An uncommon general

General Dallaire responded to my e-mail, sent to him on the commemoration date of the Rwandan genocide by saying, ‘A late reply but not forgotten dearest Elizabeth. Many thanks indeed for the thoughts and the wishes and the support from an old soldier still smarting from his mission many years ago.’

Sixteen years of therapy and nine pills a day still do not diminish that ‘smarting’ or the unwarranted guilt that General Dallaire feels for not having stopped the genocide.

Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, Ret., was the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the genocide. He warned the U.N. of the forthcoming massacre. In a now famous cable to New York on January 11, 1994, General Dallaire asked for authority to seize machetes and other weapons shipped into Rwanda for Hutu militias. In a letter signed by Kofi Annan, the then-head of U.N. Department of Peacekeeping, Annan denied him permission to act.

Despite his cable to the U.N., the Security Council refused to help, largely due to US opposition. The Security Council ordered UNAMIR to leave Rwanda. But General Dallaire, despite orders, did not abandon the people he was sent to protect. He was able to save approximately 30,000 people in Rwanda, despite threats to kill him, and acquiring post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during his time there. PTSD haunts him to this day, about which he is outspoken, advocating for better support for it.

The first time I met General Dallaire was on July 7, 2005, when he agreed to speak at the New York City Bar (NYC Bar) for no fee, forgoing a generous stipend from a university. I suggested that date because it was the day commemorating the start of Rwandan genocide in which over 800,000 people were killed, mostly with machetes. Just weeks before then, General Dallaire had been appointed to the Canadian Senate.

Speaking extemporaneously, as he always does, he posed the question, ‘Are all humans human or some more human than others?’ highlighting the fact that the Western world turned its back on black Africans. Why did no one come to help Rwanda, he asked, when it was clear that a genocide was taking place? Because, Dallaire plainly said, ‘Our lives seem more important than theirs.’

The measure of the man was highlighted when he refused to stop autographing his book, ‘Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda’, for the long line of participants at the NYC Bar’s program, although he had to leave his hotel at 4:30 A.M. to take the plane back to Canada. I asked some of the attendees not to wait because of the General’s early departure, but he stopped me, saying, ‘I want to make sure I accommodate everyone who came here tonight to hear me.’ It was very late before the last book was signed.

The next time I met with General Dallaire was after he had written his seminal book, ‘They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers’. He had again agreed to speak at a program initiated by the New York City Bar. Dallaire was sporting the red tie that he usually wears for such occasions—one with children’s faces on it. I called a car service to pick him up from his hotel to take him to a dinner I had arranged with several others. Unbeknownst to me, he was accompanied by a film crew that was prefacing a documentary on his forthcoming trip to Africa to try to dissuade militia leaders from using child soldiers.

But while the film crew waited, General Dallaire took time to converse in French with my French-speaking Haitian driver. When we arrived at the restaurant, Dallaire conversed with all of us, but also graciously acknowledged the busboy as well as the owner of the restaurant, who came over to meet the General.

When we waited at the venue where General Dallaire was going to speak for the attendees to arrive, it became clear that the former child soldier, who was going to introduce the General, was not going to be there. (He later sent an e-mail saying he’d taken ill.)

General Dallaire asked me to introduce him, and not being prepared, I left out some of the General’s achievements and many of his awards, almost too numerous to mention. When I later apologized for the omissions, the General characteristically reassured me that the introduction was sufficient, that I shouldn’t worry about the exclusions, and said, with a smile, that the audience probably wouldn’t miss the information.

When General Dallaire spoke, he mentioned his book, ‘They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children’ that chronicles his enlistment in the Canadian army, in which his father had been a non-commissioned officer, and includes a play about a child soldier. But his main emphasis was on the experience, which he describes in the book, when a wild-eyed, crazed child soldier in Rwanda pressed the muzzle of an AK-47 at his nose. ‘That little boy could have been my son,’ Dallaire said.

A strategy to cope with this situation is dealt with in the ‘Handbook for Security Sector Actors’ written by the staff at the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, which the General founded in 2008. The handbook was used as a training tool for the Sierra Leonean army and police. It also empowers military, police and peacekeepers to protect themselves and improve their interactions with children during actual armed conflict.

My next encounter with the General was after the documentary, bearing the same title as his book on child soldiers, was completed. It chronicles his travels to South Sudan, Rwanda and the northwest, war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. The film records the General’s conversations with militia leaders, aimed at convincing them to stop the ‘unmanly’ use of children. He also took time to talk with and protect former child soldiers.

The film was shown after a reception that was held by the NYC Bar for General Dallaire. The discussions after the showing included General Dallaire, affable as always, and Grace Akallo, a former child soldier abducted by Joseph Kony’s LRA in Northern Uganda. I had heard of Grace before, but she was now much more open about her horrendous experiences, probably motivated by the documentary and General Dallaire’s interest and concern for her.

The next time I saw the General was last year at a policy forum at the International Peace Institute on children and armed conflict co-organized with the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. With his typical interest in other people, General Dallaire greeted me by asking, ‘Are you still vital?’ perceptively noticing the haggard look on my face after a recent hospital stay. Anyone would be energized in the presence of General Dallaire, who, although approaching his 69th birthday, speaks tirelessly on the plight of child soldiers, advocates for better PTSD support for veterans, and is in the process of writing two books -- one on his own struggles with PTSD and the other on his life and attempted suicide after his return from Rwanda.

* Elizabeth Barad is the former chair of the New York City Bar's Rwanda Legal Task Force, the co-chair of the Committee on African Affairs, and has initiated and presented at ethics and gender-sensitivity workshops in Rwanda.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM
* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News