Hero, Failure, or Casualty?: A Peacekeeper's Experience of Genocide

As Dallaire describes vividly in Shake Hands with the Devil, this blood—accompanied by an overwhelming sense of helplessness and guilt and the terrifying memories of the genocide—will stay with him forever. Shake Hands with the Devil records the horror of the genocide, as the Tutsi minority was engulfed in violence. Dallaire fought against the indifference and proceduralism of his superiors at UN headquarters in New York (several of whom lobbied for the disbanding of UNAMIR soon after the violence escalated) to save as many civilians as he could from the genocide and ultimately to save himself from going under.