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

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Product Details

Author : Romeo Dallaire
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780679311720
Edition : 1
Number of Pages : 592
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2004-10-12
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Release Date : 2004-10-12

ASIN : 0679311726

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.ca

It was one of the fastest, most efficient, most evident genocides of modern history. And it could have been avoided. But the United States and France were content to sit back and watch as Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 Rwandans in ethnic pogroms in 1994. Roméo Dallaire, then a brigadier general in the Canadian Forces, was the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and witnessed first-hand the "unfolding apocalypse," as he calls it in his stunning book Shake Hands with the Devil. The gruesome experience and his futile attempts to convince the international community to intervene left him with emotional scars that still haven't healed. He tried to commit suicide, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, got a medical release from the military, and has had extensive therapy.

The slaughter could have been quite easily prevented, Dallaire writes in his memoir, if the United Nations and western countries had sent in a small number of soldiers and resources at a crucial point when Hutu extremists were still plotting the killings and training death squads. But at critical moments, U.S. and French officials dismissed Dallaire's pleadings for action, even though they had solid intelligence about what was happening on the ground. A U.S. military staffer explained to Dallaire that it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify risking the life of one American soldier. Meanwhile, France had long-standing links with elite Rwandan army units closely tied to the Hutu death squads and refused to acknowledge Dallaire's warnings until it was too late.

As painful as it was for Dallaire to write this book, the final result is gripping, expertly crafted, and soul bearing. It gives a taut, riveting hour-by-hour account of the international and human drama he witnessed and the "unimaginable evil [that] had turned Rwanda's gentle green valleys and mist-capped hills into a stinking nightmare of rotting corpses." Dallaire traveled back through his blood-soaked memories, he says, in order to retrieve his soul, and has since thrown himself into giving talks about his experiences. He recounts that after one talk a Canadian military padre asked him how he could still believe in God. "I know there is a God," he replied, "because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil." --Alex Roslin

Customer Reviews

A Remarkable Story (2007-07-21)

I picked up this book after reading "Left to Tell" (also highly recommended) and found it to be remarkable. Once I started reading it I could not put it down until I had finished it. The subtitle of the book "the failure of humanity in Rwanda" pretty much sums up the feelings I had after reading how "normal" Hutu civilians became vicious evil killers in an efficient slaughter of close to one million Tutsis while the world looked on in apathy. In hindsight I tend to think that the fairest actions of the UN would have been to heavily fund the RPF army once the war had started. Even providing a few low-flying aircraft equipped with machine guns could have been used to kill some of the interhame stationed at the check points. It seems that the interhamwe could get away with murder because their only threat came from the RPF, whose advance unfortunately came a bit too late. Even when the French "Operation Turquoise" was approved, there apparently was still no clear mandate to seek out and kill the interhamwe genocidaires. I hope books like this one wind up in high schools so that people can learn from this horrible tragedy.

Powerful (2007-07-09)

This is a powerful and compelling story of a man that cared deeply about every human life and who was repeatedly denied the necessary support from those that could have helped, it was as if no one listened and no one cared. The Peacekeepers that gave their heart and souls and in some cases their lives to save total strangers were abandoned. The reader will be touched and will understand what genocide means and appreciate the immense sacrifice Peacekeepers give.

Those who do not remember the past ... (2005-02-19)

The subtitle says it all: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. To call it anything less than that is a slap in the face to those who perished in the worst genocide since Pol Pot's "Killing Fields".

Gen. Romeo Dallaire's book is a wake-up call to the fact we still haven't learned anything. George Santayana, way back in 1905, warned the world that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In excruciating detail, the general recounts one of the most harrowing experiences in recent memory and the fact that the world turned a completely blind eye to this latter-day Holocaust. Surely, Dallaire suggests, the world should have known what was to come after the assassination which started the calamity.

By far the most chilling recollection is his conversation with someone who told him that it would take the deaths of at least 85,000 to even consider sending ONE peacekeeper from that country. 800,000 wound up dying. To think that but for the presence of just 10 American soldiers the massacre could have been stopped is not only chilling but demonstrates the incredible amount of racism that still pervades some quarters within the US government -- and even the US media, which gave scant at best attention to this tragedy.

Dallaire concedes that the American serviceman who was killed in Mogadishu and dragged through the streets in the now infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident a few months before may have given the Pentagon cold feet about Africa. But the larger point he makes is this: would the world reaction have been any different if Rwanda had oil, or gold, or some other exploitable non-renewable natural resource, rather than its most precious wonder (other than humans): The still very threatened "Gorillas in the Mist" for which Dian Fossey shed her blood more than a decade earlier?

Gen. Dallaire later relates how the severe depression he had afterwards from witnesses the carnage, and also from his failure to prevent the murders of 10 soliders under his command, nearly drove him to suicide. He is now one of the world's most forceful advocates in international affairs, and this book is just the start of his new career in that direction. "Shake Hands with the Devil" is definitely required reading for every world leader and anyone else who is still not convinced by Santayana's dictum or who could care less, just as their and our ancestors didn't give a damn during the Holocaust et sequens.

85,000 (2005-02-09)

In this book Dallaire remembers an official from a Western nation remarking that 85,000 Rwandans would have to die to justify the death of one soldier from his country.

Dallaire conveys the crushing sense of responsibility he continues to feel for failing to protect the 800,000 who died in Rwanda, but that weight flows through him to the reader as each of us bears blame in the failure of humanity he describes. This book forces a wrenching change of world view.

Dallaire's writing is natural and simple. Though some scenes are disturbing, he doesn't rely on gore to exact an emotional response. It's important to read this book.

Excellent Book (2005-01-06)

I have had the honour of working for LGen Dallaire and have a personally autographed copy of his book. To know the man and read his account of the horror really moved me. He always called it as he saw it, this book is evidence of that.

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