By Peter Knaack

In a keynote address held at the 2003 Industrial Accident Prevention Association (IAPA) show and conference in Toronto on April 15, 2003, one of Canada's most prominent soldiers, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire presented a vision of leadership defined by character and humanity. Using his experiences with the Canadian Armed Forces, specifically those during the fateful UN Mission to Rwanda, Lt. General Dallaire exposed how moral and other strengths of leadership could be invested to overcome the challenges unique to an age of resurgent barbarism that marked the decade of the 1990's.

Certainly the 90's were an era of tremendous change and transition. The unexpected collapse of the Soviet system brought with it a series of fundamental global and societal changes that had a dramatic effect on how people came to view themselves and their fellow men.

On the one hand, civil society of the 1990's began to toy with a thinly veiled social Darwinist belief in the rule of the strong over the weak. All too often the human element in business and human affairs was sacrificed on the altar of production efficiencies and profit. On the other hand, the fall of the Berlin Wall led to massive changes within the international milieu. The familiarity of a largely bipolar world was replaced by the insecurity of a new era challenged by unexpected asymmetric threats, unparalleled barbarism and catastrophic humanitarian events. The result of mounting global crises such as those of Somalia (1992) and Rwanda (1993 - 1996), where whole nations were brought to the brink of extinction, were mounting insecurity, emotional withdrawal and a diminished capacity for empathy within society at large.

As with all ages in transition some of the developments of the immediate post-Cold War era were positive while others were much less so. For instance the change in military affairs that accompanied the 1990's saw the first whole scale adoption of women into the last male-only bastions of the Canadian military. By embracing this opportunity the Canadian Forces were able to enrich a narrowing talent base and overcome many dated structures. However, the devolution in human affairs of the 1990's that de-emphasized the human aspects of service to one's country made it much more difficult for individuals trained and conditioned to follow orders to cope with needs typical to the volatility of the human condition. In the case of some of our highest profile leaders, such as Lt. General Dallaire, the stakes in personal and emotional terms were even higher.  While the average soldier posted to a place like Rwanda, struggled with the shame and responsibility of witnessing a nadir of human experience, it was on General Dallaire's watch that nearly 800,000 Rwandans brutally slaughtered each other while the international community watched at a distance with only passive disaffection. The challenge of coping with the dual responsibility of men and mission was truly one of Herculean proportions. While the UN vacillated General Dallaire woke up each morning to brief his troops for their missions, share in their pain upon their return, and often personally bid adieux to those that had paid the ultimate sacrifice. Sadly this also included a unit of 10 Belgian para-commandos who were caught in one of the first genocidal waves of the ever escalating civil conflict that had enveloped Rwanda.  

In a background characterized by the most fundamental global and societal change ever experienced, Canadian soldiers were being committed to an increasing number of United Nations peacekeeping missions. The downsizing of the post-Cold War era that involved all aspects of society, including corporations, institutions and government, could not fail to also target this nation's most prominent institution - its armed forces. In the case of the Canadian Army, Navy and Airforce this move toward rightsizing occurred at a time where the number of operational commitments were not on the decrease but instead, due to a general deterioration in world affairs, were steadily increasing. Fewer soldiers though, meant that often the same individuals completed longer and more frequent rotations into the highest intensity missions ever experienced during peacetime. Without question many of these soldiers were subject to situations where they risked not only life and limb, but on more fundamental level, their very existence as whole individuals. At the same time, the new societal mantra of survival of the fittest ruled out viewing stress induced injuries of the mind as legitimate.

In contrast to those who returned from the battlefields of Korea and the Second World War, the veterans of Canadian UN missions of the 1990's did not return to a heroes' welcome. Returning soldiers of two or three such missions were given no time to readjust to their families and their former surroundings. Sadly, the importance of the human references of reintegration - a bitter lesson learned during the First World War and applied with remarkable skill and compassion during and immediately after the Second World War - had largely been cast aside by an era that had abandoned its humanity. Indifferent attitudes within society towards psychological illness precluded awarding these veterans any special treatment. In an era where soldiers had become mere assets, damaged goods were no longer welcome. Those too traumatized to continue serving their country were released. Many of those who soldiered on with an apparent resilience appeared to justify the newfound belief in the inestimable pliancy of the human spirit. For many of this nation's finest soldiers the result of these expectations was the now familiar spiral into joblessness, alcoholism, substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behavior. The task of defending a nation under siege such as Rwanda took a tremendous psychological toll on all those tasked with this responsibility. In many cases the after effects have only begun to manifest themselves many years later in the form of broken lives, broken marriages, and suicide.

History yields many lessons. During the First World War, the horror of the trenches led to the development of more sophisticated ways of dealing with battlefield stress which directly benefited those fighting in the Second World War and the Korean conflict. General Dellaire's experiences in Rwanda proved that those serving this country are not mere instruments of policy. The recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are further testament to the necessity of decisive human leadership. Those in command of the smaller and leaner military formations of the battlefields of today need to instill unquestionable confidence in those they command. The kind of "communion of capabilities" inspired by General Dallaire during the UN mission to Rwanda is all the more relevant today as Canadian soldiers prepare for a new mission in Afghanistan.

Backgrounder on the Lt. General (Ret.) Dallaire and the Conflict in Rwanda

Initially in command of a multi-national force of barely 2000 soldiers, Major General Dallaire arrived in Rwanda in July of 1993 to take command of the United Nations Observer Mission - Uganda and Rwanda (UNOMUR) as well as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). Seeing his force reduced to only 490 soldiers, General Dallaire and a dedicated team of ten staff officers / UN Military Observers (UMO) attempted to stave off a developing human disaster in Rwanda. This operation code named "Operation Lance" took a dramatic turn for the worse when the President Habyarymana of Rwanda was tragically killed in an aircraft crash on the 6th of April 1994. The suspicious circumstances surrounding the Rwandan President's death provided the final spark for a simmering ethnic conflict to explode between April and July 1994, into a full-scale genocidal war resulting in the deaths of over 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus. In the end more than one in ten of Rwanda's estimated 7.5 million people had succumbed to the murderous terror, disease, and hunger of Africa's most genocidal conflict.  

By June of 1994 the forces assigned to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) had been significantly expanded. However, Rwandan society had already been devastated by genocidal ethnic warfare by the time this expanded force of some 5,500 soldiers including a Canadian contingent consisting of almost 350 troops arrived in the field. General Dallaire left Rwanda in 1994 physically and emotionally exhausted over the failure of the UN Mission to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands Rwandans among them a significant number of children. Canadian participation with the UNAMIR mission ended in February of 1995 with the departure of a final contingent of Canadian peacekeepers. After 36 years in the military, General Dallaire finally resigned from the Canadian Forces in April of 2000 citing continuing health issues resultant from the stress of the Rwandan mission as the reason for this difficult decision.