Roméo Antonius Dallaire (born June 25, 1946) is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, during the Genocide against the Tutsi. Dallaire was a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
Early life and education Roméo Antonius Dallaire was born in Denekamp, Netherlands, to Staff-Sergeant Roméo Louis Dallaire, a Canadian non-commissioned officer, and Catherine Vermeassen, a Dutch nurse. Dallaire came to Canada with his mother as a six-month-old baby on the Empire Brent, landing in Halifax on December 13, 1946. He spent his childhood in Montreal.
He enrolled in the Canadian Army in 1963, as a cadet at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean. In 1970 he graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.
In 1971, Dallaire applied for a Canadian passport to travel overseas with his troops and was surprised to discover that his birth in the Netherlands as the son of a Canadian soldier did not automatically make him a Canadian citizen. He has subsequently become a Canadian citizen.
Dallaire has also attended the Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, VA, and the British Higher Command and Staff Course.
He commanded the . 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
Original mission In late 1993, Dallaire received his commission as the Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. Rwanda was in the middle of a civil war between the extremist Hutu government and a small Tutsi rebel faction. UNAMIR's goal was to assist in the implementation of the Arusha Accords. The Hutus worked through the Rwandan army and then-president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Tutsis through the rebel commander Paul Kagame, who is the president of Rwanda today. When Dallaire arrived in Rwanda, his mandate was to supervise the implementation of the Accords during a transitional period in which Tutsis were supposed to be given positions of power within the Hutu government.
Deteriorating conditions
On the night of April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali International Airport. Dallaire immediately ordered ten Belgian soldiers to protect the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, but she and her husband were killed, and later the next day, the Belgian soldiers were found dead.
The ten Belgian UN peacekeepers had been intercepted by the Rwandan government forces (FAR), taken to a military camp as hostages, and murdered there. Passing the entrance of the camp on his way to a meeting of the FAR commanders, Dallaire caught a glimpse of some bodies on the ground. In a 2007 trial in Belgium, the Rwandan camp commander charged with the peacekeepers' murder testified that he had warned Dallaire that they were going to be killed, and that Dallaire had promised to send help. Storming Camp Kigali was beyond the means of his meagre force, however, and instead, he forbade the other Belgian troops to take action.R. Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, (Knopf Canada, 2003).
Colonel Luc Marchal, commander of UNAMIR forces in the Kigali sector, defended this decision on the grounds that to attack would have put the ill-equipped UNAMIR forces in an adversarial role against the Rwandan military, escalated the situation, and endangered their lives and those of the 331 unarmed UN observers.L. Melvern, A People Betrayed: The role of the West in Rwanda's genocide (Zed Books: London, 2000). In the 2007 trial of the Rwandan officer Bernard Ntuyahaga on charges of allowing the massacre to take place, Belgian Investigating Judge Damien Vandermeersch cited among other "obstacles to his work, the refusal of the United Nations to allow him to hear from General Romeo Dallaire." But Dallaire had testified extensively before the ICTR in 2004 about the peacekeepers and other matters, all of which was a matter of public record available to Judge Vandermeersch, and in which a decision was pending. Colonel Théoneste Bagosora was later convicted by ICTR in December 2008 of being responsible for the peacekeepers' murders.Paragraphs 2174-2177, Chapter IV: Legal Findings, page 551, Judgement and Sentence, 18 December 18, 2008, The Prosecutor v. Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T.
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 5,000 well-equipped troops would give the UN enough leverage to put an end to the killings. The UN Security Council refused, partly due to US opposition. US policy on interventions had become skeptical following the death of several U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, the year before; this new policy was outlined in Presidential Decision Directive 25 by President Bill Clinton. The Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR further to 270 troops.
Since the UN mandate had not changed, the Belgian troops started evacuating, and the Europeans withdrew. As the Belgians departed on 19 April, Dallaire felt an acute sense of betrayal; "I stood there as the last Hercules left...and I thought that almost exactly fifty years to the day my father and my father-in-law had been fighting in Belgium to free the country from fascism, and there I was, abandoned by Belgian soldiers. So profoundly did I despise them for it...I found it inexcusable."Martin Meredith, The State Of Africa, Chapter 27 (The Free Press, London, 2005).
Genocide Following the withdrawal of Belgian forces, whom Dallaire considered his best-trained2005, Pilger, John (ed), page 451, 'Tell Me No Lies', Vintage Press, London. ISBN 978-0-099-43745-1. and best-equipped, Dallaire consolidated his contingent of Pakistani, Canadian, Ghanaian, Tunisian, and Bangladeshi soldiers in urban areas and focused on providing areas of "safe control" in and around Kigali. Most of Dallaire's efforts were to defend specific areas where he knew Tutsis to be hiding. Dallaire's staff—including the U.N.'s unarmed observers—often relied on its U.N. credentials to save Tutsis, heading off Interahamwe attacks even while being outnumbered and outgunned. Dallaire and his staff are credited with saving the lives of 32,000 people.
Dallaire gave the major force contributors different evaluations for their work. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil, he gave the Tunisian and Ghanaian contingents high praise for their valiant and competent work. Ghana lost three peacekeepers. On the other hand, he criticized the Bangladeshi contingent for being poorly trained and poorly equipped. He was especially critical of the Bangladeshi contingent's leadership because of their incompetence and lack of loyalty to the mission and UN chain of command.
End to the genocide As the massacre progressed and press accounts of the genocide grew, the U.N. Security Council backtracked on its position and voted to establish UNAMIR II, with a strength of 5,500 peacekeepers.
As revealed through testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the genocide was brutally efficient, lasting for a total of 100 days and leading to the murder of between 800,000 and 1,171,000 Tutsi, Hutu moderates and Twa. Over two million people were displaced internally or in neighbouring countries.
Controversy Dallaire has been criticized by retired Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie for protecting UN soldiers when 10 Belgian paratroopers were killed on duty. Belgian authorities have stated that they would seek a penal indictment over his role in the deaths of the Belgian paratroopers.
Dallaire was later criticized by the Belgian parliamentary commission for not preventing the murder of ten members of the 2nd Commando Battalion. In his answer to the martial council he would later say, "I did not know whether they were dead or injured."Parliamentary commission of inquiry regarding the events in Rwanda, Complete report in the name of commission of inquiry by Mr. Mahoux and Mr. Verhofstadt
The commission of inquiry of the Belgian Senate in 1998 severely condemned Dallaire's actions during those days, stating it was "imprudent and unprofessional to have the Belgian escorts provided on 7 April with so few military precautions". In addition, the commission stated it "did not understand why General Dallaire, who had noted the blue beret bodies in the Kigali camp, did not communicate this immediately to the FAR's high-ranking officers at the meeting of the École supérieure and did not demand the urgent intervention of those Rwandan officers present. This appears to reflect considerable indifference on his part. Moreover, General Dallaire also neglected to inform his sector commander about what he had seen and to give the necessary instructions".Parliamentary commission of inquiry regarding the events in Rwanda, Report in the name of commission of inquiry by Mr. Mahoux and Mr. Verhofstadt, chapter 4
In his book, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, General Dallaire details his decision to send 10 soldiers to protect the Prime Minister during the "apocalyptic" first hours of the genocide.
Life after Rwanda
Upon his return to Canada from UNOMUR and UNAMIR, Dallaire was appointed to two simultaneous commands in September 1994: Deputy Commander of Land Force Command (LFC) in Saint-Hubert, Quebec and Commander of 1 Canadian Division. In October 1995, Dallaire assumed command of Land Force Quebec Area.
In 1996, Dallaire was promoted to Chief of Staff and to the Assistant Deputy Minister (Personnel) Group at NDHQ. In 1998 he was assigned to Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources – Military) and in 1999 was appointed Special Advisor to the Chief of the Defence Staff on Officer Professional Development.
Dallaire suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder and, in 2000, attempted suicide by combining alcohol with his anti-depressant medication, a near fatal combination which left him comatose. Dallaire is an outspoken supporter of raising awareness for veterans' mental health.
In January 2004, Dallaire appeared at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to testify against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. The testimony was critical to the outcome of the trial, and in December 2008 Bagosora was convicted of genocide and for the command responsibility of the murders of the 10 Belgian peacekeepers. The trial chamber held that: "it is clear that the killing of the peacekeepers formed part of the widespread and systematic attack", while at the same time holding that: "the evidence suggests that these killings were not necessarily part of a highly coordinated plan."Paragraphs 791 & 795, Pages 198-199, Judgement and Sentence, 18 December 18, 2008, The Prosecutor v. Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T
He later 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.
Dallaire was appointed to the Canadian Senate by Prime Minister Paul Martin on March 24, 2005, representing the province of Quebec.