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General Dallaire
| Date: |
27 March 2005 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Sophia Phirippides
Sophia Phirippides
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire speaking to Rwandans: 'The world is ruled by a belief that will permit other genocides. The superpowers had no interest in you. In Yugoslavia, it's different. It's 400 years of historic conflict between great religions of the world. It's ethnic cleansing. It's European security. It's whites. Rwanda is black. It's in the middle of Africa. It has no strategic value. And all that's there, they told me, are people, and there are too many anyway.'
Ruda Landman (Carte Blanche presenter): 'In 1994, in just over 100 days, an estimated 800 000 men, women and children were brutally murdered in Rwanda. It has come to be known as one of the most horrific genocides in human history. At the time, one man had been tasked by the United Nations with ensuring peace in the country: Canadian Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire. He believes the atrocity could have been stopped.'
Dallaire: 'When I received the information that the Tutsis were going to be killed in mass numbers or large numbers in January, I wanted to conduct offensive operations to destabilise them and I was not allowed to because it was not part of my mandate. I was allowed no offensive capabilities.'
He asked the United Nations for reinforcements, and a mandate to try and stop the impending disaster. His requests were ignored.
Dallaire: 'Rwanda just didn't count. I mean, if it worked as they hoped there would be a nice positive result at a time when so many other missions were in difficulty.'
A peace agreement had been signed, and Dallaire's job was to facilitate talks and observe. But Hutu extremists were advocating extermination, using radio to spread propaganda. The warning signs were there: informants had told Dallaire that something was going to happen. When the president's plane was shot down in early April, the powder-keg exploded. Fighting broke out in the streets, and Dallaire watched helplessly as government officials were taken away for execution by the presidential guard.'
Dallaire: 'One hundred days was like a moment in hell. I could tell you scenarios like the huge rape areas where young women and girls were raped and mutilated...I mean, I can still see in their faces the horror and abuse that happened.'
A few days into the genocide, ten of the Belgian soldiers under his command were murdered by rebels. The Belgian government blamed Dallaire for the loss, and ordered the withdrawal of their soldiers, leaving him with poorly trained and inadequate troops.
Dallaire: 'Two weeks into the genocide when the Belgians did pull out and the last aircraft left, it was full evidence that the world had abandoned us. And no country would abandon its forces like ultimately the UN abandoned us.'
Ruda: 'Why didn't you withdraw with the rest of your contingent?'
Dallaire: 'I received the orders directly from the Secretary General to pull out and I refused because, by then, I had over 30 000 Rwandans from both sides under my protection, and if we had left them they would have been slaughtered. And you might say, 'Well what's 30 000 in 800 000?' Well, what's one in 30 000? I mean, it was a legal order to pull out, but it was an immoral order to apply and that's why I refused it.'
Ten years later, Dallaire returned to Rwanda to attend a commemorative service and a conference on the genocide. Some Belgians still blamed him for the losses and the failure of the UN in Rwanda.
Archive footage: 'He obeyed orders that were criminal instead of saving the lives of the Tutsis. He drove past the Camp Kigali where two Belgian soldiers lay murdered and six others were still alive.'
Dallaire: 'To my chagrin there has been a lot of political hay made out of that suffering, by politicians who are using it for their own ambitions. I lost five other officers, soldiers, but 800 000 Africans died because of our inability to stop it in the first place. So I put to you, are all humans human? Or are some more human than the others?'
Ruda: 'Haunted by what he had witnessed, Dallaire fell apart. Suffering from deep depression, he attempted suicide a number of times. He was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, and his Medical Report read, 'General Dallaire cannot command troops in operations any more'.'
Dallaire: 'When I came back from Rwanda I was not the man that my wife married and I was not the father that my children knew, and I have never returned to that nature. I won't go to grocery stores because I can't go buy the meat parts, and I can't go past the fruit and vegetables because when I go there the magnificence of the colours and the aroma paralyses me. Because, what comes back is the marketplaces where people were being slaughtered by bombs and so on... women living amongst faeces, trying to sell rotten avocados, and kids dying there of malnutrition ... that comes back like that.'
It took several years for the wounds to heal. Now Romeo Dallaire consults with victims of war crimes, and recently came to South Africa to advise on our peacekeeping strategy.
Ruda: 'Since the birth of our democracy, South Africa has played an active role in peacekeeping throughout the continent, with operations in countries like Burundi, the DRC, Darfur and Ethiopia. We now have the tenth largest peacekeeping force in the world.'
Henri Boshoff, Military analyst for the Institute for Security Studies, says that South Africa's involvement in peacekeeping is making a difference.
Henri Boshoff (Military Analyst, Institute for Security Studies): 'I think that South Africa has been contributing on two different directions; firstly to the official UN missions and secondly to the African Union. The UN didn't immediately deploy a mission into Burundi, so the African Union - led by South Africa - did deploy the first troops into Burundi and the situation has improved to such that they changed that mission into a UN mission.'
Ruda: 'Why is it worth sending troops?'
Henri: 'South Africa's involvement in Africa will always be seen in the background of the bigger African picture, the bigger African plan. And when there's peace and security in the whole bigger continent, then we'll see development, then we'll see - at the end of the day - investments.'
Ruda: 'The parliamentary portfolio committee on defence has been listening to presentations from a number of sources for the past six months. This is part of a general review of the white paper on defence. Peacekeeping now plays an integral role in their strategy.'
Professor Kader Asmal (Head, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence): 'We're an African country and we must provide... as the president has said rightly again and again... Africa must provide its own solution.'
Professor Kader Asmal, who heads up the parliamentary portfolio committee on defence, was instrumental in inviting General Dallaire to South Africa.
Ruda: 'What have you learnt from General Dallaire?'
Prof. Asmal: 'We've learnt a great deal - that soldiers are for peace; secondly, it's very important that we disavow ethnic, tribal, racial views about politics, that we are conscious that we should fight against them; and thirdly, is the wonderful lesson in compassion and solidarity. There should be no limits on opposing oppression.'
One of the current hot spots in Africa is the Darfur region in Sudan. Since 1989 Africa's longest-running civil war has killed over two million people, and displaced four million. There are already 1 400 South African peacekeeping troops positioned in Darfur, and the aim is to increase the force to over 4 000. It has developed into a racially-based conflict, and Dallaire believes that it is already another Rwanda. Once again, the UN has merely established an 'observe-and-report' mission in Sudan.
Dallaire: 'You have the UN that is stymied because the Chinese will veto a much better mandate than observe and report, which I think is dooming Africa to failure because I had an observe and report and I was neck deep in bodies, and even if you do have an observe and report, who are you going to report to? What are they going to do about it?'
The Institute for Security Studies believes that the strategy adopted is enough to set Sudan on the road to peace.
Henri: 'I think there has been a decrease of incidents as a result of the African Union.'
But Romeo Dallaire says that only by providing 10 times as many troops, can a crisis be averted.
Dallaire: 'The upper scale requirement would be 44 000 troops. Now, I said that at a Harvard symposium, and the reaction from the crowd was ... [gasps]... and one idiot couldn't resist and said, '44 000 troops for Africa?' and I said, 'In Yugoslavia we put 63 000 troops in there and it is one twentieth the size of Darfur. Why not 44 000 in Africa?' And if we go in-depth into this concept of Africa, and that is that it is the lowest priority, and that's the double standard and that's what has to be eradicated.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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