GEORGETWON, P.E.I. – It’s been nearly 20 years since world powers failed to intervene in the humanitarian crisis in Rwanda and watched from the sidelines as a genocide took place.
More than 800,000 Tutsis were killed in just 100 days before a Tutsi offensive – led by current President Paul Kagame – invaded from Uganda and pushed out the Hutu government and Interahamwe militia.
Canadian Lt.-Gen. (Ret.) Romeo Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994. He alerted the UN of Hutu plans to massacre Tutsis, but had his initial requests for intervention denied.
He said the international response to Syria, two decades later, isn’t much better and it’s coming way too late.
“I think that there should have been an intervention,” Dallaire told Global News in Georgetown, P.E.I., where he’s attending the Liberal caucus meeting. But, he said that should have happened more than a year ago.
The brutal massacres and human rights violations that took place in Rwanda, while Dalliare argued for the international community to step in, eventually led to the United Nations agreeing to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
“Military intervention under the Responsibility to Protect… was the answer a year plus ago,” he said, “When the fighting in this horrific civil war wasn’t all so inter-meshed in urban areas, that would require hundreds of thousands of troops to do the job that R2P is asking, which is protecting civilians.”
R2P is an initiative all UN members agreed to in 2005, making a commitment to act when a government fails to protect or is unable to protect its citizens from genocide, massacres, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
READ MORE: Responsibility to Protect: Does the world have to help Syria?
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He has some skepticism about what could be accomplished with a military intervention, which now seems possible within a matter of days.
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Dallaire questions why foreign governments don’t want a solution similar to the Dayton Accords in 1995, which brought an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“We deployed 67,000 troops in the ex-Yugoslavia,” he said. “What’s the difference between a scenario of catastrophic failure, of imploding nations and failing states in Europe and the same thing happening in the Middle East and the Arab world.”
According to Dallaire, military force targeting facilities such as chemical weapons sites or command centres may achieve something, but it’s not going to ensure the death toll is going to stop climbing.
He said the alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians is actually a sign the Syrian regime is getting desperate to stay in power.
READ MORE: Gas attack: What chemical weapons does Syria have, and what does it do with them?
An inspection team is still investigating the attack of one week ago, but the UN’s special envoy to Syria said Wednesday that evidence suggests chemicals were used in the Aug. 21 attack.
Dallaire fears there’s no clear plan in place to assist the Syrian people moving forward to stabilize the country.
Dallaire said the international community needs to show Syria, and the countries in the surrounding region, that they’re not “standing alone.”
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