Genocidal neutrality
Joel Mowbray
February 24, 2005

Up for three Oscars this weekend, Hotel Rwanda is based on the incredible true story of Paul Rusesabagina, who used the five-star hotel he managed to shield almost 1,300 Rwandans from certain death in 1994.
But if you watch this powerful film -- and you should -- what you won't see is the even more incredibly true story of the man with direct culpability for the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis: now-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The only place you can find this stomach-turning story, in fact, is in Ambassado Dore Gold's new U.N.-trashing tome called Tower of Babble.
Gold's heavily researched and copiously footnoted book is solid throughout, but by far the best chapter is Impartial to Genocide, which serves as a damning indictment of Kofi. The most startling revelation: Despite having credible advance warning that a genocide was imminent, Kofi was the man who spearheaded the United Nations' unconscionable position of neutrality as Hutu militias murdered thousands of Tutsis per day.
On Jan. 11, 1994 -- three months before the genocide began -- Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the original U.N. peacekeeping unit in Rwanda, sent a secret cable to U.N. officials in New York warning that a very, very important government politician had put him in touch with a Hutu informant who warned that Hutu malitias were planning the extermination of minority Tutsis.
No alarm bells went off at the United Nations, even though, as Gold writes, warning signs of an impending massacre were everywhere. The man running the relevant division at the time, the Department of Peacekeeping Missions, was Kofi.
Actually, alarm bells didn't necessarily have to go off, as Gen. Dallaire offered a silver lining: He knew the location of the Hutu weapons cache, and he was planning to seize it and stop the slaughter before it started. But his plan to save hundreds of thousands of lives was short-circuited by Kofi, who didn't want to upset the sitting Hutu government or in any way appear to be taking sides.
Not only did Kofi not do anything to prevent genocide, but his actions almost assured that the Security Council wouldn't either. According to various accounts cited by Gold, including the United Nations' own post-debacle report, Security Council members complained that Kofi's department kept them in the dark, not revealing the true nature and full extent of the genocide.
Kofi's caution could not be chalked up to doubts about the accuracy of the warning. The U.N. secretary general's personal representative investigated the matter. Despite his well-documented pro-Hutu leanings, he wrote back to the United Nations that he had total, repeat total confidence in the veracity and true ambitions of the informant.
In other words, not only did Kofi and the United Nations have a Hutu informant who gave them advance notice of the genocide, but they were able to verify the veracity of that informant. Still, Kofi insisted on doing nothing.
Once the slaughter started and tens of thousands had been murdered, Kofi acted -- just not in the right way. To make sure that Gen. Dallaire's men were not trying to stop the genocide, he instructed the commander in Rwanda to make every effort not to compromise your impartiality or to act beyond your mandate. Kofi's advocacy for impartiality no doubt helped lead the Security Council to slash the already small peacekeeping contingent almost 90 percent.
Although Kofi never appeared on-screen, the fruits of his inaction could be seen throughout Hotel Rwanda. When the U.N. officer, played by Nick Nolte, tells the press before the genocide, We're here as peacekeepers, not peacemakers, you can snicker as you imagine Kofi writing that line while enjoying a glass of wine.
But when the tragedy is unfolding and the U.N. peacekeepers can do nothing but shout, Don't shoot, amusement turns to disgust. And watching almost all the Western soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers pull out once it's realized that they're needed more than ever, profound sadness slowly captures your entire body. Resisting crying at this point is fruitless.
In the movie, the pullout of the Western soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers is attributed to the West thinking of Rwandans as dirt. Again and again the movie stressed that the West didn't care about the Tutsis of Rwanda, which sadly is true.
But sadder still is that neither did their fellow African, Kofi Annan.
Joel Mowbray is the author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security.