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

Romeo DallaireToronto: Random House Canada, 2003. xxii, 562 pp, $39.95 cloth (ISBN 0-679-31171-8)This is General Romeo Dallaire's day-by-day account of his command of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1993-1994. The immediate roots of the conflict in that small nation date back to the First World War, when Belgium took trusteeship over the former German colony. The Belgians promoted the minority Tutsi tribe as the elite administrative class until revolution by the majority brought national independence in 1962. Violent repression by the new Hutu-dominated government caused hundreds of thousands of Tutsis to flee, mainly to neighbouring Uganda. The Tutsi repeatedly mounted…