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 | | Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Revised and Updated Edition by Gerard Prunier ISBN-10: 9780801446023 ISBN-10: 0-8014-4602-3 ISBN-13: 9780801446023 ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4602-3 Hardcover 2007-02 Cornell University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description In mid-2004 the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan forced itself onto the center stage of world affairs. Arab Janjaweed militias, who support the Khartoum government, have engaged in a campaign of violence against the residents of Western Sudan. A formerly obscure ‘tribal conflict’ in the heart of Africa has escalated into the first genocide of the twenty-first century. In sharp contrast to official reaction to the Rwandan massacres, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the situation in Darfur a "genocide" in September 2004. Its characteristics–Arabism, Islamism, famine as a weapon of war, mass rape, international obfuscation, and a refusal to look evil squarely in the face–reflect many of the problems of the global South in general and of Africa in particular. Journalistic explanations of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe have been given to hurried generalizations and inaccuracies: the genocide has been portrayed as an ethnic clash marked by Arab-on-African violence, with the Janjaweed militias under strict government control, but neither of these impressions is strictly true. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains what lies behind the conflict, how it came about, why it should not be oversimplified, and why it is so relevant to the future of the continent. Gérard Prunier sets out the ethnopolitical makeup of the Sudan and explains why the Darfur rebellion is regarded as a key threat to Arab power in the country—much more so than secessionism in the Christian South. This, he argues, accounts for the government’s deployment of "exemplary violence" by the Janjaweed militias in order to intimidate other African Muslims into subservience. As the world watches; governments decide if, when, and how to intervene; and international organizations struggle to distribute aid, the knowledge in Prunier’s book will provide crucial assistance. | ||
Reviews | ||
Essential source on the Darfur conflict This book is one of the essential sources on the Darfur conflict. Prunier writes in detail about the period when Darfur was an independent sultanate and discusses complex ethnic distinctions in the region - from the "African" and "Arab" tribes to ethnic and tribal differences among both groups. The author notes that people with different ethnic and tribal backgrounds lived in Darfur in relative peace for centuries but have been exploited and politicized by the governments of Sudan, Chad, Libya, and other external forces in the 1980s, thus polarizing Darfur's "Arabs" and "Africans" and setting the stage for the current conflict. The book examines colonial and post-colonial neglect of Darfur and its people and the author makes a connection between this and the rebellion that began in 2003. Prunier ends the book with a discussion about the genocide claims, media coverage of the crisis in the West, and the role the Darfur conflict plays in the general Sudanese context. | ||
Understanding Darfur ? Very precise, very clear book. And necessary for anyone who wants to try to understand something about Darfur - yesterday, today, and, perhaps, tomorrow. | ||
Clarity Triumphs Over Cliche If you will read just one book about Darfur, I can't imagine a better choice. Nothing else I've read so deftly sorts through Darfur's complex history, making clear how geographic, economic, social and political strands of the region's past made it vulnerable to the crimes perpetrated there. Prunier takes a seemingly incomprehensible story and makes it almost perfectly comprehensible. Prunier shatters all the myths and cliches that pervade media accounts of the conflict and so vex critical thinkers, who know that it can't be that simple- that there is more and at the same time, less to the story. His analysis of the Sudan's history is concise, compelling and dead on. Moreover, though the North-South war which raged for over 40 years is not the book's focus, he brilliantly analyzes how that struggle relates directly to Darfur. Chillingly, he explains how, for the Khartoum government, its actions ( and inactions ) in Darfur are perfectly logical and, from their perspective, quite effective. As one reads Prunier, he can imagine how readers years ago must have been sickened and yet, oddly "reassured "( I can't find the right word ) when they realized that the Holocaust was explainable. I say this not to compare Darfur to the Holocaust. Prunier doesn't do that either. What I refer to is the provision of explanation for events so mind-bogglingly horrible that one wants to grasp the causes, yet fears that this can't be done. If you are compelled to understand the historical roots of this horror, order Prunier now. | ||
Poor Editing Harms Presentation I'm not an expert on Darfur nor do I spend much time reading about African politics. I came to this book in the hopes of understanding the Darfur crisis better. Parts of this book are excellent, but the poor editing and confused chronology for the updated section at the end nearly make the book useless for the uninformed reader. The first section on historical background is fascinating and for the most part clearly written, although it would have been useful to offer a clearer chronology of events in Chad, which have an important impact on Darfur. Unfortunately, the editors did not take the time to correct numerous spelling, syntax and grammatical errors that existed in the 2005 version. I'm not a good copy editor with my own work, but these errors were so numerous and obvious as to be a bit disheartening. But this is a mere annoyance compared to the confusing additional text added in this "revised" edition. (1) The glossary of Arabic terms is useful, but incomplete. (2) The list of abbreviations is incomplete, and quite often the abbreviations are not even spelled out with their first use. Try to figure out what AMIS stands for. (3) There are numerous mistakes and inconsistencies in the use of abbreviations. On page 161 the Common Peace Agreement (CPA), which one does not find in the list of abbreviations, is misspelled as DPA! Or does the author mean the DPA, another unlisted acronym?! Try sorting this out as a non-specialist. The author switches randomly between the use of the abbreviation SLA and SLM for a key rebel group - it's the same group, but again very confusing. I was only able to understand this based upon other outside reading. No explanation is given in the text. Finally, the constant temporal shifts that occur in the "new and revised text," which should take the reader through 2005 and 2006 is almost on the edge of being useless, unless the reader is so familiar with the material that the reader can sort out the confusion. Read the final pages and tell me, if you can, when the DPA, another abbreviation not listed at the front, was signed, in 2005 or 2006? You'll have to look elsewhere for the answer to this important and basic question. The editors of the Cornell University Press series Crises in World Politics, have done much better elsewhere with "Peace at Any Price - How the World Failed Kosovo," a far superior work on a similar topic. This book does not live up to that standard. - Mark A. Wolfgram | ||
"...simple killing is boring, especially in Africa," writes author and "renowned analyst of East Africa, the Horn, Sudan, and the Great Lakes of Africa," Gérard Prunier in his explanation (Pp 155, 156) of why he believes that the situation in Darfur does not qualify as genocide - (because there was not an attempt to "destroy a racially, religiously, or politically predefined group in its entirety,") although he admits that it actually makes no difference how exactly it is defined. His explanation of this one point is clear; however, the rest of the book is extremely difficult to follow due to its concise, complex, research paper-like style. In the first paragraph, he states that the introductory chapter, "...aims at giving...an overview to enable the non-specialist reader to grasp the context in which the crisis developed." That may be the case, but this reader felt only minimally enlightened on the subject of Darfur after having read Chapter 1 (twice), and the remaining five, even having taken notes along the way. Prunier's attempt to explain the situation in Darfur to everyman types is no better than that of Julie Flint and Alex de Waal in their Darfur: A Short History of a Long War - an equally tough read. | ||