The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Shake Hands With The Devil

The award-winning war memoir by the general who commanded the UN forces during the Rwandan Genocide

Shake Hands With The Devil is one of the saddest books I have ever read and one of the most heart-breaking eye-witness accounts.A kind of naive and painfully honest confession of the failure of an organisation, a meticulous description of one of the worst betrayals in the history of humanity.

indisputably the best account of the whole terrible Rwandan genocide

Although this is a deeply personal book, it is undoubtedly an important historical record of the UN's failure in Rwanda and an impassioned plea against the moral cowardice that allowed the genocide to happen.

Roméo Dallaire joined the Canadian Army in 1964. A three star General, he served as Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army and later in the Ministry of Defence. In 1993 he was sent to Rwanda on a UN peace-helping mission; he was soon struggling to prevent one of modern history's most shocking events and the UN's famous failed mission: the genocide in Rwanda. General Dallaire was medically released from the armed forces in April 2000 due to posttraumatic stress disorder and is now special adviser to the Canadian government on war-affected children and the prohibition of small arms distribution. In January 2002, he received the inaugural Aegis Award for Genocide Prevention in London. The Rwandan genocide is one of the most shocking examples of political exploitation and ethnic cleansing in living memory. It has been immortalised in the films Hotel Rwanda and Shooting Dogs, and here in the words of a seasoned soldier.

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 
WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD 
 
'Indisputably the best account of the whole terrible Rwandan genocide.' R. W. Johnson, Sunday Times 
 
'Angry, accusatory and extremely moving.' Caroline Moorhead, Spectator 
 
 
When Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, he thought he was heading off to Africa to help two warring parties achieve a peace both sides wanted. Instead, he and members of his small international force were caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. Dallaire left Rwanda a broken man; disillusioned, suicidal, and determined to tell his story. 
 
An award-winning international sensation, Shake Hands with the Devil is a landmark contribution to the literature of war: a remarkable tale of a soldier's courage and an unforgettable portrait of modern warfare. It is also a stinging indictment of the petty bureaucrats who refused to give Dallaire the men and the operational freedom he needed to stop the killing. 'I know there is a God,' Dallaire writes, 'because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.' 
 
 
'Read Roméo Dallaire's profoundly sad and moving book.' Madeleine Albright, Washington Post

Romeo Dallaire

Dallaire's sorrow and anger is impressive. The object of this book is to promote and publicise his Child Soldier Initiative. Reading it is tough, but so are the lives of children who are forced to kill

Part mea culpa, part manifesto, part appeal for the reader's support, the book is a rallying call for those whose common humanity is affronted by the image of children brainwashed, bullied and exploited into becoming killing machines

Do you kill children who kill? Romeo Dallaire's heart-shredding They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children examines that question in relentless, exhausting detail. The case for more muscular, moral intervention in foreign lands could hardly be better made than it is here

It's Dallare's highlighting of the enormous potential each and every one of us has in helping eradicate this terrible global practice that resonates most effectively. For that reason alone the author is to be congratulated and this book welcomed

In conflicts around the world, there is an increasingly popular weapon system that needs negligible technology, is simple to sustain, has unlimited versatility, and an incredible capacity for both loyalty and barbarism. What are these cheap, renewable, plentiful, sophisticated, and expendable weapons? Children. 
 
This important book is part of a passionate personal mission against the use of child soldiers, by the three-star general who commanded the UN mission in Rwanda. 
 
When Romeo Dallaire was tasked with achieving peace there in 1994, he and his force found themselves caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. He left Rwanda a broken man, disillusioned, suicidal, a story he told in the award-winning international sensation Shake Hands with the Devil. 
 
Now, in They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, Dallaire provides an emotionally daring and intellectually enlightening introduction to the child soldier phenomenon, as well as concrete solutions for its total eradication. 
 
Dallaire speaks up for those without a voice - children in conflicts around the globe who do not choose to fight, but who through ill-fate and the accident of birth find their way into soldiering. This is a book that addresses one of the most harrowing, urgent and important issues of our time.

Romeo Dallaire

Praise for They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

Dallaire's sorrow and anger is impressive. The object of this book is to promote and publicise his Child Soldier Initiative. Reading it is tough, but so are the lives of children who are forced to kill

Part mea culpa, part manifesto, part appeal for the reader's support, the book is a rallying call for those whose common humanity is affronted by the image of children brainwashed, bullied and exploited into becomin ...

Do you kill children who kill? Romeo Dallaire's heart-shredding They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children examines that question in relentless, exhausting detail. The case for more muscular, moral inte ...

Dallaire's sorrow and anger is impressive. The object of this book is to promote and publicise his Child Soldier Initiative. Reading it is tough, but so are the lives of children who are forced to kill

Part mea culpa, part manifesto, part appeal for the reader's support, the book is a rallying call for those whose common humanity is affronted by the image of children brainwashed, bullied and exploited into becomin ...

Do you kill children who kill? Romeo Dallaire's heart-shredding They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children examines that question in relentless, exhausting detail. The case for more muscular, moral inte ...

Dallaire's sorrow and anger is impressive. The object of this book is to promote and publicise his Child Soldier Initiative. Reading it is tough, but so are the lives of children who are forced to kill

Part mea culpa, part manifesto, part appeal for the reader's support, the book is a rallying call for those whose common humanity is affronted by the image of children brainwashed, bullied and exploited into becomin ...

Do you kill children who kill? Romeo Dallaire's heart-shredding They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children examines that question in relentless, exhausting detail. The case for more muscular, moral inte ...

Books by Romeo Dallaire

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