The assassination of the Rwandan president on April 6, 1994 sparked a vicious 100-day slaughter perpetrated by Hutu extremists. Their target was overwhelmingly Tutsi, accounting for 90 percent of the 800,000 killed. Hutu moderates were also targeted.
There were UN troops in the country at the time, under the command of General Romeo Dallaire. Over the coming days, it became evident to Dallaire, aide workers and journalists that a massacre was happening. Dallaire asked for an increase in his forces; instead, his American, French, Italian and Belgian troops were pulled out of the country.
In the age of rapid communication and the 24-hour news cycle, a ghastly genocide occurred. No one seemed willing to contemplate the gravity of the situation-or to do anything about it.
There were excuses offered then, and re-iterated recently.
Then Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright told PBS’ Frontline, “It could not have been stopped, because it was just so-Volcanic is the only word. I used that to describe it later, because it just exploded, and was so massive.”
Also, Western leaders claimed the full scope of the genocide was obscured.
“You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But when you were [there] at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda,” Albright said.
That claim of uncertainty, of a failure to grasp exactly what was happening, was the talking point that President Bill Clinton brought to Rwanda in 1998. Policy makers say they never realized what was happening. Dallaire calls them liars.
“When [Clinton] was there in `98, he said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know. We didn’t realize.’ I’ve got all those quotes and stuff, which are outright lies. They knew, it was there as information, and it is evident that that information was either at his level or stopped within the structures,” Dallaire said to Frontline.
The fiery French-Canadian General, who suffered posttraumatic stress from the ordeal, has been outspoken in the blame he believes rests on not only Hutu extremists but also Western powers.
In a press conference in Kigali, Rwanda, Dallaire said, “The international community didn’t give one damn for Rwandans because Rwanda was a country of no strategic importance.”
At the outset of the massacre, Dallaire faxed his commanders to explain that substantial killings – a massacre – were occurring in Rwanda.
The response was to remain unengaged militarily and if possible to seek a diplomatic solution. It seems likely that this genocide was planned in advance, with a propaganda network in place to fuel Hutu hatred of Tutsis and thousands of machetes distributed to farmers to commit the evil.
Repeated pleas for help went unanswered by the international community.
Some men did act. One, Captain Mbaye Diagne, gave his life trying to help the victims of the genocide.
“He was part of that particular group of UN Military Observers, unarmed, that … on their own initiative would go to places where they were told people might be hidden, and they would get them out,” said Dallaire to Frontline.
Some people were evacuated less clandestinely. They were all expatriates, facing relatively little threat from the Hutus, who cared more about dead Tutsis and dead political enemies.
“Within days of the start of this and the evacuation of the expatriates-all these white people, businessmen, abandoning the nannies who had raised their kids for years, with bags full … even bringing their dogs on the aircraft,” Dallaire said.
Beyond the evacuation of their expatriates, the concern of the Western powers ended abruptly.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who in 1994 lead the UN’s peacekeeping operations, told Frontline that members of the UN lacked “the will” to intervene.
Annan was also skeptical that such a will is possible now, even to prevent a dire catastrophe. “I really don’t know,” he said, “I wish I can say ‘yes,’ but I am not convinced that we will see the kind of political will and the action required to stop it.”
However, the spirit of the United Nations requires nations to have this will to intervene. Common decency and morality, shared almost universally among human cultures, compels people to do what they can to preserve human rights; not to ignore the cries for help from the innocent.
Further, the United States has often promised to spread freedom and liberty. That’s why, President George W. Bush often says, the terrorists attacked us. That’s why, he often says, we are in Iraq. Whether you agree with his justification, the message of spreading freedom and liberty, of ensuring human rights, is a noble one.
There was a call to action in Rwanda, which came from Dallaire.
When the killings had only just begun, Dallaire sent his fax and felt a solution would be near.
“I sent it and I went to bed, and probably slept one of the best nights I had because I felt that finally we were going to take a certain level of control that would permit us to do so much more, politically and militarily, security wise,” he said.
His relief was short lived.
At the conclusion of his fax, he added the motto of his brigade “allons-y” meaning, “let’s go,” he told Frontline.
Long before Todd Beamer’s “Let’s roll” galvanized a sadden nation, General Dallaire’s “A)llons-y” called for an organization, and indeed the entire world, to live up to the responsibility we all have to preserve peace for all people.
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