Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa [Hardcover]

Jason Stearns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2011

At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention.

In this deeply reported book, Jason Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it. He depicts village pastors who survived massacres, the child soldier assassin of President Kabila, a female Hutu activist who relives the hunting and methodical extermination of fellow refugees, and key architects of the war that became as great a disaster as--and was a direct consequence of--the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Through their stories, he tries to understand why such mass violence made sense, and why stability has been so elusive.

Through their voices, and an astonishing wealth of knowledge and research, Stearns chronicles the political, social, and moral decay of the Congolese State.

Editorial Reviews

Review

""Dancing in the Glory of Monsters" is riveting and certain to become essential reading for anyone looking to understand Central Africa." --The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2001

"The best account [of the war] so far: more serious than several recent macho-war-correspondent travelogues, and more lucid and accessible than its nearest competitor." --Adam Hochschild, The New York Times, April 1, 2011

Kirkus, February 15, 2011
“Impressively controlled account of the devastating Congo war…The book’s greatest strength is the eyewitness dialogue; Stearns discusses his encounters with everyone from major military figures to residents of remote villages (he was occasionally suspected of being a CIA spy)…An important examination of a social disaster that seems both politically complex and cruelly senseless.”

Booklist
“Covering the devastating effects of these deadly contests on the Congolese infrastructure, Congolese institutions, and people’s lives, Stearns informatively reports on affairs for students of African politics.”
 

New York Times Book Review, April 3, 2011

“The best account [of the conflict in the Congo] so far; more serious than several recent macho-war-correspondent travelogues and more lucid and accessible than its nearest competitor…The task facing anyone who tires to tell this whole story is formidable, but Stearns by and large rises to it. He has lived in the country, and has done a raft of interviews with people who witnessed what happened before he got there…his picture is clear, made painfully real by a series of close-up portraits.”

Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2011
“He is a cracking writer, with a wry sense of understatement…Mr. Stearns has spoken to everyone—villagers, child soldiers, Mobutu's commanders, Kabila's ministers, Rwandan intelligence officers. In these conversations he found gold, bringing clarity—and humanity—to a place that usually seems inexplicable and barbaric. ‘Dancing in the Glory of Monsters’ is riveting and certain to become essential reading for anyone looking to understand Central Africa.” 

 

Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011
“Stearns is more concerned with the perceptions, motivations, an actions of an eclectic mix of actors in the conflict—from a Tutsi warlord who engaged in massive human rights violations to a Hutu activist turned refugee living in the camps and forests of eastern Congo.  He tells their stories with a judicious mix of empathy and distance, linking them to a broader narrative of a two-decade-long conflict that has involved a dozen countries and claimed six million victims.”
 

Washington Post, April 24, 2011

“Enter Jason Stearns. One of Congo’s most intrepid observers, he describes the war from the point of view of its perpetrators. He has tracked down and interviewed a rogue’s gallery of them. The resulting book, “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters,” is a tour de force, though not for the squeamish."

 

Economist, April 28, 2011

“[Stearns] is probably the most widely travelled and the most meticulous and empathetic observer of the war there. This is a serious book about the social and political forces behind one of the most violent clashes of modern times—as well as a damn good read.”

 

Global Post, April 26, 2011
“Stearns is a leading authority on the region, having lived there for years working for the United Nations and the International Crisis Group. He has built up a superb knowledge of Congo and how it articulates with its neighbours, particularly Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. He frequently imparts his understanding to journalists far less well-informed than he. And now he has produced a book where he makes the whole convoluted and confusing war in Congo a little more comprehensible, which is quite a feat. If you want to understand modern Congo then Stearns’ book should be required reading.”
 

Telegraph, May 13, 2011
“A brave and accessible take on the leviathan at the heart of so many of Africa’s problems… Stearns’s eye for detail, culled from countless interviews, brings this book alive… I once wrote that the Congo suffers from ‘a lack of institutional memory’, meaning that its atrocities well so inexorably that nobody bothers to keep an account of them. Stearns’s book goes a long way to putting that right.”

The Spectator, May 8, 2011
“(t)his courageous book is a plea for more nuanced understanding and the silencing of the analysis-free ‘the horror, the horror’ exclamation that Congo still routinely wrings from Western lips.” 

Sunday Times, May 1, 2011
“Stearns has done a fine job of amassing vast amounts (of material), much of it based directly on interviews with the participants and victims, to bring to light details of a scandalously under-reported war… (T)his book succeeds in providing a vivid chronicles of this rolling conflict involving 20 rival rebel groups.

The Shepherd Express
“a vivid chronicle of the carnage that helps illuminate a tragedy too enormous to comprehend”

 

Financial Times, June, 24, 2011

“A serious, admirably balanced account of the crisis and the political and social forces behind it, providing vivid portraits of both victims and perpetrators and eyewitness accounts of the main events… perhaps the most accessible, meticulously researched and comprehensive overview of the Congo crisis yet.”

Economist
Book of the Year, “(a) serious account of the social and political forces behind one of the most violent clashes of modern times… by one of its most meticulous and empathetic observers.”

Times Literary Supplement
“(Dancing in the Glory of Monsters) is both readable and humane. (Jason Stearns) offers an effective narrative of the convoluted regional politics of a conflict that saw the rapid emergence of an alliance of neighbouring governments which gave their support to the rebel army recruited from DRC’s Tutsi population… While Stearns works hard to make his readers understand the violence, it is clear that he is both impassioned and outraged by this story of human suffering… This intelligent and moving book may help us understand some of the people of the Congo better, as humans, tragically liable to do evil rather than as monsters; but unsurprisingly, it provides no clear answer to intractable questions about the scope of international intervention.”

Midwest Book Review
“Any collection strong in African history and culture—as well as many a military collection—will find this a ‘must’”

About the Author

Jason Stearns has been working on the conflict in the Congo for the past ten years. In 2008 he was named by the UN Secretary General to lead a special UN investigation into the violence in the country. He has also worked for a Congolese human rights group, for the United Nations peacekeeping operation, and for the International Crisis Group. He is currently completing a PhD at Yale University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition edition (March 29, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586489291
• ISBN-13: 978-1586489298
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo
  • #63 in Books > History > Africa > Central Africa

More About the Author

Jason Stearns has been working on the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2001. He has worked for Héritiers de la Justice, the United Nations peacekeeping mission and as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. In 2008, he led a United Nations investigation on conflict in the east of the country. He is currently managing a research project for the Rift Valley Institute on Congolese armed groups, the Usalama Project.

His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Africa Confidential, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He blogs at congosiasa.blogspot.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 93 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Monsters, indeed. May 18, 2011

By J. Scott Shipman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Several thoughts come to mind when reflecting on Jason K. Stearns' epic Dancing In The Glory of Monsters, The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, but "dancing" doesn't figure into any of those thoughts, and monsters are writ large, center stage. And make no mistake; we're talking fiendishly horrific monsters, almost inhuman, as if drawn from a dictionary definition: "Anything horrible from...wickedness, cruelty or commission of extraordinary or horrible crimes; a vile creature..." So the reader should be advised, some of the stories are very disturbing.

Indeed, Mr. Stearns paints a gut-wrenching portrait of a nation and region ravaged by colonial meddling, venal and brutish politician/military leaders, and centuries old ethic strife all culminating in "many wars in one" beginning in 1996 in Congo (the former Zaire) and including active participation of neighbors Rwanda and Uganda just to name a couple. In terms of geography, Congo straddles the equator and is the size of Western Europe, or slightly less than one fourth the size of the United States. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the literacy rate is 67% and the mortality rate a surprisingly "high" 54 years for men, and 57 for women; given the slaughter since 1996, my guess would have been a much lower number.

The Congo Wars were largely a by-product of the epic 1994 genocide in Rwanda where in the space of 100 days an estimated 800,000 Rwandans (primarily Tutsis and moderate Hutus) were killed. The killing was "organized by the elite but executed by people." Stearns says, "...between 175,000 and 210,000 people took part in the butchery, using machetes, nail-studded clubs, hoes, and axes." The killing was done in public and almost no one was untouched either as "a perpetrator, a victim or witness...." For internal political reasons, this resulted in over one million Hutu refugees/rebels fleeing over the border from Rwanda to Zaire. A massive tug-of-war across the border began with the ailing Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seku providing support to the rebels, and eventually a ten-year struggle within Zaire proper of both the Rwandan civil war and wars to control what became in 1997, Congo.

Dancing With Monsters is divided into three parts. Part 1 ended with the collapse of Mobutu's government in May 1997. Following a brief respite in the fighting, Congo's new president Laurent Kabila "fell out with his Rwanda and Ugandan allies" resulting in the second Congo war in August 1998 which "lasted until a peace deal reunified the country in 2003." But the fighting in the eastern part of the country continues to this day and is considered the third Congo war.

Stearns tells the Congo story based on first person interviews with both perpetrators and victims of extraordinary atrocities, although he focuses more on the perpetrators who "oscillate between these categories." A perpetrator one day becomes tomorrows victim and vice versa. Stearns has worked the better part of 10 years in the Congo, and is to be commended for the raw physical courage necessary to live, much less interview many of the "monsters" in his revealing book.

Interestingly, Stearns chose to focus on a system "that brought the principal actors to power, limited the choices they could make, and produced chaos and suffering." That "system" is in a word, a mess. The chaos and suffering are of a kind with no contextual parallel in the modern Western experience. Stearns attempts to provide a context in an excellent introduction that offers insight into the violence, which more often than not, appears maddeningly senseless and consistently brutal. The culture of the region appears to be one where everyone is on the take, where everyone is corrupt simply to survive. To quote one of Stearns' sources: ""If you don't bribe a bit and play to people's prejudices, someone else who does will replace you." He winked and added, "Even you, if you were thrown into this system you would do the same. Or sink."" This tone of resignation and an "ends justifies the means" justification permeates the attitudes of the political/military types Stearns interviews; in fact this philosophy colors a good portion of the book, and therein points to a large part of the systemic problem. A quote attributed to another monster, Stalin kept coming to mind: "You can't make an omelet, without breaking a few eggs."

From this attitude of resignation, my guess is that perhaps the "system" Stearns has documented is the extreme end result of Che Guevara-style of Soviet Marxist totalitarianism. Guevara himself spent 1965 fighting in the Congo but concluded, "they weren't ready for revolution." The Congolese may not have been ready for revolution, but it appears they bought the philosophy hook, line and sinker. This mentality reminded me of a passage from another book of horrors, The Whisperers, by Orlando Figes, where he writes: "she had subordinated her own personality and powers of reason to the collective." The subordination of reason is pandemic in Congo; a place where mostly ethnically based discrimination and killing is conducted without so much as an apology. Many of Stearns' political/military leaders spoke of "democracy," but in my reading I did not get the sense this was anything more than a rhetorical fig leaf to remain in the good graces of the UN and the West, for there has been little in the behaviors of these leaders to suggest a level of seriousness and understanding as to what democracy means; political accountability comes to mind. Meanwhile, the killing continues.

Speaking of democracy, a good portion of the West was and continues to be indifferent to the Congo and the wars. Stearns points out, "the response, as so often in the region, was to throw money at the humanitarian crisis but not to address the political causes." This sounds accurate. Stearns believes the West should do more, comparing the response to Kosovo in 1999, where "NATO sent 50,000 troops...to Kosovo, a country one-fifth the size of South Kivu"(part of Congo). Many of those interviewed by Stearns agree, but with a twist. In the concluding chapter, Stearns quotes a Rwandan political advisor offering what he called a "typical view" of the US from the region:

"When the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, you decided to strike back against Afghanistan for harboring the people who carried out the attack. Many innocent civilians died as a result of U.S. military operations. Is that unfortunate? Of course. But how many Americans regret invading Afghanistan? Very few."

Many Americans regret the extent of our operations in Afghanistan, more with each passing day. In my opinion, this seems to be offering an all-too-typical moral equivalence argument; since innocents die in American wars, our slaughter of innocents is justified. Stearns correctly follows this quote with extension of the Rwandan official's line of thought:

"This point of view does not allow for moral nuance. Once we have established that the genocidaires are in the Congo, any means will justify the ends of getting rid of them, even if those means are not strictly related to getting rid of genocidaires."

This official's argument is as dangerous as the wars he and his neighbors have endured. In delegitimizing any moral nuance his prescription is amoral, or worse, claims an exclusive role defining morality thereby justifying a continuation of the slaughter. I don't have a solution, but this prescription will yield only more of the same. Political accountability doesn't pass the buck, or hide behind a general truth that tragedies occur, but rather learns from mistakes made and steadfastly strives to avoid further bloodshed.

In conclusion, I would offer one bit of advice to those who read this important book: use Google Earth or a good atlas; the book has maps, but the maps aren't sufficient to the level of detail provided in the book. This is a minor nit, but one that can be enhanced through an external source.

Stearns concluded on a note of optimism and confidence in the Congolese people, whom he calls extremely resilient and energetic peoples. One could conclude nothing less from this excellent and truly frightening recounting of their story. Highly recommended. Read more ›

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars an impressionistic social account of the war rather than a history December 11, 2012

By Mark bennett

Format:Paperback

The so-called Great War of Africa is an important subject calling out for good books to be written about it. But unfortunately, very little good material in the way of history has been written. Many of the books, including this one, are good source material for a *real* history of the conflict, but are themselves not effective history.

The problem with Stearns is that he is too philosophical and too analitical in looking at the conflict. He doesn't let the events and people tell their own story. He is far too interested in drawing "meaning" or putting "reason" on the human suffering of the war that he fails to often see what is right in front of him.

Worse yet, he falls back on all the old cliches about Africa. Everything in Africa is explained by "deep history", "systems" and "institutions". He often sounds like someone with a sociology degree working at the UN in the 1960s. He talks about "good" and "evil". Worst of all, he invokes an argument that sounds a whole lot like "white man's burden" in that he says that somehow *we* "owe" the Congo a solution to its problems ("Why help? We owe it to them"). He fails to understand that those sorts of paternalistic attitudes toward Africa are part of the problem rather than part of any solution.

"Evil" is a concept that keeps coming up in the book. He reaches for Hanna Ardnt at one point which is about as far off the mark as one can get. He comes very close to a working analogy when he compares the conflict to the 30 years war in Europe but for all intents abandons it quickly after. There are certainly acts of evil described in the book, but they don't end up serving much purpose in telling the history of the war (or wars)....

His ultimate conclusion that there is neither cause nor essense to be found in the war is equal parts useless and frustrating. He wants often to wallow in the history of a century ago or to endlessly go through the individual suffering associated with the war. While he does these things, he neglects the big picture of the war and the era in which it happened. All of the things he brings up are very sad, but often not enlightening. Brutality and inhumanity are the consequences of war in these sorts of places. Far more interesting is to ask the question "why" of the people beyond the battlefield. That includes all of Congo's neighbors and that includes the international community as well. The people who arm and fund the militias. The people who kept the war going. He doesn't go far enough in that direction in my opinion.

In my opinion, one of the author's problems is that he is too close to the story. His book will certainly be of use to those authors who follow him looking to tell a better history of the war. The interviews and the oral history he has captured in the book is useful as raw source material. But he can't seem to bring it together to tell a story of the war.

He has the problem common to many who deal with Africa which is that interview subjects are constantly engaged in what Orwell called "doublethink". Rather than saying what they mean, they speak in a language of code-words and phrases that the sociologists, athropologists and the western media accept. They throw out words like democracy, freedom and tell tales of their own victimhood that often are simply meaningless echos back of what journalists and western academics think about them. It would be more honest to hear ethnic killers talk about being ethnic killers rather than hearing them talk about building democracy. Language is failing us in these situations as a means of communication. The media poisons the well so totally that all we hear back from these people is what we ourselves have said about them. They give us what we want to hear.

The author wants more attention if not direct intervention in the Congo. But he fails to understand that Western Troops and American money can't solve whats wrong. It didn't work in Somalia. It didn't work Iraq. Its not working in afghanistan. In Kosovo over a decade later, the entire economy is based around the international mission to Kosovo. There is also a failure to see the full irony in blaming colonialism for the problem and seeing a return of pseudo-colonialism to Congo as the solution.

In my opinion, the problems of Congo can't be solved within the Congo. The problems can only be solved when countries like Rwanda are told once and for all to get out of Congo. When countries outside of Africa stop listening to nonsense from cynical leaders of criminal regimes. When people put a higher premimum on stopping a war than wallowing in historical guilt over things that happened long before anyone involved was born. Its the people who fund the warlords who matter, not the warlords themselves.

In the end, maybe the book works unintentionally as a social snapshot of the attitudes of those directly involved in the war and nothing (including the attitudes of the author) should be taken at face value. Within those limitations, its an interesting read. Not a history nor a book with a case to make. But more of an impression of a time and place. Maybe ultimately its a testiment to the ways that language has started to fail us in provinding understanding in regards to a war like this one. Read more ›

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One reason we shy away is the conflict's stunning complexity April 4, 2011

By Didaskalex TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

*****
"How do you cover a war that involves at least 20 different rebel groups and the armies of nine countries, yet does not seem to have a clear cause or objective?" Jason K. Stearns

The Congo, a vast country as big as Western Europe, wildly rich in natural resources, and valuable minerals as diamonds and uranium, having common borders with nine central African nations, has received little sustained media coverage, even during its political crisis striving for democracy, after independence, in 1960. I was on a consulting job in Zambia, and drove to Ndola to meet a friend who taught at the university of Lubumbashi, the park was so peaceful, and the visitors were friendly. In two decades, after its economic collapse in 1996, the (Dem. Rep.) Congo was destructed by an annihilating war, in which millions lost their life in a deliberate genocide. The brutal war has left hundreds of thousands of women gang-raped and left millions of war-­related disabilities, and more than three millions were forced to flee their villages. Jason Stearns, who worked for the United Nations in Congo, tells the tragic story of chaos and suffering in, "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters," explaining the tragedy of the Great War of Africa, and the destruction of the Congo, where almost all state institutions of public services crumbled. The author describes the inhumane fights, "like layers of an onion, the Congo war contains wars within wars."

"Dancing in the Glory of Monsters" is the best account so far: more serious than several recent macho-war-correspondent travelogues, and more lucid and accessible than its nearest competitor,.." wrote Adam Hochschild in the N Y Times....
While Douglas Rogers, author of " A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa" wrote, under 'The Triumph of Fear, "The war in Congo- a state that has known little but slavery, colonialism and dictatorship for four centuries- started not as a civil war but as "a regional war, pitting a new generation of young African leaders against the continent's dinosaur, Mobutu Sese Seko. Its catalyst, moreover, was self-defense. It was planned and fought by Congo's tiny neighbor, Rwanda" quoting Stearns own description.

Adam Hochschild concludes in his compelling NY Times review that, "The task facing anyone who tries to tell this whole story is formidable, but Stearns by and large rises to it." As for me, the brave engaging writer refreshes my painful childhood memories of the post WW II movies, about the Holocaust, which kept happening in Bosnia, and Darfur. So, I skimmed through the book to find quick answers to my desperate questions within its chapters, and was chocked by his simple explanation of international non decision, "One reason we shy away is the conflict's stunning complexity." Could this be a justifying defense for the Clinton Administration? A blogger wrote about Libya, "Obama needs to get on the horn with Bill Clinton - there are lessons of history we can't afford to ignore." Read more ›