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

Dallaire was Force Commander during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and, as such, is able to provide the first insiders view of the collapse of the Arusha Accord, the subsequent resumption of hostilities between the RPF and the RGF and the rapidly unfolding genocide.

General Dallaire spends much of his book discussing his attempts to implement the Arusha Accords and, when that failed, to secure a cease-fire and protect innocent civilians. He also chronicles his frustrations with some of the troops sent to assist in the peacekeeping mission and the trouble he had getting money, supplies or even an effective mandate from the UN.

Dallaire's coverage of some important issues such as the historic Hutu-Tutsi rivalry, the role of the Interhamwe in the genocide or the US role in preventing more forceful action are cursory but, in fairness, they were not intended to be the focus of this book.

Dallaire has done the world a great service by chronicling his experience nearly a decade after his life was upended, and 800,000 Rwandan lives were lost, in one of the most horrific humanitarian tragedies in history. And while this book is a great value to those who have a relatively deep understanding of the genocide, it might not be the best introduction for those who know little or nothing about it. Dallaire provides a great amount of detail, but not necessarily the elementary background and big picture views required to understand just who was involved and what was transpiring during this chaotic 100 days.

In the end, Dallaire is a hero, as are Brent Beardsley and so many others who risked their lives to save the lives of others. And we are fortunate that General Dallaire has agreed to share his story. Perhaps with this book, the international community finally begin to take its obligations seriously. Anguished cries of "Never Again!" followed by inaction will never save the lives of innocent victims.


Genocide is SYMPTOM--Lack of Public Intelligence is CAUSE   June 29, 2004
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
180 out of 199 found this review helpful



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


When The Devil Ruled The World For One Hundred Days   May 11, 2005
Avant-Captain_Nemo (Aboard my black outlaw submarine cruising through the sewers in a city near you.)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

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.


The most powerful book I've ever read   March 29, 2004
Surdas (St Louis, MO, USA)
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

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.


Good Account but with problems   June 11, 2006
Michael C. Mclean (College Station, Texas)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful

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."