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Shake Hands With The Devil by Romeo Dallaire


Freewheeling Andy

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I've probably never been as angry or as sad as I was after finishing this book.

 

For those that don't know it, Dallaire is the general who was running the UN Peacekeeping force (undermanned, understaffed, underequipped, underfunded) that was overseeing the peace accords in Rwanda. He describes the impotence of his force, and their failings and the failings of the international community as the build up and racial hatred got worse and worse before finally overflowing with the genocidal murder of 800000 people within 100 days, in 1994.

 

He describes how the French and the US kept deliberately undermining his mission for domestic reasons, how UN beaurocracy hamstrung him, how humanity failed Central Africa.

 

It's a depressing read - and even more so as, at the end, he hints at how the stupidity of the international community in not listening on the ground and instead offering high-profile aid to the regions that were media heavy led to increased instability and the 2 Congolese civil wars, the Burundian civil war, increased instability in Uganda, and even indirectly led to the current problems in Darfur - a failure which appears to have cost something close to another 4 million dead.

 

But this end-game only comes after reading of the plight of the tiny team of peacekeepers who did all they could, but which was not enough.

 

This really is a horror book.

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