Waiting for First Light by Romeo Dallaire

Author:Romeo Dallaire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2016-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

*1 In October 1970, in response to the kidnapping of British trade commissioner James Cross and provincial cabinet minister Pierre Laporte by the Front de libération du Québec, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau controversially invoked the War Measures Act, deploying troops through Quebec and Ontario.

*2 In the early morning of April 7, 1994, the Belgium patrol had been overwhelmed and disarmed by elite Rwandan government troops, and subsequently killed by a rebellious mob of troops in Camp Kigali who believed it was the Belgians who had shot down the Rwandan presidential plane the night before.

*3 From the Belgian military court judge’s summation: “The Court must note the legality of the order given on April 7, 1994, at 2:00 am by UNAMIR Commander General Dallaire to Kigali Sector Commander Colonel Marchal—to wit, to provide the Prime Minister with an escort….We should also note that previously, General Dallaire and Colonel Marchal had attended, in part, a meeting that convinced them that the principal leaders of the Rwandan Armed Forces would continue their efforts toward the successful implementation of the Arusha Accord, while respecting the Rwandan constitution….It was not up to the Accused [Luc Marchal] in any way to assess the need for or usefulness of executing the aforementioned order—the legal nature of which is not open to discussion—in achieving the greater good sought by the competent political authority. One thing is certain: the Accused was responsible for carrying out the order as given. Refusing to do so would have been unjustifiable.”

From the UN’s comment on the result of the court martial by Kofi Annan, Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations: “Given the international character of UNAMIR as a United Nations subsidiary organ, the operational control of the Secretary-General and his exclusive authority to issue orders and instructions within the limits of the mandate and through the chain of command, it is the view of the United Nations that Colonel Marchal acted within the mandate of the Force, in full compliance with the instructions of the United Nations Force Commander, and could not have acted otherwise without disobeying the Force Commander’s instructions.”

*4 I was eventually successful in creating the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute. It has done incredible work bringing administration, operations and ethics closer together. With all of my failures, this is something I am quite proud of.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.