Sir, - While there is some point in Kevin Myers's assertion (An Irishman's Diary, March 27th) that American army intervention in Rwanda to prevent the genocide would have proved ineffective, his assumption of US ignorance of former Zaire is naive; after all, the CIA ran the place for quite some time before Mobutu was forced to make an exit. Visiting researchers would turn to it as the only source of accurate information in a place where the indigenous infrastructure was disintegrating.
This is common knowledge, but as it does not appear in "The Burton Schoolboys' Atlas of Africa", Mr Myers is once again led into the realm of a reductive and patronising fiction. Oscar Wilde wrote: "Blessed is the man who has nothing to say and doesn't say it." Kevin Myers should copy this out in big letters, and pin it firmly onto that part of the map called Sub-Saharan Africa. - Yours, etc.,
Eoin Dillon
Haddington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.