Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda Book

I imagine many copies of this bestselling book lie around unread or abandoned. I did not read all 548 pages. It's huge and vastly detailed and extremely narrowly focussed on what Romeo Dallaire did on a day to day hour by hour basis during the terrible period of the genocide.

This is what the whole heart and soul of the book is about - it's not about WHY the genocide happened, and how some Rwandans could slaughter 800,000 of their fellow citizens, it's about how the rest of the world, having been informed of the ongoing mass killings, didn't respond. This is from page 240:

The extremists had taken their cue from the grim farces of Bosnia and Somalia. They knew that Western nations do not have the stomach of the will to sustain casualties in peace support operations. When confronted with casualties, as the United States was in Somalia or the Belgians in Rwanda, they will run, regardless of the consequences to the abandoned population.

So much of this book is about Dallaire rushing about trying to get more resources for the pitiful UN peacekeeping force he was commanding, trying to do deals here and there, like a guy frantically trying to prop up a roof which is visibly caving in by cellotaping chopsticks together. It's just pitiful.

Here's where I stopped reading. Page 406 - at the height of the genocide:

That night I wrote a sharp letter of protest to Kagame over the mortar fire at the crossroads.

This is what the poor guy was reduced to. Sharp letters of protest, while the bodies piled up in the killing fields.