Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gérard Prunier

The Rwandan genocide sparked a horrific bloodbath that swept across sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to the deaths of some four million people. In this extraordinary history of the recent wars in Central Africa, Gerard Prunier offers a gripping account of how one grisly episode laid the groundwork for a sweeping and disastrous upheaval.
Prunier vividly describes the grisly aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, when some two million refugees--a third of Rwanda's population--fled to exile in Zaire in 1996. The new Rwandan regime then crossed into Zaire and attacked the refugees, slaughtering upwards of 400,000 people. The Rwandan forces then turned on Zaire's despotic President Mobutu and, with the help of a number of allied African countries, overthrew him. But as Prunier shows, the collapse of the Mobutu regime and the ascension of the corrupt and erratic Laurent-Désiré Kabila created a power vacuum that drew Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and other African nations into an extended and chaotic war. The heart of the book documents how the whole core of the African continent became engulfed in an intractible and bloody conflict after 1998, a devastating war that only wound down following the assassination of Kabila in 2001. Prunier not only captures all this in his riveting narrative, but he also indicts the
international community for its utter lack of interest in what was then the largest conflict in the world.

Praise for the

"The most ambitious of several remarkable new books that reexamine the extraordinary tragedy of Congo and Central Africa since the Rwandan genocide of 1994."
-- New York Review of Books

"One of the first books to lay bare the complex dynamic between Rwanda and Congo that has been driving this disaster."
--Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times Book Review

"Lucid, meticulously researched and incisive, Prunier's will likely become the standard account of this under-reported tragedy."
-- Publishers Weekly

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, War, Rwanda, Politics, World History

576 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure who I am madder at, the librarian who recommended this book or the author for making his life's work, his magnum opus, so darn hard to read. Unless you have a working knowledge of Africa, you are starting out behind the mark- Quick- name the capital of Angola! If you cannot do that, his reference to Luanda, as if I know what he is talking about, leave me wondering, is that Angola's capital or Namibia's- but the whole reference to Luanda, is not just a reference to a location, it is to the nuance of what Luanda means in the whole scheme of African politics- which I do not know- I felt through most of this book that I had no idea what he was talking about or what was going on.

But beyond that, it gets even worse. The book starts with a glossary of abbreviations that he uses throughout the book to identify different parties, starting in the A's with things like "ADF" Allied democratic forces, a multi-ethnic Ugandan Guerrilla force created in 1996 in Zaire fusing together elements of ADM, NALU, and UMLA. He constantly referenced these abbreviations throughout the book, leaving me bewildered because, get this, the glossary has 159 groups he is referencing. Groups I have never heard of before this book. Groups that when they are introduced I have no clue as to whether they are gong to be important players in the end, or they are just passing references.

And none of the relationships between is fixed. Two groups might be allies in one year, and enemies the next. Or might be allies in one front and enemies on another simultaneous front. or elements or sub-factions of one group might be allied with one group on one front and .... you get the picture- but multiply it by 159 factorial to get how confused I was.

On top of all that, each group is made of of varying players- again, people I have no clue who they are- or whether they are going to end up being bit players I have just struggled to figure out how they fit in, only to find they are marginal, and really were just impeding my understanding of what the heck was going on.

In the end, I am sure that this guy knows his shit, but this book I guess is for people who know a lot more about what went down. I was disappointed, because I felt that he had the ability to explain a decade long war and I was standing on the sideline going "what just happened." Probably, this just was not the right book for the casual observer. more of a wonk's book

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a more-than-interested observer of events in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I found Gerard Prunier's Africa's World War a worthwhile if dense expression of one man's opinions about an incredibly complex chapter in the continent's history. Is it rife with supposition, self-serving sources, and subjective interpretation of events? Certainly. But that's the nature of the conflict, so readers expecting a black-hat-white-hat cast of good guys and bad guys are going to be dismissive of the work if not outraged at the author's audacity to present it as history. I suspect this is as close to an actual history of this period as we're ever going to see.

What I found particularly useful was Prunier's run down of the multitude of nations involved in the two wars. The roles played by everyone from Libya to South Africa are examined in sometimes mind-numbing detail. The whys and wherefores of each player's participation are by necessity speculative; the Angolan military doesn't have much in the way of neat regimental histories posted on the Web to use as sources and neither Yoweri Museveni or Paul Kagame are known for giving lengthy confessional interviews. Still, if you approach the material with patience and several grains of salt, you can come away with a better understanding of how the conflict in Congo was shaped by numerous outside forces.

It should be noted that this isn't light, recreational reading. I studied the DRC for five years as I was researching my novel Heart of Diamonds and I still found it essential to refer to Prunier's list of abbreviations and glossary time and time again. The sheer number of acronyms is enough to slow comprehension to a crawl, but again, this is no more than an accurate portrait of a 15-year conflict where six men with an RPG can declare themselves a rebel militia, take over a village, and eventually sit down at the negotiating table with representatives from several sovereign countries and the United Nations before splitting up to join opposing armies where they start the process all over again. Any account of alliances in Congo reads like alphabet soup in a blender.

Prunier could have provided a little more specficity and clarity about two big topics. One was the role the United States played (and plays) in the Congo wars. With his somewhat fragmented organizational approach, it was difficult to piece together what we did to whom and who did what to us. America's hands have come away soiled every time we lay them on Congo (dating to our rush to be the first country in the world to endorse King Leopold's bold claim to own the nation), and I would have liked a more detailed account of what happened and when we did it during the period covered by the book.

The other is Rwanda's major involvement in the game. Prunier certainly provides an exhaustive account of the genocide's aftermath and how it played out in the eastern provinces of the DRC, but the big picture seemed to have been obscured by the details. Maybe my mind was dulled by slogging through account after account of what was happening to the refugees and which ones were the good Tutsis and which ones where the bad Tutsis, but I have to say I didn't come away from the book with a clear understanding of what Prunier thinks Kagame really hopes to accomplish.

Those looking for a simple definitive account of war in Congo had best look elsewhere, but readers who are sophisticated enough to take one man's observations and opinions and weigh them accordingly will find Africa's World War a useful addition to the shelf.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Genocide to Continental War: The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa begins just after the 1994 Rwandan genocide and traces the complex conflict that engulfed much of central Africa for the subsequent 13 years. Prunier assumes that the reader is already familiar with the genocide itself; my knowledge of it was limited and hazy. In retrospect I should have looked up a reminder of what happened first, as it took me longer to get into the book as a consequence of not doing so. Nonetheless, Prunier is adept at breaking down the details of a war that the Western media largely ignored and I knew practically nothing about. The vast majority of the fighting happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo (known as Zaire until 1997), but twelve other African nations were involved to a greater or lesser extent. It was a truly continental war that killed around four million people and had a devastating impact on those who survived. Prunier's intention is to explain this war, which doesn't even have a name, to those who never had to pay it any attention. He writes clearly and uncompromisingly:

In plain language, the [mid-1990s] Zairian economy reverted to its precolonial, pre-monetary existence, but with three major differences. First, the precolonial economy was a complex affair in which purely economic matters were intimately mixed with ritual, religion, social prestige, and cultural exchanges. These rich precolonial complexities were by now largely dead. Second, the precolonial economy had served a population of probably fewer than ten million, whereas by 2000 there would be fifty million Congolese. Third, the precolonial economy had operated as a system of pleasant autarky supplemented by limited regional trade mostly made up of nonessentials. By now the people had been taught to expect that they could purchase a number of products and services from a circuit of commercial exchanges; thus the shrinking of the money economy turned what had been a dignified scarcity into humiliating grinding poverty. The social consequences were enormous.

The book's aim of explanation is challenging given the nature of the conflict. It isn't simply that readers outside Africa have limited contextual knowledge, but also that there were so many national, ethnic, and political dimensions. The sheer number of groups fighting each other, directly or indirectly, is hard to get your head around, as Prunier wryly acknowledges:

Does the reader at this point want to throw in the towel and give up on the ethnopolitical complexities of the region? I would not blame him, although I can assure him that I am honestly trying to simplify the picture. If we stand back for a moment and try to assess the situation, what do we see?

Prunier then divides the nations involved into the core (Rwanda, Uganda, DRC), the second layer of 'powerful players' (Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia), the third layer involved due to their own regional politics (Libya, Chad, Sudan), and fourth layer peripherally/reluctantly involved due to proximity (Burundi, Central African Republic, Tanzania). And hovering in the background observing was South Africa. Meanwhile, the UN, US, and Europe did not grasp what was happening and had limited interest in knowing, as the region involved was peripheral to their security and economic interests.

For what was happening in Kisangani [in 1999] was only a portent of things to come: the disintegration of a 'rational' war into myriad 'privatised', socially and economically motivated subconflicts. But at that stage the international community did not understand the nature of the problem and still believed that it faced a conventional conflict that could be treated by traditional diplomatic methods. So when the various contenders finally agreed to sign on August 31st, the document they agreed upon was outwardly 'normal' but in fact completely unfit for dealing with the reality on the ground.

The uselessness of the 1999 Lusaka Peace Agreement is shown by the fact that the war continued unabated for another eight years. I found this analysis particularly helpful:

African wars can only be carried out part time. The 'total war' concept invented by Germany during World War I and since seen to apply to many conflicts worldwide cannot apply in Africa because the means are simply not available. Military action is largely disconnected from the rest of socioeconomic life and cannot be sustained relentlessly. Thus, if war can only be carried out only part time because of financial constraints, the combatants sooner or later tend to privatise their action. And if looting can at times be supervised by the state, as in the case of Rwanda, it is a 'natural' tendency for all the combatants to practice it on a large scale, particularly for those belonging to nonstate militias, who are usually left without pay for long periods of time.

In this respect, as in several others, the Great Lakes or 'Congolese' conflict resembles the European Thirty years' War (1618-1648), in which looting was one of the fundamental activities of the contending armies. [...] Because civilians are the ones from the whom the military can take its means of survival, armed violence is more often directed at civilians (including, at times, those of one's own camp) than at the enemy army. Direct armed confrontation is often avoided, and straightforward military victory is only one of the various options in the field. It is actually this nonstate, decentralised form of violence that makes conflicts so murderous and hard to stop.

Under these circumstances, it was extremely difficult for international organisations to provide much-needed humanitarian aid. Prunier points out that adopting the approach of offering aid without attempting to address the conflict itself was ineffectual:

Faced with this the international community could only utter truisms, such as the central message of the Brahimi Report: 'The key conditions for the success of future complex operations are political support, rapid deployment with a robust force posture and a sound peace-building strategy.' Who could quarrel with that? But equally truly, who was ready to do it?

Needless to say, From Genocide to Continental War: The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa is not particularly cheering to read, albeit powerful and informative. I found the maps, glossary, and list of abbreviations included at the beginning extremely useful. It was published in 2009, so I looked up the current situation in the DRC. I was saddened but not terribly surprised to learn that essentially the same conflict continues to this day on a smaller scale in the Kivu region (east of DRC and bordering Rwanda and Uganda). An article explaining the 'latest iteration' of the conflict from 21st June 2022 and a brief update from 6th September 2023. This book provides valuable background and context for an ongoing humanitarian crisis, elucidating a complicated tragedy.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prunier gives central Africa's horrible 1996-2002 war the attention it deserves. He treats each ethnic group, nation, business interest, or foreign power involved to the same scathingly critical examination. Where each party claims itself a victim seeking justice, Prunier judges all actors by their own deeds: the genocidal Hutu refugees, the avenging Tutsi army, the old U.S.-backed defenders of private enrichment (as opposed to socialism) such as Mobutu or Savimbi, the manipulating French government, or the rebel militias of unemployed kids taking pay to undercut neighboring states. Prunier's account moves at an observant pace -- through the aftermath of Rwanda's genocide, the implosion of Mobutu's Zaire, the quagmire of conflicting security interests, and the morphing of war into vampire-like private enterprise. Each effort to simply eliminate rivals generates greater blowback, till the chaos resembles central Europe in the Thirty Years War (of 1618 to 1648). Then, with the perspective of several years' hindsight, Prunier examines the slowly growing factors which brought the war to a formal close, leaving "illegitimate" non-state groups to be somehow included in a mutually-accountable future.

[Yngve Skogstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly well-researched and detailed work of history on the Congolese wars, but perhaps not something I would recommend to a lay person. Getting anything out of this book requires a significant amount of pre-knowledge of the region. An extensive list of acronyms, a few maps and a list of local words/phrases does help a lot, but either way, keep a map at hand and don’t rush ahead when reading.

If you’re looking for easy, convenient narratives of the Congo wars, this is not the place to look. Prunier attempts to debunk some of the popular misconceptions here. In my opinion, the strongest aspect of the book is his minute account of each of the actors’ regional/local interests and motives, a narrative which I found convincing. Admittedly, due to the chaos of the conflict, the practical inaccessibility of much of DRC, and the complete intransparency of the governments and groups concerned, good sources are hard to find. Thus, much of what is presented here as analysis should rather be treated as the author’s (well-informed) opinions.

[David M]

The word "Rwanda" has become synonymous with mass slaughter, and yet the actual ramifications of the genocide do not seem to be very well understood. To see this, compare how the catastrophic war in the Congo - which followed as a consequence - remains virtually unknown.

In the west, or at least America, Africa is still largely seen as the land of generic mass misery. If the Middle East provokes fear and chauvinism, Africa provokes pity and condescension. The ideology of humanitarianism, so widespread in the west, erases politics and can be used to justify virtually any course of action; so that the lesson from Rwanda often turns out to be that the US can use it as a rational to bomb almost any country in the world.

This stunning book provides an anecdote. The author seeks real lessons from Rwanda through painstaking analysis rather than sloppy moralizing.

*
As other reviews here have noted, the book is rather dense and difficult. Prunier brings in an enormous amount of African history and geography. The book does include a couple glossaries and a few maps, but even so I frequently had to resort to google to makes sense of what was going on. Moreover, while the subject is one of the bloodiest conflicts of the past 100 years, Prunier actually pays scant attention to the human impact of the war, focusing instead on convoluted political intrigue. Reading the book, you don't get much of a sense of what it was like to live through or die in this conflict.

Even so, I strongly recommend reading it. At the risk of making excuses for myself, I think my ignorance coming in was fairly typical. Every semi-aware western citizen has some baseline familiarity with the wars that have plagued the Middle East since the end of the Cold War. The same just is not true in the case of Africa. There's a sense in which suffering in Africa is marginal to great power politics.

Despite the book's title, world imperial powers actually do not seem to have been all that directly involved in the war in the Congo. At one point Prunier describes it instead as the first instance of one African country trying to colonize another - with Rwanda here as the aggressor and the Congo the victim.

Prunier explicitly disavows and tries to distance himself from the idea of a "double genocide" in Rwanda. Even so, nearly everything in the book about the post-genocide Tutsi government is extremely unflattering. Kagame is shown playing on the guilt of Europe and invoking the specter of genocide to justify military incursions into another country; all this inevitably brings Israel to mind. I found all this incredibly fascinating.

Europe's first world war is a point of comparison, but not a terribly convincing one. Prunier grants that, aside from perhaps Rwanda, the actors involved did not having a terribly developed sense of nationalism. Rather than ww1, then, the more relevant historical comparison may be the 30 years war; this was the late premodern catastrophe from whose ashes the modern state system emerged.

It's notable that Prunier brings this up. Syria today is constantly compared to the 30 year war. What is it it that makes this such a salient point of reference for wars in the late 2oth and early 21st century? Is it just a loose analogy, or does it point to an epochal shift in the nature of warfare and the state? It at least seems possible that the era of clearly defined nation-states going to war with each other is over (with the Iran-Iraq as the last great example?); war today has become something altogether more baroque and incoherent.

[Barry Sierer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerard’s Prunier’s book does not just portray the anxieties that created the war in Congo, but delves into the anxieties about how the war is portrayed. This war was so multifaceted and complex, that keeping track of the various factions is more demanding than trying to follow the Lebanese civil war of the 1970’s and 80’s.

Towards the end of the book, Prunier explains his own metamorphosis from being an admirer of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front-the Tutsi rebel group that overthrew the Hutu government that carried out the 1994 genocide), to a man who comes to see Paul Kagame and the RPF in the same light as the Hutu government that it overthrew, after it becomes clear that Rwandan forces are using the same tactics in their intervention in Congo.

Prunier spends a lot of his book knocking down western stereotypes of Africa and explaining the region’s unique context to outsiders. This can be laborious for the reader, yet still vital to understanding the complexities and contradictions of this war.

Prunier’s account is in depth and jaded (by experience) but still worth the effort to understand the many players in “Africa’s World War”.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll need to hit the ground running with this one.

I suspect the vast majority of Americans are going to have approximately the same amount of knowledge as I did concerning the two Congolese wars fought in the 90s and early 2000s, which is practically nothing. Embarrassingly little, especially for someone who considers himself at least somewhat informed about the world, as I do--and this lack of attention from the rest of the world is something author Gérard Prunier sadly laments but seems resigned to as well. The reality is, as he says, that in our image driven world, some atrocities just aren't sexy enough to get air time.

Chances are, though, that at some point or another, you may have heard of the Rwandan genocide, though you may not know much more than that--those slightly better informed may also know that it took place between groups designated as Hutu and Tutsi, but, like me, may not have been able at any given point to pick out who were the victims and who were the perpetrators (which is sad, but evidently common, as Prunier even quotes a South African diplomat who couldn't keep it straight)

With that as my starting point, I had a steep learning curve ahead of me--and Prunier demands that the reader undertake it. This book is going to demand your attention, as there are absolutely no easy and convenient shortcuts toward understanding what happened after the genocide and why, even though the world generally demands simple cause and effect storylines, whether any exist or not. When they don't, there are always people who will rush to invent them, though after reading Africa's World War, I don't believe Prunier is one of them.

To recapitulate Prunier's account of the Congolese wars would force me to write a review nearly as long as his book, so instead I'm going to try to list some of the preparation one might need to read this book (or that one might have to absorb on the fly), and a few other meta-comments about the book, as there's nothing I can say about his narrative; as ignorant as I was (am) about the state of affairs in the Congo, I can hardly quibble with his account.

The first thing I noticed when opening the book (and it's impossible to miss), were the eight pages of acronyms listed that were used throughout the text. I had a sinking feeling right then; any other time I'd read about African history, the effort of keeping the acronyms of different groups straight was always a struggle--and those often only included three or four different groups. Here there were more than a hundred.

The next thing that became abundantly clear was that I was starting in the middle of the story. Prunier had written a book before this one (The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide) which dealt with the events prior to the summer of 1994; the first sentence of Africa's World War could easily have been "And after those things happened..."

So don't let the subtitle lure you into thinking that Prunier is going to encapsulate all the horrible events of the spring of 1994 in a tidy introduction for those of us who haven't been paying too close attention--as he says, the Genocide provided a catalyst for the wars in the Congo, but this book is solely about what came after. It would be similar to reading a book about WWI where the assassination of the Arch-Duke is alluded to as the springboard of events, but never discussed in depth.

Here's a couple of questions you might want to ask yourself before starting this book: Do you know the capital of Rwanda? The Democratic Republic of the Congo? What was the D.R.C before it was the D.R.C? Who's the leader in Uganda? If I threw out the words Kabila and Kigali, would you know which one was a person and which was a place? And if I had the metonymic habit of using place names to refer to the government (like saying Washington DC to mean the government of the US), how long would it take you to get confused knowing that Kabila is the president of one country and Kigali the capital of another? (Kigali threatens Kabila with troop positioning, for example. Who? What? Where?)

Most of this kind of information is in the book, somewhere, though the overall layout seems to suggest that Prunier already expects you to be familiar with the names and places he tosses out. There are some maps included in the front, which did help some, but like most efforts at maps, they could be better. And there are footnotes. My goodness, are there footnotes. You might think you were reading David Foster Wallace with all the footnotes. At first I ignored them--many of them are simply indications of source material. But about a third of the way into it, I discovered that there were many footnotes that indeed helped further explain some of the situations for those of us not quite up to speed on the complexity of the African political situation, and as much a PITA as flipping to the end of the book every other sentence, I thought it was worth it in the end.

These things might suggest I didn't like the book, or that it was lacking in certain ways: Not at all--thus the five stars. To anyone who has any interest at all in this time or place (or in the nature of conflict itself), I would highly recommend it. It's no fault of the book that it's written in a way that asks the reader to do some work (for some of us, we might need to draw up some flow charts and Venn diagrams), or even to do some extra research, even if it's only on Wikipedia. In fact, I applaud Prunier for writing the book the way he did--retention is one of my biggest problems with historical accounts such as this, and requiring effort on my part seems to be one of the best ways to help me remember the storyline months and years later. And I can't emphasize enough: there is no easy storyline here. If the root causes of the war had been simplistic, it wouldn't have been so intractable. And anyone determined to find the 'good guys' for whom to root might as well stop now. There are plenty of villains, but no heroes. About the closest you are going to get is those who were 'stupidly naïve', or 'x was not as bad as y'.

So, five stars for this incredibly dense and informative book. I sensed little partisanship in the part of Prunier, though I have to add in again that I am so woefully uninformed about this area of the world that I would have a hard time picking it out. But since no one really comes out as someone to champion, I have to feel like the author remained even-handed. As with any book like this that deals with recent events, it's probably best not to rely on one account of it. But for me, I deeply appreciate the way Prunier presented his information, and I feel better aware (by orders of magnitude) than when I began.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, is a fascinating book on the chaos of Africa's "First World War", written by Gerard Prunier. This book is no walk in the park, and for various reasons. The subject matter is extremely disturbing, as the collapse of Zaire is attributed to the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide in the early '90's, which was itself responsible for the deaths of up to a million people. This is just the start of the conflict. The competing interests of various state and parastatal actors can range from disturbing to absurd. Competing factions include, on one side, Angola, looking to curb its own internal civil war, Zimbabwe, looking to compete with South Africa for mineral riches in the DRC, Libya and Chad, pan-Africanists with their own agendas, and Sudan, with a rivalry and proxy-war with Uganda. On the other, Burundi, looking to protect its borders with the DRC, Rwanda, looking for revenge and territorial expansion, and Uganda, looking to fight Sudan in any way possible.

This confusing jumble of state actors becomes more complex when one looks at the various rebel groups operating with impunity inside the DRC. Abbreviations such as RCD-G. LRA, FDLR. and so on are common throughout the country. These groups fight, ally, disband and regroup constantly, and the abbreviations list in this book chalks up to 12 pages or so. This confusing list of rebel groups, commando forces and so on is a good look at a conflict which involves multiple states, multiple internal actors, and multiple foreign parties.

Another review of this book on Goodreads laments the confusing number of actors in this conflict. It also decries Prunier's use of city and ethnic and tribal names with little context. The user states "Quick, what's the capital of Angola?" (it's Luanda). This criticism captures the fatigue in which the international community (ie. the West) viewed this conflict. Millions of people were killed during this war, for reasons such as, cooking food for rebels of differing ideologies, for being part of certain ethnic groups, for being perceived as friendly toward a certain state or actor, or just for wanton rape, murder and slaughter. The fact that people are fatigued by this horror is frightening and disturbing. This is one of the worst wars fought in the past 60 years. It is comparable to WWII in some ways. And yet nobody knows about it, or cares. The fact that many companies from France, Belgium, Canada and the USA were directly involved in funding rebel groups, dealing with instigators of genocide, and rampant and belligerent corruption, falls on deaf ears. No one group in this conflict, whether it be the genocidal Interhambwe, the completely useless and toothless UN forces, or the counter-genocidal Rwandan Tutsi, are innocent. All have the blood of millions on their hands, whether they wield the machete themselves, or whether they stood by complacently and watched it unfold.

Prunier's book is bewildering, confusing, and oh-so important to read. It is a fantastic look at a genocidal war, comparable, in his own words, to Europe's 30-years war in Germany. Actors were out for territorial gain, or absolute greed, or revenge. The blood of millions was spilled. And this conflict has not even concluded. Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, is still in power in Rwanda. Musevini still rules in Uganda. the Dos Santos are still in Angola. The ANC still presides in South Africa. Mugabe still rules in Zimbabwe. Ethnic conflict has flared in Burundi as recently as the last year. The M23 rebellion in North and South Kivu has direct links to the conflict of the '90's. This is far from over. Prunier's books is a fascinating look at Africa's very own WWI. It is a recommended read before the outbreak of Africa's WWII. A wonderful, coldly-clinical look at the most genocidal conflict the world has experienced since the horrors of WWII. Not to be missed.

[giovi · Rating 4 out of 5]

truly mixed feelings on this one. more a 3.5
the author is obviously knowledgeable and i learned so much through this book. i do feel his characterization of the MPLA in angola is vastly inaccurate to a distracting degree. I also don't believe he spends nearly enough time discussing the interworkings of the IMF and debt as an external weapon. I am glad I read this book but would definitely not recommend this book to someone with a) little knowledge of african history/politics b) without pre-formed opinions of a lot of the organizations involved first. he does well in his characterization of rwanda's interests and kagame

[Declan Carmody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, at times very dense with information, but felt the author didn't dumb down anything regarding the conflict. Lots and lots of stuff I had no idea about, especially about the post Rwandan Genocide conflicts.

[Perato · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirja joka tuo oman tietämyksen ja älykkyyden kapeat rajat hyvin nopeasti näkyville.

Tietämykseni Afrikan konflikteista on varsin pintapuolista, diktaattoreista raapaisuja ja kirjallisuutta on ehkä puolitoista kappaletta luettuna. Maantieto rajautuu siihen, että tietää maiden nimet, mutta ei aina niiden sijaintia ja pääkaupungeista vain muutaman. Näillä lähtökohdilla tämän kirjan lukeminen oli varsin haastavaa, joskin ei täysin mahdotonta.

Prunier yrittää rakentaa muutamassa sadassa sivussa yksityiskohtaisen selonteon monimutkaiseen konfliktiin, joka on monimutkaisuudessaan lähempänä 30-vuotista sotaa kuin otsikossa mainittua maailmansotaa. Kirjoittaja toteaakin ykskantaan, että ehkä lukija haluaa heittää pyyhkeen kehään kun asiat alkavat käydä turhan monimutkaiseksi. Kirja alkaa mukavasti n. 30 sivulla lyhenteitä ja erilaisia afrikkalaisia termejä, joskin tähän listaukseen palaaminen käy lopulta puuduttavaksi kun yhdessä virkkeessä saatetaan mainita neljä eri kapinallisjärjestöä, pikkuarmeijaa, heimoa ja puoluetta.

Teksti on välillä vaikealukuista. Asioissa hypitään ajan ja paikan suhteen milloin missäkin eikä synny niin kronologista kuin maantieteellistäkään kuvaa oikeastaan mistään. Ehkä sivumäärä tuotti ongelmia eniten, liian paljon liian pieneen tilaan. Kirjassa onkin pienellä präntillä lähes sata sivua alaviitteitä, joten nimellinen 374 sivun pituuteen voinee lisätä helposti 150-200 sivua lisää.

Prunier on kuitenkin ihan hyvä kirjoittaja paikoin, mutta ehkä teksti olisi kaivannut kunnollista editointia. Myös suomalainen painos on jotenkin epäonnistunut, osa otsikoista on leipätekstin seassa vain kursivoituna eikä erillisinä otsakkeina. Silti tulee vain olo, että kirja olisi voinut olla parempi jos ymmärtäisin kaikkia paikallisia konflikteja ja historiaa vähän paremmin.

Mutta jos tietämykseni rajallisuus jotain opettaa, niin sen, että parempi olla hiljaa aiheesta Afrikan sodat, koska luettuani kirjan tuntuu että tiedän aiheesta paljon vähemmän ja vähemmän varmemmin, mikä lienee ihan hyvä tuntemus.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has taken on a "ripped from the headlines" timeliness since the very recent leak of a UN investigation into the war in the Congo between 1996 and 1998 which concluded that the Rwandan military was guilty of war crimes and possible genocide against Hutu refugees. Since the genocide perpetrated by the Hutu against the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994 Paul Kagame has used the pusillanimous behavior of the UN, the United States and Western Europe to demand that they support Rwanda economically and turn a blind eye to the way they treat ethnic minorities.

Gerald Prunier says that Kagame has used his "genocide guilt credit" to force the West to allow him a free hand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in the mineral rich North and South Kivu provinces. Prunier, a well thought of analyst of Central and East Africa who has spent years studying the area, lays much of the blame for the continuing murderous conflict in the DRC on Kagame with Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, grasping kleptocrat Sese Seko Mobutu, the foreign office of France and many others also condemned as part of the problem.

Much of the war was about looting of the Congo for personal gain and to fund the war itself. Prunier says that sending his troops into the Congo was one way that Museveni kept from having to pay them while the Rwandan ministry of defense had a "Congo Desk" to make sure the proper cut of the loot went to the top. Uganda was most transparent in their theft, declaring gold and diamonds taken from the Congo and then sold as official export income. Rwanda had large increases in diamond exports with no additional domestic production to account for it.

According to Prunier there were no real good guys--just about everyone involved in the Congo Wars was a scoundrel, some worse than others. The war wasn't a civil war as such--for example one battle in December of 2000 for control of Lubumbashi in Katanga the "rebel" forces were made up of regular army forces of Rwanda and Uganda plus the irregular armed bands they supported while the "DRC" army opposing them was largely troops from Angola, Zambia and Namibia. Some were there for loot; some to settle long standing grievances against the DRC; some for both. But none of the combatants--which at one point also included soldiers from Chad airlifted by the Libyan air force and troops from Sudan operating on DRC territory against Ugandan irregulars--were interested in the a peaceful solution of the Congo War. This was ethnic, political and economic warfare carried out with constant savagery against civilian populations and refugees, the slaughter of women and children with almost unparalleled brutality.

Prunier is an elegant writer. He makes his case very well even if his biases occasionally show through. There are some documentation lapses--some important references are to private conversations with unnamed officials--but with 99 pages of footnotes, largely in English and French, he has obviously read very deeply into his subject. This occasionally leads to overly detailed discussions--for example if one wants to know about the four different Hutu political factions in Burundi in 1995, each with its own militia, how and why each group split, its internal politics and its relationship with the Burundian army you will find it here.

Whatever its minor faults, though, "Africa's World War" is an extraordinary and necessary reexamination of the past decade of African history.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the war that can be roughly marked from the end of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide (the genocide is not covered much, as for sure it would require another book) that eventually led into a wild multinational war in the DRC. On Wikipedia they are listed as two wars, the First and Second Congo Wars, with the former covering Mobutu's deposition and the second covering the subsequent conflict between Rwanda/Uganda against their once-allies in the DRC and their foreign supporters, mainly Angola and Zimbabwe.

I consider this an important topic for Westerners to learn about. Even the well-educated among us know quite little about exactly what goes on there, seeing terrible images and hearing terrible stories when humanitarian issues flare up but learning little about exactly who is fighting whom and why. Consequently the violence loses its human face -in our minds we chalk it up to "it always happens there."

Unfortunately, this book is very challenging to follow for someone who isn't already familiar with the geopolitics of Africa. Though certainly impassioned, the structure of the book is too much of a recitation of events, like a very long and more emotionally charged encyclopedia, and with what I consider to be too much effort to give every faction its mention. Of course the subject itself is immensely complicated, but I think if you are to attempt an ambitious survey of a challenging topic, one of your major responsibilities as an author is in fact to strategically select historical narratives rather than making sure every last thing gets a mention. If that's an unacceptable level of simplification then perhaps this subject would be better served through separate volumes covering specific subtopics (maybe this book's bibliography has some helpful ideas).

Its wide range of material covered makes it a good book to have on your shelf and refer to when something comes up in the news. But it has some shortcomings in its ability to teach the reader about what is happening.

[Sam H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Africa's World war is an excellent, in-depth and well researched study of the war in the Congo. The book begins with the immediate aftermath of the rwandan genocide of 1994 and explains the events which led to the conflagration. This conflict was labelled as africa's first world war and was the biggest conflict on the continent since WWII, claiming 4 million lives.

This is an impressive book. With about 100 pages of footnotes, and a 45 page bibliography, this is a very thorough study of a very complex conflict. The author manages to avoid taking sides, exposing the motives of the actors involved. This is not an easy book, as the multitude of players, names, rebel groups, armies is a little intimidating at first. This is the first book I read on the subject and it might have been a little easier to have a little more knowledge on the region before diving into this book. The author does a great job of explaining the backround of the countries involved in the war, with an overview of the Angolan civil war, the Central African Republic, the propping up of Mobutu as a western ally in the cold war, the situation in the Sudan, Uganda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, the Kivus and in Rwanda in the post-genocide period. Even though the author goes into the intricate details of the conflit, he manages to weave a narrative that is compelling and enlightening.

I highly recommend this book. My only advice to the neophyte on the subject, as I am, is to relax and not get overwhelmed by the avalanche of information and groups.

[Taru Luojola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ennen kirjan lukemista en tiennyt Afrikan sodista 1990- ja 2000-luvuilla paljon mitään. Nyt kirjan lukemisen jälkeen tiedän enemmän. Ehkä päällimmäinen ajatus on se, että vaikka Afrikassa on sodittu paljon, sota ei ole ollut jatkuvaa vaan se on jossain vaiheessa lisääntynyt huomattavasti ja sittemmin hiipunut, ja myöskään yksittäiset konfliktit eivät niinkään ole yksittäisiä konflikteja vaan isomman vyyhden osia.

Mutta kirjasta olisi varmasti voinut saada enemmänkin irti kuin minä nyt tällä lukukerralla sain. Monet asiat ovat sellaisia, joista luin nyt ensimmäistä kertaa, joten jo pelkästään suuri joukko vieraskielisiä paikannimiä ja henkilöitä teki tapahtumien seuraamisesta työlästä. Jonkinlaisen yleiskuvan kuitenkin katson saaneeni. Myös suomennos on paikoin tankeaa ja epätarkkaa, mikä osaltaan teki lukemisesta puuduttavampaa.

Ja kamalia asioitahan tässä käsitellään. Niin kamalia, että paikoin ei voi tehdä muuta kuin nauraa hysteerisesti tapahtumien tragikoomisuudelle — muuten ei sielu kestä. Mutta rankimpiakin aiheita on hyvä lähestyä järjestelmällisesti ja analyyttisesti. Kannattaa siis perehtyä Afrikan tapahtumiin, sillä ne poikkeavat aika paljon siitä, millaiseksi elämä täällä länsimaissa mielletään.

[Robert Jere · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been the most educational book in my venture into African history so far. This book gives a very detailed account of the events that followed from the Rwandan genocide. A war that took place primarily in Congo and took the lives of millions of people over several years. The conflict involved a number of African countries who had different motives for their involvement.
The author does a brilliant job of explaining the complicated groups of fighters that took part in the war. The role of NGO's and western governments is also explained in detail.
This is a rather sad read and it was hard to understand why i had never heard of this tragedy. The people of Congo have been through hell, it is so heartbreaking. Some of the motives in this book are so base considering the amount of human suffering that they led to.
This book tells a story that i believe most Africans should know about. It is not easy to read because of the density of the information. But i found my persistence was rewarded.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a mess! This book is a very detailed account of the (most probably) biggest African conflict; a war fought among foreigners on the Congolese land for often unrelated interests and reasons. Starting with the aftermaths of the Rwandan genocide, Prunier covers the events ‘till the 2008. Although the situation is extremely intricate (during your reading you can probably get lost in a war bush somewhere in the Congo basin or drown in the river of words of a western diplomat), the author manages to guide a careful reader in the complexity of what he calls the “continental war”.

I have learnt so much from this book! The mineral wealth of the Congolese region has been often used as a kind of catch-all explanatory device; well, through this work you are able to see much more about this catastrophe (which hasn’t been very “media-sexy”).

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5. A fabulously well-written and incredibly well-researched book that gets bogged down with too many details. Not for the casual reader.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a book that helps explain the complicated and convoluted nature of the Congo War, this book does a great job at setting the context as well as describing the complex motivations of the parties involved and the failures of Congo that allowed it to be pushed around by much smaller nations who had their own very particular goals when it came to involvement in Congo.  The author also has some very intelligent comments to make about the crazy-quilt division that made Congo a less holy and Roman equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire in terms of its lack of overall sovereignty and state power.  As would surprise no one, a weak state with a lot of natural resources tends to attract a great deal of greedy and acquisitive actions from its neighbors.  We may frown upon bullies, but few nations are restrained enough to keep from bullying a neighbor whose resources make it a target and which lacks the ability to defend its own interests.  And Congo had plenty of nations that were willing to help it out for its own reasons, at least for a little while, even if it has not really been able to improve its statehood during the last few years after this book ends.

This book is between 350 and 400 pages of reading material and is divided into ten generally large chapters.  The book begins with abbreviations, a glossary, maps, and a somewhat large introduction to the contents of the book.  After that the author discusses Rwanda's mixed season of hope in the aftermath of the genocide that saw the restoration of a Tutsi government there (1).  After that the author discusses the time from April 1995 to October 1996 that saw conflict in the Kivu and the impact of the Rwandan refugees on Eastern Congo (2).  After this the author discusses the broader context of observers and interlopers into Congo's affairs, including the role of the Sudanese and Ugandans, the importance of the Angolan war, and a few nations like Burundi, Zambia, and Central African Republic that were trying to stay out of the conflict (3).  After this the author turns to the virtual war from September 1996 and May 1997 that was won by Kabila and his rebels over a dying Mobuto (4) as well as the discussion of how the peace was lost in the fallout of diplomacy and economic troubles (5).  This leads to a discussion of the Second War in its massive continental phase (6) and the quagmire between August 1999 and January 2001 in the breakdown of the alliance between Uganda and Rwanda as well as the efforts of Angola and Zimbabwe to deal with their own concerns (7).  After that the author talks about the whimper of the war's confused ending to December 2002 (8) as well as the transition from war to peace from January 2003 to 2007 (9) and closes with the author's attempt to grope for meaning in the conflict (10) as well as an appendix on Seth Sendashonga's Murder as well as notes, a bibliography, and index.

When reading a book like this, it is important to figure out what the agenda of the author is.  In this case, the author has a lot of agendas.  One of them is to write a book that goes into great detail about the various parties involved in the failure of the Congo, which the author does very well.  But not all of the agendas are likely to be as welcome to the reader, including the way that the author seeks to promote himself as being some sort of prophet, seeks to bash the French response and lambast Americans for being clueless and inattentive, to give praise to the South Africans for their savvy, and to compare the Congo Wars with the Thirty Years War in terms of the anarchical way that they were fought and the complexity of the coalitions involved over time.  Again, these agendas are not always going to be unwelcome to the reader, who certainly has some notable insights on the Congo Wars, but these agendas are at least worth noting insofar as they affect the way that the book's contents are framed.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative on the 90s-00s conflict in Rwanda and Congo, however it's somewhat too detailed to be a great primer on the topic.

I definitely know a lot more about it now, and Prunier's analysis seems level-headed to me (of course I have no contrasting view to compare it against). However, it had quite a homework-y feeling about it, with a litany of names and acronyms to keep track of. The writing style was accessible, but if you're not willing to flip back and forth between the glossary and map while you're reading, or refer back to sections you've already read when you forget what "Nokos" means (e.g.), then you're not going to be getting everything out of this book that it has to offer. So for where *I* was coming as a reader/learner, I would have enjoyed a more big picture overview rather than such a granular account of events.

And speaking of maps, my only objective complaint is that the maps provided here are wholly inadequate to the level of detail being discussed in the book. Probably a quarter of the book refers to either the "Ituri" fighting or North/South Kivu, complete with descriptions of specific battles and massacres, yet the maps do not even outline those regions, let alone list all the cities and towns he is referring to. This is the book's only significant failing imo; the rest of my complaints can be chalked up to user error.

In sum, if you want to know more about Rwanda/Congo this book will definitely solve that, but you might want to look around for a better starting point.

Not Bad Reviews

[Anthony Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most western media treats the Rwandan genocide as an isolated, horrible event, after which Rwanda became a feel good story, while the Congo is talked about as a nebulous house of horrors unconnected to everyting.
Prunier clearly shows the ongoing ripples from the genocide, and outlines Western historical failures and blindness to the realities of modern-day Africa, while clearly outlining the motivations and driving forces behind all the actors in the Second Congo War.

I learned more from this book than almost any other book I've read on Africa. It is a bit hard to read, and occasionally takes on the character of an academic text. I'd recommend reading something on the Rwandan genocide first, and then familiarizing yourself with the geography of Central Africa.

[Jack Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was, to put it bluntly, a grammatical nightmare. Interspersed in this run on sentence was a series of contradictory editorializing (“why won’t the UN do anything?” To “I hate the UN, they are incompetent and racist and should leave countries alone!”). This book officially lost me with the confident use of the phrase “everyone knows” almost a dozen times over the first few chapters.

Other reviews point out the mind-spinning use of abbreviations for various militias, agencies, and parties. These are slightly unfair. The region is so colossally ruined because of these many groups, and the state of confusion the reader is left in, is, in my view, broadly the same as what one would experience on the ground. A primer is certainly necessary to be able to follow the world we are introduced into, but I’ll give the author some breathing room there.

Overall, it is perhaps best to find other sources for commentary on foreign policy than the French.

[Lotta Yli-Hukkala]

Todella mielenkiintoinen! Kirja on paikoittain hieman raskas, sillä nimiä ja paikkoja on paljon – vaikkakin tietämättömyys näiden suhteen oli ihan lukijan omaa sivistymättömyyttä.

[Maximilian Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times fast and confusing - had Prunier intended to mirror the war, he would have succeeded. Although his work requires some knowledge on the Rwandan genocide, even I have made it through without having had to consult other books. As did Phillips in "The Battle for Syria", Prunier offers study of international relations in the context of the Congo War - its build-up, the involved parties and their interests as well as the international environment, meaning both the African continent and the international community. A great explanation as to how one of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century came into being as well as a more or less hidden attack on the inaction of the world.

[Sasha Grankin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty lovely academic history of the first & second congo wars as ignited by the rwandan genocide... fucked up to read aswell as written out in a bit of an esoteric manner this one takes getting used to but its an important history to understand african politics as well as the way it gets diluted in western thinking. last chapter was especially insightful.

[Daniel Polansky]

An exhaustively research, compellingly intimate dissection of the Congolese war of (roughly) 96-02, the ethnic and political complexities of which make the dissolution of the Balkans look like the American Civil War. Prunier does an extraordinary job of walking us through the minutia of the conflict while offering what seems a genuinely even-handed insight into what started and prolonged the deadliest conflict since WW2, albeit one that was virtually completely ignored by the foreign press (a situation which, alas, continues in the region to this day). Excellent, if horrifying.

[Aneliya Ivanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest I’ve been struggling with so many names in the book ,so at one point I’ve lost the track.High academic style ,but I’ve learned couple new facts about Africa.

[T.J. Petrowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gérard Prunier’s Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe is a masterful study of the causes and consequences of the Rwandan Genocide (1994) and the First and Second Congo Wars (1996-1997, 1998-2003).

The Rwandan Civil War (1990-1994) began when Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda. After the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, Hutu extremists, both inside and outside of the Rwandan regime, massacred in door-to-door violence 500,000 to 1,000,000 people between April and July 1994. The RPF resumed the civil war and overthrew the regime, which fled with hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

The flight of the former Rwandan regime and génocidaires and hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees into Zaire transformed the conflict between a rebel movement and an African regime into an ethnopolitical quagmire that is almost impossible to understand. This is not to deny the ethnic complexities of the Rwandan Civil War. As René Lemarchand writes in Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, the terms Hutu and Tutsi are not mutually exclusive, and an individual can identify as both Hutu and Tutsi. “In Kirundi, the term [Hutu] has two separate meanings: one refers to its cultural or ethnic underpinnings, the other to its social connotations. In the latter sense, Hutu refers to a ‘social subordinate’ in relation to somebody higher up in the pecking order. […] Thus a Tutsi cast in the role of a client vis-à-vis a wealthier patron would be referred to as ‘Hutu,’ even though his cultural identity remained Tutsi. Similarly, a [Tutsi] prince was a Hutu in relation to the [Tutsi] king, and a high-ranking Tutsi was a Hutu in relation to a [Tutsi] prince.” (pp. 9-10). This ambiguity regarding the terms “Hutu” and “Tutsi” made it impossible to accurately distinguish a person’s ethnic identity during the Rwandan or Burundian genocides. Often a victim was massacred with a machete or bludgeoned to death by their neighbour for no other reason than to steal the victim’s belongings or house. “Other genocides have been committed by strangers killing other strangers, and their violence was often engulfed in the wider violence of large international wars or revolutions,” Prunier writes. In Rwanda, the genocide “was a hill-by-hill and a home-by-home thing. And it is this neighborly quality, this grisly homespun flavor, that contaminated the world of the survivors after the killing had stopped.” The Rwandan Genocide “was so intertwined with everyday life that it could be used at every turn to secure an economic advantage, to settle an old grudge or to cover one’s tracks. Many people were killed by former Interahamwe simply because they might give evidence against them. Other people quickly found out that having survived the genocide could be a profitable business. They created ‘accusation cooperatives,’ which would sell their denunciations of real or supposed Interahamwe activities to those who could use such testimonies for economic or political benefit.” Tutsis survivors “were caught in nightmarish world between their Hutu neighbors, some of whom had been their saviors and some who had tried to murder them, and strange returnees from abroad who often accused them of compromising with the killers in order to save their lives. As for Hutu survivors, they were looked on as génocidaires by the returnee Tutsi and as traitors by the sympathizers of the old regime. Nobody was automatically innocent, and suspicion was everywhere.” (pp. 1-3).

When the former Rwandan regime, the génocidaires, and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Zaire, this created additional ethnic, social, economic, and political factors to the already complex Rwandan conflict.

Before the Rwandan Genocide, the corrupt Mobuto regime in Zaire was already on its last legs. The end of the Cold War transformed Mobuto from an anti-communist freedom fighter into an anachronistic African dictator in the eyes of the West. Mobuto’s support for, tolerance of, or simple incapacity to deal with foreign rebel movements active in Zaire — including UNITA fighting the MPLA regime in Angola; the génocidaires and former Rwandan regime fighting Kagame’s Rwandan regime; and various Ugandan rebels supported by Sudan and fighting the new Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni; the CNDD–FDD fighting against the Burundian regime — alienated many of the West’s new African allies. Many of these states, in turn, supported anti-Mobuto rebels in Zaire. Adding to this social, economic, ethnic, and political quagmire, the massive influx of foreigners — including the heavily armed forces of a former African regime — into the impoverished and ethnically volatile Zaire, especially its Kivu region, added further pressure on the land and environment the populace depended on for its subsistence. This created conflicts between the multitude of different peoples in the eastern Congo: the autochthonous peoples in the Kivus and Ituri, the Tutsi in South Kivu (Banyamulenge), the Hutu and Tutsi in North Kivu (Banyarwanda), the Rwandan and Burundi refugees that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, the recent Rwandan and Burundian refugees, and the génocidaires and former Rwandan regime, which continued the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus within the refugee camps in eastern Zaire.

“Does the reader at this point want to throw in the towel and give up on the ethnopolitical complexities of the region? I would not blame him,” writes Prunier (p. 201). YES — at least that’s what I thought.

In 1994, although for entirely different reasons, multiple African countries invaded or deployed troops in Zaire, including Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Angola, and Eritrea, and supported Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s rebel movement to overthrow Mobuto. After Kabila toppled Mobuto in 1997, he turned against his African masters, and multiple African countries again invaded Zaire, newly renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to Prunier, there were four layers of this second conflict (pp. 201-202):

The Core Conflict. This involved the Rwandan RPF regime, with Ugandan support, trying to overthrow Kabila.
The Second Layer. This involved several powerful African neighbours, including Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, who were not involved and did not care about the Hutu-Tutsi conflict but wanted Kabila to remain in power for their own reasons.
The Third Layer. This involved countries such as Libya, Sudan, and Chad that got involved for reasons related to each other (ex. Chadian-Libyan conflict, the Chadian-Sudanese conflict) and their relations with other states involved in the Congo.
The Fourth Layer. This involved countries such as Burundi and the Central African Republic that were geographically close to the Congo and that were entangled with other countries active in the Congo

Added to this were the economic interests of the belligerents. Rwanda and Uganda were trying to wage war on the cheap, which involved the self-financing of troops and allied militias in the Congo. At the same time, Zimbabwean mining companies wanted to block South African mining interests in mineral-rich Katanga. Thus, Rwandan and Ugandan troops, while nominally fighting for the same objective — the overthrow of Kabila — engaged in brutal street fighting with each other in the Congo’s third-largest city, Kisangani, to control the airport and the diamond trade in August 1999, May 2000, and June 2000. What began as a “rational” war, Prunier writes, thus degenerated into “myriad ‘privatized,’ socially and economically motivated subconflicts.” (p. 225).

Prunier is a brilliant scholar of Africa and an excellent writer. His ‘tell-like-it-is’ manner of writing is both comical and to the point and makes understanding African complexities easier. After reading this book, I cannot honestly say that I understand Africa’s so-called World War, the deadliest conflict since WWII, with 5.8 million deaths. Still, Prunier’s analysis helped shed much-needed light on the conflict, one that I was not adequately acquainted with before.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide-scope introduction to the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide and the near-decade of war in its aftermath. Let's remember--- the Congo Wars involved a shifting cast of international players (Congo/Zaire, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Sudan, Tanzania, and Namibia, plus the UN, the US, France, and a host of NGOs) plus a bewildering array of militias, political parties, ethnic/tribal movements, and governments-in-exile. The cost of the Congo Wars in the decade after 1996 may have been as many as five or six million dead from war, ethnocide, starvation, and disease.

Prunier's account of war and politics here is dense, filled with an alphabet soup of parties and agencies and movements, and the reader has to struggle to keep track of the players and their backers. And Prunier is opinionated, cynical, and too open to rumours and self-serving, often unverifiable sources. Though...as another review pointed out, that's the nature of both war and the Congo.

There are no good guys here, even among the humanitarian NGOs, whom Prunier sees as too fixated on being where the Next Big Thing is and refusing to see the political context of refugee work. The victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda become the ethnic cleansers of 1996. The Ugandans who fought against Obote's dictatorship in the 1980s become the pillagers of northeast Congo. Alliances and loyalties shift, coalesce, evaporate.

But this is an indispensable book for anyone interested in what happened in the Congo after 1996--- a continent-wide war obscured by events in the Balkans in the late 1990s and totally brushed aside by the world's press after 2001. Very much recommended for anyone trying to assess modern Africa and its fate.