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State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic
Shortlisted for the Fage and Oliver Prize 2018
In 2013, the Central African Republic was engulfed by violence. In the face of the rapid spread of the conflict, journalists, politicians, and academics alike have struggled to account for its origins.
In this first comprehensive account of the country's recent upheaval, Louisa Lombard shows the limits of the superficial explanations offered thus far – that the violence has been due to a religious divide, or politicians' manipulations, or profiteering. Instead, she shows that conflict has long been useful to Central African politics, a tendency that has been exacerbated by the international community's method of engagement with so-called fragile states. Furthermore, changing this state of affairs will require rethinking the relationships of all those present – rebel groups and politicians, as well as international interveners and diplomats.
An urgent insight into this little-understood country and the problems with peacebuilding more broadly.
In 2013, the Central African Republic was engulfed by violence. In the face of the rapid spread of the conflict, journalists, politicians, and academics alike have struggled to account for its origins.
In this first comprehensive account of the country's recent upheaval, Louisa Lombard shows the limits of the superficial explanations offered thus far – that the violence has been due to a religious divide, or politicians' manipulations, or profiteering. Instead, she shows that conflict has long been useful to Central African politics, a tendency that has been exacerbated by the international community's method of engagement with so-called fragile states. Furthermore, changing this state of affairs will require rethinking the relationships of all those present – rebel groups and politicians, as well as international interveners and diplomats.
An urgent insight into this little-understood country and the problems with peacebuilding more broadly.
304 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 24, 2023
New insights into the methods for dealing with violence and intervention are provided in this well-researched analysis by Lombard. Having become somewhat of an expert on the Central African Republic (having worked there and interviewed many people), Lombard delves into the nation’s issues from pre- to post-conflict. My favourite quote from the book covers the motivation of the analysis. Rather than merely lifting the veil, Lombard is, “looking to see where scope for action and change existed and where it was restrained”. As there were endless reports and evaluations and few/none actioned.
Many factors are explained, including why leaders lose popularity, how others remove them from power, what happens during rebellion, the lack of control in running a revolution, the effects of marginalised people, the fight to be heard by foreign peace-keepers and thus receiving compensation/advantages, the fallout from errors and so much more.
A lot of the focus is on the disection of foreign intervention. Aside from monetary assistance, how much do they help compared to creating mistrust?
Although I don’t know a great deal about conflict zones, I did learn a lot about what kinds of things can happen. I think one thing in particular was the way rebels are not necessarily a pre-existing military unit. Rather they join in when the time is right, and go back to civilisation once it’s over. So it’s not as simple as quashing a military unit. The other things that left an impression is how the initial rebels are more closely aligned with an objective to improve certain things (eg payment of salaries), whereas foreign opportunists (often from powerful neighbours) take advantage and join in. But as the neighbours don’t need to reassimilate into the community, their acts of violence are often more extreme than the original rebels. And it becomes hard to disentangle. Once peacekeepers arrive, it seems hard for them to differentiate perpetrator from victim.
So what would I do if I was Prime Minister of the CAR? Well… Actually I will spare you my thoughts since I have no qualifications. Although things seem dire, it’s not out of the question that there’s a way out for a better future.
The delivery of the book was challenging to be honest. It was not gruesome or focussed on accounts of violence at all. It was just clunky. At times you could hear the voice of the expert, but at other times it felt like the venting of some points of experience.
I’d also say the level of content about peacekeeping in conflict areas, is quite advanced. No pre-requisites are required but it would most likely appeal to professionals in the field looking to adapt methods from lessons learned than being a guide broken down for newbies.
Many factors are explained, including why leaders lose popularity, how others remove them from power, what happens during rebellion, the lack of control in running a revolution, the effects of marginalised people, the fight to be heard by foreign peace-keepers and thus receiving compensation/advantages, the fallout from errors and so much more.
A lot of the focus is on the disection of foreign intervention. Aside from monetary assistance, how much do they help compared to creating mistrust?
Although I don’t know a great deal about conflict zones, I did learn a lot about what kinds of things can happen. I think one thing in particular was the way rebels are not necessarily a pre-existing military unit. Rather they join in when the time is right, and go back to civilisation once it’s over. So it’s not as simple as quashing a military unit. The other things that left an impression is how the initial rebels are more closely aligned with an objective to improve certain things (eg payment of salaries), whereas foreign opportunists (often from powerful neighbours) take advantage and join in. But as the neighbours don’t need to reassimilate into the community, their acts of violence are often more extreme than the original rebels. And it becomes hard to disentangle. Once peacekeepers arrive, it seems hard for them to differentiate perpetrator from victim.
So what would I do if I was Prime Minister of the CAR? Well… Actually I will spare you my thoughts since I have no qualifications. Although things seem dire, it’s not out of the question that there’s a way out for a better future.
The delivery of the book was challenging to be honest. It was not gruesome or focussed on accounts of violence at all. It was just clunky. At times you could hear the voice of the expert, but at other times it felt like the venting of some points of experience.
I’d also say the level of content about peacekeeping in conflict areas, is quite advanced. No pre-requisites are required but it would most likely appeal to professionals in the field looking to adapt methods from lessons learned than being a guide broken down for newbies.
November 10, 2018
Thoughtful deconstruction of some pervasive issues affecting CAR, but definitely helpful if the reader already has some baseline historical knowledge, because this book isn’t gonna break it down for you.
September 30, 2018
This is a thought-provoking book on the history of armed conflicts in the Central African Republic, though, as other reviewers have already pointed out, this is not an introductory-level book on the country’s history. It presupposes that readers already have some knowledge about CAR politics and history and are familiar with the literature on peacebuilding. But this in-depth approach is also where the key strength of the book lies. It doesn’t reiterate the common tropes about the CAR’s conflicts – that it is driven by Muslim-Christian animosity, greed for control over natural resources, the spill-over from conflicts in neighbouring countries, or the meddling from powerful neighbours such as Chad – but instead adopts a long-term historical view to explain how violence has become a dominant mode of governance and of managing state-society relations.
The book particularly highlights how the gap between an attachment to the ideal-type state, on the one hand, and the inability of the state to fulfil this role and Central Africans prevailing view of the state’s function as a provider of entitlements (and thereby social status), on the other hand, lies at the heart of these dynamics of instability and violence. Importantly, the author argues that peacebuilding efforts have often, unwittingly, contributed to strengthening these centrifugal tendencies. The great value of the book lies in advocating
(i) that external actors involved in the CAR (which the author refers to as ‘the good-intentions crowd’) need to develop awareness of their own positionality, how this affects their interpretation of dynamics on the ground, and how the people they interact with have different positionalities from them (which are not necessarily right or wrong, but simply different) and
(ii) that peace-promoting policies in the country should not take the state ideal-type as their starting point but the actual dynamics of governance in the country and the centrality of the politics of distribution. Here, I would have liked for the author to reflect more on the long-term and economic viability of this mode of state-society relations centred on the politics of distribution and on the possible negative consequences that it could produce.
Overall, a challenging but very worthwhile read.
The book particularly highlights how the gap between an attachment to the ideal-type state, on the one hand, and the inability of the state to fulfil this role and Central Africans prevailing view of the state’s function as a provider of entitlements (and thereby social status), on the other hand, lies at the heart of these dynamics of instability and violence. Importantly, the author argues that peacebuilding efforts have often, unwittingly, contributed to strengthening these centrifugal tendencies. The great value of the book lies in advocating
(i) that external actors involved in the CAR (which the author refers to as ‘the good-intentions crowd’) need to develop awareness of their own positionality, how this affects their interpretation of dynamics on the ground, and how the people they interact with have different positionalities from them (which are not necessarily right or wrong, but simply different) and
(ii) that peace-promoting policies in the country should not take the state ideal-type as their starting point but the actual dynamics of governance in the country and the centrality of the politics of distribution. Here, I would have liked for the author to reflect more on the long-term and economic viability of this mode of state-society relations centred on the politics of distribution and on the possible negative consequences that it could produce.
Overall, a challenging but very worthwhile read.
March 25, 2017
This is probably the best book available on the Central African Republic, although that isn't saying much since there are only a few that are published. This book won't provide what many will want; an explanation of the politics and history of CAR. Instead, Lombard looks at the manner in which instability is part of the architecture of power in the country, as well as the role that both 'internal' and 'external' (peacekeepers, humanitarians, etc.) play in the state. The author challenges the idea of 'external' actors actually being outside the state, and instead focuses on the role they play in the embodiment of power. Additionally, there is a fascinating discussion on the role of mobility as power, and those with power having the most ability to move (e.g. the difference between locals, inpats, expats, the wealthy, etc.). Not a great book for people looking for an explantion of CAR, but it is enlightening in the manner in which it discusses the role of the state, and various actors who construct and embody it.
May 1, 2019
A work of anthology that still contains great prose, and truly estranges our current UN model of interventions. I absolutely loved this book.
April 6, 2022
This was thoughtful and interesting, but too airy for me to recommend outside of the very niche circle of people who are already down the philosophical rabbit hole about CAR. If you want to understand CAR, see Making Sense of the Central African Republic. If you want to understand armed violence and peacekeeping, there are a few directions to go, and I wouldn't start here.
This book delves deeper into both of these topics from an open, anthropologist perspective of sorting out and starting from what is as opposed to what should be, something few actors in CAR choose to do, as the author makes clear by illustrating insurmountable gaps between aspirations and actions, words and drivers, across the population spectrum. There are a few factual histories reported here, including the absurd failures in designing disarmament programming that contributed to making militias out of loose criminal and self defense networks. That chapter would be a useful excerpt in any study on peacebuilding and humantarian approaches and program design.
Lombard, above all else, paints a picture of constrained actors across the board acting logically based on incentives, institutional rules and frameworks, and immutable culture (including clinging to ideas of statehood that don't apply in this reality of the state as one of many natural resource concessions managers without a monopoly on violence) with little room for influence and change; the book is as predictive of future bad outcomes as it is a description of historical ones. She ends on such a soft note. The only recommendation in the book is to fund universal basic income or social protection or social safety net or unconditional cash transfers or multipurpose cash assistance, whatever you want to call her call for 'dignified salaries for all,' an existing idea in play in humanitarian and development action (and socialist political theory) with their own sets of logical constraints that Lombard apparently misses, a little too narrowly focused on what hasn't been tried in CAR to see how these too have played out poorly or ineffectively within the same Peaceland, extractive economy constraints existent in other places.
Do you detect disappointment in my review? Yes. Because I also love people in CAR and CAR itself, I also see the wall of insurmountable incentives forcing every actor's hand, and I was hoping so much that deeper study could produce better ideas, not just a clearer enunciation of what's wrong. This is an academic book written, in the end, for the academy, and not the actors in the drama under study.
This book delves deeper into both of these topics from an open, anthropologist perspective of sorting out and starting from what is as opposed to what should be, something few actors in CAR choose to do, as the author makes clear by illustrating insurmountable gaps between aspirations and actions, words and drivers, across the population spectrum. There are a few factual histories reported here, including the absurd failures in designing disarmament programming that contributed to making militias out of loose criminal and self defense networks. That chapter would be a useful excerpt in any study on peacebuilding and humantarian approaches and program design.
Lombard, above all else, paints a picture of constrained actors across the board acting logically based on incentives, institutional rules and frameworks, and immutable culture (including clinging to ideas of statehood that don't apply in this reality of the state as one of many natural resource concessions managers without a monopoly on violence) with little room for influence and change; the book is as predictive of future bad outcomes as it is a description of historical ones. She ends on such a soft note. The only recommendation in the book is to fund universal basic income or social protection or social safety net or unconditional cash transfers or multipurpose cash assistance, whatever you want to call her call for 'dignified salaries for all,' an existing idea in play in humanitarian and development action (and socialist political theory) with their own sets of logical constraints that Lombard apparently misses, a little too narrowly focused on what hasn't been tried in CAR to see how these too have played out poorly or ineffectively within the same Peaceland, extractive economy constraints existent in other places.
Do you detect disappointment in my review? Yes. Because I also love people in CAR and CAR itself, I also see the wall of insurmountable incentives forcing every actor's hand, and I was hoping so much that deeper study could produce better ideas, not just a clearer enunciation of what's wrong. This is an academic book written, in the end, for the academy, and not the actors in the drama under study.
July 4, 2018
Helicopter vision of the state
Professor Lombard has expertly dissected the historical and anthropological undercurrents that mediate the expression of the state and violence in CAR. The author includes both theoretical discussion and policy recommendations.
Professor Lombard has expertly dissected the historical and anthropological undercurrents that mediate the expression of the state and violence in CAR. The author includes both theoretical discussion and policy recommendations.
August 2, 2019
Lombard assumes the reader is already aware of CAR's political history, at least in the past decade and its relationship to its neighbors. With that, State of Rebellion is a dense info dump on all and everything CAR.
July 5, 2025
Really well written, Lombard condenses a complex subject using a few key concepts. Not an introductory book into peacekeeping studies but one that developed my understandings through a contextualised study.
January 1, 2017
Best book out there for understanding the Central African Republic.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews