The Shallow Graves of Rwanda

Rating:
Summary: A first class case study of a UN operation
Review: Although not quite perfect in its smallest detail, this is the most authoritative analysis yet available of the aid that the UN and the international community tried to provide to Rwanda after the genocide of 1994, concentrating on the period from the author's arrival in June of that year and tending to discuss UNAMIR's work at the operational rather than the tactical level - although it does cover, with dispassion and objectivity rather than overt emotion, a number of individual horror stories.

This must be regarded as a classic case study and, as one who worked under Ambassador Khan in Rwanda, I recommend it without reservation for students of the United Nations, those obliged to deal with this and other international organizations and, especially, those considering their resourcing.

The areas in which I would wish to assist Khan were he to revise his text for a future edition are: definition of the boundaries between Operation Homeward (which escapes mention under this name) and Operation Retour, and to give due credit due to Lt Col Tom Mullarkey for his formulation of Retour; Operation Hope and its role in the chronology of UNAMIR-RPF relations; Khan's somewhat rose-tinted view of UNAMIR's discipline and performance; and the captions of some photographs (Plate 5 is not of the medical centre in Kibeho but of a church somewhere else; Plate 6 is misdated - and definitely not of a scene in 1943; Plate 7 is of Kigali Prison rather than of Gikongoro's); amongst a full and mostly accurate coverage of the tragedy in Kibeho, correction of some minor flaws in the attribution of witness testimony.

In identifying these errors, this is not to say that I think this a poor book: I think it quite the opposite and believe that it deserves to be read very widely!