Forced Bystander.
In the fall of 1993 the commander of the UNAMIR in Rwanda Romeo Dallare and his small group of peacekeepers arrived in Rwanda. They were doing a good job maintaining the ceasefire and being a leader in a very turbulent situation. Before the genocide started he sent a warning to the west that a genocide was being planned, but his warning went to deaf ears. When the genocide broke out April 14th of 1994, he left his big house in Kigali in a UN Jeep, he never returned to the house and his phone never stopped ringing that day. He was trying to convince the UN to send another 5,000 well armed soldiers and some tanks to maintain order, but instead the Belgian's withdrew their soldiers after the killing of the peacekeepers. He suggested the UN approve his action to seize all the weapons from the Hutu extremists but that went to deaf ears. The Belgians wanted to pull out after the region. Simultaneously after the Belgians left, all the foreign soldiers left besides 200 soldiers. So Romeo Dallare kept on trying to convince the UN to send 5k troops until the end of the genocide in mid July of 1994. His pleas never worked and at the end the RPF took down the militia and ended the genocide. At the end, of his time in Rwanda he felt like he let hundreds of thousands of innocent Rwandan's down so he attempted suicide by driving around "looking to be ambushed". That did not work and eventually he came home to Canada, a decorated military general. A couple years later, Romeo Dallare said "The impact of the trauma of Rwanda had physically affected my brain and had put me in a state where there was no capability left of any desire for life, any desire to even consider life. I was even debating whether I should exist as I held on my shoulders, and still today, the belief that as commander of the mission in Rwanda I had failed the Rwandans. I had failed in my duty as the UN mission commander to assist the Rwandans to be able to move to a peaceful application of democracy in a rather short period of time." Romeo Dallare suffers from extreme PTSD now, and he wrote a book "Shaking hands with the devil".
For me, I forgive the US for not intervening early on in the event but as things clearly began to show signs of genocide and urgent requests for aid and troops rang out nothing was truly done. Dallaire tried to do anything he could to save the Rwandan people and was forced to be a bystander as you explained. The US showed little interest in Rwanda and practically only addressed it because they were forced too by the UN and international community. In the passage we are reading in class we have learned about the multiple cases where the lack of knowledge and interest in Rwanda lead to the event being made much less significant and atrocious as it really was.
ReplyDeleteIt is so sad to think about how it is probably the person who tried to do the most to help from the international community who has felt the most guilt. While there are hundreds of thousands of obvious victims of the Rwandan genocide, it is important to consider that although Dallaire feels like he failed the Rwandans, he was also one of the people failed, in a different way, by the inaction of the international community. Other countries who could have helped did not believe intervening in any way was worth the risks. However, their inaction should not be forgiven. Rather, it should be a source of shame for the leaders who could have made the choice to help but refused. Further, all people should keep the consequences of the international community's failure to help the Rwandans in mind in the future. While Dallaire did what was in his control to help the Rwandans more and was, in fact, forced to be a bystander because of the lack of support that would have been needed to do so, the populations of countries who did not intervene when they had the chance were not forced bystanders. The leaders who refused to support Dallaire's pleas for help should feel guilty, and the citizens of countries like the US, who saw the news yet convinced themselves that urging their leaders to do anything more to help was not in their own best interest, should feel guilty. Dallaire was forced to be a bystander, but there are few others from the international community who can be described the same way in the case of the Rwandan Genocide.
ReplyDeleteIt is incredibly depressing when our foreign policy repeatedly ends up on the wrong side of history. I find it reprehensible that we live in a nation that spends half of our budget on military defense but cannot stop genocide when given ample amounts of intel. It is simply unacceptable, that our diplomacy repeatedly prioritizes put in minimal effort while maintaining the facade of a nation that represents the values of justice and equality.
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