The cable left UN peacekeeping headquarters in Kigali under a four-word subject line: "Request for Protection for Informant." It was 11 January 1994. Sent over the UN’s telex circuit and reproduced afterwards in fax form for the records that survived, the document is known in the historical record as the Genocide Fax. By the time it reached New York that evening, it was already one of the most specific warnings of mass killing the United Nations had ever received.
Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), had spent the day debriefing an informant his staff identified only as Jean-Pierre. The man was a senior trainer for the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia. He told UNAMIR that the militia was registering Tutsis in Kigali by location and that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis." He offered to lead peacekeepers to a weapons cache of at least 135 firearms, including AK-47s issued by the Rwandan army, in exchange for protection for himself and his family.
Dallaire’s cable laid all of this out in plain language and asked New York for two things: authority to seize the weapons within 36 hours, and safe passage out of the country for the informant. He closed in French with the line that would haunt the document for decades: "Peux ce que veux. Allons-y." Where there is a will there is a way. Let’s go.
The reply landed within a day. It was drafted by Iqbal Riza, an assistant to UN peacekeeping head Kofi Annan, and went out under Annan’s name. It instructed Dallaire to take no action that "might lead to the use of force and unanticipated repercussions."
No raid. No safe passage.
He was to brief Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana on what the informant had said and ask the government to act, then defer to the French, Belgian, and US ambassadors in Kigali. The cable Dallaire had sent at 6:45 p.m. New York time was filed.
The Rwandan genocide began on 7 April 1994, less than three months later. The first UN casualties were ten Belgian paratroopers from Dallaire’s own force, killed escorting Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was murdered the same morning. Estimates of the death toll range from 500,000 to one million people, predominantly Tutsis, killed across roughly 100 days. The Belgian contingent was withdrawn within weeks.
The Genocide Fax is unusual in the record of foreseen atrocities because it was not lost, mistranslated, or buried. It was sent to the right desk on the right day, read by the right people, and answered. A signed document does not oblige anyone to act on it. The medium can only carry the warning. What happens after the page rolls off the tray is up to whoever is standing next to the machine.