The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality [Paperback]

Thomas Turner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1842776894 | ISBN-13: 978-1842776896 | Publication Date: June 15, 2007

This book, by a lifelong authority on the Congo, makes sense of the world's least reported and least understood major war. Since 1996 successive waves of armed conflict in the Congo have left behind at least 3 million casualties, overwhelmingly civilian. Turner throws new light on partisan and economically self-interested military interventions by Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia. And he cuts through the highly tendentious historical myths that have been used to make sense of the unfolding catastrophe both in the region and beyond. The book also indicates the changes required of the international community, neighboring African states and Congolese political leaders if this hugely resource-rich region of Central Africa is to build peace and economic security for its people.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Thomas Turner's book will likely be the point of reference for anyone interested in the Congo wars, their origins and dynamics and why, in spite of the carnage, they remain a largely ignored and unknown conflict outside of Central Africa'. Ian Taylor, University of St Andrews 'Thomas Turner provides the most lucid and detailed analysis of the complexity of the internal and interregional wars that have plagued this vast country since 1996. By situating this tragic history within the legacies of colonialism and Mobutuism, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the criminalization of political activity in resource rich but politically unstable regions of the world, he has produced a remarkable and highly readable book.' Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, United Nations Development Programme

About the Author

Thomas Turner is Professor of Political Science at the National University of Rwanda

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (June 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842776894
• ISBN-13: 978-1842776896
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #926,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rather sloggy, June 21, 2008

By 

M. Craig Willy (Roquefort-les-Pins, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality (Hardcover)

The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality is written by veteran Congo scholar Thomas Turner. It is not a narrative of the wars. Rather, the book tries to do many things: the early chapters are wonderful at introducing and contextualizing the conflict, later it describes the belief of Ugandans that Congo is a place where you can steal cars, meet women, and make money, the ways Uganda/Rwanda have plundered Congo, the role of the international community and the elections that have been held since the war ended. The result is a book which is slightly clunky, two chapters of in-depth analysis on the impact of the war in the provinces of North and South Kivu I found a particular slog but unfortunately unenlightening. It is a useful book nonetheless.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Straight and true, October 19, 2008

By 

Howard French "Bigfoot" (Shanghai, China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality (Paperback)

The Congo crises of the late 20th Century contributed to the death of perhaps four million people, and yet the literature on these conflicts and their causes is sparse and generally undistinguished.
Turner's book reflects a real mastery of Central African history and politics, and he takes an almost clinical approach to his story, with all the gory details and no particular axes to grind.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Convergent catastrophes in the Congo, January 4, 2012

By 

Edward Waffle - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality (Paperback)

While the European colonization of Africa is one of the lowest points of so-called Western civilization (or Western so-called civilization) the history of the Congo is horrific even by the standards of primitive accumulation set by the British and French empire builders who realized that a partially educated native population serving as clerks, middle managers (supervising only other Africans, of course) and non-commissioned officers in the military was necessary to channel the aspirations of the indigenous people into activities useful to the metropolis and not threatening to the dominant polity. There were plenty of atrocities committed under the Union Jack (Kenya) and the Tricolor (Algeria) but there was also an attempt to leave behind a functioning state capable of self-government, if only to continue the exploitation of former colonies.

It was different in the Congo. The Belgians excluded Africans from higher education, government and corporate management and the learned professions. When the men from Brussels got on the last planes north they left behind an economic, social and political disaster. The numbers show a shameful century of rule by the lash, the iron fist in the mailed glove: there were 16 university graduates and 136 high school graduates in a population of about 14 million; there were no Congolese teachers, physicians or army officers and only one native lawyer. The population itself was about ten million people less than if the Belgians hadn't arrived, due to war, starvation and disease according to contemporary report.

So the citizens of the Congo/Zaire/DRC never had a chance. They have been reaping the whirlwind sowed by their colonial overseers for the past five decades, particularly during the almost constant warfare from 1996 to 2004. "The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality" by Thomas Turner is one of many attempts to analyze the Great African War, its causes, combatants and outcomes.

Turner sees a nexus of events as "convergent catastrophes" beginning with the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the flight of one million (or so) Hutus into Kivu province of the DRC after the Paul Kagame led Rwandan Patriotic Front intervened and the collapse of the Zairian/Congolese state which allowed the Interahamwe militia hidden in the refugee camps to attack Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front to retaliate. It was armed conflict characterized by mass murder and rape of civilians, systematic looting and the use of refugees as both shields and cover for contending armies.

Turner shows how the refugee camps in the DRC, hard by its borders with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, were used as recruitment grounds and staging areas for the armed rabble used as pawn in cross border battles and as a rationale for both Uganda and Rwanda to attack the DRC. Refugees were forced across the continent through and forest, dying or being killed along the way.

The international response was to do nothing. Whatever the reasons given by those with the power to intervene to stop the crimes against humanity, it seems clear that the lives of Africans didn't weigh that heavily on the conscience of those in Washington, Paris or Brussels. MONUC, the UN mission to the eastern Congo was underfunded and poorly led, with an unclear instructions and no real mandate to intervene into the murderous activity around them.

There is more--lots more--in this short book including a detailed, compact history of the economic, cultural and linguistic history of the Banyamulenga people in Rwanda and the Kivus. They were part of the forced labor migration from population dense but resource poor Rwanda to the mines and fields of what was then the Congo Free State. In the citizenship/nationality debates decades later Belgian administrative decisions--who would be sent where to do what kind of labor--were recast as agreement between Africans, creating unanswerable questions and long standing sources of conflict regarding the rights of people who settled in the Congo at different times.

The doleful history of the Congo has to be told (and learned) from many points of view. Historians, political scientists, NGO aid workers and peacekeepers look at issues differently from each other and from the Congolese civil society and political actors who live through them. Turner's book is a good account of the basis for much of it. If you disagree with (or simply don't like) Marxist terminology: class, lumpenized masses, urban proletariat--you may have some trouble here since Turner uses these concepts of social organization as an important part of his analysis. He is by no means a Marxist but uses all the intellectual tools available and appropriate.