'Rwanda was of no value'

2004-03-25 10:22

Paris - Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who grieves for 800 000 Rwandans his token UN force could not save 10 years ago, fears big powers' "self-interested racism" could allow genocide to happen again.

"Not all humans are human in the international context," Dallaire said. "Some countries are seen as important, but we have coldly created a tier of orphan nations."

Ten years ago, Bosnians counted much more because they were Europeans, and the Balkans represented a strategic interest worthy of international military intervention, Dallaire said. He described this as "self-interested racism".

"I'm sure there would have been more reaction if someone had tried to exterminate Rwanda's 300 mountain gorillas," he said.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton stopped in Rwanda to apologise for the world's failure to prevent the 90-day slaughter, declaring: "Never again."

History is unclear on how many Tutsis were hacked to death, burned or shot over three months. Most estimates say more than 500 000. Dallaire, who watched it from start to finish, says 800 000.

His book, Shake Hands With the Devil, dispassionately relates how UN headquarters, on orders from Washington and European capitals, left his two-thousand-member peacekeeping force powerless.

But, in conversation, he drew lessons for the present. He condemned Washington strategists who he said took little heed of the political and human consequences of overturning a society.

"You don't gain anything by just going in and blowing them away, as we see now in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. However Washington explains it, "most of the world - and the victims - see imperial motives and economic interests."

A main-force invasion may be essential, Dallaire said, but afterward "soft skills" must be left to the armies of small nations, with no vested interests, operating under a UN flag.

Dallaire, a 57-year-old Quebecois, has a bristling grey moustache and penetrating eyes that suggest a fierce mien, but his voice is soft.

Drunk under a park bench

He still takes antidepressants to get through the day, but three years with his manuscript have taken him far beyond the suicidal low point when he was found drunk under a park bench.

Now retired as a three-star general, he pulls no punches about Rwanda.

In January, he flew to Tanzania to testify at a UN tribunal.

His book, just released in France, is a best-seller in Canada.

But, he says with a touch of rue, no American publisher seems interested in ancient Rwandan history.

Dallaire reached Kigali months before a mysterious plane crash killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, as well as many of their ministers. The massacres, clearly planned in advance, started before the wreckage stopped smoking.

In cable after cable and 40 telephone calls, Dallaire pleaded for more soldiers and a change in the orders that allowed widely dispersed troops to shoot only in self-defence. A committed force of five thousand could have stopped the killing, he said.

' Humiliation in Somalia

"The world just did not want to hear about it," Dallaire said. "Americans had suffered their humiliation in Somalia and had no more taste for casualties in Africa."

France had its own strategic reasons to lean toward the Hutus, he said.

On April 21, the UN Security Council, which requires nine votes and no vetos to take action, refused to help. Instead, the token force was cut to just 270.

Dallaire said his UN superiors told him the US government insisted it had no business in Rwanda and would not help any other country that wanted to get involved.

Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali calls it "my worst failure at the United Nations".

Washington paralysed action

Speaking in Paris, where he heads an organisation of French-speaking nations, he said Washington paralysed action by setting impossible conditions.

Reminded of Clinton's "Never again" pledge, Boutros-Ghali said, "Why didn't he say that four years earlier?"

He added, "We asked permission to send help without US participation but they said no because they would have to pay 30% and were afraid of being called in if things went wrong."

Boutros-Ghali blamed not only the United States but also France, Britain and Belgium.

He quoted an unidentified Belgian officer as saying, "Let the Bougnols kill each other." Bougnol is a derogatory word for Africans.

James Rubin, who was a top adviser to Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said Washington voted no because no one was ready to commit troops in any case.

Piece of paper

"It was our fault, everybody's fault," he said by telephone from Washington. "There is no question we failed. But we opposed the resolution because it was a meaningless piece of paper."

At the time, he said, "we had this ridiculous fear of supporting a resolution that wouldn't get implemented".

It's easy for Boutros-Ghali and others to criticise Albright now, Rubin said, but Washington believed that no country would send enough troops to head off the massacres.

Dallaire said he was told by UN officials in New York that "Rwanda was of no value in any way, shape or form."

Left on his own, he struggled with an impossible mission.

After trying to persuade Rwandan Hutu leaders to stop the killing, his own flag-flying car was blocked and sprayed with gunfire. He and his aide barely escaped alive.

He had to stand back helpless as 10 Belgian paratroopers under his command were captured and tortured to death at Rwandan army headquarters.

Reluctant to fight

Even if he had defied orders, he said, his troops were mainly Bangladeshis so reluctant to fight that they sabotaged their armoured cars by putting rags in the exhaust pipes.

Apart from the 800 000 people massacred in Rwanda, Dallaire said, three million were left homeless, ravaged by an Aids epidemic and fed by inept aid programs.

"I saw children die because all their mothers were given was whole corn with no water or wood for cooking," he said. "Kernels swelled up when they ate them, and they suffered a slow, horrible death."

Had big powers reacted, he concluded, "we would have saved millions from this calamity. But I'm afraid we haven't learned, and the same thing could happen again. How do you live with that?"

- AP