Syria's situation is as dangerous as that in Rwanda before the genocide, according to the commander of the UN forces who tried in vain to convince the world to intervene.
May 1994 : Refugees cross the Rusumo border into Tanzania from Rwanda Photo: Reuters
By Harriet Alexander
2:16PM BST 11 Sep 2013
48 Comments
Lt General Romeo Dallaire, head of the UN in Rwanda at the time, made increasingly desperate attempts to rally the world and send soldiers to stop the genocide. But, unwilling to intervene in a far-off land, the UN members did not respond – and 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.
"The parallel is the ineptitude of the international community, given a whole bunch of politicians worried about self interest and political capital back home," he said. "Not statesmen who are able to take risks and explain essentially where they want to go with this thing.
"Why should people want to engage when the politicians go at it half-assed? If the politicians, who are supposed to be the leaders, are hedging their bets, then why would the population be convinced?
"That's not leadership. That's just fiddling with the books." Syrian activists with the bodies of some of the victims of the chemical attack in Damascus (Reuters)
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But Mr Dallaire, who is now a senator in his native Canada, said that the only way to resolve the conflict was to send in troops.
He described the idea of a targeted, military strike as "absolute bull ----," and said that only with boots on the ground would the sides be separated and a diplomatic solution achieved. Ground forces should be sent in, he argued, under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter – the clause which authorises action with respect to threats to the peace and acts of aggression.
"There is no doubt in my military mind that you will not reach a settlement unless you put the UN flag, under a Chapter Seven, on the ground and have credible forces, with credible equipment, who are able to do the job right.
"This surgical stuff is absolute bull ----, and what's worse is: it's hypocritical. It could have been done two years ago. We didn't need the chemical weapons, this gas attack, to make everyone freak out.
"It reminds me of that attack in Sarajevo, during the Yugoslavian campaign, when that rocket fell on the market place. All of a sudden the whole world got involved.
"Well I thought we had gone beyond that, and understood our responsibility to protect and to operationalise it."
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who headed UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1994 (EPA)
Mr Dallaire, 67, understands more than most the possible consequences of failing to intervene.
As head of the UN in Rwanda in 1994, he repeatedly and vociferously asked for reinforcements to the 2,500 poorly equipped and ill-trained peacekeepers he was given.
"All I needed was 5,000 and we might have been able to pull off at least a significant reduction in the continuation of the genocide there," he told The Daily Telegraph, speaking by telephone as he travelled by train across Canada. "We could have done that early and fast, and look at what happened there."
In April 1994, an adviser to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then-UN Secretary-General, called Mr Dallaire in Kigali to find out what was happening.
"I told him if I had effective troops, I could stop the killing," he wrote in his book, Shake Hands with the Devil. "What more could I possibly tell them that I hadn't already described in horrific detail? The odour of death in the hot sun; the flies, the maggots, rats and dogs that came to feast on the dead."
Instead, under pressure from the Clinton Administration in Washington, which was scarred by the failure of its peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the Security Council slashed Mr Dallaire's force to just 450 men.
The butchery continued unchecked for three months.
During the Rwandan genocide 800,000 people were killed in 100 days (AP)
Haunted by the events in Rwanda, by the late 1990s Mr Dallaire sunk into depression and suffered a mental breakdown, attempting suicide several times. He was given an honourable medical discharge from the Canadian army in 2000, and the former three-star general has since entered the Canadian parliament, at the request of the prime minister, and campaigned on genocide prevention and against the use of child soldiers.
And he is adamant that sending troops into Syria is the only way to stop the violence.
“It’s interesting that they believe that by committing any troops on the ground that they are escalating their engagement,” he said.
“The French did it right in Mali.
"Because the parallel that Rwanda also goes back to – not having sorted out the problem with Rwanda – is that we’re still fighting in the Eastern Congo. That was started by the Rwandan genocide – and that was 20 years ago.
"And if anyone tells me that Libya was a beautiful success, they are also smoking dope. All those weapons and munitions coming from that country.
French troops on patrol in Mali (AFP)
“In essence Mali was a situation that needed boots on the ground to stabilise the situation. This is the same - instead of just looking at that option of trying to blow a whole bunch of holes into Syria from the air – and God knows what all the collateral damage will be, including maybe spreading all that chemical stuff that they are trying to contain.”
He believes that the "medium sized powers" of Germany, Japan, and Canada should be pressed to contribute – "those who don't bring the potential baggage of being not only an invading force but an occupation force."
And he laughs at the world leaders who, today, use the example of Rwanda to call on the world to intervene.
"If I were them I wouldn't hark back to it," he said.
"Because all they are doing is proving that the existing methodology didn't work. Even though they have the doctrine and the capability to do it.
"Why do you want to bring something that failed once before, and use it to illustrate how you're failing once again?"
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