Panel Condemns Failures in Rwanda

Romeo Dallaire, the former force commander for the United Nations mission to Rwanda, last night condemned the U.N.’s and United States’ failure to intervene in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Dallaire was one of three speakers in a panel titled “Ghosts of Rwanda” at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics. The Forum featured the FRONTLINE documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda.”

The forum started on a sober note with a clip from the documentary.

“Lots of those eyes still haunt me,” Dallaire said in the clip. “How come I failed? How come my mission failed? How come I lost my soldiers and 800,000 people died?”

During the event, Dallaire discussed his dealings with U.N. bureaucracy and his efforts to “stymie the progress” of the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu government. The Hutus were the ethnic majority in Rwanda.

Dallaire also discussed the ethical quandary he faced when negotiating with Hutu leaders responsible for the genocide.

“I noticed some blood on them...and suddenly they were no longer humans,” Dallaire said. “I was literally talking with the devil.”

“Is it okay to negotiate with the devil to save people, or do I wipe them out right there?” he continued.

The other panelists—“Ghosts of Rwanda” producer Greg Barker and Kennedy School Lecturer and Pulitzer Prize Winner Samantha Power—stressed institutional denial of the genocide and the reasons for the United Nations’ failure to intervene. Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Michael Ignatieff moderated.

The forum featured a seven-minute clip from “Ghosts of Rwanda” in which journalists and Red Cross volunteers recounted how the Rwanda mission was “devoid of support from New York,” where U.N. headquarters is located, and that “everyone knew what was going on in the country.”

After the clip, Power praised Dallaire for his leadership in adverse conditions.

“The man who did the most feels the worst,” Power said of Dallaire.

She said lower-level U.N. bureaucrats had vital information concerning Rwanda, but that the highest level “had other national interests.”

“Rwandans were just a cost-benefit equation...a statistic,” Power said. “Their institutional interest was saving the U.N., even when saving the U.N. meant pulling troops out of Rwanda.”

All three panelists said the U.N. Security Council and U.S. government failed to intervene because they did not want to commit troops to a dangerous conflict in Africa.

“The feeling was if you took sides, it was yours,” Power said. “You were in it for the long haul.”

Power also said President Clinton “never had a Cabinet meeting” during the genocide. She added that Richard Clarke—who was then a presidential adviser and who has recently alleged that the Bush administration bungled warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks—“is the only one who’s been honest. Clarke says [Rwanda] wasn’t in our national interest...and if he had to, he would advise the same today.”

Dallaire and Barker denied that Kofi Annan, the current U.N. secretary general who headed the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, got off too easily for his failure to act in the Rwandan crisis. Dallaire said Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary general at the time, deserved more blame than he received.

“There was the kingpin. He wasn’t even in New York the first three weeks of the genocide,” Dallaire said.

At the end of the forum, Ignatieff announced that Dallaire will be a fellow at the Carr Center next year. His concluding statement was that the audience should “go out tonight knowing [the genocide] did not have to happen.”

Dallaire’s accounts seem to have left an impression on audience members.

Amy Smith, a student at Gordon College, said “it was very provocative to hear from Dallaire himself” and that she left with a greater understanding of the Rwandan genocide.

Jessica Gustin, an Americorps volunteer who was also at the forum, added that seeing Dallaire was an “extraordinary privilege.”

PBS will air “Ghosts of Rwanda” on April 1.