Book summary “Shake hands with the devil”: summary

Introduction

You want to understand how modern international institutions fail when mass atrocities unfold before the eyes of the world. You look at global conflicts and wonder why peacekeepers stand paralyzed while millions perish in targeted violence. You struggle to grasp the gap between lofty diplomatic rhetoric and the grim reality on the ground during a humanitarian catastrophe.

Roméo Dallaire addresses this problem by detailing his command of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda during the nineteen ninety-four genocide. He argues that bureaucratic indifference, rigid doctrines, and a lack of political will among world powers enabled the slaughter of eight hundred thousand human beings.

The book traces the descent from classic peacekeeping to total institutional failure and severe personal trauma.

• How did a modest observer mission collapse into active genocide?
• Why did the international community abandon Rwanda when lives could have been saved?
• What happens to a soldier ordered to watch innocents die?

1. Military Roots and Peacekeeping Doctrine

Military Upbringing

Growing up in a military family shaped Dallaire's lifelong dedication to the army and instilled a deep sense of self-sacrifice derived from his parents' experiences in World War II.

A soldier learns early to look beyond self-interest to defeat evil.

Dallaire's father served as a senior NCO who maintained 250 vehicles and bridge-building equipment in Europe, and his mother fled wartime Holland with a six-month-old baby to join him in Canada. His father was born in 1902 in Thetford Mines, Quebec, and landed in Normandy in 1944 a month after D-Day. During the winter of 1944 to 1945, the Canadian Army held a line that stretched 322 kilometres.

Classic Peacekeeping Model

Classic Cold War peacekeeping relies strictly on impartiality, neutrality, and the consent of warring parties.

Traditional blue-helmeted observers monitor stable conditions.

Developed by Lester Pearson, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, this model involves lightly armed, multinational blue-helmeted observers interposed between former combatants to maintain a status quo or monitor a stable ceasefire. Dallaire and his troops were trained exclusively in these traditional chapter-six peacekeeping principles, which assumed stable conditions, just like the Sinai mission during the period from 1956 to 1967.

You can transform academic performance from mediocre to exceptional by creating a disciplined study environment and responding to mentorship challenges. Dallaire raised his average from 72 per cent in grade nine to 91 per cent in grades ten, eleven, and twelve after a major challenged his prospects.

• Close the door to the room and put the radio on to create an isolated bubble for focused study.
• Commit to studying for up to twelve hours straight on weekends with a dedicated study partner.

2. Setting Up the Rwanda Mission

The UN established a modest observer mission and an ambitious peace accord under severe resource constraints.

UNOMUR monitored the border between Uganda and Rwanda to ensure no weapons or soldiers crossed to reinforce the RPF while peace negotiations proceeded. Dallaire was appointed to command UNOMUR with a total force of eighty-one unarmed military observers stationed exclusively on the Ugandan side of the border. This border operation addressed a two-and-a-half-year civil war duration.

The Arusha Peace Accord

The Arusha Peace Agreement set an aggressive timeline for political transition, power-sharing, and national rebuilding. The accords demanded the rapid creation of a broad-based transitional government, refugee resettlement, army demobilization, and democratic elections within a strict window.

The agreement required the deployment of a neutral international force by September 10, just five weeks after its signing, to guarantee the fragile ceasefire. This twenty-two-month timetable set by Arusha left little room for administrative delays.

Reconnaissance and Force Options

UN leadership frequently pressures commanders to tailor mission estimates to available resources rather than actual field requirements. Maurice Baril warned Dallaire not to request a brigade-sized mission for Rwanda because anything large and expensive would never be approved by the Security Council.

Dallaire's eighteen-member team had twelve days to assess Rwanda's potential for a peacekeeping mission, relying heavily on local UN leadership like Amadou Ly to overcome severe shortages of basic supplies and vehicles. Dallaire set up a temporary headquarters in a meeting room at the Hôtel des Mille Collines, where they had to make do with tourist maps and borrowed supplies arranged by Amadou Ly.

Planning a UN mission requires offering multiple force options ranging from an ideal logistical footprint to a minimal viable presence to satisfy differing political wills. Dallaire developed three options for the UN:

• an ideal force of 5,500 personnel with full logistical support;
• a reasonable viable option of 2,500 personnel requiring calculated risks;
• a minimal option of 500 to 1,000 personnel demanded by major powers.

During discussions over secure lines with Maurice Baril, Dallaire refined the reasonable viable option to deploy troops in stages and minimize the burden on troop-contributing nations. The initial estimate for the mission reached 50 million US dollars.

3. Deploying UNAMIR to Kigali

Dallaire faced extreme logistical hurdles, uncooperative belligerents, and a looming humanitarian crisis as troops arrived in theatre.

Witnessing the extreme human suffering in displaced persons camps can transform a military assignment into a personal moral commitment to secure peace. In a massive displaced persons camp near the demilitarized zone, Dallaire witnessed an old woman weighing no more than a dozen kilos left to die alone while children played soccer with a ball made of twigs. Encountering a massive camp of 60,000 displaced persons living in horrific conditions convinced Dallaire to dedicate himself entirely to bringing a UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda for the sake of the children.

Logistics and Pull Systems

Traditional peacekeeping mandates can be adapted to include the authority to use deadly force to prevent crimes against humanity, bridging traditional peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Dallaire inserted paragraph seventeen into the proposed Rules of Engagement to authorize deadly force for preventing crimes against humanity. Dallaire cribbed the proposed Rules of Engagement largely from Cambodian rules and introduced paragraph seventeen to handle potential atrocities.

The United Nations logistics operate on a pull system rather than a push system, requiring constant explicit requests for every essential item. Unlike NATO forces which automatically supply provisions based on troop deployment, the UN requires a detailed request for everything from rations to flashlights. Chief Administration Officer Per O. Hallqvist explained that food, water, and basic equipment had to be explicitly requested, and if an item like flashlights was ordered without specifying batteries and bulbs, they would arrive without them.

The Kigali Weapons Secure Area

The establishment of a Weapons Secure Area is a necessary structural prerequisite to safely introduce an armed rebel battalion into a hostile capital city. To manage the arrival of an armed RPF battalion into the heart of Kigali without triggering a massacre, Dallaire negotiated the Kigali Weapons Secure Area agreement, requiring all parties to secure their weapons and move armed personnel only with UN permission and escort. Dallaire negotiated the KWSA agreement at Kilometer 64 on December 23, overcoming resistance from Colonel Théoneste Bagosora regarding private security firms and militias.

You can organize similar high-risk deployments through structured operational steps:

• Negotiate terms where all parties secure their weapons within a designated city zone.
• Prohibit the movement of weapons and armed troops without UN permission and escort.
• Deploy UN troops along the corridor and around the garrison site as a buffer before permitting the rebel battalion to enter.

The concept of operations for UNAMIR was structured into four phases spanning thirty months with a maximum force strength of 2,548. Phase one focused on securing Kigali and withdrawing French troops over 90 days with 1,200 personnel. Phase two deployed the full maximum force into the demilitarized zone. Phase three covered demobilization and reintegration over ten months, and phase four involved holding democratic elections. Dallaire planned to turn Kigali into a weapons-secure area and establish unarmed observer teams across the ten prefectures.

Colonel Herbert Figoli and his advance party of officers from Uruguay, Bangladesh, and Poland reviewed the operational concepts and served as the backbone of the mission. Dallaire briefed these advance officers on his concept of operations and committed the plan to paper as Force Commander’s Directive Number 1, issuing interim rules of engagement as Directive Number 2.

On December 28, Dallaire and Colonel Luc Marchal executed Operation Clean Corridor, escorting the RPF convoy from Mulindi through RGF lines to the CND building in Kigali while cheering crowds lined the streets. Operation Clean Corridor prepared a secure route for the RPF battalion and politicians to travel into Kigali and established their garrison at the CND complex, buffered by UNAMIR forces.

4. The Discovery of the Third Force

An informant exposed a clandestine network of extremist death squads preparing for mass extermination while New York prohibited proactive intervention.

The Informant Jean-Pierre

A former commando named Jean-Pierre approached UNAMIR with explosive intelligence. He served as a Presidential Guard and chief trainer for the Interahamwe, the extremist militia tied to Hutu Power.

Jean-Pierre revealed that militia cells were compiling lists of Tutsis for extermination. They had received four large shipments of AK-47s to execute 1,000 Tutsis in Kigali within twenty minutes. The informant also exposed a trap from the previous Saturday. Mobs and hidden Presidential Guards tried to provoke Belgian blue berets into firing. Their goal was to kill ten Belgians and force Belgium to withdraw from UNAMIR.

Captains Claeys and Deme investigated the claims and verified the existence of hidden weapons caches. Captain Deme entered the MRND headquarters basement with Jean-Pierre past two guards. He found at least fifty assault rifles, boxes of ammunition, clips, and grenades.

Restrictions from Headquarters

You watched as New York systematically dismantled every proactive plan to neutralize these threats. When Dallaire uncovered illegal weapons caches and planned raids, Kofi Annan and the DPKO ordered him to suspend operations immediately. They told you to refuse proactive intervention and instead hand the information directly over to President Habyarimana.

After Dallaire sent an unprecedented direct code cable to Maurice Baril outlining a plan to seize arms caches, Riza and Annan shot down the plan. They instructed UNAMIR to limit its role strictly to monitoring under chapter-six peacekeeping rules.

On February 17, New York sent a code cable rejecting Dallaire's revised arms recovery and public security plans. The UN triumvirate in New York and Hedi Annabi argued that UNAMIR lacked the capacity and mandate to take over public security. They insisted that maintaining law and order remained solely the responsibility of local authorities.

5. An Explosion at Kigali Airport

The assassination of President Habyarimana triggered a systematic purge of moderates and the deliberate murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers.

The Political Vacuum

On April 6 at 2020 hours, an explosion at Kigali airport shot down Habyarimana's plane. The crash killed the president, the president of Burundi, and the army chief of staff. Colonel Bagosora convened a crisis committee of senior military officers.

Colonel Bagosora assumed control at RGF headquarters. He dismissed the authority of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and asserted that the military must temporarily run the country. This takeover bypassed the Arusha Peace Agreement and sidelined the legally next-in-line leader.

Extremist military and militia units executed a meticulously planned operation to eliminate moderate political leaders. Hit squads systematically hunted down and murdered moderate political figures.

Hélène Pinsky and her husband Lando Ndasingwa were murdered by Presidential Guards. The guards overwhelmed their guards despite the presence of UNAMIR personnel. These killings destroyed the moderate political leadership required to implement the BBTG.

The Belgian Sacrifice

Extremists spread false radio propaganda claiming Belgian soldiers shot down the presidential plane. Ten Belgian paracommandos assigned to protect Prime Minister Agathe were captured. The captors took them to Camp Kigali, where they were brutally mutilated and murdered.

Dallaire discovered the mutilated bodies of the soldiers piled outside the morgue at Kigali hospital. This deliberate murder served as a psychological trap designed to force a Western military withdrawal of the 450 Belgian troops in the contingent.

You faced an impossible strategic dilemma as the capital descended into chaos. Dallaire analyzed the force ratio, lack of heavy weapons, and vulnerability of dispersed personnel. Over 1,000 troops were dug into Camp Kigali.

Dallaire rejected a rescue mission for the trapped Belgian soldiers. His small, lightly armed Quick Reaction Force lacked the combat power to take a fortified camp. Launching an assault would turn UNAMIR into a third belligerent, causing catastrophic casualties while abandoning nearly 5,000 expatriates and diplomats scattered across Rwanda.

6. Descent into Genocide

As massacres spread across churches and communes, the UN Security Council voted to slash the mission to a skeleton force.

Evidence of Slaughter

UNAMIR encountered concrete evidence of systematic, pre-planned ethnic slaughter when officers inspected a massacre at a local church. Gendarmerie systematically checked identity cards, separated Tutsis, and handed them over to civilian militiamen with machetes who methodically murdered hundreds of men, women, and children.

Brent, Marek Pazik, and Stefan Stec drove an APC to the Gikondo Parish Church, where they discovered hundreds of bodies inside the pews and aisles, alongside a few survivors tended by Polish priests. You found 15 survivors among the hundreds of dead. The colonial-era identity card system became a lethal bureaucratic mechanism used by extremists to target, round up, and erase victims from humanity. Militia and gendarmes checked identity cards to identify Tutsis for execution, subsequently burning the cards and commune records so that the victims were officially erased as if they never existed.

Extremist radio broadcasts served as the primary tool for inciting nationwide mass mobilization and coordinating the systematic slaughter of civilians. RTLM commentators broadcast provocative songs, instructions, and read out the specific names and locations of individuals to be killed, treating the radio as the voice of sanction. Faustin listened to RTLM broadcasters exhorting violence and calling up reservists while reading target lists over the airwaves.

Resolution 912 and Withdrawal

Faced with deteriorating security and mounting pressure from troop-contributing nations, the UN Security Council voted to slash peacekeeper numbers to a skeleton force. Through Resolution 912, the Security Council opted to withdraw the bulk of UNAMIR personnel—including the entire Belgian contingent—leaving behind only a small residual force. Dallaire received Security Council Resolution 912 via fax from Riza, prompting him to order the accelerated withdrawal of about 1,000 troops to Nairobi.

The RPF refused to negotiate any ceasefire with the military leadership until a strict list of security and political preconditions was fully met. Seth Sendashonga outlined eight preconditions for the RPF, which included stopping civilian massacres, disarming the Presidential Guard, condemning extremist actions, and fully accounting for missing officials. Dallaire met with RPF political leadership including Seth Sendashonga, Tito Rutaremara, Dr. Jacques, and Commander Charles inside a small conference room at the CND.

The RPF demands included strict rules for military compliance:

• Stop the slaughter of innocent civilians.
• Stop the indiscriminate shooting by the RGF on the CND.
• Disarm the Presidential Guards, return them to their camp, and arrest them.
• The Crisis Committee must openly condemn the actions of the extremists, particularly the Presidential Guard.
• Fully restore the telephone system.
• Identify the leader of the Crisis Committee.
• Produce and broadcast a joint communiqué with the RPF regarding the true state of affairs.
• Fully account for all officials who had died or disappeared.

7. International Indifference and the Aftermath

Western powers gutted reinforcement resolutions, refused to jam hate radio, and left survivors to face massive regional refugee crises.

Gutted Resolutions and Sabotaged Gear

The UN Security Council authorized 5,500 men for rapid deployment under UNAMIR 2. Major powers like the United States and the United Kingdom gutted the resolution. Most nations avoided taking direct responsibility, reducing UNAMIR to the role of accountants keeping track of the dead. Colin Keating publicly admitted that the United States gutted the resolution.

The United States and Britain demanded upfront lease and transport payments for surplus Cold War gear. The U.S. charged 4 million dollars to lease APCs and another 6 million dollars to cover air transport to Entebbe. Britain offered 50 Bedford trucks that quickly broke down.

The United States delivered tons of rusting metal APCs without trucks to transport them or drivers trained to operate them, and the British trucks broke down one by one until none were left. 100 APCs were needed by Dallaire for ground effectiveness, but the U.S. only supplied 50 APCs.

The Pentagon rejected jamming the RTLM radio station, arguing it would cost 8,500 dollars an hour for a jamming aircraft over Rwanda and violate international conventions.

Facing the RPF advance, nearly 800 men and their families who surrendered at the airfield were handled by UNAMIR. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Adinkra's Ghanaian troops provided security. You must follow specific procedures:

• Provide tight security for surrendering troops and civilians
• Have the battalion doctor look to medical needs of the wounded
• Count them, record names, and wait for further orders
• Prevent the RPF from taking people away under any circumstances
• Apply new UNAMIR 2 rules of engagement without hesitation

Regional Spillover and Personal Toll

The RPF's rapid advance drove 300,000 people who crossed into Zaire initially. The refugee influx caused 3,000 deaths a day in Goma and 40,000 total deaths from the cholera epidemic. Major St-Denis witnessed piles of bodies twenty feet high outside a hospital in Goma and soldiers with lifeless eyes during the height of the cholera epidemic.

General Dallaire suffered severe physical and psychological exhaustion. He fired his entire pistol clip at a pack of wild dogs attacking his pet goats in front of his astonished staff, making it clear he was losing control.

10 Key Ideas

1. Roméo Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda during the nineteen ninety-four genocide, where bureaucratic indifference and a lack of political will among world powers enabled the slaughter of eight hundred thousand human beings.
2. Classic Cold War peacekeeping relies strictly on impartiality, neutrality, and the consent of warring parties, leaving lightly armed blue helmets completely unequipped to handle mass atrocities.
3. UN leadership pressured Dallaire to tailor mission estimates to available resources, resulting in a modest observer mission and an ambitious peace accord that demanded the rapid creation of a transitional government under severe resource constraints.
4. Dallaire negotiated the Kigali Weapons Secure Area agreement to safely introduce an armed RPF battalion into the hostile capital city by requiring all parties to secure their weapons and move armed personnel only with UN permission and escort.
5. A former commando named Jean-Pierre exposed a clandestine network of extremist death squads preparing for mass extermination, but New York systematically dismantled every proactive plan to neutralize these threats.
6. The assassination of President Habyarimana triggered a systematic purge of moderates, the deliberate mutilation and murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers, and an impossible strategic dilemma for Dallaire as the capital descended into chaos.
7. UNAMIR encountered concrete evidence of systematic, pre-planned ethnic slaughter at local churches where the colonial-era identity card system became a lethal bureaucratic mechanism used by extremists to erase victims from humanity.
8. Faced with deteriorating security and mounting pressure from troop-contributing nations, the UN Security Council voted through Resolution 912 to slash peacekeeper numbers to a skeleton force while the RPF issued strict preconditions for any ceasefire.
9. Major powers like the United States and the United Kingdom gutted reinforcement resolutions, charged exorbitant fees for surplus Cold War gear, and refused to jam hate radio broadcasts that coordinated the nationwide slaughter.
10. The RPF's rapid advance drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into Zaire where a cholera epidemic caused massive casualties, while General Dallaire suffered severe physical and psychological exhaustion from witnessing the failure of humanity.