The Rwanda Witness (Canadian general who commanded UN troops)

[coda]

ENCOUNTER
The Rwanda Witness
By GUY LAWSON

Published: April 4, 2004


For seven days in February, Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general who commanded the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda 10 years ago, sat on a witness stand in a small courtroom in Arusha, Tanzania. Dallaire had served in Rwanda during one of the worst massacres in modern history. In 100 days, some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus viewed as sympathetic to them were murdered, and Dallaire was powerless to stop it. During those months, his waking hours were a living nightmare. The bodies were everywhere, strewn in fields and latrines and stacked in neat rows next to the road as if someone were keeping score. Countless times, Dallaire had to get out of his four-by-four and move remains from the middle of the road to avoid driving over them. Denied authority by the United Nations to intervene, Dallaire tried to broker a cease-fire, protect the innocent, prick the world's conscience through the media. But his real mission, it came to pass, was personally far more devastating -- to be a witness.


The general had returned to Africa to testify against Col. Theoneste Bagosora at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The war-crimes tribunal has been working in obscurity for nine years, but no defendant has been as significant as Bagosora, who was the second in command at the Ministry of Defense and is accused of being a mastermind behind the genocide. Dallaire recently published an account of that time called ''Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.'' One of the devils was Bagosora.


At the trial, Dallaire kept a small pill case on the table in front of him, so he would remember to take the medications he now relies upon to control anxiety and depression. He sat at attention behind thick bulletproof glass and gazed straight ahead to avoid enraging himself by looking at Bagosora. His manner was blunt and precise, but he was given to long and complicated answers, as if any elision or missed detail might do an injustice to the past. Apart from a few reporters and the occasional curious tourist, the two rows of seats reserved for spectators remained empty as defense lawyers tried to suggest that there had been no genocide at all. The world, it seemed, had forgotten what happened in Rwanda. Dallaire had not.


The events of those 100 days, which will be commemorated in Rwanda this month, have haunted Dallaire. He is now 57, married with three grown children, and he keeps a busy schedule giving speeches and promoting his book, which is a best seller in Canada. He has been approached twice to run for political office. His official job now is adviser on war-affected children to the Canadian government, but he has influence far beyond his bureaucratic-sounding title. He has turned himself into a self-appointed ambassador of memory for the forgotten wars of the world.


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Months before the killing began, Dallaire had contacted his United Nations superiors in New York, requesting permission to undertake deterrent operations; seven times he asked, and seven times he was turned down. Not many months earlier, dead American soldiers were being dragged through the streets of Somalia. There was no stomach at the United Nations or in the Clinton administration for a mission that might risk more Western casualties for a humanitarian cause. Now as the killing grew fiercer, Dallaire's force was cut from 2,600 to 450. His request that the United States jam the radio signal of the extremist Hutu radio station inciting its listeners to murder Tutsis was not acted upon. Dallaire's only order from New York was to evacuate foreigners.



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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/magazine/04RWANDA.html?ex=1081659600&en=0f0994ec32c1bc2f&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE