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More than 800,000 people are believed to have been killed in 100 days in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire witnessed these massacres. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he describes the dilemmas and atrocities to which he was exposed.
In the book Dallaire explains how, after arriving in Kigali in August 1993, he warned the UN high authorities that he lacked sufficient equipment and manpower to carry out his mission. However, a lack of clarity in the UN's intervention procedures coupled with the international community's apparent lack of interest in Rwanda meant that Dallaire's calls for help went unanswered.
From day to day the situation deteriorates until eventually the general's forces are left on their own, without fuel, money or adequate equipment. Meanwhile, encouraged by the ethnic hate propaganda of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), Hutu militiamen attack their Tutsi victims while an army of exiles begins a civil war, from the northern border of the country, to take power. In Kigali, corpses of civilians killed by machetes begin piling up and many of the moderate politicians with whom Dallaire had the mandate to negotiate are also murdered.
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