CBC Hot Type - Romeo Dallaire — Transcript

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1. 0:03one hundred days of slaughter
2. 0:06more than eight hundred thousand dead
3. 0:08men women and children
4. 0:10and the general who tried to stop the
5. 0:12genocide
6. 0:13tonight on a special edition of heart
7. 0:16type the general
8. 0:30and then totally crashing in 98
9. 0:34where for months i was a zombie
10. 0:38as they tried to rebuild rebuild me
11. 0:41into a a human thinking human again
12. 0:47and ultimately what it ended up by being
13. 0:49we had entered into
14. 0:51into hell and so it had to go
15. 0:55another visit into hell to relive it
16. 0:58and write it because without reliving it
17. 1:01there was no way
18. 1:02you could write it when you got the
19. 1:04mission the day before if i bumped into
20. 1:06you and i said
21. 1:07tell me about rwanda what would you tell
22. 1:08me i think it's in africa
23. 1:11now that is an indictment i think to me
24. 1:13personally
25. 1:14for my lack of culture and knowledge of
26. 1:16geography of the world
27. 1:18but it's also an indictment to to
28. 1:21a western nation that has
29. 1:24considered these things so peripheral
30. 1:27that it wasn't worthy the attention
31. 1:30are the predominant race who represent
32. 1:3490 of the people are peasants ignoring
33. 1:37all thought for tomorrow
34. 1:38rwanda was a belgian colony until 1962
35. 1:42now the belgians were always more
36. 1:43sympathetic with the minority tootsies
37. 1:45than they were at the hutus
38. 1:47simply because they saw the tall and
39. 1:49light-skinned tootsies as
40. 1:50as closer to europeans it was pure
41. 1:53racism
42. 1:54and so when the belgians were kicked out
43. 1:56in a bloody hutu uprising the hutus took
44. 1:59power
45. 1:59and they forced the tutsis to flee into
46. 2:01neighboring countries places like uganda
47. 2:03burundi and zaire
48. 2:05and there was always a desire to go back
49. 2:07of course by those
50. 2:08wands and tutsis the extremists or the
51. 2:11government
52. 2:12in rwanda which was the majority which
53. 2:15was hutu
54. 2:16having been oppressed by the tutsis
55. 2:18through the colonial period and previous
56. 2:20was scared that these people come back
57. 2:23because
58. 2:24they felt that these people had so much
59. 2:25power and capabilities
60. 2:27that they would take over the country
61. 2:28now now when you get this mission let's
62. 2:30just kind of walk through because it's
63. 2:32really interesting
64. 2:33someone throws you the ball and they say
65. 2:36delaire
66. 2:37we want you to head this little mission
67. 2:39to rwanda yes
68. 2:41no problem now let's just keep in mind
69. 2:43that rwanda is undergoing essentially
70. 2:45civil war right
71. 2:46correct in fact the civil war started in
72. 2:491990
73. 2:50and also the the the scenario in which
74. 2:53we find ourselves is the somalia problem
75. 2:55is the somalia
76. 2:56of the debacle of the american forces
77. 2:58zlaka down gang
78. 3:00and mugadishu had made the americans
79. 3:02exceptionally gun shy
80. 3:04after 18 american soldiers were killed
81. 3:06in a failed ambush in what became known
82. 3:08as the black hawk down episode of 1993
83. 3:12bill clinton pulled us forces out of
84. 3:14mogadishu
85. 3:16went to the bigger the canadian
86. 3:18experience in somalia was a disgrace as
87. 3:21well
88. 3:21with the aggressive form of racism that
89. 3:23was played out by the canadian airborne
90. 3:25against a somalian civilian teenager
91. 3:28when he was tortured
92. 3:29and murdered thank you very much this
93. 3:31rwandan mission led by delaire was meant
94. 3:34to be
95. 3:34simple and clean a cakewalk the
96. 3:38opportunity for a success story in
97. 3:41africa
98. 3:42is presenting itself and in fact
99. 3:45both sides are presenting themselves as
100. 3:48fully wanting this peace agreement and
101. 3:50we had
102. 3:51from all the western powers and of the
103. 3:53un people at the negotiations
104. 3:56and and there was a sense that this
105. 3:58thing could work if we acted rapidly
106. 4:01delayer's mission in rwanda was to
107. 4:03monitor the arusha peace agreement
108. 4:04which was supposed to put an end to the
109. 4:06long and vicious civil war
110. 4:08now the arushi accords have been struck
111. 4:10between the hutu dominated government
112. 4:12led for 20 years by the dictator
113. 4:14president hadiya ramana
114. 4:16and the tutsi rebels who had been driven
115. 4:18out in the hutu takeover
116. 4:20and had been living in refugee camps in
117. 4:22neighboring uganda
118. 4:23now the un believed that there was
119. 4:25motivation on both sides to find a
120. 4:27lasting peace
121. 4:28and to create a democracy so delaira's
122. 4:30job was simply to oversee the process
123. 4:33so they send you in charge of this
124. 4:35mission yes to monitor
125. 4:36what should be a crucial moment in these
126. 4:39peace talks and
127. 4:40have you been briefed well canada was
128. 4:42not
129. 4:43not into that zone of africa
130. 4:46and it goes with with our background in
131. 4:49europe europe oriented and we were up to
132. 4:51yugoslavia up to our ears we had learned
133. 4:54lessons because we had troops in
134. 4:56cambodia the middle east we've been
135. 4:58standing in there
136. 4:59at vitamin so and and
137. 5:02the focus of the intelligence was not
138. 5:05necessarily africa
139. 5:06the answer no rwanda no one even wanted
140. 5:10the mission to happen
141. 5:11except the french who thought that with
142. 5:14a small force there
143. 5:15we'd be able to keep the things under
144. 5:17wraps it's kind of hard to convince a
145. 5:19country to go and spill blood
146. 5:21in somewhere where you know it's not
147. 5:24there's no security problem for you
148. 5:25there's no strategic interests you know
149. 5:27the only thing are humans as as they
150. 5:29would say
151. 5:30and uh listen it's tribalism anyway this
152. 5:32is just normal stuff yeah yeah so let's
153. 5:34create
154. 5:34stuff though isn't it hey racist this is
155. 5:37outwardly saying
156. 5:39that these humans don't count they're
157. 5:41not really human
158. 5:42you're saying there's institutionalized
159. 5:44embedded
160. 5:45racism about when it comes to this
161. 5:47problem because
162. 5:48the the the profiling that we do of them
163. 5:52is profiling that comes from the most
164. 5:55racist of periods which is the colonial
165. 5:57era
166. 5:58de lair was under orders to follow
167. 6:00what's called the classic
168. 6:01chapter 6 peacekeeping mission which
169. 6:04meant that he could play a defensive
170. 6:06role only
171. 6:07when does it dawn on you that this
172. 6:10mission is not going to be
173. 6:11a nice little example of the u.n doing
174. 6:14its chapter 6 mission
175. 6:15that things are going to slip out of
176. 6:17control it's sort of a
177. 6:20accumulation of events but i think if
178. 6:24you want the first one
179. 6:25it'd been there three weeks and uh
180. 6:28i was the opening of my headquarters
181. 6:30building
182. 6:32and the president was invited and came
183. 6:34in his belief that the u.n was
184. 6:36absolutely essential
185. 6:37to move the peace process and it was you
186. 6:40know what you
187. 6:41sort of dreamed you know as the best of
188. 6:43circumstances
189. 6:45that same night five massacres happened
190. 6:48in the northwest not big ones
191. 6:52seven or eight nine people killed in
192. 6:54each site
193. 6:56and the next morning it was reported
194. 6:59that the rebels had conducted those
195. 7:02massacres
196. 7:03and so all of a sudden where i enter
197. 7:06into an arena
198. 7:07that's not clear and that's real
199. 7:10i mean this is reality because their
200. 7:13bodies are there
201. 7:14you got it and when we go in to
202. 7:17investigate there is nothing
203. 7:20to really prove that it was done by the
204. 7:23rebels in fact
205. 7:24it is tactically and it is strategically
206. 7:28ridiculous that they would do that and
207. 7:31so
208. 7:32we all of a sudden find ourselves in a
209. 7:34reality
210. 7:35that people not only have divergence
211. 7:38points of view
212. 7:39they're willing to kill each other to do
213. 7:41it to win
214. 7:42and the reality there kill their their
215. 7:45own
216. 7:46over the next couple days they come to
217. 7:48the realization that this was not done
218. 7:50by the rebels
219. 7:51but this was a frame up a frame they're
220. 7:54killing
221. 7:54who choose killing who choose to frame
222. 7:57the tutsis
223. 7:58and to spark the war and so you see a
224. 8:01germination
225. 8:02in my mind and then that that were where
226. 8:05we've got
227. 8:05we know the the hard-line party which is
228. 8:09the president
229. 8:11and they're still working with me
230. 8:14but then we start to discern that
231. 8:17there's something
232. 8:18more evil something even stronger behind
233. 8:21the hardline party
234. 8:23that are willing to conduct their
235. 8:25operation
236. 8:26to scuttle the peace agreement the
237. 8:28fragile peace was destroyed by a series
238. 8:30of killings and assassinations
239. 8:32conducted by a third force what de lair
240. 8:35calls a shadow force
241. 8:37which turned out to be part of the hutu
242. 8:39power
243. 8:40a lot of the militia were
244. 8:42disenfranchised youth
245. 8:43i mean we're not talking about people in
246. 8:45the 40s and 50s killing all that we're
247. 8:47talking about
248. 8:4817s and 16s and 18s and 20s and so on
249. 8:51who many of them had absolutely no
250. 8:53future there was nothing left for them
251. 8:56there was no opportunities in the
252. 8:57country and so by the tens of thousands
253. 9:00many of them were simply left idle and
254. 9:02so the militia
255. 9:04the youth wings of the extremist parties
256. 9:06gave them
257. 9:07uniforms gave them a cause of focus made
258. 9:10them feel very proud
259. 9:11and so when you give them a machete and
260. 9:13you give them the
261. 9:14easiest of causes possible
262. 9:17those people are different and we got to
263. 9:20watch out for them
264. 9:22delaire would report to superiors at the
265. 9:24united nations headquarters in new york
266. 9:26directly through an old army friend and
267. 9:29a fellow canadian
268. 9:30general maurice barry the un's top
269. 9:32military advisor
270. 9:34marie had the ear of secretary general
271. 9:37butros butro's galley
272. 9:38and of kofi annan at that time the head
273. 9:41of the peacekeeping missions
274. 9:44all right when we come back romeo de
275. 9:46lair talks about the famous facts he
276. 9:48sent to the united nations senior
277. 9:49headquarters in new york in the days
278. 9:51before the wholesale massacre began the
279. 9:53warning
280. 9:54come on back for a lot more of romeo
281. 9:56daler when i
282. 9:58was negotiating with those extremist
283. 10:00militiamen who did
284. 10:02the bulk of the slaughtering and so on i
285. 10:04was not
286. 10:05negotiating with human beings and
287. 10:07[Music]
288. 10:12we finally had these guys
289. 10:16where we wanted them what was the heart
290. 10:18of this outfit who was really
291. 10:20running it so we could nip it right
292. 10:22there and and expose it
293. 10:24that was the aim expose them and then
294. 10:26set them
295. 10:28into turmoil that would throw them off
296. 10:30balance
297. 10:31and possibly give us more of a
298. 10:33capability
299. 10:34to then prevent them from ever
300. 10:35restructuring again delay addressed a
301. 10:37note directly to his fellow canadian
302. 10:39soldier general bari
303. 10:40and he said he would have to take a more
304. 10:43offensive role
305. 10:45i said i'm now moving into offensive
306. 10:48operations
307. 10:49i should have said deterrent operations
308. 10:51but i mean
309. 10:52genocide was a word too and and genocide
310. 10:55although we finally used it nobody came
311. 10:57anyway so
312. 10:58these words are are very important in
313. 11:01the
314. 11:01in the realm of diplomacy and so on but
315. 11:04they don't mean
316. 11:05crap in the field so it was my duty to
317. 11:08inform them
318. 11:10that i was doing this there was a risk
319. 11:12but as i say in the end of my
320. 11:15of my cablegram i say
321. 11:20you can what you want yeah what you will
322. 11:23let's go
323. 11:24and i was sending that to my colleague
324. 11:26general betty who is part of the
325. 11:28triumphant of decision making in
326. 11:31and kofi annan and this is where the
327. 11:33indictment of the u.n
328. 11:35kind of begins because just before what
329. 11:37the world starts understanding to be the
330. 11:39genocide
331. 11:40they say do not go raid those weapons
332. 11:43caches they ignore your warning
333. 11:45that rwanda is teetering on the brink of
334. 11:48something horrific yes they do not give
335. 11:52you more support
336. 11:53they do not expand your mandate is this
337. 11:56in your mind the first great failure
338. 11:59well
339. 12:00there is no doubt that that was a major
340. 12:02turning point
341. 12:03point in our ability to stymie the
342. 12:07possibility of those massacres and
343. 12:08ultimately what ended up in a genocide
344. 12:11we knew you knew there was weapons you
345. 12:13cable this to new york
346. 12:14you don't use the word genocide in the
347. 12:16facts but no because
348. 12:18the ability to enter into our mind
349. 12:21genocide
350. 12:22was in fact impossible because of our
351. 12:25cultural background
352. 12:27we had just been attempting to
353. 12:29understand ethnic cleansing
354. 12:30in yugoslavia
355. 12:34we knew of cambodia but still it was a
356. 12:36far away
357. 12:37the killing feels but the word genocide
358. 12:40is synonymous with holocaust
359. 12:44and holocaust we had been educated that
360. 12:46it is so
361. 12:48evil so impossibly evil so
362. 12:51huge that it's impossible that it
363. 12:54exists again and so it took me even
364. 12:58knee deep in bodies to actually be able
365. 13:01to say
366. 13:02genocide let's talk about what you saw
367. 13:07because general delaire i've read about
368. 13:10your story afterwards and you talk about
369. 13:12being haunted by the images
370. 13:16i mean this is uh you can't prepare for
371. 13:19this yes
372. 13:20when you close your eyes what do you see
373. 13:24the most horrific i mean
374. 13:27going into a church and seeing a couple
375. 13:28thousand people slaughtered
376. 13:30and dying over days uh going into places
377. 13:33where they were killed
378. 13:35all around you you're walking in them
379. 13:37yeah you know it's like it's like
380. 13:38walking in a pile of dead fish you know
381. 13:40all slimy and so on and
382. 13:42it's the same same thing but the worst
383. 13:45of scenes
384. 13:46the most horrific for me were the scenes
385. 13:50of uh rape areas
386. 13:54where girls young girls young women
387. 13:58were raped and then torn apart
388. 14:02by all kinds of different things
389. 14:05the horror that was still in their eyes
390. 14:08and the the suffering that they must
391. 14:11have gone through
392. 14:13while alive to be killed afterwards when
393. 14:16we come back
394. 14:17the guilt that romeo delaire feels the
395. 14:19general admits that he still feels
396. 14:21responsible for the deaths of 800 000
397. 14:23rwandas and for the ultimate
398. 14:25failure of his mission that's a burden
399. 14:27come on back to that
400. 14:31some still smoldering carrying birds
401. 14:34overhead
402. 14:35black lumps in the rags moving
403. 14:39ever so slowly downstream as others
404. 14:42piled up in the curve of the river
405. 14:44i was filled with a sense of gross
406. 14:46ineptness
407. 14:48ripped apart by failure and remorse the
408. 14:51book
409. 14:52when i read it is it starts with
410. 14:55guilt it's infused with guilt yes
411. 15:00and a lot of people and a lot of
412. 15:01elements that are guilty in this the u.n
413. 15:04the western oh yes and i say that too
414. 15:06but
415. 15:07and you took on the guilt i mean we've
416. 15:10all read about
417. 15:11your breakdown and the suicide attempts
418. 15:15but do you feel
419. 15:19do you feel guilty totally
420. 15:22for the rest of my life i was the field
421. 15:25commander
422. 15:26i was the head of mission it was my
423. 15:29responsibility in the field
424. 15:31to make that mission function and
425. 15:33operate and i failed
426. 15:35the mission failed but an eight hundred
427. 15:37thousand people were slaughtered
428. 15:38three three million were displaced and
429. 15:41injured and refugeed
430. 15:42there is no solace anywhere
431. 15:45in saying i did the best i can there
432. 15:49there could have been more either my
433. 15:51skill sets failed
434. 15:53or my ability or whatever else
435. 15:56i did not convince the world
436. 15:59that these human beings were being
437. 16:01slaughtered
438. 16:02and that they counted you didn't commit
439. 16:05to genocide
440. 16:06i didn't prevent it i didn't succeed
441. 16:09in bringing them in an atmosphere of
442. 16:12security
443. 16:13to the evolution of their peace
444. 16:16agreement and that was my mission
445. 16:18my mission was to create an atmosphere
446. 16:21of security
447. 16:22to permit those londons the ones that i
448. 16:24saw dying on the side of the roads
449. 16:26you know by the hundreds as they walked
450. 16:28in the mountains around like tens of
451. 16:29thousands of people
452. 16:30and then looking in their eyes and i'm
453. 16:33seeing bewilderment
454. 16:38what the hell happened was it an
455. 16:39indictment of you every time you see one
456. 16:41of those
457. 16:42images in your head
458. 16:45that's why you need therapy there'll be
459. 16:48no getting away from it
460. 16:51do you regret going to reward them no
461. 16:54never i discovered the humans i
462. 16:57discovered culture i discovered the most
463. 16:59magnificent place on earth and i want to
464. 17:02one day simply
465. 17:03be a pilgrim in that nation do you still
466. 17:05believe in god
467. 17:06yes because i know the devil's there you
468. 17:09believe
469. 17:09and he was with me on a couple of
470. 17:11occasions that i can describe and i do
471. 17:13in the book
472. 17:15it's my pleasure thanks a lot yeah my
473. 17:18pleasure
474. 17:19no matter how idealistic the aim sounds
475. 17:22this new century must become the century
476. 17:25of humanity
477. 17:26when we as human beings rise above race
478. 17:29creed
479. 17:30color religion and national
480. 17:32self-interest
481. 17:33and put the good of humanity above the
482. 17:35good of our own tribe
483. 17:37for the sake of the children and for our
484. 17:40future
485. 17:44persecuted know there have been many
486. 17:46excellent books about the genocide in
487. 17:48rwanda but the world has waited over a
488. 17:50decade to see the events through romeo
489. 17:52delaire's eyes
490. 17:53after all the lair had the most unique
491. 17:55view of what happened both
492. 17:56both on the ground as it took place and
493. 17:58in the back rooms of the united nations
494. 18:00well not only is his book shake hands
495. 18:02with the devil a detailed history
496. 18:04of how a genocide can still unfold
497. 18:07without anyone doing anything about it
498. 18:09it's also the personal story of one
499. 18:10man's conviction for a cause his journey
500. 18:12to a very dark place
501. 18:14and his long slow recovery which is
502. 18:16still taking place
503. 18:18now as you saw romeo delaire rightly
504. 18:20blames the united states
505. 18:21france belgium and the un for their lack
506. 18:24of concern about the civil war in rwanda
507. 18:26and for not stepping in earlier to stop
508. 18:28the killings of course there's well
509. 18:30there's no shortage of
510. 18:31responsible parties in something like
511. 18:32this but the truth is romeo de lair
512. 18:34still blames himself
513. 18:36the most and we saw that in the
514. 18:37interview daleira's guy has taken abuse
515. 18:39from all over the world because of the