Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Romo Dallaire with Brent Beardsley

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD 'Indisputably the best account of the whole terrible Rwandan genocide.' R. W. Johnson, Sunday Times 'Angry, accusatory and extremely moving.' Caroline Moorhead, Spectator When Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, he thought he was heading off to Africa to help two warring parties achieve a peace both sides wanted. Instead, he and members of his small international force were caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. Dallaire left Rwanda a broken man; disillusioned, suicidal, and determined to tell his story. An award-winning international sensation, Shake Hands with the Devil is a landmark contribution to the literature of war: a remarkable tale of a soldier's courage and an unforgettable portrait of modern warfare. It is also a stinging indictment of the petty bureaucrats who refused to give Dallaire the men and the operational freedom he needed to stop the killing. 'I know there is a God,' Dallaire writes, 'because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.' 'Read Roméo Dallaire's profoundly sad and moving book.' Madeleine Albright, Washington Post "When Romeo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he believed that his assignment was to help two warring parties achieve the peace they both desperately wanted. Instead, he was exposed to the most barbarous and chaotic display of civil war and mass execution in recent history, observing in just one hundred days the killings of more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans. With only a few troops and his own ingenuity and courage to direct his efforts, Dallaire rescued thousands, but his call for more support from the UN fell on deaf ears." "In Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire takes the reader with him to Rwanda, recreating the awful events the world community chose to ignore. He also chronicles his own progression from confident Cold Warrior to devastated UN commander, and finally to retired general struggling painfully, and publicly, to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder - the highest-ranking military officer ever to share such experiences with readers."--Jacket Woven through the story of this disastrous mission is Dallaire's own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, reconciliation and hope. This book is General Dallaire's personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth and secure in his assumptions to a man conscious of his own weaknesses and failures and critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to General Dallaire and his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields our peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into the world's dirty wars Lt General Rom-o Dallaire went to Africa, commanding the UN mission to Rwanda, to help two warring parties achieve peace. Following a vortex of civil war and genocide, he left Rwanda a broken man, disillusioned, suicidal and determined to tell his story. "In Rwanda," he writes, "I shook hands with the devil, and therefore I know there is a God." A Canadian general and former United Nations peacekeeper shares his harrowing eyewitness account of the genocide in Rwanda, revealing how he and his men managed to rescue thousands of people despite the orgy of bloodletting that was erupting all around them. Reprint