Roméo Dallaire

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Lieutenant-General Roméo Alain Dallaire, OC, CMM, GOQ, MSC, CD, B.Sc, LL.D (University of Saskatchewan(Granting: 2007) (h.c.) (born June 25, 1946 in Denekamp, The Netherlands) is a Canadian senator, humanitarian, author and retired general. Dallaire is widely known for having served as Force Commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop a war of genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Rwanda 2.1 Original Mission 2.2 Assassination of Habyarimana 2.3 The Genocide 2.4 End to the Genocide 3 Life after Rwanda 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Dallaire was born in Denekamp, Holland to Staff-Sergeant Roméo Louis Dallaire, a Canadian non-commissioned officer, and Catherine Vermaesen, a Dutch nurse. He spent his childhood in Montréal.

He enrolled in the Canadian Army in 1964, as a cadet at Le Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean. In 1969 he graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.

In 1972, Dallaire applied for a Canadian passport to travel overseas with his troops and was surprised to discover that his birth in the Netherlands as the son of a Canadian soldier did not automatically make him a Canadian citizen. [1] He has since become a Canadian citizen.

Dallaire has also attended the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the British Higher Command and Staff Course.

He commanded the 5e Régiment d’Artillerie Légère du Canada . On July 3, 1989 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He then commanded the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. He was also the commandant of Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean from 1990 to 1993.

[edit] Rwanda

See also: Rwandan Genocide

[edit] Original Mission

In late 1993, Dallaire received his commission as the Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. Rwanda had just emerged from civil war between the majority Hutu population and the minority Tutsi -- who operated from neighboring Uganda -- with the signing of the Arusha Accords. The Hutus were led by then-president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Tutsis by the rebel commander Paul Kagame, who is the president of Rwanda today. When Dallaire arrived in Rwanda, his mandate was to supervise the implementation of the Accords during a transitional period in which Tutsi were to share positions of power within the Hutu government.

There were early signs that something was amiss when, on January 22, 1994, a French DC-8 aircraft landed in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, loaded with ammunition and weapons for the FAR. (The Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) was the Hutu army under Habyarimana's control.) Dallaire was unable to seize the weapons as it violated his UN mandate. The Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army told Dallaire that since the munitions were ordered before Arusha, the UN was not allowed to detain the shipment, and displayed paperwork showing that the weapons had been sent by Israel, Belgium, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Egypt. In addition to the arms deliveries, troops from the Rwandan government began dispensing identity cards which identified individuals as Hutus or Tutsis. These cards would later allow Hutu militias to identify their victims with accuracy.

[edit] Assassination of Habyarimana

On the night of 6-7 April 1994, an airplane carrying Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali Airport. Following the airplane crash, Hutu extremists, with help from the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Armed Forces, began a systematic execution of Tutsis and Hutu moderates, as well as many of the moderate elected officials of the new government. Dallaire immediately ordered ten Belgian soldiers to protect the new prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. However, the soldiers were intercepted by the Interhamwe, a Hutu militia, and taken hostage. Madame Agathe and her husband were killed, and later that day, the Belgian soldiers were found dead too. In outrage, Belgium withdrew its forces.

Seeing the situation in Rwanda deteriorating rapidly, Dallaire pleaded for logistical support and reinforcements of 2,000 soldiers for UNAMIR; he estimated that a total of 4,000 well-equipped troops would give the UN enough leverage to put an end to the killings.

The UN Security Council refused, largely because President Bill Clinton refused to provide material aid after the death of several U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia the year before^{[citation needed]}. The Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR further to 260 men.

[edit] The Genocide

Following the withdrawal of Belgian forces, whom Dallaire considered his best-trained and best-equipped, Dallaire consolidated his contingent of Canadian, Ghanaian, Tunisian, and Bangladeshi soldiers in urban areas and focused on providing areas of "safe control" in and around Kigali. Most of Dallaire's efforts were to defend specific areas where he knew Tutsis to be hiding. Dallaire's staff—including the U.N.'s unarmed observers—often relied on its U.N. credentials to save Tutsis, heading off Interhamwe attacks even while being outnumbered and outgunned. Dallaire's actions are credited with directly saving the lives of 20,000 Tutsis.

[edit] End to the Genocide

As the massacre progressed and press accounts of the genocide grew, the U.N. Security Council backtracked on its position and voted to establish UNAMIR II, with a strength of 5,500 men in response to the French plan to occupy portions of the country. (The so-called Operation Turquoise, the presence of French troops, was initially opposed by Dallaire because the French had a history of backing the Hutus and the Rwandan Armed Forces, and thus their presence would be opposed by Kagame and the rebel RPF.) It was not until early July, when RPF troops under Kagame swept into Kigali that the genocide ended. By August, the French had handed their portion of the country to the RPF, giving Kagame effective control of all of Rwanda.

As revealed through testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the genocide was brutally efficient, lasting for a total of 100 days and leading to the murder of between 800,000 and 1,171,000 Tutsi and Hutu moderates. Over two million people were displaced internally or in neighbouring countries. The Genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of Rwanda on July 18, 1994, though recrimination, retribution, and criminal prosecutions continue to the present day.

[edit] Life after Rwanda

In 1996 Dallaire was made an Officer of the Legion of Merit of the United States, the highest military decoration available for award to foreigners, for his service in Rwanda.

Dallaire was medically released from the Canadian Forces on April 22, 2000, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time of his retirement he held the rank of lieutenant-general. Blaming himself for the failures of the mission, he began a spiral into a depression, culminating on June 20, 2000, when he was rushed to hospital after being found under a park bench in Hull, Quebec. He was intoxicated and suffering from a reaction with his prescription anti-depressants, and the mixture almost put him into a coma. The story gained national headlines and sparked a fierce debate over the rules of engagement forced upon UN Peacekeepers.

After the 'park-bench' incident, Dallaire began writing his book, started lecturing on his experiences, and was well on the road to recovery. He has since stated that during this bleak period, he considered suicide and attempted it on several occasions.

In January 2002, Dallaire was awarded the inaugural Aegis Trust Award and on October 10, 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In October 2002, the documentary The Last Just Man [2] was released, which chronicles the Rwandan genocide and features interviews with Dallaire, his aide Major Brent Beardsley, and other people who were involved with the events that happened in Rwanda. It was directed by Steven Silver.

Dallaire chronicled the eventful months he spent in Rwanda in his 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, written in collaboration with Beardsley. This book won the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing in 2003 and the 2004 Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

A documentary film, entitled Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, which was inspired by the book and shows LGen Dallaire's return to Rwanda after ten years, was produced by the CBC, SRC and White Pine Pictures, and released in 2004. The film was nominated for two Sundance Film Festival Awards, winning the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for World Cinema - Documentary (Peter Raymont) and a nomination for Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema - Documentary (Peter Raymont). The film aired on CBC on January 31, 2005.

In January 2004, Dallaire appeared at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to testify against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.

In 2004, PBS Frontline featured a documentary named The Ghosts of Rwanda^[3]. In an interview ^[4] conducted for the documentary and recorded over the course of four days in October 2003, LGen Dallaire has said: "Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know...."

In 2004, he was 16th on the voted list of The Greatest Canadian, the highest-rated military figure on the list.

Dallaire worked as a Special Advisor to the Canadian Government on War Affected Children and the Prohibition of Small Arms Distribution, as well as with international agencies with the same focus, including child labour. He is a great proponent of the concept of Institutionalism, and, in 2004-2005, he served as a fellow at The Carr Center For Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's JFK School of Government. He is an endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network.

The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda featured a UN colonel based on Dallaire, played by Nick Nolte. Dallaire is quoted as saying that neither the producer, nor Nolte himself, consulted with him before shooting the film.

A Canadian dramatic feature film Shake Hands with the Devil adapted from Roméo Dallaire's 2003 book and starring Roy Dupuis as Lieutenant-General Dallaire, starts production in mid-June 2006. Dallaire participated in a press conference about the film held on 2 June 2006, in Montréal, and is more involved in consultation for this production than he was in Hotel Rwanda.

On March 9, 2005, Dallaire received the 25th Pearson Peace Medal from Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.

On March 25, 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin appointed Dallaire to the Canadian Senate, representing the province of Quebec. He sits as a Liberal. Soon after his appointment, Dallaire noted that his family has supported both the Liberal Party of Canada and the Quebec Liberal Party since 1958.

On June 1, 2006, Romeo Dallaire was awarded a Doctorate of Human Letters by the Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY) in recognition of his efforts in Rwanda and afterwards to prevent other Genocides from occurring. In his speech, he received an ovation for his comment that "no human is more human than any other". This was the same commencement address that New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi made his infamous remarks about NY Politician Charles Schumer.

On June 16, 2006, Dallaire announced his support for Michael Ignatieff's bid to be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

On September 8, 2006, Concordia University announced that Roméo Dallaire would sit as Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), a research centre based at the university’s Faculty of Arts & Science.[5]

On September 29, 2006, Dallaire issued a statement urging the international community to be prepared to defend Bahá'ís in Iran from possible atrocities.[6]

On October 11, 2006, the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine awarded Dallaire with the 2006 Human Security Award.

On November 18, 2006, Dallaire gave the keynote address at Rutgers Model United Nations 2006, discussing both his role as Force Commander of the UNAMIR, and other, "behind-the-scenes" aspects of the UN's functions and role in modern international politics and warfare.

Dallaire has received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from St. Thomas University, Boston College, the University of Calgary, Athabasca University, Trent University, the University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University, and a honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from the University of Lethbridge.

He is married to Elizabeth Dallaire and has three children: Willem, Catherine and Guy.

There is at least one school named after Dallaire, in Winnipeg, MB [7]

Dallaire is the subject of the song Run Romeo Run on the 2006 album The Great Western by Welshman James Dean Bradfield.

[edit] See also

• Role of the international community in the Rwandan Genocide

[edit] External links

• LGen Roméo Dallaire's official public speaking website at National Speakers Bureau
• Biography of Senator Dallaire on the Canadian Parliament Official Site
• Canada Council of the Arts: brief biography, high-resolution image, and review of Dallaire's autographical book Shake Hands with the Devil
• CBC Biography of LGen Roméo Dallaire
• CBC Digital Archives – Witness To Evil: Roméo Dallaire and Rwanda
• CBC News article on appointment of Roméo Dallaire to the Canadian Senate
• LGen Roméo Dallaire Official Website
• Moving from Words to Actions Panel discussion hosted by Aegis Trust on January 25, 2006.
• Transcript of interview of LGen Dallaire in Ghosts of Rwanda documentary on PBS Frontline.
• Transcript of talk by Romeo Dallaire at the Carnegie Council, 2005
• Transcript of interview of LGen Dallaire at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted in Washington D.C., June 12, 2002.

Preceded by: created by United Nations on October 5, 1993	Force Commander of UNAMIR October 5, 1993 – August 15, 1994	Succeeded by: Major-General Guy Tousignant (Canada)
Preceded by: Roch Bolduc	Gulf Senate division 2005-present	Succeeded by: Incumbent