History: That's not an excuse for the way the world stood by and wrung its hands while some one million citizens of Rwanda, mainly members of the Tutsi ethnic group, were hacked and butchered to death by their Hutu neighbours.
Spinoza said the best approach was neither to laugh nor to weep but to understand. The world's conduct cannot be excused but it can be explained. Following from that explanation, steps can be taken to prevent a recurrence of the terrible events of 1994.
"Never again" was the cry as the United Nations established itself in the aftermath of the second World War and its horrific genocides against Jews and others. But it did happen again in Rwanda and to a lesser extent in the Balkans and may be about to happen once more in Sudan at time of writing.
The international community finally moved to halt genocide in the Balkans, too late for some but just in time for many others. One of the problems with Rwanda was that the genocide happened so fast. It is usually said to have taken place in 100 days but in reality it seems most of the killing was carried out in the first 50.
Hate is irrational but it is not stupid. Linda Melvern indicates how, as soon as the right moment arrived, the vast Hutu killing machine was set into action. Not since the Holocaust had such careful and meticulous planning gone into the process of mass murder.
The world responded with a combination of sluggishness, stupidity, bureaucratic inertia and downright cynicism. The UN Secretary-General of the time, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali does not come out well, particularly due to his failure to interrupt a visit to Europe and return to New York at once to deal with the crisis.
France comes in for heavy criticism. As the author presents the case, the French were mainly worried about maintaining their influence in central Africa and remained either apathetic or ignorant about the possibility, indeed probability, that mass murder was on the agenda.
One would have liked to learn more about the reasons the Hutu hated the Tutsi to the extent they did. One has seen similar ethnic hatred among elements of the loyalist community in Northern Ireland and the genocidal war-cry that, "A traitor is anyone who befriends, employs or marries a Tutsi" has a familiar ring if you substitute "Taig" for "Tutsi".
The murder of Rwanda's Hutu President, Juvénal Habyarimana, acted as a signal for the genocidaires. There has been claim and counter-claim recently over who was responsible, forces led by Rwanda's current Tutsi President, Paul Kagame, or "Hutu Power" elements seeking an excuse for slaughter.
Whether deliberately chosen or not, it acted as the perfect launching-pad for genocide. Wipe them out, cleanse our nation of the Tutsi "cockroaches", this was the cry.
The rest of the world, accustomed to the fairly stable, if stultifying, order imposed by the Cold War, failed to comprehend what was taking place. The Clinton administration was still paralysed by the failure of the UN mission to Somalia in which 18 US soldiers were killed and their corpses dragged through the streets.
President Harry Truman is meant to have said that a particular military objective was "not worth the life of one Kansas farm boy" and Bill Clinton clearly took the view that US lives should not be sacrificed to impose order on Rwanda.
But in fairness to Clinton and others, the world community thought this was a civil war situation and it failed to realise in time the sheer scale of what was taking place.
The excuse for this is that there was inadequate intelligence information available. Melvern queries this and complains about a lack of full disclosure in this respect. It is safe to say the US nearly always has a satellite looking at just about everything that goes on in the world, although there is no guarantee the information it transmits will be properly interpreted, assessed and acted upon.
I recently visited Rwanda for the first time, to cover the 10th anniversary of the genocide. Like many tragic places, it possesses a landscape of great natural beauty. The people, too, have enormous grace and charm which has survived through their terrible experiences.
But there was a terrible sense that, if these people were white and, even better, sitting on major oil reserves, their fate would have been very different from what it was. That is why the world must find new rules and new mechanisms for dealing with Rwanda-type situations as they arise in the future. There must be no value-judgments that give the lives of one community greater precedence over the lives of another.
A ceremony of remembrance at the Amahoro football stadium was a curious experience. First of all the place was only two-thirds full. Secondly, the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, was treated as a guest of honour, reflecting his genuine attempt to come to terms with and express due regret for Belgium's failings with regard to Rwanda. Thirdly, the fact that the name of Kofi Annan did not provoke derision was significant. He was head of UN peacekeeping at the time and must take his share of responsibility for the lapses of the international community, but unlike many governments, the UN at least investigated itself afterwards and expressed sorrow and remorse for what it had allowed to happen.
Linda Melvern's book is very worthwhile but makes few concessions to the reader. A good, tight editing job would have made it a more readable but no less significant chronicle of man's inhumanity to man. This is an epic story of evil but it is not always easy to get through, thanks to the profusion of unfamiliar multi-syllabic names tumbling on top of one another and the lack of a clear narrative thread to guide us through the highly-complex series of events taking place.
The best chapter is the last one, where the author presents her main findings and suggests some pointers for the future. One would have liked more of this. She dwells, very properly, on the serious failings of the news media who were too ready to dismiss the Rwanda story as just another African tribal conflict. There was also the fact that the amazing transition to democracy in South Africa captured the lion's share of media attention and resources at the time.
Among the charges she lays against the French administration of the day, perhaps the gravest is that, after the genocide, Paris facilitated the flight into exile of the interim Hutu government which had provided the political, military and administrative leadership for the programme of mass killing.
Few emerge with honour from this sorry saga and the author cites a report from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which slated France, Belgium, the US, the UK, the Catholic Church and the UN Secretariat. No doubt, the blame is well-merited but one would like to have heard more about what the OAU members were doing at the time.
The saddest figure in the story is Maj-Gen Romeo Dallaire, the French-Canadian who headed up the small and largely-ineffectual UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda. Like the hero of a Kafka tale, he was a decent man trying to behave humanely but caught in a web of international intrigue, ignorance and power politics.
Finally she quotes Bill Clinton, de facto leader of the free world who, like it or not, had ultimate responsibility for the prevention of this terrible tragedy. "All over the world there were people like me," he said during a visit to Rwanda four years later, "sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."
But this book points out that, from virtually the first day of the genocide, there was information available in the US as to what was taking place and there were photographs of massacre sites with thousands of bodies. In her most damning observation she writes: "Whilst at the UN there is a willingness to uncover what happened, in both Washington and London there is a seeming indifference to the matter."
"In both London and Washington, and at the UN in New York, there were politicians and civil servants who took decisions that cost the lives of an incalculable number of people. They should bear full responsibility for those decisions, though it is unlikely that they ever will."
Sadly, she is almost certainly right. Some of the Hutu directors of the genocide have been punished while others are being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sitting in Arusha, Tanzania. In the nature of things, many guilty parties have gone free but one hopes at least this tribunal will impose exemplary sentences, helping in its own way to make a reality of the slogan: "Never again".
Deaglan de Breadun is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times and author of The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland (Collins Press).