Andreas Simon dos Santos

As commander of the UN peacekeepers, General Roméo Dallaire was sent to Rwanda in 1993. His mission was to secure a fragile peace between the warring ethnic groups of Hutu and Tutsi. However, extremists in the Rwandan government had long planned a genocide, counting on the hesitation of the United Nations. Desperately, Dallaire tried to prevent the genocide, but to no avail. Armed with a toothless UN mandate, a troop that was far too small, and inadequate equipment, and abandoned by the UN and Western powers, he and his soldiers had little choice but to defend themselves and watch helplessly as the slaughter unfolded. Although Dallaire managed to save over 30,000 lives, he experienced the failure of the UN mission as a personal failure and was nearly broken by it. "Shake Hands with the Devil" is the disturbing eyewitness account of a tragic hero.