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This is an important book because it creates order in events that have to be understood, but that are confusing by any standard. At the grass-roots, the war in the Congo must have seemed, and must still seem, a cosmic event - hence the designation of 'Africa's world war' is taken as the title of this book. It was not a world war in the strict sense, but outsiders were deeply involved in it, including Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Sudan, South Africa, and to a lesser extent the United States and France. The list is not complete. It was also a very cruel war in which many lives were lost for no reason. Cannibalism and mass rape were ingredients of this warfare. Standard explanations in political science, whether from the right or the left, make no sense of it. Prunier argues cogently, for example, that the war cannot be explained in terms of Western economic interests. The last chapter is modestly entitled: 'Groping for meaning: the "Congolese" conflict and the crisis of contemporary Africa'. Gerard Prunier deserves great respect for conscientiously following, documenting and interpreting the unfolding of these depressing events.
The Congo and Rwanda are areas outside my particular interests, but this war overwhelmed sub-Saharan Africa to such an extent that any person studying African politics needs to be informed about it. This book gives a clear chronology of events from 1995 to 2007, and that is very helpful in ordering the...