International Action Organization

When Humanity Fails

By Lila Schow

May, 2005

At what point do the events in history stop bearing relevance?  Eleven years?  On April 19, 2005, the entire staff of InterAct flew to Idaho to attend the lecture given by retired Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire.  All two of us. 

Romeo Dallaire served as the commander for the United Nations Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the 1994 genocide.  He had been invited to the Borah Foundation’s “Voices of Peace” Symposium. 

The symposium has been held every year for over fifty years.  It brings attention to the causes of war and the conditions necessary for a lasting peace.  After World War I, Senator William Edgar Borah proposed that war be declared illegal so that international peace could be established.  Instead of violence as a means to solve conflict, he offered a judicial substitute that would settle disputes and administer legal sanctions. To do this, he introduced Senate Resolution 441 in 1923. He reintroduced the bill in 1926 and 1927.  Unfortunately it never passed.

However, his legacy continues and the 2005 symposium could not have had a more perfect lecturer than Romeo Dallaire.   

For his first mission in 1994 as Force Commander for the United Nations, Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire thought he was heading off to the small African country of Rwanda to help two warring parties achieve a peace both sides wanted.  Instead, rendered impotent by the UN, Dallaire could only watch as “the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people [he was] supposed to protect.”¹

Lt. General Roméo Dallaire is the most extreme example of a leader being given responsibility without authority.  His objective to protect Rwanda failed, overseen by an organization who didn’t fully support the mission. 

The experience he had with the international community in 1994 leads him to ask, “Are all humans human, or are some more human than others?”  For 100 days in 1994, the world complacently watched, the destruction of over one million human beings.  Dallaire points out that the Rwandan “gorillas got more attention and interest, the humans didn’t even bring a whimper of the same concern.”

Though Rwanda happened eleven years ago, to Dallaire the genocide is as crisp in his mind as if it were happening today. And in a way it is, in Sudan.  Dallaire must feel like he is stuck in Bill Murray’s 1993 Groundhog Day where nothing has changed, no lesson learned, and here we go again! In the last eleven years, the world has continued to fail to act against genocide.  

His lecture focused on one question.  Have we learned? 

Each day the world is confronted by new reports of atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. President Bush, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last month, referred to the situation as "genocide," and he and Secretary General Kofi Annan pledged support for sanctions against the Sudanese government and a Security Council resolution to expand the African Union force on the ground there. But I am afraid that moral condemnation, trade penalties and military efforts by African countries are simply not going to be enough to stop the killing - not nearly enough.

I know, because I've seen it all happen before. A decade ago, I was the Canadian general in command of the United Nations forces in Rwanda when that civil war began and quickly turned into genocide. The conflict was often portrayed as nothing more than an age-old feud between African tribes, a situation that the Western world could do little to stop. All that was left to do was wait to pick up the pieces when the killing stopped and to provide support to rebuild the country.

Western governments are still approaching it with the same lack of priority. In the end, it receives the same intuitive reaction: "What's in it for us? Is it in our 'national' interest?"

The United Nations, emasculated by the self-interested maneuverings of the five permanent members of the Security Council, fails to intervene. Its only concrete step, the Security Council resolution passed in July, all but plagiarized the resolutions on Rwanda 10 years earlier. When I read phrases like "reaffirming its commitment to the sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and independence of Sudan" and "expressing its determination to do everything possible to halt a humanitarian catastrophe, including by taking further action if required," I can't help but think of the stifling directives that were imposed on the United Nations' department of peacekeeping operations in 1994 and then passed down to me in the field.

I recall all too well the West's indifference to the horrors that unfolded in Rwanda beginning in April 1994. Early warnings had gone unheeded, intervention was ruled out and even as the bodies piled up on the streets of Kigali and across the countryside, world leaders quibbled over the definition of what was really happening. The only international forces they sent during those first days and weeks of the massacres were paratroopers to evacuate the foreigners. Before long, we were burning the bodies with diesel fuel to ward off disease, and the smell would cling to your skin like an oil.²

The United States is capable of mobilizing and moving quickly.  We did it in one morning with 600,000 international troops in 1991 during Desert Storm.  And again, to a lesser extent, with 120,000 soldiers for our 2003 invasion of Iraq.  In September 1994 George W. Bush used the term “genocide” to label the atrocities in Sudan, yet not one US soldier has been offered to protect the people of Sudan.⁶

Dallaire insists that the UN could utilize regional forces such as the African Union under Chapter VIII (eight) of its Charter.³  He recognizes the unlikely welcome by Sudan for outside intervention, but pushes for it anyway believing “that a mixture of mobile African Union troops supported by NATO soldiers equipped with helicopters, remotely piloted vehicles, night-vision devices and long-range special forces could protect Darfur's displaced people in their camps and remaining villages, and eliminate or incarcerate the Janjaweed.” ²

Rwanda has already sent a small contingent to Sudan, keeping Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s promise to come to the aid of any people suffering from genocide.²  This is vital, protection is central to ending the immediate suffering.  Director of Darfur Peace and Development, Omer Ismail explains, "There is no security for the people in the camps. The people cannot venture a few yards out of the IDP [internally displaced persons] camps."⁴

Dallaire notes that only a series of integrated solutions, including intervention will succeed.  He has proposed two options: 24,000 to 44,000 troops for intervention and protection or 4,000 to 10,000 troops to establish a moral presence in the area.

But while the African Union may have the soldiers for such a mission, they do not have the funds. With 7,500 people dying every month in Darfur, no one has the time to quibble over the legal responsibilities of this genocide.⁵

Dallaire was very clear in describing our options for the future.  We can survive it, build a wall or resolve at the source and participate in the solution.  “Terrorism is the expression of rage by the underdeveloped world.  We’ve seen Arab rage, we have not seen African.”

The citizens of North America have sometimes demonstrated themselves to be a little too complacent to the tragedies of others.  In his lecture, Dallaire called this era the “New World Disorder” where 80% of humanity is mired in atrocious conditions, and ethnic cleansing is a tool of the intra state. We hold an enormous role of responsibility, bathing in an elite quality of life while the majority of the world suffers enormous poverty and despair.

While many Americans recognize their luck in being in such a privileged percentile, few feel a need to act for the betterment of humankind.  Much of this stems from a lack of information on our part.  Why should we get involved in someone else’s problems?  What we fail to recognize is that we, Americans, are the source of a majority of these conflicts.

As countries gained independence from their colonial rulers, we helped them build their nation states, put leaders in power and fed them financially and militarily in order to prevent unrest during the cold war.  Then, after the Cold-War when Communism was no loner a national threat, the United States and the Soviet Union ended their aid, interest, and left these nations to sort out the impending mess themselves.  And the era of tyrannical security turned into humanitarian catastrophe.

We must get involved, influence policy and actively work toward the advancement of humanity, not self interest. Where all humans are human.  To do this, InterAct is organizing an informational gathering about the Sudan genocide where we will present Frontlines "Sudan: The Quick and the Terrible."  We hope to raise awareness and funds for the International Committee of the Red Cross operating in Sudan.

For more information about the event, click here.

Preview the video here.

SOURCES

1.       Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire RandomHouse Canada 2005 back cover

2.       Looking at Darfur, Seeing Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire October 4, 2004Reprinted from The New York Times http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/Dallaire_looking_darfur_seeing_rwanda_nyt_100404.htm

3.       United Nations Charter, Chapter VIII http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/

4.       Forum panel assails Sudanese government By Sarah Abrams October 18, 2004 http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/10.21/23-darfur.html

5.       Genocide? By Lila Schow, International Action Organization March 2005 http://www.interactorg.com/genocide.htm

6.       President's Statement on Violence in Darfur, Sudan September 9, 2004 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040909-10.html

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