Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda is a 2003 non-fiction book by Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire and Major Brent Beardsley. The bulk of the book is the account of Dallaire's experiences as force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) from 1993-1994. Dallaire and UNAMIR are originally tasked with preserving the fragile Arusha Accords, a ceasefire agreement which the UN hopes will be a roadmap to peacefully ending Rwanda's ethnic civil war. UNAMIR is meant to be the neutral force keeping the peace between the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government and the Tutsi militants of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as the two sides form a multi-ethnic transitional democratic government.
As the situation deteriorates and Rwanda plunges into a bloody genocide Dallaire the rest of UNAMIR do what they can, within the restrictive standing orders imposed by the UN Security Council, to protect civilians and stem the bloodshed as Dallaire desperately tries to convince the UN and major world powers to do something.
The book won the 2003 Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing and 2004 Governor General's Award for nonfiction. The book also served as the basis for a documentary film about Dallaire's life called Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire in 2004.
A fictionalized version of Dallaire, played by Nick Nolte, appears in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda.
There was also a film in 2007.
This work provides examples of:
- Badass Bureaucrat: A number of civilian administrative staff in UNAMIR and other organisations get named and praised for their dedication to their own life-saving tasks under immense pressure and danger.
- Badass Crew: Dallaire's entire team, save the Bangladeshis and some of the Belgians. It takes balls to live the way they did.
- Badass Pacifist: All of UNAMIR. They aren't allowed to fight unless they're attacked first. That doesn't stop them from protecting the refugees.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The RGF is slaughtering and torturing civilians, while the RPF is shelling civilian places and taking away medical aid.
- Blatant Lies: What the Clinton administration said about what they did to help Rwanda. 'Provided $9 million in relief' my ass.
- The Chessmaster: Paul Kagame
- Child Soldiers: The RPF and the RGF both use child soldiers... something Dallaire is violently opposed too.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: The shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane with surface-to-air missiles (killing both Habyarimana and the President of Burundi) is a major catalyst of the genocide, which begins mere hours later. The identity of the side responsibile remains disputed to this day: most (including the post-genocide Rwandan government) state that Hutu extremists in the government wanted the relatively moderate Habyarimana eliminated, while others say the RPF killed him because of their frustration of the delay in implementing the Arusha Accords.
- Dirty Coward: Generally averted; most of the people involved conduct themselves magnificently, however, a small group of Belgian bodyguards abandon their VIPs under fire (after disobeying direct orders not to bring them back at night), and the Bangladeshi officers (in addition to repeatedly making it clear that they are not willing to take their troops into situations that are actually dangerous) are photographed stampeding towards their evacuation plane, dropping their belongings on the tarmac with some of them literally kissing the aircraft, and leaving their subordinates to catch the next plane.
- Doorstopper: Over 500 pages, in most versions.
- Frameup: Used in one of the most depicable ways possible: it is speculated that the RGF had framed the RPF for the
murders and gang-rape of six young children. - The Friend Nobody Likes: The Belgians are widely disliked by Rwandans, both because of the colonial history and because some of the soldiers behave disgracefully. However, the Bangladeshis take the cake in UNAMIR, with displays of farcical incompetence that would be comical in a less deadly situation. See Dirty Coward above for an incident on which Dallaire notes his "extreme displeasure", as well as a wry observation that they couldn't even leave without screwing over the mission in some way.
- Friend to All Children: Dallaire. In the Prologue, he almost decides to take an orphaned child back to the UN camp in Kigali. He cares deeply about the youth of Rwanda.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Dallaire and UNAMIR are repeatedly attacked by the Hutu-supremacist radio network RTLM, the most influential media outlet in Rwanda. RTLM even calls for their listener to kill Dallaire on sight and, to be safe, kill any other white man with a mustache they see.
- The RPF could technically count, too, though the hero part is really debatable.
- Heroic BSoD: Dallaire and troops suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome after all the horrors they've witnessed in genocide.
- Dallaire himself was seriously suicidal for years after returning to Canada. As he mentioned in the afterword for the book, writing it was his attempt to dispel the demons that haunted him. It was apparently mostly successful, though in speaking engagements and interviews he admits to still having deep-seeded psychological problems.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: During a meeting in the demilitarization zone between the RPF and RGF, unbeknownst to the participants, RGF forces begin planting mines on the road back to the capital, despite UNAMIR having warned them multiple times not to do so in the zone. Ultimately, the only person threatened by this is Bagosora, who was not only responsible for the RGF's nonsensical antics, but was (as later events suggest) so staunchly anti-peace/Tutsi that the whole meeting was pointless, and thus in his hurry to leave he rushed straight into the minefield before the UNAMIR party uncovered it.
- Humans Are Bastards: The subtitle of the book is "The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda". Being deployed in Rwanda during the genocide can show a darker side of humanity.
- Last Stand: Dallaire remains there to the bitter end.
- Only Sane Man: Dallaire, sometimes. While the rest of the world refuses to see the scope of the genocide and take action, Dallaire is in the thick of it from start to finish. Especially later on in the book, when Dallaire's two most loyal men, Brent Beardsley and Luc Marchal, are forced to leave UNAMIR.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After finding out that their family had been slaughtered, some of the RPF soldiers go on this against the Hutus.
- Romeo himself flirts with this upon the discovery of the Belgian soldiers murdered during the opening hours of the genocide:
Romeo: "I wanted to take justice into my own hands, an eye for an eye - the first time I had ever felt the toxic pull of retribution." - Self-Harm: Dallaire was known to cut himself after his return.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Romeo Dallaire.
- Slave to PR: The entire UN, and (surprising no one) the Clinton Administration.
- The Strategist: Dallaire thinks Kagame fully deserves his nickname of "the Napoleon of Africa" and is convinced very early on that the RPF will win the war because their leadership is so obviously superior to the RGF. While it is ambiguous whether Kagame had ulterior motives in his actions (or at least had different priorities) the brilliance of his military campaign is beyond question.
- Tragic Hero: Dallaire, oh so much.
- Unreliable Narrator: Just about everybody. The UN, the national heads of state, the genocidaires, the RPF.... everybody. Even Dallaire has been accused of this.
- Villain Ball: The Genocidaires. Had they not decided to wage genocide, they wouldn't have seen themselves reduced to hated, hunted, and despised escapees fleeing not only from a Rwandan government ruled by their longtime enemy, but also most of the world.
- Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: The Bangladeshi regiments in UNAMIR are drilled to perfection on the parade ground, unfortunately they have zero combat experience, and unlike the other nations' contributions they are completely unwilling to gain experience by actually putting themselves at any kind of risk. The one time this is averted is when the collapsing infrastructure and sanitation threatens devastating outbreaks of disease; unlike the soldiers from more developed countries, the Bangladeshis were very experienced in such matters from their own homeland, and Dallaire (who pulls no punches with his denunciation of their incompetence on many other occasions) notes that their organisation of basic essentials like proper latrine trenches amongst the chaos was excellent.
