There was a controversy as an african union(?) general came out on the subject some years after, and blasted Romeo in a book, I heard - he called him an amateur salon general, and accused Dalaire of things like having taken a side, and disobeyed many orders...
I don't agree necessarly, but.. it does raise questions. WHAT happened, really?
Well, you could write a book on what happened, but for my .02 I'll try and spell out how I perceive it, having read Dallaire's account and many others. (also, if it was a foreign general blasting Dallaire, it was probably someone from Belgium.)
So what you had on the ground at the time was two warring factions: the largely Anglophone RPF, which was mostly made up of Tutsis that weren't actually living in their country anymore, but rather in refugee camps across the northern border.
Then you had the Rwandan Army backed by the mostly Hutu government. The government itself was backed by French trainers.
The RPF, on the other hand, was largely a professional military with good fieldcraft that had managed to beat not just the Rwandan Army, but French paras in open combat.
Now, the RPF was on a good foot, and when it and the government came to a decision to begin a dialogue, they were separated by a DMZ made up mostly of abandoned villages and mine fields. (remember the mine fields, it comes in later)
So, the UN wasn't actually asked to go in to impose a peace (which falls under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, or "Korea"), but to police a peace already in place (which falls under Chapter SIX, read Suez 1956.)
Romeo Dallaire deployed to the country, stopping at several countries along the way to get more support. The initial deployment wasn't made up of troops: there were about a dozen people in there basically to pave the way logistically, politically, and tactfully, for the troops to come. Dallaire looked at the situation, visited the head of the RPF immediately: and at that point if shows just how weird things were there. The RPF was the only side that actually marked it's minefields. The Rwandan government just set them up higgledy-piggledy and waited for someone to step on them.
Dallaire went back to the DPKO and said: "We'll need at least 2000 peacekeepers, not counting the unarmed observers." Now, some folks will ask what UAOs can do in this situation. It's simple: the southern flank of the country is bordered by Burundi, which had just elected a popular democractic President. So he could safely assume it was going to be stable and could deploy his UAOs THERE while deploying the other armed peacekeepers to the western border with Zaire (or Congo or whatever it was that week) and in the north along the DMZ.
The UN, by which I mean the Security Council, replied: "You don't get 2000. You get 1000. That's the ceiling." So Dallaire went about finding signers. He got some second- and third-tier nations: Bangladesh, Ghana, and Tunisia, all of which could provide men but little in the way of reliable training or logistics.
Generally, the most important force in a UN peacekeeping operation is the so-called "anchor force," which is normally made up of a Western- or Western-style military that can provide leadership and a model for the other less-well-trained forces to emulate and thus buoy morale. So Dallaire and the rest of the team went looking for an anchor force. France said no. America said no. So did Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy, Greece, Russia, China, Greece, and India. Only one country stepped up to take the slot: Belgium.
Now, there's a big rule in UN peacekeeping operations in post-colonial countries: you never (NEVER) have your anchor force be the country that ruled the country before. It tends to throw the whole UN force into a bad light. But Dallaire had no choice: no one else was willing to send in troops. So he okayed the Belgians.
(now I could voice my opinion about why the West didn't want to send in troops but I'd sound like a bleeding heart leftist. Yeah. ME.)
UNAMIR deployed a full MONTH after the target date because of the difficultly in putting together the force and transporting them to Rwanda. UNAMIR's main base was in fact NOT in Rwanda but across the border in Zaire. And the government of Zaire, when Dallaire told them his projected ROEs and the way he intended on policing the border, was told: "You can't leave your compound without informing us at least 12 hours in advance so we can provide scouts to show you the minefields." Now this was an obvious attempt by the government to lend aid to the Rwandan government: the whole idea of policing the ceasefire intended on the ability of the UN to move unimpeded throughout the country.
So he ended up moving a lot of his force into Kigali, the capital, in the UN compound. His ground intelligence provided the locations of arms caches that the Hutus would later use in the Genocide, and he asked the UN for permission to go after them. The UN declined because they didn't want to make any "provocative actions."
Meanwhile, he was dealing with the unrealiability of his force: the Bangladeshis would regularly put paper bags over their exhaust pipes, then complain of engine trouble so they wouldn't have to go out on patrol. A Ghanain gaurd was so afraid of anyone with officer's stripes on that he actually peed himself when Dallaire approached the gaurd post.
Dallaire wanted to employ a US Commando Solo C-130 to jam the government radio station that was whipping the Hutus into a frenzy with hate speech: the US said it would be to costly to do it and he was also unable to hit it with a ground force.
Then the kickers: at a church north of the capitol, 10 Belgian paras were attacked by Rwandan government forces and killed after they handed over their weapons (due to the fact that the ROE they were under was so vague). Then the Burundian and Rwandan presidents with both killed in a plane crash that was caused by the Burundi-based opposition. The Rwandan government got what it wanted: the Belgian government under pressure and a reason to go on the warpath.
The genocide started, weapons came out of caches that were untouchable by the UN, and the Belgians promptly pulled out as people died. Now it's at this point where the South African-based PMC Executive Outcomes makes a brief cameo: they got ahold of the UNAMIR leadership in Kigali, and offered their services to attempt to separate the two sides and stop the Genocide if the UN would contract with them as legal peacekeepers. Dallaire pushed for it, as it at least meant that there would be SOME form of trained military presence to stop the slaughter. The UN disagreed. Perhaps they didn't want to cut into their Potted Plant or Modern Art budget for the UN HQ.
Then the UN decided it's mission there was unfeasible, saying it was "putting peacekeepers at risk." (gag.) So the UN prepared to pull out. At one point, a woman representing a group of refugees hiding in the compound walked up to a UN machine gunner and asked her that if they were going to leave, then she would rather they were machine gunned to death quickly en masse as opposed to what would happen at the hands of the government forces.
Dallaire tried to stop the carnage with what he had: he sent Bangladeshi troops out into the city to attempt to set up a road block with an armoured personnel carrier. They ended up being confronted by a mob and ABANDONING THE VEHICLE.
We left. A half a million people died. And when it was all over, we came back. The Canadian Airborne Regiment had to be deployed to recover the lost APC.
I've got my own opinions, honestly, and they're kind of sharp. But I was just trying to lay out the facts here so folks know what was going on.