The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire

by Astri Suhrke

The Great Lakes region of Africa has seen dramatic changes. After a decade of war, repression, and genocide, loosely allied regimes have replaced old-style dictatorships. The Path of a Genocide examines the decade (1986-97) that brackets the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This collection of essays is both a narrative of that event and a deep reexamination of the international role in addressing humanitarian issues and complex emergencies. Nineteen donor countries and seventeen multilateral organizations, international agencies, and international nongovernmental organizations pooled their efforts for an in-depth evaluation of the international response to the conflict in Rwanda. Original studies were commissioned from scholars from Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire, Ethiopia, Norway, Great Britain, France, Canada, and the United States. While each chapter in this volume focuses on one dimension of the Rwanda conflict, together they tell the story of this unfolding genocide and the world's response. The Path of a Genocide offers readers a perspective in sharp contrast to the tendency to treat a peace agreement as the end to conflict. This is a detailed effort to make sense of the political crisis and genocide in Rwanda and the effects it had on its neighbors.

438 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

Reviews

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quality varies widely between papers, not all are super reliable. This is definitely unsuitable for a casual reader on the Rwandan Civil War or the events of 1994, this is really only for a deep dive researcher looking for additional materials. You should have read three books already before considering tackling this one, like for sure Andrew Wallis book on France's role, Gerard Prunier's The Rwanda Crisis. If you can't name which political parties were granted seats in the BBTG, then this book is not for you.

There are some interesting and useful elements in this work, but by and large its a low-value source, where I was frequently wondering why an author thought the way they did.

[Denise DeRocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling, analytical yet fascinating.