Shake Hands with the Devil : The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
by Romeo Dallaire, Samantha Power
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Book Summary Information
Author: Romeo Dallaire, Samantha PowerEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2004-12-10
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 584
Book Reviews of Shake Hands with the Devil : The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Book Review: Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Summary: 5 Stars
It's almost fitting that the task of reviewing, and therefore reading, Shake Hands with the Devil, Roméo Dallaire's wrenching first-hand account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was a task studiously avoided by many of us around the offices of ascent. Fitting, as it mirrors in a microcosm how Dallaire's cries for help were also largely ignored at the time by the West.
Shake Hands with the Devil is a haunted survivor's attempt to assess responsibility in "the failure of humanity in Rwanda," wherein 800,000 people were massacred over a period of 100 days. Dallaire's point is not merely to point fingers, but rather to learn where mistakes were made so that future interventions by the world community into conflicts might render these intercessions more facile.
While highly emotional, this book is also fair and balanced in its criticism, never confusing true emotion with sentimentality. One example is Dallaire's criticism of the Belgian government, which has a long and shameful colonial history in Rwanda. Although the Belgians lost ten soldiers in a massacre, Dallaire doesn't allow that tragedy to temper his disapproval of their behaviour during the genocide. In fact, no one escapes Dallaire's just criticism, from United Nations and world leaders arguing semantics over UN decrees while hundreds of thousands of people were being slaughtered, to US army assessors' macabre accounting that the life of one US soldier was valued equal to the lives of 80,000 Rwandans, and of course, the perpetrators of the genocide themselves - the normal people who just woke up one morning and joined in the killing of their former neighbours.
Shake Hands with the Devil is a great guttural wail of humanity coming from one who has witnessed its worst possible behaviour. It is telling that while Dallaire paints his account of the atrocities in broad strokes, he reserves more detailed accounts to quoting other observers: his second-in-command, UNHCR commanders and other NGO workers. It is as if he himself cannot find a voice to speak of things that no one should ever see.
Ultimately, this book stands as Roméo Dallaire's confession and self-indictment. This seeming paradox of a man - a career soldier who is a gentle, eloquent spokesman for peace - still cannot forgive himself for what he sees as his failure in being unable to stop the killing a decade ago. The horrors witnessed in Rwanda, coupled with the impotence of his UN mandate and scarce resources of an ill-equipped force of only 500, have left this brave man scarred, prematurely aged, forced into early retirement from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a survivor of multiple suicide attempts.
This book filled me with an overpowering moral outrage, but ultimately it allows a small glimpse of hope. The survivors of the Rwandan genocide have attempted to rebuild their country with a non-partisan government not based upon ethnic lines. Roméo Dallaire came back from the edge of hell with hope that the new century will be what he calls the "century of humanity." Where human beings will rise above violence, while recognizing that the poverty that leaves much of the world without hope is the source of most violent conflict and therefore must be eliminated to help bring peace. Dallaire believes that we can rise above notions of race that led Hutu to kill Tutsi - notions that raise the question of whether Western nations would have stood by while a nation of non-Africans were slaughtered en masse.
In all this uncertainty, Roméo Dallaire is still able to entertain these hopes, and the fact that a hardened, former high-level military leader who has witnessed the ultimate savage potential of human beings can still have faith in mankind helped restore my own hope for humanity, flawed as we are.
Summary of Shake Hands with the Devil : The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
On the tenth anniversary of the date that UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada is proud to publish the unforgettable first-hand account of the genocide by the man who led the UN mission. Digging deep into shattering memories, General Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naivete, racism and international politics. His message is simple and undeniable: "Never again." When Lt-Gen. Romeo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was heading off on a modest and straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned and suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only a hundred days. In "Shake Hands with the Devil", he takes the reader with him on a return voyage into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven through the story of this disastrous mission is Dallaire's own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, reconciliation and hope. This book is General Dallaire's personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth and secure in his assumptions to a man conscious of his own weaknesses and failures and critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to General Dallaire and his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields our peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into the world's dirty wars.Subjects Books
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