Shake Hands with the Devil

Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire's "Shake Hands with the Devil" is a harrowing and deeply personal account of his command of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1994. Expecting a conventional peacekeeping operation, Dallaire and his small international force were instead thrust into the unfathomable horror of the Rwandan genocide, witnessing the systematic slaughter of nearly a million people. Despite his desperate pleas for reinforcements and a clear mandate, Dallaire was tragically undermined by international indifference and bureaucratic inertia, leaving him and his troops powerless to halt the atrocity. The book is not merely a historical record but a raw, unflinching memoir of a man broken by the evil he encountered and the world's profound failure to intervene. Dallaire's vivid prose conveys the unimaginable suffering, his personal descent into PTSD, and suicidal ideation, culminating in his famous assertion: 'I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil.' It stands as a powerful indictment of political inaction and a testament to the enduring human cost of conflict.