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Title: The African Stakes of the Congo War
ISBN: 0312295502
Author:
Publicate Date: 2002-09-14
Publish: 2002-09-14
List Price: $79.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $27.95
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Peeling Back The Layers
This overview of the Second Congo War does an excellent job of explaining what could be a mind-numbing amalgam of acronyms and ever-shifting alliances between the literally dozens of war lords, foreign-backed rebels, official forces, and UN peacekeepers struggling for control of the rich resources of this sad nation.
Of particular note is the role played by neighboring countries in both the war and its aftermath. Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Zimbabwe all sent forces into the DRC; many are still there, although operating under different cloaks of official denial. The book is somewhat dated in its particulars at this point, but not by much.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the forces that drive the atrocities occurring in the Congo today are the same ones that Clark's contributors so aptly describe in this book.
Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo
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2: Solid introduction to Africa's Great War
The African Stakes of the Congo War is special because it is an edited volume of articles by different authors. This has some disadvantages: the authors don't all necessarily agree and they are not made to link up. On the other hand, each chapter has to both be short and make a well-argued point, which is always good. The two introductory chapters are very good: John Clark explains the situation in Congo/Zaire that made the war possible very well and Crawford Young very originally puts Congo's invasion by Rwandan guerrillas in a continental context (IE, pointing out that this sort of thing also happened to Chad, Uganda, Rwanda...).
The other chapters each explain a single theme or factor in the war. I found those on the conduct of individual states to be the best: the reasons behind Rwanda's and Uganda's invasions, and Angola's and Zimbabwe's interventions alongside the government, are explained as is South Africa's neutrality. I found the chapter on Rwanda particularly good: it dispels a lot of illusions about Rwanda's current government, and how its shadier actions (counter-genocide, invasion, economic pillage) tend to get overlooked because these are the same people who ended the Rwandan Genocide (much as Israel was cut some slack in the early years because of the Holocaust). This book, despite a format not usually aimed at non-experts/students, I think is probably the best introduction to the topic.
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