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Lieutenant-General Roméo Alain Dallaire, OC, CMM, GOQ, MSC, CD, B.Sc, LL.D (h.c.) (born June 25, 1946) is a Canadian senator, humanitarian, author and retired general. Dallaire is widely known for having served as Force Commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop a war of genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

Early life and education

Dallaire was born in Denekamp, The Netherlands to Staff-Sergeant Roméo Louis Dallaire, a Canadian non-commissioned officer, and Catherine Vermeassen, a Dutch nurse. He spent his childhood in Montréal.

He enrolled in the Canadian Army in 1964, as a cadet at Le Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean. In 1969 he was graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. He has also attended the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the British Higher Command and Staff Course.

He commanded the 5e Régiment d’Artillerie Légère du Canada . On July 3 1989 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He then commanded the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. He was also the commandant of Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean from 1990 to 1993.

Rwanda

In late 1993 Dallaire was assigned the position of Force Commander of UNAMIR. Rwanda had just endured several years of bloody civil war which had been concluded with the Arusha Accords, and UNAMIR's mandate was to supervise the peaceful transfer of power to the new Rwandan government.

On January 22, 1994, a French DC-8 aircraft loaded with ammunition and weapons for the FAR landed in Kigali, and General Dallaire seized it under his UN mandate. The Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army later met with Dallaire and told him he was not allowed to seize the munitions because they were ordered before the ceasefire and peace agreement, so the UN was not allowed to detain the shipment. The Officer came back two days later with paperwork which reflected banking arrangements, production, and transport of these weapons in Israel, Belgium, France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Egypt, all participants in the load of ammunition and equipment.

On the night of 6-7 April 1994, an aeroplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali Airport. Following the aeroplane crash, Hutu extremists, with help from the Rwandan government, started executing Tutsis and Hutu moderates as well as many of the moderate elected officials of the new government. This was the starting point of the Rwandan Genocide. Dallaire ordered ten Belgian soldiers to protect the new prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The soldiers were intercepted by Hutu extremists and taken hostage, after which Madame Agathe and her husband were killed. Later that day, the Belgian soldiers were found brutally murdered. Belgium was outraged that Dallaire had put its soldiers in such danger and promptly withdrew its forces.

Seeing the situation in Rwanda deteriorating rapidly, Dallaire pleaded for logistical support and reinforcements of 2,000 soldiers for UNAMIR; he estimated that a total of 4,000 well-equiped troops would give the UN enough leverage to put an end to the killings. The UN Security Council refused, several journalists laying blame on the administration of US President William Jefferson Clinton, which refused to provide requested material aid after the US debacle in Mogadishu, Somalia. The Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR further to 260 men.

Following the Belgian withdrawal, Dallaire consolidated his contingent of Canadian, Ghanaian, Tunisian, and Bangladeshi soldiers in urban areas and focused on providing areas of "safe control." His actions are credited with directly saving the lives of 20,000 Tutsis. There is speculation that Dallaire's forces deliberately sabotaged equipment to slow their UN-mandated withdrawal from the combat zone.

As the massacre progressed, the UN Security Council backtracked on its position and voted to establish UNAMIR II with a strength of 5,500 men. Howerver, French and UNAMIR II contingents didn not arrive in Rwanda until after the RPF had taken over the country and the genocide subsided.

The Genocide, revealed through testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to have been brutally and efficiently organized months before, lasted for 100 days, leading to approximately between 800,000 and 1,0171,000 deaths, and over two million people being displaced internally or in neighbouring countries. The Genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of Rwanda on July 18, 1994, though recrimination, retribution, and criminal prosecutions continue to the present day.

Life after Rwanda

In 1996 Dallaire was made an Officer of the Legion of Merit of the United States, the highest military decoration available for award to foreigners, for his service in Rwanda.

At home, Dallaire was medically released from the Canadian Armed Forces on April 22, 2000, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time of his retirement he held the rank of lieutenant-general. Blaming himself for the failures of the mission, he began a spiral into depression , culminating on June 20, 2000, when he was rushed to hospital after being found under a park bench in Hull, Quebec. He was intoxicated and suffering from a reaction with his prescription anti-depressants, and the mixture almost put him into a coma. The story gained national headlines and sparked a fierce debate over the rules of engagement forced upon UN Peacekeepers.

After the 'park-bench' incident, Dallaire began writing his book, started lecturing on his experiences, and was well on the road to recovery. He has since stated that during this bleak period, he considered suicide and attempted it on several occasions.

In January 2002, Dallaire was awarded the inaugural Aegis Trust Award and on October 10, 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In October 2002, the documentary The Last Just Man * was released, which chronicles the Rwandan genocide and features interviews with Dallaire, his aide Major Brent Beardsley, and other people who were involved with the events that happened in Rwanda. It was directed by Steven Silver.

Dallaire chronicled the eventful months he spent in Rwanda in his 2003 book The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, written in collaboration with Major Brent Beardsley, his aide in Rwanda. This book won the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing in 2003 and the 2004 Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

A documentary film, entitled The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, was inspired by the book and shows LGen Dallaire's return to Rwanda after ten years, was produced by the CBC, SRC and White Pine Pictures and was released in 2004. The film was nominated for two Sundance Film Festival Awards, winning the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for World Cinema - Documentary (Peter Raymont) and a nomination for Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema - Documentary (Peter Raymont). The film aired on CBC on January 31, 2005.

In January 2004, Dallaire appeared at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to testify against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.

In 2004, PBS Frontline featured a documentary named The Ghosts of RwandaIn an interview [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/dallaire.html conducted for the documentary and recorded over the course of four days in October 2003, LGen Dallaire has said: "Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know...."

In Canada, Dallaire is considered a hero who tried with all his strength to stop the bloodshed of a nation going mad and managed to at least save some lives, despite his difficulties. In 2004, he was 16th on the voted list of The Greatest Canadian, the highest-rated military figure on the list.

Dallaire worked as a Special Advisor to the Canadian Government on War Affected Children and the Prohibition of Small Arms Distribution, as well as with international agencies with the same focus, including child labour. He is a great proponent of the concept of Institutionalism, and, in 2004-2005, he served as a fellow at The Carr Center For Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's JFK School of Government. He is an endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network.

The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda featured a colonel loosely based on LGen Dallaire, played by Nick Nolte. Dallaire is quoted as saying that neither the producer, nor Nolte himself, consulted with him before shooting the film.

A Canadian dramatic feature film Shake Hands with the Devil adapted from Roméo Dallaire's 2003 book and starring Roy Dupuis as Lieutenant-General Dallaire, starts production in mid-June 2006. Dallaire participated in a press conference about the film held on 2 June 2006, in Montréal, and is more involved in consultation for this production than he was in Hotel Rwanda.

On March 9, 2005, Dallaire received the 25th Pearson Peace Medal from Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.

On March 25, 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin appointed Dallaire to the Canadian Senate, representing the province of Quebec. He sits as a Liberal. Soon after his appointment, Dallaire noted that his family has supported both the Liberal Party of Canada and the Quebec Liberal Party since 1958.

On June 1st, 2006, Romeo Dallaire was awarded a Doctorate of Human Letters by the Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY) in recognition of his efforts in Rwanda and afterwards to prevent other Genocides from occuring. In his speech, he received an ovation for his comment that "no human is more human than any other". This was the same commencement address that New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi made his infamous remarks about NY Politician Charles Schumer.

On June 16th, 2006, Roméo Dallaire announced his support for Michael Ignatieff's bid to be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

Dallaire has received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from St. Thomas University, Boston College, the University of Calgary, Athabasca University, Trent University, the University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University, and a honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from the University of Lethbridge.

He is married to Elizabeth Dallaire and has three children: Willem, Catherine and Guy.

See also

External links

Canadian generals | Canadian humanitarians | Canadian military people | Canadian non-fiction writers | Canadian senators | Grand Officers of the National Order of Quebec | Officers of the Order of Canada | Meritorious Service Decoration (Canada) | Montrealers | Quebec authors | Recipients of the Legion of Merit | Rwandan Genocide people | 1946 births | Living people

Roméo Dallaire | Roméo Dallaire | Roméo Dallaire | Roméo Dallaire | Roméo Dallaire | Roméo Dallaire

 

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