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  • Journey into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda
  • Frank Kalesnik
Journey into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda. By Thomas P. Odom. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. ISBN 1-58544-457-X. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 297. $24.95.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Odom served throughout his career in military intelligence, spending most of his time in the Middle East and Africa. While this memoir describes his entire career, the emphasis is on his service in Rwanda. While his experiences as a Foreign Area Officer make for fascinating reading, his insights into the Rwandan tragedy are compelling.

The author is a scholar as well as a soldier. His other works include: Leavenworth Paper #14, Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964–65 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, 1988) and Shaba II: The French [End Page 888] and Belgian Intervention in Zaire in 1978 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, 1993). Both are authoritative accounts of European interventions in Central Africa. He also worked as a Pentagon briefer during the First Gulf War, and then helped write (with Brigadier General Robert H. Scales, Jr.) Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War (Washington: Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, 1993).

While Journey into Darkness is fully documented with end notes and a bibliography, it is first and foremost a soldier's narrative, frankly told. While Rwanda is the focus of his story, the insights into a Foreign Area Officer's experiences in places such as Lebanon, the Sudan, and Turkey cast a welcome light. Foreign Area Officers are "strategic scouts," given extensive language training, including independent travel in their assigned region of expertise. They provide the crucial human element necessary in accurately assessing information provided to policy makers.

Odom arrived in Zaire as a military attaché in October 1993. Zaire's director of Foreign Liaison, Brigadier General Loleki, had been an attaché in Washington, which he left with $50,000 in unpaid debts and five luxury cars, also not paid for. The. State Department refused to accredit Loleki's replacement until the bills were paid; Loleki retaliated by ignoring Odom. His tragicomic description of Zaire is incisive, as are his accounts of personality clashes within the U.S. Embassy, but it is to neighboring Rwanda that attention quickly shifts

The collapse of the Arusha Accords following the death of Rwanda's President Habyrimana in April of 1994 led not only to the renewal of hostilities between the Hutu government and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Popular Front, but to the horrific genocide involving what Odom believes was more than a million people (or one out of every seven Rwandans). While Canadian Major General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN peacekeepers enforcing the Arusha accords, had warned the UN Security Council of the impending disaster, no action was taken.

That revelation played havoc with the U.S. stance on nongenocide. The United States had been at least partially responsible for tying Dallaire's hands in stopping the genocide before it started. Now its position that no genocide was taking place looked at best to be ill informed. Part of it stemmed from the disaster in Somalia. No one in Washington wanted another Mogadishu. It was still trying to extract itself from that mess. By equating Rwanda with Somalia, Wahington tied itself and the U.N. Security council in knots (p. 77).

As the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Army routed government forces, a Hutu exodus ensued. Their French patrons established an enclave near Lake Kivu, through which the refugees, many of whom were responsible for the genocide, fled to refugee camps established at Goma in Zaire.

The Clinton administration then initiated Operation Support Hope, in which the armed forces of the United States gave humanitarian aid to the perpetrators of a holocaust. The author helped coordinate this effort. While water purification equipment was desperately needed, the administration [End Page 889] demanded a more dramatic airdrop for the benefit of CNN. The cargo? Flour, earmuffs, and mittens.

Lieutenant Colonel Odom was next assigned to Rwanda itself, and praises Ambassador David Rawson, with whom he worked closely and well. He also praises the Rwandan Patriotic Army, which he...

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