Romeo Dallaire: Model of Faith

Romeo Dallaire was born in Denekamp, The Netherlands on June 25 1946. His father, Staff-Sergeant Romeo Louis Dallaire, was a Canadian non-commissioned officer, and his mother,Catherine Vermaesen, was a Dutch nurse. At six months, Dallaire and his family moved to Montreal, Canada where he spent his childhood.In 1964, he joined the Canadian Army, as a cadet attending school at Le College militaire royal de Saint-Jean. In 1969 he graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada and was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.

In 1993, Romeo Dallaire was given a commission to be the Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. He was given 2,600 troops (mainly from Bangladesh and Ghana) with the orders to oversee a continued end to the fighting, and the signing of a peace treaty between Rowanda's two main groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. All was going well until a plane carrying two prominent Hutu leaders was shot down in 1994. Immediately the Hutu controlled radio blamed the Tutsis and called for their total extermination. this began a 100 day genocide in which between 800,000 and 1,171,000 Rawandan men, women and children were killed.

Dallaire, however did not have enough troops or ammunition in order to put down this genocide. All they could do was watch. Dallaire pleaded with the U.N. to send more troops and ammunition and the authority to seize Hutu arms caches. Dallaire argued saying that he would only need 5,000 more troops in order to stop this mass murder of civilians. However the U.N. refused. Dallaire pleaded with the U.S. to shut down the Hutu radio that was calling the orders for genocide. Clinton refused to do even this, and the killings continued. About seven days into the genocide the U.N. Secratary General, Boutros Ghali, ordered that Dallaire withdraw all the troops from Uganda. However, Dallaire refused to follow these orders."The situation was going to shit....And, I said, 'No, I can't leave.'"

Romeo Dallaire is a model of faith in today's world because he denied orders to withdraw from a mission to stop a genocide which was impossible to stop, and stayed on: to help in anyway he could. While he could not stop the mass genocide he was able to bear witness to it, to help the survivors, and minimize the amount of deaths as much as he was able to. After Rwanda, Dallaire retired from the military and was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. He spiraled into depression and became heavily dependent on alcohol and anti-depressants. Today he gives speeches about his experiences and has recently written a book, Shake Hands with the Devil

Some interesting related websites

Le College militaire royal de Saint-Jean

Orphans of Rwanda

An Interview with Romeo Dallaire

Sorces:

National Security Archive

BACK