The Shallow Graves of Rwanda [Hardcover]

Shaharyan M. Khan (Author), Mary Robinson (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2001

This book is a unique account of the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative in Rwanda in the mid-1990s. Shaharyar M. Khan's tenure began in the immediate aftermath of the downing of President Habarimana's plane on April 6, 1994 and the massacres that followed. Khan details his encounters with soldiers and politicians, victims and survivors, perpetrators of the massacres, and humanitarian relief efforts. This book reveals how the UN works on the ground and at headquarters.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Khan, a special United Nations representative assigned to Rwanda, provides a provocative and insightful account of the aftermath of a devastating contemporary genocide. Within a three-month period, more than one million people died in a series of massacres following the April 1994 death of Rwanda's president, killed when his airplane was shot down by a missile. The resulting Tutsi-Hutu conflict was thought to be a mere civil conflict. That perception, if not world indifference, masked the systematic genocide that followed. Khan conveys the sheer horror of legions of dead bodies in the midst of the living dead. The conflict between Rwandans, both Tutsi and Hutu, returning to their homeland set off mass murders at the hands of neighbors. Khan is most enlightening at conveying the attempts at national reconciliation--the conflict between the well-equipped U.N. attempt at national reconciliation and the actual and perceived conflict with those attempting to reestablish appropriate government authority. This is a well-balanced account that integrates the conflicting forces of world perception versus the daily reality of horrors beyond comprehension on any day. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“...a revealing, insightful treatise on how the United Nations and the international relief community work...” —San Antonio Register“...impressive and unique documentary evidence, and shows how the lessons of Rwanda can provide valuable guidance for the future.” —Black Men

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris (January 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860646166
• ISBN-13: 978-1860646164
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,546,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A first class case study of a UN operation, March 25, 2001

By 

Soldiers Supporter (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Shallow Graves of Rwanda (Hardcover)

Although not quite perfect in its smallest detail, this is the most authoritative analysis yet available of the aid that the UN and the international community tried to provide to Rwanda after the genocide of 1994, concentrating on the period from the author's arrival in June of that year and tending to discuss UNAMIR's work at the operational rather than the tactical level - although it does cover, with dispassion and objectivity rather than overt emotion, a number of individual horror stories.

This must be regarded as a classic case study and, as one who worked under Ambassador Khan in Rwanda, I recommend it without reservation for students of the United Nations, those obliged to deal with this and other international organizations and, especially, those considering their resourcing.

The areas in which I would wish to assist Khan were he to revise his text for a future edition are: definition of the boundaries between Operation Homeward (which escapes mention under this name) and Operation Retour, and to give due credit due to Lt Col Tom Mullarkey for his formulation of Retour; Operation Hope and its role in the chronology of UNAMIR-RPF relations; Khan's somewhat rose-tinted view of UNAMIR's discipline and performance; and the captions of some photographs (Plate 5 is not of the medical centre in Kibeho but of a church somewhere else; Plate 6 is misdated - and definitely not of a scene in 1943; Plate 7 is of Kigali Prison rather than of Gikongoro's); amongst a full and mostly accurate coverage of the tragedy in Kibeho, correction of some minor flaws in the attribution of witness testimony.

In identifying these errors, this is not to say that I think this a poor book: I think it quite the opposite and believe that it deserves to be read very widely!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Another Failed Mission of the U.N.", March 8, 2007

By 

Russell A. Rohde MD "Owl" (West Covina, California USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Shallow Graves of Rwanda (Hardcover)

"The Shallow Graves of Rwanda", Shaharyar Khan, 2000, I.B. Tauris, London, ISBN: 1-86064-616-6, HC 228 pgs., includes 1 map, 2 pgs. Acronyms, 16 Illust., 1 pg. Biblio., 8 pg. Index. 9 1/2" x 6 1/4"

Khan, retired Pakastani Muslim career deplomat, was give "onerous responsibility" to seek a peaceful settlement in Rwanda as Special Representative of UN Secretary-General after Tutsi Pres. Habyarimana's plane was shot down April 6, 1994. Arriving 3 mos. later, on July 4, 1994, the author learns a civil war &/or genocide had occurred with about 800,000-1,000,000 Rwandan's massacred, largely by Hutu majority wielding machetes in a planned mass-killing of the Tutsi minority. For reader's not familiar with Rwanda, the country is one of the smallest of the smallest countries in the world, less than the size of a small pea on a full Atlas-sized map page of Africa - it is surrounded on the W-N-E-S by Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania & Burundi.

Despite author's claim of his book as a diary, it is nothing of the sorts. He gives a brief synopsis of Rwandan's clash arising in the 1930's from colonists imposing Western values, intra-ethnic tensions, over-population, & that docile compliant mind-set of Rwandan peoples who are silently obedient to any authority. This is bizzare when put in context of the brutal killings which were barbaric, revengeful, & savagely carried out on men, Women, & children left to die slowly by hemorrhage, evisceration, limblessness, genitalia excisions, head bashings or smaller victims tossed into urinal pits to drown or suffocate in feces. It transcends by far anything reported in the Holocaust or Armenian Genocide.

The Author provides a list of 47 acronyms to distinguish & represent various Worldly, African, or United Nation offices, programs, organizations, plans, committees, missions, departments, coalitions, forces, etc. which are supposed to have helped Rwanda, but are herein documented to have been uniformly counter-productive, adversarial, overlapping & heavily endowed groups which spent millions if not billions of dollars in observing the situation, but not even pennies for rebuilding as roads, electric power, communications, etc. The author, despite his "onerous responsibility" was shown to have absolutely no power, & though he ussued decrees, demands, resolutions. suggestioons & reports, he discovered that no one really listened to him, or if they pretended to do so they readily changde their minds. We are informed that various organizations which should have been involved in peaceful measures were actually involved in the illegal & irrational importing of land mines, grenades, pistols, ammo & automatic weapons from Italy, Israel, Egypt, China, etc., instead of aid supplies.

We are informed about the insurgent military groups, RGF (Hutu) vs. the RPA (Tutsi) lead by 37-yr-old Tutsi leader Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame who quickly advanced from VP to Pres. of Rwanda. He was recently accused by French Magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere (Feb. 2007) as ordering the assassinations of April 6, 1944 & it was also alleged the U.S. and the U.N. quashed earlier inquiries since Paul Kagama was an ally of the U.S.

So, all in all, the book is not what it purports to be, is poorly written & poorly cllated,& it is highly repetitive of the miserable accountings of beastly killings that had already occurred before the impotent author had set foot in Kigali. If there was a "fall guy" for the U.N., it was the author. It is not a book about the Rwanda genocide, it is a book about power, politics, & money.