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

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I read this book with the eye and mind of a professional intelligence officer long frustrated with the myopia of national policy constituencies, and the stupidity of the United Nations Headquarters culture. General Dallaire has written a superb book on the reality of massive genocide in the Burundi and Rwanda region in 1994, and his sub-title, "The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda" is where most people end up in reading this book.

I see things a little differently. I see this book as a massive indictment of the United Nations culture of "go along gently", as a compelling documentary of how ignorant the United Nations is about impending disasters because of its persistent refusal to establish a UN intelligence secretariat as recommended by the Brahimi Report, and as a case study in how the Western nations have failed to establish coherent global strategies--and the intelligence-policy dialogues necessary to keep such strategies updated and relevant.

According to the author, 15 UN peacekeepers died--over 800,000 Rwandans died. The number 15 is not larger because Belgium, Canada, and the US explicitly stated that Rwanda was "irrelevant" in any sense of the word, and not worth the death of a single additional Western (mostly white) soldier.

Although there has been slight improvement in the UN since LtGen Patrick Cammaert, NL RM became the Military Advisor to the Secretary General (see General Cammaert and other views in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, the reality is that the UN is still unintelligent and unable to muster the strategic intelligence necessary to get the mandate right; the operational intelligence necessary to get the force structure right; and the tactical intelligence necessary to achieve the mission on the ground. Just about everything General Dallaire writes about in this book with respect to UN culture and UN lack of intelligence remains valid today: they still cannot get decent maps with which to plan a campaign or execute the mission; UN administrators are still anal-retentive bureaucrats that will not issue paper and pencils, much less soft drinks for diplomatic encounters; UN "seniors" still like the first class lifestyle on the road (they pretend to be austere only in NY); UN civilian mission leaders still misrepresent military reporting, as Booh-Booh did to Dallaire; and the UN is still ineffective in creating public intelligence with which to communicate directly to national publics the reasons why humanitarian operations must take place early and in force.

General Dallaire concludes his excruciatingly detailed book, a book with enormous credibility stemming from the meticulous manner in which he documents what happened, when it happened, and what everyone knew when (including advance warning of the genocide from the "third force" that the UN leadership refused to take seriously), with two thoughts, one running throughout the book, the second in the conclusion only:

First, and perhaps because of the mental toll he himself paid for this mission, there are frequent references throughout the book to the urgency of understanding the psychology of groups, tribes, and cultures. This is not something any Western intelligence agency is capable of today. The closest I have seen to this is Dr. Marc Sageman's book on Understanding Terror Networks We urgently need a global "survey", with specific reference to the countries plagued by ethnic conflict and other sources of instability, and we need to start taking "psychological intelligence" very seriously. We need to UNDERSTAND.

Second, he concludes the book by emphasizing the urgency of understanding and then correcting the sources of the utter RAGE that characterizes hundreds of thousands if not millions of young men around the world, all of whom he says have access to guns and many of whom he says will ultimately and unavoidably have access to weapons of mass destruction.

As I contemplate the six-front hundred-year war that America has started by attacking Iraq instead of addressing the social networks and sources of terrorism, I cannot help but think that this great solider and statesman has hit the nail on the head: Rwanda is coming to your neighborhood, and nothing your policy makers and military leaders are doing today is relevant to avoiding that visitation. Remember the kindergarten class in Scotland? The Columbine shootings and Oklahoma disasters? Now magnify that by 1000X, aggravated by a mix of angry domestic militants, alienated immigrant gangs, hysterical working poor fathers pushed into insanity--and the free availability of small arms, toxins, and simple means for collapsing the public infrastructure....

The complexity of society, which has lost its humanity, is leading to unpredictable and difficult to diagnose and correct collapses of all the basic mechanisms of survival. General Dallaire's book is not about Rwanda--it is about us and what will happen to us if we persist in being unintelligent about our world and the forces that could--if we were wise--permit billions to survive in peace.

In addition to this book I recommend the PKI book mentioned above, Jonathan Schell's book on The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Bill Moyer's on Doing Democracy, and Tom Atlee on The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All. If we do not take back the power and restore common sense to how our nations behave and how our nations spend our money around the globe, the plague of Rwanda will visit our neighborhoods within the decade.

See also:
How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption

The terrible truth about General Dellaire's book, "Shake Hands With The Devil" is that it is so well written it takes its place among the literary classics devoted to history such as Julius Caesar's Memoirs and Gibbon's Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. The General shows a profound awareness of literary tradition and wields it ruthelessly to expose the ruin at the heart of global humanity and how it lead to the brutal rapes, mutilations and murders of almost a million human beings in the country of Rwanda. Corpses are piled everywhere and they fill the rivers and lakes of the country. The odor of death - perhaps the most diabolic odor in the world - is so strong and intense that the General feels it is impossible to physically move. The body of a boy trembles and the General trys to assist the lad but the body crumbles to pieces filled with worms and insects that had caused the flesh to quiver.
But there is something truly disquieting beneathe all of the evils and dark strategems described by the General. His book is essentially a work of atonement - but it goes furthur. He contaminates us all with his atonement because almost all of us (myself especially) are guilty of the genocide. We did absolutely nothing while the political and economic alliances that seek to dominate our world handed the people of Rwanda over to unnatural horrors.
Those of us of rational age are guilty. We must all follow in General Dellaires on-going work of expiation.

I bought this book a few days after it was released and read it within a week. It is an extremely compelling account of a horrific event from one of the few people who tried to stop it. He looked at dead or orphaned children in Rwanda and saw his own young children. He exhorted the UN and the powerful nations of the world to send him a few thousand troops, so that he could save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. In the end, political calculus was more important to those nations than the lives of almost a million Africans. This book really changed the way I look at the world. Another really good book for exploring the role of politics in refusing to prevent genocide is "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Powers.

I have read the reviews of some others here below that this book didn't have a good story line and looked to much like a dairy of this former general.

I agree but that is what puts this book aside from the others. As I work at the UN I know the (basic) frustrations that the he is experienced in his fight and by giving us a cold, day to day, story of how things happened, he actually managed to capture the frustration and disapointment that he wants us to experience.

Most people say that it's a good review when they can not put a certain book down. For me this book was a completly different experience. I simply HAD to put it down, my frustration became to much.

I recommend this book to anyone, its a lesson in humanity. It might be frustrating, disgusting and everything in between, but it should be a mandatory reading for every human being.

A most powerful book that will leave you speechless - at the horror, at the incomprehensibility of the Rwandan genocide, as well as at the travails and struggles of Dallaire's UN mission under tremendous odds. The author involves you by his day to day observations, you feel the daily grind of his army life as well as the unique frustrations placed on him by his UN superiors. Yes the Rwandan genocide could have been stopped had he had the manpower and means - how efficiently we will never know. But to have to stand by while people who expected help were butchered, while endless paperwork had to be filed, while the "genocidaires" went freely about their business thumbing their noses at UNAMIR - it becomes clear why many like Dallaire suffered intensely of PTSD - how can one erase the images? They wrench the soul.
Living in Rwanda and being able to associate places and names, listening to people - all of whom were touched by "la guerre" and who lost family - brings the genocide even closer , although there are no more answers now than when Dallaire was there. I do not know how Rwandans can cope, living next door to returned killers whom they perhaps know personally. I do not know how they can look at the bones of those slaughtered and go on tilling the fields, doing their chores, smiling and hugging... But as one Rwandan said to me, what choice do we have but to forgive, we cannot hate for the rest of our lives (he lost his brother and family while he himself hid for three months and so managed to survive). Instead, he has turned his brother's property into a restaurant, where there is music and dancing - he thought his brother would like such a memorial.
When Dallaire came to Rwanda for the ten year memorial celebration, he saw hope among the people again - may he be right. Plus jamais.

This book Shake Hands with the Devil written by Lt.General Romeo Dalliare about his own encounter in Rwanda truly showed me the failure of humanity that is capable of hurting so much people, and how such a tragic event could happen without anyone trying to help it. After reading this book I truly understood why this event was so tramautizing for the author, as he even attempted to commit suicide after returning to Canada. The thought of wanting to help, but being helpless is one of the worse feelings one can experience. Overall this book was well written other than sometimes it can be complicated because of the vocabulary used and the numerous number of people that are involved with in this book. However, the glossary at the back is really helpful because it provided essential imformation to understanding some of the key words. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about genocides or how nowadays there are big events happening in other parts of the world that you never knew about. This book will amaze you and those of you who are emotionally I recommend having a box of tissue right next to you. The way he tells his experiences touches you so deep that you also feel like you were at Rwanda at the same time.

This is an amazing book, written by an amazing man. The phrase that can most describe it is "screaming into the void" as Dallaire tried so hard to save a country in a mission that would ultimately fail.

This book is crucial to read and it forces you to reconsider many of your beliefs, and now as we see a similar situation occuring in the Sudan, readers will be shocked to see how it is also being ignored.

Despite the painful failure of his mission, Dallaire is to me a hero and the faults lie not within UNAMIR, but within the beurocracy. He said that he knows God exists because he shook hands with the Devil in Rwanda. I would like to shake hands with Dallaire and thank him because without his sacrifices, things certainly would have been much worse.

Lt.Gen. Dallaire's account of his tenure as UNAMIR Force commander is a good read but I do not think it quite hits the mark for which he aimed. His accounts are riveting but I think his military experience sometimes hampers the re-telling and the thrust of the story, how evil genocide is, gets lost. He wants to retell everything and so you sometimes get lost in his mission's minutiae rather than the real point: Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

Notably, the book is written along the lines of a Unit Log. Our forces maintain them and I am sure the Canadians as well as all professional armies. This is my main gripe about the book. It is written in a straight-forward, chronological order much as you would expect a Unit Log to be kept. He does flesh out the events rather than getting the standard "1900 hrs. Unit came under fire." He does have a good writing style and I like how he explains fully everything that occurred even if he does not need to retell everything. His telling does often get emotional and rather than detract, I think it adds to the story since you would consider someone an absolute monster who would clinically describe genocide. He stays mildly objective to give creedence to his arguments but not so much that you feel he is detached.

You do however, like Dallaire, become detached near the end of the book. Not to say the book is uninteresting but as Dallaire himself becomes sensitized to the killings his writing becomes more clinical. So towards the end you lose a visceral feel for what he describes since he has also. That and you have read very gruesome descriptions already so hearing about countless bodies has less impact than his account of finding what he thought was an infant that survived the murdering.

Another problem with the book that I do not think Dallaire intended, is what exactly he is arguing against. It is rare that anyone would argue for genocide but his story revolves around genocide itself but also the detachment of the developed world form the suffering of the developing one. This is at least as big a theme of the book as the death itself. Also, during the civil war and the genocide occurring alongside it in Rwanda, Dallaire is constantly running back and forth to meetings, cabling the UN hq in NY, producing reports and making phone calls.

I know that Dallaire did all he could through official channels but he constantly says that it was inaction and bureaucracy that aided the killing. I do not wish to diminish his heroic role but he seems to think that action could only come from "others" and that he needed permission to act morally and intervene. It would have been suicidal on his part I admit; the book is about genocide but is more of a case study in UN ineptitude and moral relativism as well as the crushing bureaucracy it has become. His command and actions are prime examples and he, like any thinking caring person, begins to see this. This is, as I agree with him, mainly the result of the actions of the permanent members of the security council. His lesson from all this is not to encourage more participation by individual nations and action, but give more power and support to the UN. It has shown itself to be nothing more than a pawn of the richest countries so why would more of the same produce a better result.

One part of Dallaire's book that I was surprised at was his political perceptions. He shows a great deal of insight into the racist/colonial undertones that were present in his mission and its hindrance. He also talks at length about the "Somalia Complex" and how nations will tend to do the right thing only if it serves their interests. The clinical account of the U.S. Army statistician to him on the ratio of Americans killed versus locals murdered to make it worth the U.S.' time, treasure, and blood is one of the many instances Dallaire shows about the West's moral relativism towards life. Such was the case in Rwanda, a small land-locked country with no natural resources in the middle of Africa. Stopping Genocide there would not have served any of the more cynical interests of the 1st world. His depiction of the Tunisians, Ghanaians, and Ethiopian peacekeepers were touching and inspiring. hindered by their own domestic problems and lack of wealth they still volunteered to help out those worse-off. His disgust with Europe and the West was equally emotional.

I know I gave this book three stars. This does not mean that I disliked the book but that it has some problems. I think everyone should read this book. My gripes were about the execution of the book versus its conception. Meaning that I saw in this book equal parts diary of hell and insider's critique on the failure of the UN rather than it being one or the other. He freely admits that he and his mission were failures but that some good can come from studying them. I agree and hope, as Dallaire does, that the world will live up to the slogan "Never again."* Though his mission proves that the caveat means "at least, not until the next time."

This review refers to the paperback edition by Arrow Books. An excellent book. It was different to what I expected - I thought it would contain detailed and elaborative descriptions of the acts of genocide in Rwanda. However, it was written at strategic level and Dallaire discusses the political and organisational hurdles and obstructions to the mission of the UN military contingent. For someone who knows little about the functioning of the UN, it provides lots of insight and information, without becoming technically boring.

Obviously there are references to and descriptions of genocide acts. Such references are, however, professionally described and although the horribleness and sadness of those events are easy discernable, they remain within context with the rest of the book, supporting Dallaire's arguments without changing the book into an emotional experience.

Dallaire is extremely honest and although he assigned responsibility and accountability in well-argued motivations, he does not spare himself. In this reviewer's opinion, he is perhaps too critical of himself. But then, he is clearly a professional soldier (the photograph of him on the cover of the book is sufficient proof of that!), expecting total commitment and therefore prepared to commit himself totally. Not only does the book provide an overview of the military perspective but it also covers the political perspective extensively, probably because Dallaire, unexpectedly, had to fulfil that role as well for most of his term in Rwanda.

The book is well written and the editing is good. The glossary is extremely helpful to clarify acronyms and to identify role players. The index is also a welcome addition as are the maps at the start of the book. My only criticism is that the book contains no photographs - it would have been nice to see some of the faces behind the names. A nice touch, though, is a list of recommended reading at the back of the book. I strongly recommend this book for readers interested in African, political and/or military affairs. If I were a lecturer I would have prescribed the book to political science students or at least created an assignment for such students to critique the book, because of the insight it provides in international politics.

I just finished reading this book and found it both compelling and haunting. I couldn't put it down. If you are looking for a balcony analysis this is not for you but if on the other hand you want to know what it was like... no what it was really like, day to day, and step into the shoes of someone who was there then this is the book for you. Gen. Dallaire had access to and negotiated over and over again with the top leaders on both sides of the conflict and tells the story, the few triumphs and many failings of the groups in Rwanda, the member nations, and the UN itself, like no one else possibly could. My hats off to him for taking the time to tell this story, no doubt a painful one, in detail and for having given so much personally during that year of his life to save lives and minimize the deaths in Rwanda with the cards that were dealt him. Few, I believe would have persisted as long as he did trying to make a difference under similar conditions.