Shake Hands With the Devil:

Shake Hands With the Devil: Personal and Political Tragedy in Rwanda One of the most underreported news stories of the 1990s was that of the genocide that took place in Rwanda. The magnitude of the tragedy was shocking: nearly 800,000 Tutsis were killed within three months. Almost as shocking as the carnage, however, was the failure of the Western world to take meaningful action against the marauding Hutu forces. Shake hands with the devil is Canadian General Romeo Dallaire's grounds-eye account of the tragedy.

Romeo headed the 1993 UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and his book is a searing indictment of the cowardice and the ignorance of the United Nations in attempting to deal with chaos and injustice. The major Western powers had no intention of committing to a major humanitarian mission in Rwanda, given its lack of perceived strategic importance. The UN was more concerned with observing bureaucratic protocols than functioning as an effective force.

It did not allow Dallaire his originally-promised number of soldiers to subdue the region, even while the carnage piled up before his eyes and the stench of death was everywhere. With enough reinforcements, Dallaire says, the tragedy could have been stopped. The aggressor Hutu forces were not well-armed and mainly used machetes to enact their massacres. However, they knew that the UN was not committed to upholding its stated mission of peace. They planned their genocide even when Hutu and Tutsi representatives were ostensibly engaged in peace talks.

A lack of willingness of the major players on the UN Security Council to act caused the UN as a whole to fail to take notice of what was transpiring. The UN was founded to stop such genocides from ever occurring again and the horror of the Holocaust was given as one of the justifications for the need for an international peace-keeping organization. Yet another modern holocaust took place in Africa, and the world scarcely noticed.

"Nations do not have the stomach or the will to sustain causalities," writes Dallaire, when nations only have a humanitarian not an economic or political stake in the outcome (Dallaire 2004: 240). The UN also seems to have a failure to understand or function in an effective way when lives are in the balance and immediate action is needed during a war. At one point Dallaire needed a decision made by the Security Council, but the body was divided between China, France, and the non-aligned nations vs.

The U.S., UK, Russia, and their supporters. The weekend was coming up, so it was decided that the nations should reconvene on Monday. "How many Rwandans would die that weekend," wondered Dallaire in exasperation as well as horror (Dallarie 301). Given the constant stream of murders he witnessed, which he was virtually powerless to stop, due to his meager forces, it is easy to see why Dallaire experienced post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) upon returning home. However, his reaction seems inevitable and unpreventable.

Granted, he could have received better debriefing and counseling upon his integration back into society. The guilt he felt was overwhelming. He had the sinking knowledge that he failed in a mission that should have succeeded. His only cold comfort was that he tried far harder than any of the representatives of.