General Romeo Dallaire: Time to Set the Record Straight

General Dallaire was head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the Rwanda Genocide where about 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered. Most of those killed were members of the Tutsi ethnic group. He set forth his experience in "Shake Hands With the Devil," which largely supports Rwanda President Paul Kagame's distorted version of the Genocide. Unfortunately, Dallaire became either an unknowing or willing shill for Kagame.

I have visited Rwanda, read Dallaire's book, visited the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kilgali, seen the documentary "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire," and heard him speak at the University of California, Berkeley.

After years of systematic disinformation about the Genocide, there exists a collective ignorance about what really happened in Rwanda and who was responsible. What actually happened? Kagame was trained at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas. Major-General Kagame returned from Leavenworth to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) shortly after the October 1990 invasion of Rwanda by Ugandan forces, which has been misrepresented as a war of liberation by a Tutsi-led guerilla army.

The "civil war" or "war of liberation" was in reality a brutal struggle for political power between the Hutu-led Juvénal Habyarimana government supported by France and the RPF-backed Tutsi forces backed financially and militarily by the United States. The Hutu-Tutsi rivalry was used deliberately in the pursuit of U.S. strategic and geopolitical objectives by establishing a U.S. sphere of influence in Central Africa, a region historically dominated by France and Belgium. What was at stake? The region's vast geostrategic mineral wealth, i.e., cobalt, oil, natural gas, copper, uranium, tin, coltan, cassiterite, gold, and diamonds,

In April 1994, according to French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière and many others, the RPF shot down the plane carrying Rwandan president Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, which was the catalyst for the Genocide.

By July 1994, the RPF completed its coup d´etat and consolidated its power in Rwanda. After the coup, the recently released United Nations Report charges that Hutu militia along with Hutu civilians fled across the border to Congo, then known as Zaire. Rwanda pursued them across the border, aided by Congolese rebel forces. These combined forces systematically massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwanda and Congolese Hutus, the majority of which were children, women, and elderly. It could be said that a second genocide occurred.

The government of Paul Kagame has maintained political power and manipulated public sympathy by promoting a highly politicized ideology of Genocide. Anyone who challenges the official story is branded a "genocide negationist," a "genocide revisionist," or "killers of remembrance" by the Kagame regime. Even the Genocide Memorial Centre promotes his version of the Genocide.

Kagame is now one of our men in Africa. He was recently reelected President and is well on his way to becoming a president-for-life. Will the U.S. reevaluate our relationship with Kagame? Probably not. The geostrategic stakes are too high.

Given the U.N. Report and earlier revelations since the publication of his book, I challenge General Dallaire to set the record straight and cease his support of Rwanda President Kagame.