Another Victim of UN "Peacekeeping"

In mid-June, a middle-aged man was discovered sleeping on a park bench in Hull, Quebec. Clad in a t-shirt, obviously drunk, and curled into a fetal position, the man was identified as Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of Canada's UN "peacekeeping" mission to Rwanda in 1994. "When I finally discovered it was him, I was really sad," commented Stephane Beaudoin, a news cameraman who was on the scene. "I didn't shoot it because I was depressed to imagine a man like that could be there and didn't have help. He was so important to Canada when he was in good shape."

After Lt.-Gen. Dallaire was taken to a hospital and treated, he explained - through his spokesman, Lt.-Col. Brett Boudreau - that he has been battling post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his experiences in Rwanda. "My heart goes out to him," Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded a UN "peacekeeping" mission in Bosnia, told the June 29th National Post. "I know he's battling a lot of demons right now." After taking an early retirement on April 12th, Dallaire commented that his nightmares of Rwanda's bloodletting had left him with "all those grey cells screwed up." He has had repeated flashbacks, which can be triggered by seemingly random stimuli. He has attempted suicide on at least two occasions.

As previously reported in these pages (see "A Silent Accomplice to Mass Murder," June 8, 1998, page 6), Dallaire did what little he could to prevent the Rwandan massacre, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives - but his efforts were thwarted by Kofi Annan, the current UN secretary-general who was then the head of the UN's peacekeeping division. After learning from an informant of plans by the Hutu government to "register" Tutsis as a precursor to the massacre, Dallaire faxed UN headquarters and requested permission to seize cached weapons that were eventually used in the massacre. Annan refused to authorize the mission and instructed Dallaire to provide his intelligence to the same Hutu government that was planning the killing spree.

Last December, observes the National Post, "an inquiry panel confirmed that [Dallaire] sent a telex warning the UN Security Council of a potential massacre. The inquiry blamed the United Nations, and secretary-general Kofi Annan in particular, for failing to respond to Lt.-Gen. Dallaire's request to step in to prevent the genocide." While the panel's ruling restored Dallaire's military reputation, it has provided him with no comfort as he grapples with his tormented memories and his undeserved guilt.

In a CBC-TV interview, Dallaire described how he could hear victims of the massacre "die at the end of the phone" as they desperately pleaded for help he was forbidden to provide. He also described the mutilated bodies of Belgian soldiers who were among the first victims of the bloodletting. "There are many days in the past, and less so now, where I wish I had died there," Dallaire disclosed. Kofi Annan, the object of diplomatic adulation worldwide and the beneficiary of all the perquisites of his elite position, is apparently untroubled by his own role in this tragedy.

Source: http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2000/07-31-2000/insider/vo16no16_un.htm