Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda - Couverture rigide

Dallaire, Romeo

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0679311718 ISBN 13 : 9780679311713

Editeur : Random House Canada, 2003

Synopsis

Book by Dallaire Romeo

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Introduction

It was an absolutely magnificent day in May 1994. The blue sky was cloudless, and there was a whiff of breeze stirring the trees. It was hard to believe that in the past weeks an unimaginable evil had turned Rwanda’s gentle green valleys and mist-capped hills into a stinking nightmare of rotting corpses. A nightmare we all had to negotiate every day. A nightmare that, as commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, I could not help but feel deeply responsible for.

In relative terms, that day had been a good one. Under the protection of a limited and fragile ceasefire, my troops had successfully escorted about two hundred civilians -- a few of the thousands who had sought refuge with us in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda -- through many government- and militia-manned checkpoints to reach safety behind the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) lines. We were seven weeks into the genocide, and the RPF, the disciplined rebel army (composed largely of the sons of Rwandan refugees who had lived over the border in camps in Uganda since being forced out of their homeland at independence), was making a curved sweep toward Kigali from the north, adding civil war to the chaos and butchery in the country.

Having delivered our precious cargo of innocent souls, we were headed back to Kigali in a white UN Land Cruiser with my force commander pennant on the front hood and the blue UN flag on a staff attached to the right rear. My Ghanaian sharpshooter, armed with a new Canadian C-7 rifle, rode behind me, and my new Senegalese aide-de-camp, Captain Ndiaye, sat to my right. We were driving a particularly dangerous stretch of road, open to sniper fire. Most of the people in the surrounding villages had been slaughtered, the few survivors escaping with little more than the clothes on their backs. In a few short weeks, it had become a lonely and forlorn place.

Suddenly up ahead we saw a child wandering across the road. I stopped the vehicle close to the little boy, worried about scaring him off, but he was quite unfazed. He was about three years old, dressed in a filthy, torn T-shirt, the ragged remnants of underwear, little more than a loincloth, drooping from under his distended belly. He was caked in dirt, his hair white and matted with dust, and he was enveloped in a cloud of flies, which were greedily attacking the open sores that covered him. He stared at us silently, sucking on what I realized was a high-protein biscuit. Where had the boy found food in this wasteland?

I got out of the vehicle and walked toward him. Maybe it was the condition I was in, but to me this child had the face of an angel and eyes of pure innocence. I had seen so many children hacked to pieces that this small, whole, bewildered boy was a vision of hope. Surely he could not have survived all on his own? I motioned for my aide-de-camp to honk the horn, hoping to summon up his parents, but the sound echoed over the empty landscape, startling a few birds and little else. The boy remained transfixed. He did not speak or cry, just stood sucking on his biscuit and staring up at us with his huge, solemn eyes. Still hoping that he wasn’t all alone, I sent my aide-de-camp and the sharpshooter to look for signs of life.

We were in a ravine lush with banana trees and bamboo shoots, which created a dense canopy of foliage. A long straggle of deserted huts stood on either side of the road. As I stood alone with the boy, I felt an anxious knot in my stomach: this would be a perfect place to stage an ambush. My colleagues returned, having found no one. Then a rustling in the undergrowth made us jump. I grabbed the boy and held him firmly to my side as we instinctively took up defensive positions around the vehicle and in the ditch. The bushes parted to reveal a well-armed RPF soldier about fifteen years old. He recognized my uniform and gave me a smart salute and introduced himself. He was part of an advance observation post in the nearby hills. I asked him who the boy was and whether there was anyone left alive in the village who could take care of him. The soldier answered that the boy had no name and no family but that he and his buddies were looking after him. That explained the biscuit but did nothing to allay my concerns over the security and health of the boy. I protested that the child needed proper care and that I could give it to him: we were protecting and supporting orphanages in Kigali where he would be much better off. The soldier quietly insisted that the boy stay where he was, among his own people.

I continued to argue, but this child soldier was in no mood to discuss the situation and with haughty finality stated that his unit would care and provide for the child. I could feel my face flush with anger and frustration, but then noticed that the boy himself had slipped away while we had been arguing over him, and God only knew where he had gone. My aide-de-camp spotted him at the entrance to a hut a short distance away, clambering over a log that had fallen across the doorway. I ran after him, closely followed by my aide-de-camp and the RPF child soldier. By the time I had caught up to the boy, he had disappeared inside. The log in the doorway turned out to be the body of a man, obviously dead for some weeks, his flesh rotten with maggots and beginning to fall away from the bones.

As I stumbled over the body and into the hut, a swarm of flies invaded my nose and mouth. It was so dark inside that at first I smelled rather than saw the horror that lay before me. The hut was a two-room affair, one room serving as a kitchen and living room and the other as a communal bedroom; two rough windows had been cut into the mud-and-stick wall. Very little light penetrated the gloom, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw strewn around the living room in a rough circle the decayed bodies of a man, a woman and two children, stark white bone poking through the desiccated, leather-like covering that had once been skin. The little boy was crouched beside what was left of his mother, still sucking on his biscuit. I made my way over to him as slowly and quietly as I could and, lifting him into my arms, carried him out of the hut.

The warmth of his tiny body snuggled against mine filled me with a peace and serenity that elevated me above the chaos. This child was alive yet terribly hungry, beautiful but covered in dirt, bewildered but not fearful. I made up my mind: this boy would be the fourth child in the Dallaire family. I couldn’t save Rwanda, but I could save this child.

Before I had held this boy, I had agreed with the aid workers and representatives of both the warring armies that I would not permit any exporting of Rwandan orphans to foreign places. When confronted by such requests from humanitarian organizations, I would argue that the money to move a hundred kids by plane to France or Belgium could help build, staff and sustain Rwandan orphanages that could house three thousand children. This one boy eradicated all my arguments. I could see myself arriving at the terminal in Montreal like a latter-day St. Christopher with the boy cradled in my arms, and my wife, Beth, there ready to embrace him.

That dream was abruptly destroyed when the young soldier, fast as a wolf, yanked the child from my arms and carried him directly into the bush. Not knowing how many members of his unit might already have their gunsights on us, we reluctantly climbed back into the Land Cruiser. As I slowly drove away, I had much on my mind.

By withdrawing, I had undoubtedly done the wise thing: I had avoided risking the lives of my two soldiers in what would have been a fruitless struggle over one small boy. But in that moment, it seemed to me that I had backed away from a fight for what was right, that this failure stood for all our failures in Rwanda.

Whatever happened to that beautiful child? Did he make it to an orphanage deep behind the RPF lines? Did he survive the following battles? Is he dead or is he now a child soldier himself, caught in the seemingly endless conflict that plagues his homeland?

That moment, when the boy, in the arms of a soldier young enough to be his brother, was swallowed whole by the forest, haunts me. It’s a memory that never lets me forget how ineffective and irresponsible we were when we promised the Rwandans that we would establish an atmosphere of security that would allow them to achieve a lasting peace. It has been almost nine years since I left Rwanda, but as I write this, the sounds, smells and colours come flooding back in digital clarity. It’s as if someone has sliced into my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my cortex. I could not forget even if I wanted to. For many of these years, I have yearned to return to Rwanda and disappear into the blue-green hills with my ghosts. A simple pilgrim seeking forgiveness and pardon. But as I slowly begin to piece my life back together, I know the time has come for me to make a more difficult pilgrimage: to travel back through all those terrible memories and retrieve my soul.

I did try to write this story soon after I came back from Rwanda in September 1994, hoping to find some respite for myself in sorting out how my own role as Force Commander of UNAMIR interconnected with the international apathy, the complex political manoeuvres, the deep well of hatred and barbarity that resulted in a genocide in which over 800,000 people lost their lives. Instead, I plunged into a disastrous mental health spiral that led me to suicide attempts, a medical release from the Armed Forces, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and dozens upon dozens of therapy sessions and extensive medication, which still have a place in my daily life.

It took me seven years to finally have the desire, the willpower and the stamina to begin to describe in detail the events of that year in Rwanda. To recount, from my insider’s point of view, how a country moved from the promise of a certain peace to intrigue, the fomenting of racial hatred, as...

Revue de presse :

“Lt. General Roméo Dallaire is revered by Canadians everywhere. When I finished the book, I could understand why. Here was a man who screamed into the void. No one listened, no one cared, no one heard. But he never stopped screaming. He valued every human life. He wept for every human loss. He never gave up.”
—Stephen Lewis in The Walrus

“Using the detailed daily notes that were taken by his assistant in the field, Gen. Dallaire painstakingly recreated the events leading up to the genocide and provides a minute-by-minute account of the eruption of bloodshed in April, 1994, as his pleas for reinforcements to UN headquarters in New York were ignored.”
—Stephanie Nolen, The Globe and Mail

“Almost certainly the most important book published in Canada this year.”
—The Globe and Mail

“Shake Hands with the Devil is both an exorcism and a scathing indictment. With all the powerful immediacy of an open wound, Shake Hands with the Devil is the most important non-fiction book of the year.”
—The Vancouver Sun

“It [is] a story of international indifference and political failure, but it [is] also one of the most profoundly disturbing tales of the century.”
—The Ottawa Citizen

“With considerable effort, pain and sacrifice, retired Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire has provided us with an insider’s account of how he struggled with one of the most horrific events in the 20th century while an indifferent world and an incompetent United Nations looked on. Hopefully, this well written and comprehensive book represents the last chapter in Dallaire’s painful Rwandan journey.”
—The National Post

“Shake Hands with the Devil [is] one of the year’s, if not the decade’s, most important events in Canadian publishing.... Dallaire gives us something to believe in. That he has done so with his eyes and heart wide open to the worst our species has to offer is a monumental achievement. Shake Hands with the Devil delivers this remarkable man and his story to us.”
—Vancouver Sun; Times-Colonist (Victoria)

“[O]n the enormously important issue of Third World development and the moral obligation of the Western world to assist the dispossessed, [Shake Hands With The Devil] is a powerful cri de coeur for the powerless, and a gut-wrenching description of what really happened during those awful months 10 years ago.”
—The Toronto Star

“Dallaire, the proud, dedicated Canadian in charge of that mission, a man of deep humanitarian conviction.”
—The Ottawa Citizen

“The very spareness of the prose reflects a supreme effort at self-mastery and heightens the anguish described....He manages to convey the full horror of the genocide in relatively few passages of extraordinary, wrenching lyric power....This is a book to read — to understand what genocide means, to relect on the failure of “humanity,” and to be inspired by the courage of the few in the face of genocidal horror and international indifference.”
—The Gazette

“With the best intentions in the world, we asked Romeo Dallaire to inhabit an unspeakable world for us, to witness horrors beyond imagining, to carry a moral burden that no one person should ever have had to shoulder. He has now done us the immeasurable service of setting out in print what price that burden exacted on his mind and his soul.... ”
—The Gazette

“Anyone wondering whether the United Nations still has a role to play ought to be reading Romeo Dallaire’s long-awaited account of the Rwandan massacre. Shake Hands with the Devil is a harsh, uncompromising account of a great catastrophe — one the great powers saw coming and chose not to prevent. This is an important book....”
—Edmonton Sun

“As painful as Shake Hands with the Devil is to read, it is impossible to imagine the agony it author had to go through to write it.... What he witnessed, what he was incapable of stopping, would have broken anyone. Dallaire’s condemnation of the free world is stark and uncompromising.... It is impossible to read this memoir — written in meticulous detail — without feeling sick and without feeling rage.... ”
—Calgary Herald

“[A] powerful story of leadership and sacrifice, of moral and physical courage, and a deep love of humanity. In short, a story of a fine soldier and a hero.”
—The Edmonton Journal

“This is an important book because it is a factual record of the genocide of recent times.... So we encounter with him the misery and chaos and the sheer unadulterated terror of living through an unnecessary and avoidable atrocity.... Read this book and rediscover if you have lost it, your capacity for moral outrage.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire’s powerfully eloquent reconstruction of genocide, [is] a haunting story of evil....That he has survived and found a way to write about those events is a triumph. Not a book for the faint of heart, perhaps. But Shake Hands with the Devil should be mandatory reading for Western leaders and citizens of every country that pays lip service to the peacekeeping ideals and the sanctity of human life.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)

“[A]n almost day-by-day chronology of the horror.... Dallaire has written an emotional, often bitter book.... moving and tragic.”
—The Telegram (St. John’s)

“[Dallaire’s] passionate, disturbing memoir of those awful days is harrowing reading.... It is a savage book.... But his humanity shines through, unlike so many others tainted by the blood of innocents.”
—The Calgary Sun

“[Shake Hands with the Devil] is an affidavit for an indictment — an indictment of the murderers, the hamstrung, bureaucratized UN, and the self-absorbed developed world.... If Shake Hands with the Devil serves as an introduction to the Rwandan genocide, even for those only voyeuristically in what happened to a Canadian general, it has surpassed its original intent. For all this, Romeo Dallaire emerges as our post-Cold War hero.”
—Quill & Quire

“To read his soul-searching book is to feel a rush of empathy with its author. It is also to confront uncomfortable truths ... Shake Hands with the Devil is an uncommonly courageous work, wrung from the depths of despair and wrought in plain, forthright prose ... Abroad in the world, the Canadian humanitarian needs a saint’s compassion, a scholar’s knowledge, and a soldier’s strength. Bravely and passionately, Romeo Dallaire has shown us where to start.”
—Literary Review of Canada

“In his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire has documented the callousness and inertia that precluded military intervention in Rwanda. The book is a scathing indictment of the United Nations and its member countries and a dire warning of the consequences to be expected when we choose to not get involved.”
—The Hamilton Spectator

“... retired Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire has writeen a book that is sure to mark all those that read it ... Shake Hands With the Devil is a book with a message ... LGen Dallaire’s ‘cri du coeur’ is a must read.”
—The Edmonton Sun

“... there’s something about [Shake Hands With the Devil] that is Shakespearean — this sincere soul with a solid heart who tries to do the right thing while the rest of the world cynically covers their butts ...”
—Michael Donovan, interviewed in The Globe and Mail

“...[a] remarkable book. I hope Canadians will read this book...Dallaire does not spare us any of the details, for which, once again, thank you!...Read this book! Thank you, again, Dallaire — not just for the book, but also your service to Canada and the world.”
—The Guelph Mercury

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Random House Canada
• Date d'édition: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0679311718
• ISBN 13: 9780679311713
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 584