Complex:
  --Butler was also the whistleblower for the Business Plot (also called the “Wall Street Putsch”) in 1933. The US was mired in global capitalism’s endless “Great Depression” thanks to the austerity of free market doctrine (waiting for “the market” to save itself, despite post-crash pessimistic capitalists refusing to risk sufficient investments), leading to the 1933 election of FDR and his state spending schemes (the New Deals). This was seen as enough of a threat to “freedom” by certain US capitalists to trigger a plot to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator. The bigger picture is that certain US capitalists (
  infamously Henry Ford) were particularly impressed with fascism (Hitler took power in 1933) in reviving private industries from the Depression while crushing alternatives (leftists):
  Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.
  --The “international war clouds gathering” that Butler warned about culminated in WWII. While FDR’s New Deals were still too trivial to revitalize US capitalism, “the sky is the limit” “war-time profits” of WWII served as the creative destruction that swept away the Great Depression and constructed a new global capitalism driven by the US military industrial complex: war-time mass production was repurposed after WWII into middle-class mass consumerism to try and absorb the expanded production; war-time R&D transformed information technology.
  --A parallel process during WWII’s creative destruction was the disruptions to European colonialism, as Western Europe was too busy destroying itself. The colonized experienced the hidden half of global capitalism, where resources were drained to fuel Western industrialization (
  Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present) while the colonized starved next to railroads shipping food grains to foreign purchasing power (
  Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World).
  --WWII’s colonial infighting and the USSR resisting Nazism’s conquest opened the doors to the messy process of decolonization (
  The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World) and resulting “Third World Industrialization” (culminating in the push for the New International Economic Order, NIEO, overshadowed by the OAPEC oil crises).
  --This was a major threat to the new US global capitalism (despite the Western focus on the Cold War), which the US neutralized with:
  i) Its own brand of economic imperialism (new Orwellian words like “economic development” under the “Washington Consensus” of IMF/World Bank, culminating in the “Third World debt crisis”:
  The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions),
  ii) Post-WWII revival of fascists/colonizers, an infamous list of coups (see the
  history of “banana republic”) by the greatest military in human history:
  -
  Washington Bullets
  -
  Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
  -
  The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
  -
  The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
  --Of course, capitalism is full of contradictions, with its dispossession of the masses (domestic “Enclosures” and foreign colonialism to privatize land, creating the land market) vs. unparalleled production (mobilize the dispossessed to work, i.e. the labour market, and the wealthy to invest/compete in endless accumulation, i.e. stock/financial markets) creating vast inequalities.
  ...Thus, post-WWII US as the new factory of the world was enlightened enough to rebuild buyers (esp. Western Europe) and other satellites developed from US military contracts (ex. Japan’s re-industrialization from US’s genocidal bombing of Korea; “East Asian miracle” of South Korea/Taiwan/Thailand/Singapore from US’s genocidal bombing of Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia:
  Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980).
  
  4) Canada’s role:
  --All the above is crucial in contextualizing interventions. “Peace-keeping” cannot be apolitical or economically neutral. Canada, residing in the attic of the US, shadows the US’s foreign policy (relationship with Saudi Arabia already mentioned)/global capitalism plan.
  --Canada’s foreign policy is particularly influenced by its
  outsized mining corporations, which leads the world. Ex. targeting Venezuela, from Peter Monk (head of Barrick Gold) slandering 1998 election winner Hugo Chavez to recent 2017 Lima Group (
  see here). For details on Canada’s foreign policy, see
  Yves Engler.
  --Lectures on interventions:
  -On imperialism's "ideological censorship":
  https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74
  -"The Destruction of Nations and Responsibility to Protect, Dr.
  Vijay Prashad":
  https://youtu.be/1MiYazFZYpI
  -"Stand on Guard for Whom? - Canada and NATO":
  Paul Jay interviews
  Yves Engler:
  https://youtu.be/JM8ncBJKGLc
  -"JFK’s Canadian Coup":
  Paul Jay interviews
  John Boyko on JFK/US intervention in Canada against Diefenbaker to get Lester Pearson elected:
  https://youtu.be/4oDHpUpFux8
  
  5) Alternatives?:
  -
  Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
  -Hickel's follow-up to "The Divide":
  Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
  -Global South playlist (including alternatives of decolonization movements including "de-linking" from imperialist finance/global division of labour, regionalism, socialism, economic/participatory democracy):
  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
  -economic alternatives in production/finance/trade/land etc.:
  Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
• 
  Debbie W.

  A comprehensive look at the 100 days during the height of the Rwandan genocide and the man who felt powerless to do anything about it. A must-read for those who want the truth about this horrific period in modern history!
• 
  Igor Ljubuncic

  Phenomenal, infuriating, disgusting.
  
  This is a sad masterpiece.
  
  The whole book is one giant j'accuse.
  
  It's a personal story of General Dallaire, a French Canadian, who briefly shares with us his early life in segregated Quebec before going into his tribulation, day by day, through the genocide in Rwanda. One hundred days where he tried to prevent the catastrophe, while he tried to jungle the political, humanitarian and military mess surrounding him and his small team of UN peacekeepers.
  
  The book is horrifying - it has visual descriptions of mutilations, rape, torture, dead bodies, personal tragedy, anguish, despair, loss, and futility of this whole story, and there's no happy ending either. The general came back to Canada with a deep sense of guilt, suicidal, unable to cope with crowds, scarred for life by his inability to make a change while the big powers watched with indifference as 800,000 people, including 300,000 children were killed with machetes.
  
  The book provokes deep rage and hatred - not for the belligerents - but for the "world" community, the UN bureaucracy machine, the colonial powers that decided the lives of some Africans weren't worth the bother of sending their own troops in.
  
  Some examples of j'accuse:
  
  France, which airlifted and harbored the genocide government representatives safely in Paris, twice propped the RGF from being defeated by the RPF, tried to stop the defeat of the genocide government, and then prevented the return of two million refugees from Zaire back in Rwanda, sparking the Zaire war that eventually killed about 10 million people over the next decade.
  
  Belgium, which tucked tail and fled after 10 of its soldiers were killed - the ex-master of Rwanda with deep racist culture - Belgian soldiers refused to salute "colored" officers, including officers from other UN contingents (like Ghana and even Bangladesh), soldiers that beat Rwandan journalists for writing bad things about them, soldiers that took in prostitutes despite strict orders against fraternization against the locals.
  
  The US, which had the logistic power to move in quickly and stop it all, but decided that after Somalia it wasn't going to risk the lives of its soldiers to the exact tally of - one American life being equal to 85,000 Rwandans. Moreover, the US promised help many times over and then simply didn't do anything.
  
  The UN political representative in Rwanda, who was more concerned with his furniture and used a helicopter for personal needs than have it used to ship MILOBs where they were desperately required.
  
  The Bangladesh contingent, which were there for a free ride, refused to help any non-Europeans, often fled from any conflict area, and ran to their planes when the time for their evacuation finally came.
  
  The UN leadership in New York, which dallied, played wording games, and stalled for as long as it could while tens of thousands of people were being massacred.
  
  And the list goes on and on.
  
  In the midst of it all, Dallaire had 400 observers, most of them unarmed, they ate expired German combat rations, and had to watch helplessly as people were machetted to death inside churches and sanctuaries.
  
  And the humanity sat and watched. Fast forward 25 years, we've learned nothing as a race. Morality is relative to the mineral and fossil fuel wealth as well as the intimate strategic interests of the great powers.
  
  This is a very difficult book - but it's an important read.
  
  Igor
• 
  Julie

  Dallaire's powerful memoir is important, graphic, and undeniable. It is, however, a tough read because of the disturbing events he describes and the even more disturbing lack of action on behalf of Rwanda's victims. Its historic importance and brutal honesty earns it five stars.
• 
  Ian

  *Reposting Accidentally Deleted Review* (Duh!) *Updated- corrects spelling *
  
  The genocide in Rwanda, one of the great tragedies of the late Twentieth Century, is remarkable because it unfolded in plain view and yet there was no international humanitarian effort made to stop it. Romeo Dallaire was the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force (UNAMIR) in Rwanda and watched this "failure of humanity" unfold from a front row seat. After arriving in country Dallaire soon realizes the situation is not the classic peacekeeping mission assigned to him, but a country seething on the edge of a renewed civil war, which would include a carefully planned extermination of the minority Tutsi people. His warnings and plans for preemptive action were ignored and rejected and in the end he could just sit and watch as hundreds of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered. The limited measures he was able to take saved tens of thousands but Dallaire's agony over those he couldn't reach is evident throughout the book. He doesn't spare himself from the criticism he levels at the UN bureaucrats and western governments that permitted the genocide to occur.
  The book takes you into the nuts and bolts of the UN mission, its personalities, its flaws, its heros, its small victories and its overwhelming failure.
• 
  Mikey B.

  A personal and heart-rending account. This is definitely a ‘boots on the ground’ rendition of the terrible tragedy in Rwanda in 1994.
  
  We sense Romeo Dallaire’s naiveté when he arrived in Rwanda in late 1993. As he was learning about the intricate political groupings surrounding the Arusha Peace Agreement so, he to, was being assessed – particularly as to the level of commitment of the U.N. to Central Africa. This was shortly after the Americans had lost troops in Somalia. How much was the West (and the U.S.) going to invest in commitments for this ‘Peace Agreement’?
  
  Mr. Dallaire’s central theme is that the West is not interested in sacrificing lives to prevent genocide in a country like Rwanda. There is no resource payback; like in Kuwait. It is highly likely that 5,000 well trained troops would have saved the lives of most of the 800,000 who were slaughtered during the genocide. These 5,000 troops are far less than what was dedicated to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.
  
  Mr. Dallaire’s description of the genocide and the continued ineptitude of the U.N. are most poignant and excruciatingly sad. Rwanda, at the time, was on the Security Council and did much to thwart the efforts of Mr. Dallaire and others to inform the world that Rwanda was soon to reach a breaking point with the region erupting into a holocaust of violence if the Peace Agreement were broken. The U.N. in Rwanda had several warnings from their contacts within the community that lists were being prepared, weapons were at the ready and that a countdown was imminent.
  
  Despite the fact that the writing style can be at times cumbersome with numerous “I” references and constant use of acronyms – the depiction of events during the genocide is unparalleled in their searing emotion.
  
  This is a book that needs to be read to understand recent world events and why the West needs to intervene to establish some form of civil authority; otherwise events cascade into an apocalypse. We can no longer blind ourselves to the poverty and lack of infra-structure that exists in many Third World countries.
  
  
  
• 
  William Cline

  I read this shortly after reading Philip Gourevitch’s
  We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which was fortunate. Shake Hands with the Devil is clear and well-written, but it doesn’t supply much context. What it offers is a blow-by-blow of the Rwandan genocide from Dallaire’s perspective. Dallaire commanded the military side of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), which was meant to be a straightforward peacekeeping mission monitoring a peace agreement between the government of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), who had just fought a civil war. Neither Dallaire, nor his bosses in the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), nor the UN’s member states were prepared for the Rwandan government’s plan to murder both its political opponents and an entire ethnic group, hatred for whom it had made a cornerstone of its political power.
  
  Dallaire could tell that something was wrong in Rwanda, but he wasn’t able to figure out what until the genocide had already begun. While some nations had intelligence officers and military advisors embedded among the Rwandan forces, their information wasn’t shared with the UN or Dallaire. The head of UNAMIR, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, did an unenthusiastic and sometimes incompetent job of managing the political side, and Dallaire did not get along well with either him or his staff. (For what it’s worth, Booh-Booh has written
  a rebuttal to Dallaire’s book.)
  
  Both before and after the killings began, Dallaire faced seemingly every possible obstacle, including an obstructive UN procurement apparatus, a shortage of critical staff, and a DPKO who considered UNAMIR a sideshow alongside more “important” conflicts like Yugoslavia. As with most UN matters, he was also hamstrung by the member states. The United States and other countries refused to officially acknowledge the genocide for what it was until after the fact. France actively supported and armed the Rwandan government right up to (and possibly including) the start of the genocide and the resumption of the civil war. Once the war restarted, the United States quibbled over its price for leasing armored personnel carriers to the UN — even as the killing happened — and said APCs eventually arrived in Africa stripped of radios, ammunition, spare parts, or even operating manuals. Belgium was the only rich nation to supply a significant troop contingent, but some Belgian troops’ colonial attitudes caused problems with the Rwandan locals, and Belgium pulled out as soon as it suffered casualties. Bangladesh supplied troops, but they arrived under-equipped, poorly trained, and expecting an easy, risk-free tour of duty; Bangladeshi troops sometimes sabotaged their own vehicles to avoid missions, and their commanders countermanded Dallaire’s orders when they thought a mission was too dangerous.
  
  The list goes on.
  
  As an account of UNAMIR’s military role during the genocide, Shake Hands is very good. As its subtitle indicates, it’s also an enumeration — a very long one (see above) — of the failures of the UN, our governments, and ultimately ourselves. Dallaire’s subtitle calls it, literally, a “failure of humanity”; we failed to see the Rwandan people as humans whose slaughter presented a moral imperative to act.
  
  Where I had trouble with the book was in understanding Dallaire’s mental and emotional experience during the approximately one hundred days of the genocide. He tells his story as a straightforward linear narrative, with no digressions or anecdotes to break up the action or supply context. Consequently, the book has no rhythm. I say this not to fault Dallaire, but rather to caution would-be readers that this is not an easy book to get through.
  
  The writing is clear but spare; it engages the reader on a mostly intellectual level, even when relating events that ought to inspire the strongest emotions. Because Dallaire doesn’t try to tell the reader how he should feel, and because Dallaire doesn’t dwell on each individual horror he witnesses — had he tried, he would have quickly run out of superlatives — reading Shake Hands is an exercise in empathy, which I think is actually appropriate given how badly humanity failed to empathize with Rwanda in 1994.
  
  As a detailed, first-hand account of an event in recent history, Shake Hands with the Devil satisfied some of my curiosity and supplied another take on some of what Gourevitch covered in his book (mentioned above). In particular, Dallaire is highly critical of Paul Kagame, the RPF military leader and now president of Rwanda. Gourevitch paints him as a righteous rebel leader fighting for democracy against a murderous and racist regime, but Dallaire casts aspersions on Kagame’s motives and argues that Kagame’s military campaign was executed in such a way that it had the side effect of prolonging the genocide.
  
  Where I’m left now is mainly curious about the international politics surrounding the Rwandan genocide, which neither Gourevitch nor Dallaire address except in how their end result affected the situation on the ground. Fortunately, Shake Hands includes an extensive bibliography.
• 
  Sylvain Reynard

  Those interested in military or African history will find much of interest here, as will those who are interested in the inner (and outer) workings of the U. N. and its peacekeeping missions. Dallaire shows the failure of the UN and Western nations to intervene adequately in the Rwandan genocide. But history is not without its witnesses, and Dallaire and his soldiers provide a record of the nation of Rwanda's descent into hell. This descent includes the gang-rape and murder of children and the use of child soldiers.
  
  This book is not an easy read, but a necessary one. If all human beings are created equal, then the genocide of any people is a tragedy. Just as we should intervene if we see physical violence on the street, so we as human beings should intervene when one group targets another for slaughter. It's easy enough to feel outrage from the comfort of our homes, but the next time we hear of ethnic cleansing on the other side of the world will we change the channel? Or will we do something?
• 
  Saleem Khan

  My review, published in Metro, February 2004.
  
  Shake Hands with the Devil
  Lt. 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.
  
• 
  Steve Wehling

  An excellent chronological view of the Rwanda genocide as seen by the Canadian general in charge of UN security in the country. Ostensibly this assignment was for him to take a skeletal force of UN troops from a few nations and provide security for the implementation of a peace agreement and the installation of a transitional government. A great keyhole view into the problems of UN peacekeeping. I admire his tenacious adherence to his duty in light of absolute chaos and terror going on around him, and the courage of his troops that were ridiculously outnumbered and under-equipped. The book makes a strong case that France, Belgium, the UN and the US could have easily taken actions that might have prevented the genocide (if the UN mission had been properly organized and equipped with the soldiers, supplies, vehicles, and perhaps most importantly, the correct mission parameters), or squelched it soon after it began instead of letting it run its bloody course. It also outlines several twists of fate that contributed to the circumstances of the genocide, such as the US involvement in Somalia which curbed US interest in getting involved in central African conflicts, or the rotation of the Rwandan ambassador to the UN onto the Security Council just at the moment when the Security Council needed to have an independent, objective, viewpoint of Rwandas situation. Rwanda signaled that world powers will not intervene (at least not quickly) into these conflicts. A lesson not lost in Sudan or the DRC today.
• 
  Marissa Pineda

  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.
• 
  Hannah

  This book reminds me of the scene in Amadeus in which Emperor Joseph II tells Mozart that there were "simply too many notes."
  
  This book has simply too many words.
  
  I believe that Dallaire's perspective and insight about what happened in Rwanda in 1994 needs to be shared. However, I'm not sure that it needed to be shared for more than five hundred pages. The sheer length of the text is prohibitive for many readers, and Dallaire may be have been able to reach a wider audience with his message had there been more effort in editing and refining his writing.
  
  If one is looking for gruesome accounts of the genocide, this is not the book to read. If one is looking to learn about the structural and systematic failures that contributed to the genocide in Rwanda, this is the book for you.
  
  I kept at reading this book (very slowly) despite its verbosity and the laborious nature of the process because I had seen Dallaire speak. I get the sense that writing this account may have been a cathartic process for him, a way to come to terms with his own presence and role in Rwanda. This book sometimes read as a man trying to justify to himself that he had done what he could and what he thought was best at the time.
  
  If not a good writer, Dallaire IS a man haunted by the indifference (of the first world, especially) to the horror and extreme violence which humans inflict upon each other and the lack of western interest in those who live in places which do not have needed resources to exploit.
• 
  Nathan

  One feels compelled to excuse any shortcoming this book might have, in light of General Dallaire's unquestionable heroism in the face of unbelievable horror. On the human level, this book is excellent, both as a warning against the evils of genocide and as a reminder that there are people still dedicated to justice and peace, even at great personal cost. On the literary level, and on the personal level, this book sucked. The flow of events is alternately dizzyingly fast or numbingly slow; the human element of the story obscured by logy politicking; the hero of the story an irritating saint who is all too aware of his saintliness. I am glad that a man like Dallaire exists; I wish someone else had told his story.
• 
  NormaCenva

  Sorry guys, but to be honest with you - I still do not understand why they didn't do anything!
• 
  uh8myzen

  This is an absolutely stunning insider's look at the travesty of the Rwanda genocide and the United Nations mission led by General Romeo Dallaire.
  
  The book explores two stories. The first being General Dallaire's personal journey from a strong, confident warrior to the broken, suicidal man he became upon his return to Canada. A man consumed by the guilt and the horror of a genocide that very well could have been prevented had his warnings to the United Nations been heeded and had he been given the resources he required.
  
  The second story is that of the genocide itself and the refusal of the world to recognize the atrocities that were being committed and the UN's complete failure to act in any constructive way to stop it. Both stories are interwoven masterfully as we see the brave General's refusal to abandon his mission and the people of Rawanda in the face of overwhelming odds and his countless attempts to make the world pay attention. He repeatedly risks his own life in pursuit of that goal.
  
  This is a profoundly important piece of modern history that needed to be brought to the fore for so many reasons, and General Dallaire does that in this wickedly honest, no holds barred biography. It was both haunting and captivating, and above all, it was honest.
  
  General Romeo Dallaire is a forgotten hero who deserves to be remembered for all he tried to do in the face of overwhelming odds. It is a rare person capable of such a feat.
  
  Read this book... you will never forget it.
• 
  Liesel

  This book, though heavy in military jargon and very long, was absolutely one of the most stunning books I have ever read. It was gripping, and completely chilling. It is the deeply personal story of Romeo Daillaire, the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission for Rwanda during the genocide/war and how he witnessed, literally, the abandonment of humanity by humanity.
  
  It is worth your time to read this book. I plan to read it again soon.
• 
  Shourie Bannai

  This is more of a indictment document rather than a book. The accusation by an unassuming, innocent, devoted army man who was helplessly put into his position to bear witness to the ugliest face of human cruelty on an unimaginable scale. I am still at loss of words how this brave man has survived after all that he has been through, when just reading the book has made me unimaginably melancholic, at loss for emotions. This book is not for those carefree souls and who cherish that attitude because it might very well lead anyone into that spiral of never ending guilt. Just don't god damn read this book, only understand we humans failed to protect and stand up for 8,00,000 of our brothers and sisters when they were being slaughtered , most of them probably thinking at last that how lucky they were to die and get rid of the misery around them, when their fellow humans had abandoned them to their fate. And this poor general who was told that it was his duty to save all these people, bears the burnt of our failure. I can't really put my feeling together, I am not sure I am feeling anything anymore. God damn whatever it is.
• 
  Michael

  This is a must read if one wants to understand just how badly the leadership of the world let Rwanda and UN Peacekeepers down during the Genocide. I had to put this book down several times and then return to it because I would get so angry and disappointed in how support was nonexistent for people being exterminated in Rwanda and for the multi-national peacekeepers who put their lives on the line (or lost their lives) to do what they could in spite of the lack of support from headquarters in New York (UN Headquarters).
• 
  Mike

  Finished. Barely a 3 Star rating because there is too much "I" and day-to-day diary goings-on. He could have given more background, history, other actors. I have lost what little respect I might have for the UN--what a den of slimy snakes. But I have more respect for the few that do their best supporting the blue helmet missions. Not many but there are some worthies there. Some troops on the UNAMIR mission were outstanding but many were not. The opportunities to stop the slaughter were there but the West was mostly not interested. Despite my disappointment in the book, it still should be read. Just need to add other perspectives.
• 
  Yvonne (It's All About Books)

  
  
  Finished reading: December 17th 2012
  
  
  

  
  “The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes of the teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda, it is the rage I sensed in the hearts of the children of Sierra Leone, it is the rage I felt in crowds of ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and it is the rage that resulted in September 11. Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve.”
  

  
  
  
  
  I always like reading a non fiction story every once in a while and I've actually had a course involving war crimes and genocide during uni, so when I saw a copy of Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda I was immediately intrigued. In this non fiction novel Roméo Dallaire tells his story of what happened during his time in Rwanda and how politics have influenced in the disasters that happened in 1993. It's not that he tries to blame someone else, but he does want to show why he couldn't do more to help the people of Rwanda after he was sent to serve as a force commander of the UN intervention. Betrayal, naïveté, racism, international politics and its consequences... Roméo Dallaire never had an easy job and his memories of his days in the African country still devastate him. It was really brave of him to write down his story and even though it took me a long time to finish this read, I'm glad I had the opportunity to learn more about his experience and deepen my knowledge about the genocide in Rwanda. It's not an easy story to read and actually quite depressing, but if you are interested in the theme Shake Hands With The Devil does have an interesting perspective.
  
  
  
  
  The Canadian Roméo Dallaire was sent to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993. What he thought was a simple peacekeeping mission slowly turned into a bloody nightmare... And he has his hands tied as he witnesses the slaughter of 800.000 Rwandans in 100 days. Dallaire recreates the events that lead to the genocide and explains how humanity failed to stop it despite timely warnings... The international community preferring to turn their backs on the problem rather than act accordingly. He also explains the difficulties he had to get the proper equipment sent to him and the treacherous politics around the whole affair... Not denying his own failure and weaknesses, Dallaire helps make the reader understand what happened during the mission and where it went wrong.
  
  
  
  
  Shake Hands With The Devil is a truly intriguing memoir and a heartbreaking account of the genocide in Rwanda. As the force commander of the UN intervention Roméo Dallaire experiences the horrors during 1993 first hand and by telling his story he wants to bring awareness as to how humanity essentially failed to prevent the murder of all those innocent Rwandans. It's a dark, violent and depressive story, but also an excellent read for the right person.
  
  P.S. Find more of my reviews
  here.
• 
  Krista

  
  Shake Hands With the Devil is a frustrating, horrifying and terribly important book, written by a reluctant eyewitness to the Rwandan Genocide: Lt Gen Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). His account of the meager mandate and resources given to him by the UN to monitor a peaceful government transition in the unstable country, and the organization's refusal to respond to his pleas for more men and matériel as the situation began to spiral out of control, confirmed what I've long thought about the UN: it's a great idea that fails to live up to its promise, bogging swift action down by bloated processes and allowing the world's most despotic regimes an equal voice in humanity's collective response to injustice. I've spent years wondering why we keep ourselves committed to the charade that the UN is an impartial arbiter, not least of all when Cuba and China are allowed to wag their fingers at us in Canada as despicable human rights abusers. What I found most remarkable in this book is that Dallaire concludes that the UN is a vital instrument that simply requires a renaissance, a recommitment to its founding principles. As I hope to never experience the General's intimate knowledge of the UN's indifference and its barbaric consequences, I will defer to his analysis.
  
  I sought out Shake Hands With the Devil after reading
  Running the Rift, a fictional account of the Rwandan Genocide. That book left me wondering about the root causes of the genocide, primarily because it failed to explain how neighbours could take up machetes against neighbours, slaughtering the people that they have lived amongst for years. Naturally the answer to that question is complicated and Dallaire offers some insight, beginning with his angry contemplation upon the withdrawal of Belgian troops after ten of their soldiers were murdered:
  
  

  Images of my father and father-in-law wearing their Second World War battledress seemed to leap out of the darkening sky. They looked tired, muddy and haggard and were in the midst of fighting for the liberation of Belgium. As Canadian soldiers fought tooth and nail against the Germans, King Baudoin of Belgium and his ruthless lackeys kept millions of black Africans in Rwanda and all of the Great Lakes region of central Africa under subjugation, raping these countries of their natural resources…Fifty years after my mentors had fought in Europe, I had been left here with a ragtag force to witness a crime against humanity that the Belgians had unwittingly laid the spadework for.

  
  
  So there are roots for the conflict that go back to colonialism but Dallaire also has a harsh analysis of the modern citizens of Rwanda:
  
  

  I sometimes let myself think about the evil that men such as Bagosora wrought -- how the Hutu extremists, the young men of the Interhamwe, even ordinary mothers with babies on their backs, had become so drunk with the sight and smell of blood and the hysteria that they could murder their neighbours…I rejected the picture of the génocidaires as ordinary human beings who had performed evil acts. To my mind their crimes had made them inhuman, turned them into machines made of flesh that imitated the motions of being human. The perpetrators on both sides had their "justifications". For the Hutus, insecurity and racism had been artfully engineered into hate and violent reaction. In the RPF's case, it was willing to fight to win a homeland at all costs, and its soldiers' rage against the genocide transformed them into machines.

  
  
  And although it was the Hutu extremists who committed the genocide, Dallaire knows that the RPF leader, Paul Kagame, intentionally allowed many thousands of his fellow Tutsis to be sacrificed during his slow advance, for his own political reasons:
  
  

  I found myself thinking such dire thoughts as whether the campaign and the genocide had been orchestrated to clear the way for Rwanda's return to the pre-1959 status quo in which Tutsis had called all the shots. Had the Hutu extremists been bigger dupes than I? Ten years later, I still can't put these troubling questions to rest, especially in light of what has happened to the region since.

  
  
  Despite losses on both sides of the conflict, Dallaire clearly states that there is no moral equivalence, saying: The myth of the "double genocide" was now in full swing -- some people actually bought the line that the racial war had cut both ways. In my further research I've found that there are people who believe it was the RPF, or other radical Tutsis, who shot down President Habyarimana's plane initially, provoking the massacre of their own people. I suppose there are conspiracy theorists tied to every tragedy (the American government orchestrated 9/11 and other such idiocies) but I will again defer to Dallaire's analysis of the situation, as an impartial witness on the ground, when he categorically states that this atrocity was genocide perpetrated upon the Tutsis by the Hutus. I will also accept his analysis of the failure of the UN to appropriately respond:
  
  

  Ultimately, led by the United States, France and the United Kingdom, [the UN] aided and abetted genocide in Rwanda. No amount of cash and aid will ever wash its hands clean of Rwandan blood.

  
  
  That is a damning statement, for sure, but backed up with Dallaire's detailed account of his daily experiences -- his reports to the UN and their slow and indifferent responses -- it seems ultimately fair. After Somalia and Bosnia, the West had no stomach for intervention in Central Africa (and as the cynical said at the time, Rwanda has no oil or minerals or strategic position that makes the country important). Currently, after Iraq and Afghanistan, we have no stomach to intervene in Syria -- and what if we did? Would we be handing the country over to the jihadi extremists? This situation seems doomed to follow in Rwanda's footsteps -- if we had intervened early and overwhelmingly, there was a chance for the moderates to have assumed control, but it's too late for that now. With over 100 000 dead and 7 million Syrians displaced, at what point are we morally obligated to intervene despite the consequences? Why is Russia pulling all the strings at the UN over this? Isn't this more proof that the UN just isn't workable?
  
  The following two excerpts describe some of the horror of the Rwandan Genocide, reader beware:
  
  

  From the memoir of Shaharyan Khan (who took over as force commander from Dallaire),
  The Shallow Graves of Rwanda: The Interhamwe made a habit of killing young Tutsi children, in front of their parents, by first cutting off one arm, then the other. They would then gash the neck with a machete to bleed the child slowly to death but, while they were still alive, they would cut off the private parts and throw them at the faces of the terrified parents, who would then be murdered with greater dispatch.

  
  
  

  For a long time I completely wiped the death masks of raped and sexually mutilated girls and women from my mind as if what had been done to them was the last thing that would send me over the edge. But if you looked, you could see the evidence, even in the whitened skeletons. The legs bent and apart. A broken bottle, a rough branch, even a knife between them...Some male corpses had their genitals cut off, but many women and young girls had their breasts chopped off and their genitals crudely cut apart. They died in a position of total vulnerability, flat on their backs, with their legs bent and knees wide apart. It was the expressions on their dead faces that assaulted me the most, a frieze of shock, pain and humiliation. For many years after I came home, I banished the memories of those faces from my mind, but they have come back, all too clearly.

  
  
  Lt Gen Dallaire suffered from PTSD for many years after leaving Rwanda, even attempting suicide. One can only imagine the impact that the genocide had on the citizens of Rwanda, and especially upon the children, 90% of whom are said to have witnessed the murder of someone they knew. What this means for the future of Rwanda can't be imagined. Dallaire concludes:
  
  

  Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences.

  
  
  This leads me back in a circle to where I began: root causes. I don't know if, despite all of the historical information, Shake Hands With the Devil fully explains to me how neighbours could massacre each other in such an inhuman fashion, and failing this understanding, how can such a horror show be prevented from happening again? I sincerely hope that Dallaire's faith in the UN and its ability to move forward into a "Century of Humanity" is well placed since at this point it's the only show in town. This is a book that left me shaken, feeling powerless, but I am not sorry to have read it.
• 
  Colleen Browne

  This is a book about a story that needed to be told for a variety of reasons. Dallaire, as the UN Force Commander in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide with his very small and poorly equipped group of soldiers, tells of the horror of the war and genocide that engulfed the country of Rwanda.
  
  After a peace treaty had been signed between warring factions of Rwandans, it was Dallaire's job to enforce the treaty and protect the fragile peace. Dallaire's constant requests for additional manpower and resources were ignored which, in his view, led to the war reigniting and the subsequent genocide. This book is a harrowing account of the brutality of the killing and of the constant frustration of those on the ground trying to stop it. At every juncture, Dallaire's attempts to bring the necessary support to the people were frustrated by people who should have known better. Dallaire places the lion's share of the blame for these failures on the French and U.S. governments whose indifference to what was happening and then skittishness about the risks attached prevented any real action until the war and genocide were over.
  
  Through his words, Dallaire's commitment to humanity shines through. His was a thankless job in one of the worst situations imaginable. Shaharyar Khan, in his book on the genocide describes it in the following words: ". . . .Never in human history has such wanton brutality been inflicted by human beings on their fellow creatures (as in Rwanda). . . . even the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia pale before the gruesome, awful depravity of massacres in Rwanda." Shake Hands, p. 462. Despite shortages of proper sleeping quarters, irregular deliveries of food, water, and medical care, even for his own soldiers, Dallaire fought to bring peace to the ravaged country and did it with a steady hand; he did it until his own psychological health began to suffer to the extent that he had to return home.
  
  He concludes with some ominous warnings about the future of our planet if we refuse to see and intervene to solve the problems of people that lead to extremism and disasters like Rwanda and 9-11: grossly uneven distribution of wealth and resources, environmental degradation, lack of education, indifference of the haves, and ultimately, the lack of hope that results from these conditions will become worse if we in the wealthiest nations do nothing.
  
  This is an excellent book that I would recommend to everyone. I am only ashamed that it took me so long to pick it up and read it.
  
• 
  Ben

  This is the unforgetable account of Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire, Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). When he first arrived in Rwanda, he was brimming with confidence at the prospect of successfully maintaining the peace and ushering in the country's transitional government. What he encountered, however, was a UN administration that was distracted by other theaters and hamstrung by a bewildering bureaucracy, and Western Powers unwilling to commit even a single soldier or capital assistance to the mission. Most stunning and heart-wrenching of all, in January of 1994 (three months before the genocide began) Dallaire was informed by a reliable source that Hutu extremists were planning a well-coordinated extermination of the Tutsi minority. He notified Kofi Annan, who effectively ignored this, instructed Dallaire to do nothing, and the latter watched helplessly as 800,000 Rwandans were murdered.
  
  Dallaire said that he was later told by a US staffer that it would take the deaths of 86,000 Rwandans to justify the loss of one US soldier. Where was this calculation during the recent Iraq war, in which thousands of soldiers died for a completely fabricated justification?
  
  Dallaire says he wrote this book to bring to the world's attention the failure of the international community to recognize a humanitarian crisis and to respond appropriately, in the fervent hope that this will never happen again. I would like to share this hope, but were not the words "Never again" already uttered outside the death camps of Auchwitz close to 70 years ago? Dallaire is heroic for providing us with this memoir, especially considering how obviously painful it was for him to witness the horror of those months in Rwanda. I just can't shake the feeling, however, that the people who make the decisions of international intervention are not listening.
• 
  Czarny Pies

  This is one of the most important books ever written by a Canadian. It provides an extraordinary view of the Genocide in Rwanda as it unfolds and the gross failure of the U.N. to mount an effective response.
  
  Africa is closer to us than we would sometimes like to think. This is one of the key books to understanding world history in the last twenty-five years.
• 
  Daphne

  I knew from the preface that this book was going to be amazing. I don't exactly know why, but there's something about the writing I really connected with. The writing isn't exceptionally beautiful or anything like that, but it feels very real and honest.
  
  That really is how I would describe this book: honest. Dallaire is completely brutal in his assessment of what happens. He was clearly disillusioned by how the UN and the Western world failed Rwanda, and he wasn't afraid to explain why. You could feel his frustration and anger at all the ridiculous hoops he had to hop through just to get food for his troops and his disbelief at the UN's inaction when they had intel on a possible genocide. His mission was so poorly funded and mismanaged that it practically made the genocide--or at least some other awful event-- inevitable. It's awful to think how much death could have been avoided if the world had cared more about Rwanda and central Africa.
  
  From my visit to the genocide memorial in Rwanda I knew that the UN and the rest of the world really messed up with how they dealt with Rwanda both before and during the genocide, but I wasn't prepared for how bad things really were. Large parts of the book were filled with explanation of the UN's incompetent buroceacy. If it weren't so horrifying, it would be comical. There was a section early in the book where I literally laughed in disbelief due to how stupid some of the rules of the UN and other Western nations were. But really, it's not funny at all and is actually quite enraging.
  
  I had to take a break part way through reading this because it was so upsetting. Literally the entire book (minus when Dallaire was explaining his upbringing and so forth) was really hard to read about. Nothing gory is explained in detail, but the situation was so awful that even the tiniest mentions of the piles of corpses were extremely disturbing.
  
  I wouldn't recommend this book to people who want to learn more generally about the Rwandan genocide. The causes were mentioned, of course, but this book is an account of what Dallaire went though, not a history of the colonialism and ethnic tensions in Rwanda. If you want to read this I'd recommend at least reading the Wikipedia page on the genocide first. I highly, highly recommend this though. It was super impactful and definitely something that will stay with me.
• 
  Regina Lindsey

  Shake Hands With The Devil by Romeo Dallaire
  4 Stars
  
  Canadian Romeo Dallaire was appointed Force Commander of the ill-fated UN peace keeping forces in Rwanda between 1993 - 1994, the era known as the Rwanda Genocide. Shake Hands with the Devil is his chronicle of events leading up to the outbreak of violence, events during those tumultuous 100 days, and a reflection of the leadership in charge of keeping peace.
  
  I typically stay away from memoirs. As humans very few of us are able to look at ourselves objectively. That is particularly true of military memoirs. I often find them to be self-aggrandizing, leaving me frustrated and sighing, "yeah, okay" . Dallaire does not approach his story in that manner. It is evident he is haunted by the question of "what could I have done differently?". He feels the loss of life keenly, and he comes across as very humble. His story is an important one because it deals with the larger political context both in Rwanda itself and within the UN that many people don't understand.
  
  Dallaire helped me connect the dots. Most writing will point to the downing of President Habyarimana's ( a Hutu) plane on April 6, 1994, as the impetus for the violence. It is widely assumed that Tutsi rebels shot down the plane. Nothing about this has EVER made sense to me. There was no way the Tutsi's would have benefited from downing the plane. Dallaire provides sound evidence that Habyarimana had lost control of his power and that Hutus may have been the culprit in order to provide rationale for a well-planned execution plan of the Tutsi that had probably been in place as much as six months prior to the downing of the plane. In my mind that scenario makes much more sense. It also explains the slaughter of the Dutch soldiers.
  
  But, Dallaire was not always objective. Understandably, Dallaire expresses a great deal of frustration with the UN and the superpowers of the world. That frustration is warranted. But, he seems to be harsher on some than others. The UN went into Rwanda under a Chapter 6 agreement, a peacekeeping resolution. However, with the language of the resolution related to Rwanda when Dallaire learned in January, four months prior to the outbreak of violence, of the stock piling of weapons by the Hutu's it would've been within his mandate to address the situation. One of his mandates was to disarm both sides. However, Kofi Annan in no uncertain terms, ordered Dallaire to back down. Yet, Dallaire has nothing but praises for Annan. Additionally, while I want to make clear in no uncertain terms that more should have done by powers like the US to contribute to this effort, context is important. It is important to highlight the fact that the US was virtually absent for this operation. Dallaire does mention Somalia a time or two. Merely mentioning it is not enough. Like it or not, the debacle in Somolia was important context for Clinton's decision during this time. It is no excuse, but it does warrant examination particularly within the larger context of whether or not the UN is effective.
  
  The book is a difficult read. You cannot read a book on this period without having your stomach turn. It is also difficult, I think, for some to read because it reads almost like a diary - explanation day by day of what was occurring. However, Rwanda deserves much more attention that it gets. Just think about it - at least 800,000 Tutsi's murdered by their neighbors over the course of 100 days. At the conclusion of WWII the world cried, "never again!" Rwanda is the most glaring example that the world did not learn a single lesson from WWII.
  
  Dallaire decided to write the book as a means to dealing with his demons. I certainly hope he has found some peace. It is crystal clear that he loved the country and its people from the start. He was simply given a mandate that was absolutely impossible to realize with the resources granted him by the international community.