Rwanda Veteran Will Address KSG Grads

Canadian Senator Roméo A. Dallaire—a retired Lieutenant-General who has spent the past year as a fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy—will deliver today’s graduate address at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

Dallaire is best known for serving as the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda from 1993 to 1994. During this time, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by extremist Hutus in 100 days, while Dallaire’s calls for support from the developed world went unheeded.

In recent years, he has authored the best-selling book “Shake Hands With the Devil” about his experiences in Rwanda.

“[Dallaire] brings a really interesting perspective,” says KSG Dean David T. Ellwood ’75, who selected Dallaire with the input of students. “We admire him both for his values and the vision he brings.”

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Although he left Rwanda in August of 1994, Dallaire continues to speak out about the terrors he witnessed in the war-torn country—an uncomfortable subject that some would rather forget.

Dallaire has been an advocate for increased awareness of the challenges facing combat veterans, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder­—a condition that led to Dallaire’s medical discharge from the military in 2000.

Still haunted by the images of children in Rwanda, Dallaire has become outspoken about the suffering of youths living in war-torn areas.

Tiawan S. Gongloe, another Carr Center fellow this year, has worked with Dallaire and speculates that the General will use tomorrow’s speech as an opportunity to speak about issues including the plight of child soldiers and the need for more support from the developed world for intervention in places like Darfur.

“He will be appealing to the United States and Britain to put more money into peacekeeping,” says Gongloe. “He is a very frank speaker, he doesn’t embellish anything. He [speaks] in a very simple and sincere way.”

Gongloe, a native of Liberia who was prosecuted by the Liberian government for his campaign for human rights, says he is grateful for people like Dallaire who work to bring attention to Africa.

“I feel so glad that he speaks for me, and that he speaks for people from my part of the world,” Gongloe says. “He is a man that is committed to the good of humanity”

WITNESSING GENOCIDE

Dallaire first arrived in Rwanda on August 19, 1993, for a 12-day fact finding mission. He returned for a longer stay in October of that year, at which point he began the difficult task of advancing a peace between the Hutu-controlled Rwandan Government Forces (RGF) and the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

From the beginning, Dallaire had difficulty getting the support he thought necessary for his mission. Belgium, Bangladesh, and other nations sent troops, but not in the numbers he had requested.

Within months, the situation grew more worrisome. In January 1994, Dallaire received a report that Hutu extremists were preparing to exterminate large numbers of Tutsi, and he requested permission from the United Nations (U.N.) to take action.

Dallaire quickly heard back from the U.N.: he was to do nothing to stop rumored weapons shipments. The U.N. said it did not think that powerful nations like the United States would support a forceful intervention.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the President of Rwanda was shot down— setting off a collapse of the nascent Rwandan government. Extremist Hutus killed the Prime Minister and the 10 Belgian troops who were protecting her, and a campaign began to rid the country of Tutsi.

Less than three weeks later, the U.N. decided to withdraw its troops from Rwanda. By that point, tens of thousands had already been killed.

Dallaire insisted on staying behind, and for the next three months he watched as the body count rose higher and higher. His stubborn force is credited with saving thousands, but the genocide continued until July, when the RPF finally took control of the capital from the RGF.

THE PATH TO RWANDA

Dallaire spent most of his life in a world far removed from the instability of Rwanda.

He was born into a military family, in 1946, in Holland. His father was a non-commissioned officer in the Canadian Army who moved his family back to Canada shortly after Dallaire’s birth.

As a child, Dallaire decided that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he enrolled in the Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean in Quebec. He eventually moved onto the Royal Military College in Ontario, from which he graduated in 1969.

For the next 25 years, Dallaire rose through the ranks of the peacetime Canadian Army, commanding larger and larger artillery forces.

On June 27, 1993, he was asked by his superior, Major-General Armand Roy, whether he could deploy overseas to lead a United Nations peacekeeping mission to the nation of Rwanda.

“I confess that when General Roy called, I didn’t know where Rwanda was or exactly what kind of trouble the country was in,” Dallaire writes in his book.

But what was unfamiliar territory at the time was to become a defining experience, transforming Dallaire into the human-rights advocate who will address this year’s KSG graduates.

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.