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Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda
As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia's descent into war and its battle against US troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan's Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half the genocide in Rwanda. In Me Against My Brother, he brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders.In Somalia, Peterson tells of harrowing experiences of clan conflict, guns and starvation. He met with warlords, observed death intimately and nearly lost his own life to a Somali mob. From ground level, he documents how the US-UN relief mission devolved into all out war - one that for America has proven to be the most formative post-Cold War debacle. In Sudan, he journeys where few correspondents have ever been, on both sides of that religious front line, to find that outside "relief" has only prolonged war. In Rwanda, his first-person experience of the genocide and well-documented analysis provide rare insight into this human tragedy.Filled with the dust, sweat and powerful detail of real-life, Me Against My Brother graphically illustrates how preventive action and a better understanding of Africa - especially by the US - could have averted much suffering. Also includes a 16-page color insert.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
15 people are currently reading
594 people want to read
About the author
Scott Peterson
3 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
He was a Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph but as of 2000 was a staff writer and Moscow bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor. His book, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda is an account of his experiences and observations during a decade of reporting from Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also one of only a few journalists to report in depth on the subject of depleted uranium contamination in Iraq.[1]
Peterson was injured on his head on 12 July 1993 while in Mogadishu covering a recent US operation against an alleged safe-house. He also carries shrapnel in his arm from Fallujah.
From Wikipedia
He was a Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph but as of 2000 was a staff writer and Moscow bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor. His book, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda is an account of his experiences and observations during a decade of reporting from Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also one of only a few journalists to report in depth on the subject of depleted uranium contamination in Iraq.[1]
Peterson was injured on his head on 12 July 1993 while in Mogadishu covering a recent US operation against an alleged safe-house. He also carries shrapnel in his arm from Fallujah.
From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 4, 2014
This is a reporters’ onsite reflections’ on what he has witnessed in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda in the 1990’s. We are also provided with the historical backdrop to these events which gives us insight of these three different regions – and how the outside world (the U.N., U.S. and Europe) responds, and in the case of Rwanda, does not respond.
Somalia is viewed as one of the first challenges of the post-Cold War era. There was the optimism of the “New World Order” and an effervescent “can-do” spirit. The U.N., with U.S. help, literally went in with guns blazing – but with little attempt to understand Somalia intricacies – the culture, blood ties. As per the author, the U.N. needlessly escalated the war and became another warlord (an external one at that, akin to U.N. imperialism) and came to be hated. When U.S. soldiers were killed – and then paraded through the streets – this set the stage for non-intervention in Rwanda. As Romeo Dallaire pointed out in his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda once European lives are lost in Africa the cause is no longer seen as worthwhile - no matter how African lives have been lost or are at stake. For oil, though, we will organize vast armies.
The ultimate result of U.N. involvement in Somalia proved futile as the title of the last chapter “Back to Zero” denotes.
Sudan is a vast territory with an Islamic despot in the north in Khartoum and Christian warlords in the south with rival groups of Dinga and Nuer. Once more the author’s personal experiences in Sudan give a vivid picture as different groups of villagers are forced at gunpoint to migrate across this inhospitable land.
In Rwanda he explains how the U.N. and the U.S. did not want to intervene. Also France supported the Hutu power structure militarily. And the Christian churches knew of the upcoming genocide, did little to stop it and in some cases actively aided the Hutu fanatics. A gruesome fact that the author points out, is that in terms of numbers, more were killed in a short period of time than any other such undertaking including the Nazi exterminations. This was an organized genocide and its’ lethality brutal. The author acknowledges the incapacity of words.
We are given grim portrayals of these three African countries. We are also told how aid groups came to be manipulated and dominated (often for the very survival of the aid workers) by various militias and warlords. This results often in the perpetrators being fed and cared for instead of the victims. Along with the author we are unable in many cases to comprehend the level of violence.
From a quote taken from a picture in the book:
“Also, (Lord) we ask that you provide us with understanding, so that when we go away, we will know how this can be your will.”
Somalia is viewed as one of the first challenges of the post-Cold War era. There was the optimism of the “New World Order” and an effervescent “can-do” spirit. The U.N., with U.S. help, literally went in with guns blazing – but with little attempt to understand Somalia intricacies – the culture, blood ties. As per the author, the U.N. needlessly escalated the war and became another warlord (an external one at that, akin to U.N. imperialism) and came to be hated. When U.S. soldiers were killed – and then paraded through the streets – this set the stage for non-intervention in Rwanda. As Romeo Dallaire pointed out in his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda once European lives are lost in Africa the cause is no longer seen as worthwhile - no matter how African lives have been lost or are at stake. For oil, though, we will organize vast armies.
The ultimate result of U.N. involvement in Somalia proved futile as the title of the last chapter “Back to Zero” denotes.
Sudan is a vast territory with an Islamic despot in the north in Khartoum and Christian warlords in the south with rival groups of Dinga and Nuer. Once more the author’s personal experiences in Sudan give a vivid picture as different groups of villagers are forced at gunpoint to migrate across this inhospitable land.
In Rwanda he explains how the U.N. and the U.S. did not want to intervene. Also France supported the Hutu power structure militarily. And the Christian churches knew of the upcoming genocide, did little to stop it and in some cases actively aided the Hutu fanatics. A gruesome fact that the author points out, is that in terms of numbers, more were killed in a short period of time than any other such undertaking including the Nazi exterminations. This was an organized genocide and its’ lethality brutal. The author acknowledges the incapacity of words.
We are given grim portrayals of these three African countries. We are also told how aid groups came to be manipulated and dominated (often for the very survival of the aid workers) by various militias and warlords. This results often in the perpetrators being fed and cared for instead of the victims. Along with the author we are unable in many cases to comprehend the level of violence.
From a quote taken from a picture in the book:
“Also, (Lord) we ask that you provide us with understanding, so that when we go away, we will know how this can be your will.”
July 13, 2019
Very enlightening book. It was devastating and raw to read the true accounts of the people living in these war-torn countries. The chapters on Somalia, in particular, highlight the complexities of clan life and relationships. The book highlights how there is never any easy answer to conflict; life in these countries is so different from that which we understand as Westerners and not usually resolved by Western methods. UN efforts mean well, but where aid resources are a commodity more valuable than plain money, aid can sometimes be fuel on the fire if not dispersed cautiously and in the appropriate manner. For anyone looking to understand how cultural differences create very unique problem sets, this book is a must. As a read, the stories can be a bit jumpy and difficult to follow, but the content is worth the effort.
October 4, 2024
Mishmash of historical impressions, including some outright incorrect material,
its a travelogue of personal impressions
poor description of pre-colonial and colonial Rwanda, zero mention of First & Second Hutu Republics,
He misunderstood a number of facts, such as the quoted 9% Tutsi population had its origin in a fabricated quota under the 1st and 2nd Republics to undercount the Tutsis - and therefore reduce the quotas permitted to them in the education system. Using the US embassy estimates from 1990 was not a good reference.
Kangura is mistakenly said to mean "wake up" - thats the meaning of the RPF magazine (Kanguka), Kangura is the Hutu Power magazine meaning "wake others up" (one of many, many, many errors)
its a travelogue of personal impressions
poor description of pre-colonial and colonial Rwanda, zero mention of First & Second Hutu Republics,
He misunderstood a number of facts, such as the quoted 9% Tutsi population had its origin in a fabricated quota under the 1st and 2nd Republics to undercount the Tutsis - and therefore reduce the quotas permitted to them in the education system. Using the US embassy estimates from 1990 was not a good reference.
Kangura is mistakenly said to mean "wake up" - thats the meaning of the RPF magazine (Kanguka), Kangura is the Hutu Power magazine meaning "wake others up" (one of many, many, many errors)
July 10, 2014
Unfortunately, the question of whether humanity as a whole learned a valuable moral lesson from the Holocaust was dramatically answered in the negative during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Not only did history repeat itself, but so did world indifference to the misfortune of a million victims. In Me against my brother (New York: Routledge, 2000), journalist Scott Peterson vividly describes, based on personal observations and extensive research, the ethnic tension and the genocide in Rwanda. In the chapter “Genocide Denied” he also covers world reactions, including, unforgivably, France’s defense of the Hutu aggressors and the isolationist policies of the United States. He argues that these were important international factors that made the mass killings possible. Above all, the author persuades us that, unlike other ethnic tensions in Africa and the Middle East, the Rwandan genocide could have been averted by effective U.N. involvement: “In Rwanda Hutu extremists were often just young men with machetes or ill-disciplined soldiers” he states. (292) As the title of the book suggests, neighbors, former friends and even family members killed many of the victims in Rwanda using rudimentary weapons: most often machetes that had been previously employed for everyday household purposes and agriculture. Why then did the U.S. refuse to intervene?
Peterson points out that a few months after giving the inaugural lecture at the United States Holocaust Museum in April 1993 and expressing his commitment to fight the evil of genocide throughout the world—“But as we are its [evil’s] witness, so we must remain its adversary in the world in which we live”—President Clinton, having just pulled humiliated American troops from Somalia, urged the United Nations not to intervene in the ethnic conflict in Rwanda (289). Peterson elaborates: “Genocide must be organized to be effective, and in Rwanda that took time and left many traces. But Washington feared ‘another Somalia’, and so the first instinct was denial that genocide was even occurring—that would have legally required action to stop it. The second instinct was to disengage entirely, as the US sought to slash UN troop numbers. The third move—at least from the part of American policy-makers—was to bully any other nation from acting” (290). In hindsight, Bill Clinton would later declare that not interfering in the Rwandan genocide was the biggest regret of his presidency.
Between April and September 1994, the Hutu majority in Rwanda ruthlessly massacred almost 1 million men, women and children of the Tutsi minority. Tensions between the two ethnic groups rose during the early 1990’s over control of the country. The Hutu government of Rwanda, backed by Belgium and France, had more or less ruled the country since their revolution against the Tutsi elite in 1959. However, the Tutsi minority in exile, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of Paul Kagame, was attempting to reaffirm power in Rwanda. The Hutu extremists, who called for a “final solution” to the “Tutsi problem”, gained political momentum during the 1990’s.
The Hutu Power movement galvanized the support of part of the army and of powerful politicians. The assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana (1937-1994), the third president of the Republic of Rwanda, on April 6, 1994, only stocked the Hutu extremists’ hatred and their suspicion that the Tutsis were out to destroy them. They blamed the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front for the crime, using the assassination of the president as a pretext for mass murder. Transmitting their message mostly via radio stations, they urged vendetta against Tutsis as well as against moderate Hutus.
The result was atrocities that are almost beyond description. Nonetheless, Peterson attempts to give readers an impression of the sheer volume and violent nature of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. “In the next weeks, the death toll began to merge into a statistical mass. In this village one Tutsi survived from a population of 400; in that town some 2,800 were slaughtered; dozens of parish churches were turned into abattoirs. To fully appreciate the nature of Rwanda’s mass killing, however, requires extracting the terrific agony particular to each death. That is now an impossible task. But an extermination rate of 45,000 each day means little, unless you explore and taste the charnel house yourself” (263).
The Hutu Power movement reinforced one simple, hateful message: in the power struggle with the Tutsis, it’s us versus them. Either we kill them or they’ll kill us. We’ve seen over and over again throughout history how this “us versus them” mentality can lead to the dehumanization of members of another ethnic or religious group. This makes genocide not only possible, but also--in a dramatic inversion of ethical standards of right and wrong--a moral duty. Scott Peterson’s well-documented book, Me against my brother, shows the danger of this dualist mentality and, perhaps even more so, the danger of lack of intervention by the rest of the world when genocide occurs. Genocide, he points out, is not just a “humanitarian crisis”--as the international news conveyed the Rwandan disaster--any more than mass rape in Bosnia was a “gynecological crisis”. Genocide is a massive crime against humanity that reveals the moral breakdown of our civilizations in general: particularly when the world refuses to intervene and help the victims. As the UNAMIR commander in Kigali, General Romeo Dallaire, notes with great regret about the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda: “The biggest crime of all is that we weren’t able to keep it from happening” (290).
Claudia Moscovici, Literature Salon
Peterson points out that a few months after giving the inaugural lecture at the United States Holocaust Museum in April 1993 and expressing his commitment to fight the evil of genocide throughout the world—“But as we are its [evil’s] witness, so we must remain its adversary in the world in which we live”—President Clinton, having just pulled humiliated American troops from Somalia, urged the United Nations not to intervene in the ethnic conflict in Rwanda (289). Peterson elaborates: “Genocide must be organized to be effective, and in Rwanda that took time and left many traces. But Washington feared ‘another Somalia’, and so the first instinct was denial that genocide was even occurring—that would have legally required action to stop it. The second instinct was to disengage entirely, as the US sought to slash UN troop numbers. The third move—at least from the part of American policy-makers—was to bully any other nation from acting” (290). In hindsight, Bill Clinton would later declare that not interfering in the Rwandan genocide was the biggest regret of his presidency.
Between April and September 1994, the Hutu majority in Rwanda ruthlessly massacred almost 1 million men, women and children of the Tutsi minority. Tensions between the two ethnic groups rose during the early 1990’s over control of the country. The Hutu government of Rwanda, backed by Belgium and France, had more or less ruled the country since their revolution against the Tutsi elite in 1959. However, the Tutsi minority in exile, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of Paul Kagame, was attempting to reaffirm power in Rwanda. The Hutu extremists, who called for a “final solution” to the “Tutsi problem”, gained political momentum during the 1990’s.
The Hutu Power movement galvanized the support of part of the army and of powerful politicians. The assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana (1937-1994), the third president of the Republic of Rwanda, on April 6, 1994, only stocked the Hutu extremists’ hatred and their suspicion that the Tutsis were out to destroy them. They blamed the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front for the crime, using the assassination of the president as a pretext for mass murder. Transmitting their message mostly via radio stations, they urged vendetta against Tutsis as well as against moderate Hutus.
The result was atrocities that are almost beyond description. Nonetheless, Peterson attempts to give readers an impression of the sheer volume and violent nature of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. “In the next weeks, the death toll began to merge into a statistical mass. In this village one Tutsi survived from a population of 400; in that town some 2,800 were slaughtered; dozens of parish churches were turned into abattoirs. To fully appreciate the nature of Rwanda’s mass killing, however, requires extracting the terrific agony particular to each death. That is now an impossible task. But an extermination rate of 45,000 each day means little, unless you explore and taste the charnel house yourself” (263).
The Hutu Power movement reinforced one simple, hateful message: in the power struggle with the Tutsis, it’s us versus them. Either we kill them or they’ll kill us. We’ve seen over and over again throughout history how this “us versus them” mentality can lead to the dehumanization of members of another ethnic or religious group. This makes genocide not only possible, but also--in a dramatic inversion of ethical standards of right and wrong--a moral duty. Scott Peterson’s well-documented book, Me against my brother, shows the danger of this dualist mentality and, perhaps even more so, the danger of lack of intervention by the rest of the world when genocide occurs. Genocide, he points out, is not just a “humanitarian crisis”--as the international news conveyed the Rwandan disaster--any more than mass rape in Bosnia was a “gynecological crisis”. Genocide is a massive crime against humanity that reveals the moral breakdown of our civilizations in general: particularly when the world refuses to intervene and help the victims. As the UNAMIR commander in Kigali, General Romeo Dallaire, notes with great regret about the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda: “The biggest crime of all is that we weren’t able to keep it from happening” (290).
Claudia Moscovici, Literature Salon
May 19, 2020
A journalists's account of civil war and US involvement in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. Lays out personal experiences and intertwines the political backdrop of domestic politics, US role, and international organizations into the stories of humanitarian disaster. Questions whether aid donors are effective and definitely questions US policy toward each war; also shows how one war's legacy (Somalia) affected US decisions on Sudan and Rwanda.
January 8, 2021
I read this book to try to understand some of the most heinous atrocities in my lifetime. I found this book honest, accurate and shocking. I would strongly recommend to anyone who wants an honest, unbiased history of recent conflict. It will & has stayed with me for many years.
September 16, 2017
Read in Somalia when I was working there. Dates approximate
March 10, 2008
The author does a wonderful job of covering his experiences in Somalia and gives enough background and inside perspectives that the reader isn't confused if they don't know too much about the situation. However, I think he possibly should have stopped at Somalia as he did not have as much experience or historical knowledge about Sudan or Rwanda. The book does however raise the important question of what is the role of aid/humanitarian organizations in environments of conflict and how do NGOs/UN prevent the end of conflicts & famines through what are perceived as good deeds?
March 21, 2009
I picked this book up because I realized I had a very poor understanding of the conflicts, past and present, in Somalia. The author, a news correspondent in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda, gives some brief background info on the culture and history of each nation, however most of the work focuses on his own experience in-country when these conflicts came to a head. A good, heavy read and, as far as I can tell, a pretty good introduction into the subject of civil war in impoverished nations.
October 8, 2010
Epilogue summed it up nicely (as it should) - the horrors have very few equals and expressing them on the page results in redundant use of adjectives that almost diminishes the impact of what he is trying to protray. I can't get my brain to understand what happened...and I am somewhat thankful that the veil of the written word keeps the horror from being too real. As a nation we must do better than to develop public policy based on the last botched PKO.
October 17, 2013
A five star is the only thing I could give this book. Scott Peterson's unbiased book on the horrors of Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda in the nineties is a well written and insightful piece of literature. He was exceptional at given graphic descriptions of events and showing the thinking behind all parties involved in the crisis. The worst thing about the book was he wasn't making any of it up.
Scott Peterson also gave me a new outlook on journalism.
Scott Peterson also gave me a new outlook on journalism.
April 7, 2017
I'm not sure what to say here. This book is overwhelming.
The unbridled violence and the extravagant disregard for human life — both by those who commit violent acts and those who could prevent them but don't — are hard to take.
But a lot of this book is an eyewitness' account and the events affected millions & millions of people in ways my empathy fails to understand. So these accounts are significant.
Hard to read, good to read.
The unbridled violence and the extravagant disregard for human life — both by those who commit violent acts and those who could prevent them but don't — are hard to take.
But a lot of this book is an eyewitness' account and the events affected millions & millions of people in ways my empathy fails to understand. So these accounts are significant.
Hard to read, good to read.
September 14, 2008
journalist covering wars in sudan, somalia and rwanda. though I only read the somalia part, I was captivated by his descriptions. describing what he saw. painful, but lucid.
... like mogadishu smells like "a mix of hot sea and salted, rotting ocean waste and the decomposing refuse of sweating human beings".
mat, i think you would like to read this!
... like mogadishu smells like "a mix of hot sea and salted, rotting ocean waste and the decomposing refuse of sweating human beings".
mat, i think you would like to read this!
Currently reading
May 4, 2010this a poem i got from the book.
Rich with Bullets
Arms were
and still are
Somalias most useful currency.
Along with food,
they can ensure living
until tomorrow.
without a weapon
your food will be stolen;
but well armed
you can always steal food.
An AK-47 assault rifle then
cost less than a plate
of goat meat.
Rich with Bullets
Arms were
and still are
Somalias most useful currency.
Along with food,
they can ensure living
until tomorrow.
without a weapon
your food will be stolen;
but well armed
you can always steal food.
An AK-47 assault rifle then
cost less than a plate
of goat meat.
April 17, 2012
A horrifying firsthand look at the wars and tumult of Africa in the 1980s and '90s by Scott Peterson, an eminent British reporter for the Telegraph. Peterson divides his book into three parts: Somalia, The Sudan and Rwanda, places where he was posted in those years and gives exhaustive details about the history of the conflicts there. Not for the tender-hearted.
March 14, 2014
Second time reading this book and it is absolutely amazing. The amount of civil unrest and the geo- political forces at play in Africa is stunning. The problems there are very intriguing to me and this book does a wonderful job of taking several well known conflicts and showing us just how complicated it can be.
July 27, 2011
Tough to describe and harder to digest, the insights into evil events in terrifying places by pro overseas correspondent Peterson are fingers-over-eyes horror movie standard. A must read for anyone (most?) who misunderstands true hardship, pain, suffering and fear.
March 3, 2008
Couldn't finish this book.
July 19, 2011
Thoughtful and engaging writing about a horrible subject. I marvel at this guys ability to be in the wrong/right place in the wrong/right time!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews