Customer Reviews

Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster

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An excellent overview behind the conflict in Darfur. This book outlines the cultural (tribal) background behind the genocide in Darfur and gives a great account of the strife between the riverine "arabs" and the tribal strife between the fur, masalit and others. This is not a simple tale and the authors do a great job of analyzing Libya's destabilizing influences in the region. The impact of French and US policy in North and East africa is also presented. this book is balanced and factual and the only shortcoming I can find is that it is a little sparse in its accounting of John Garang's impact on the Strife in South Sudan. Overall a great book to add to any collection on NE Africa.

This book examines the background of the genocide in the Sudan by examining the history of Chad's relations with Libya. Libya inserted itself in African politics in the 1980s and began a major degree of meddling in Sub-Saharan Africa, training revolutionaries and rebels such as Charles Taylor. Increasingly it involved itself in Chad and Chad became a brooding ground and testing ground for Arab Islamist militias persecuting indigenous Africans and Christians. This was a viscious recipe and it eventually led to the problems across the border in Darfur where similar rivalries based on race, religion and tribe ignited a genocide, backed by Khartoum.

A fascinating history and a new perspective.

Seth J. Frantzman

Images of the genocide in Darfur have shocked the Western world: Upwards of 300,000 of its inhabitants have died, and another 2.5 million have become refugees. Those affected by the violence are estimated at almost 4 million, 700,000 of whom are now beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance. These are staggering numbers, and the fractious insurgent groups involved-- Islamist Arab tribal militias against Christian black Africans and other militias made up of deserters of the Chad Army--were and still are supported to kill, rob, and terrorize by the governments of the neighboring states of the Sudan, Chad, and Libya.
These are the consequences of a decades-long war, as J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins explained in their earlier book, Africa's Thirty Years War: Libya, Chad, and the Sudan, 1963-1993. The Long Road to Disaster in Darfur updates this study and covers the events of the last thirteen years.

Reviews of Africa's Thirty Years War
"A lively detailed and informative study...The authors consider ethnic, religious, cultural, technological,geographic, and meteorological variables and present brief enlightening political portraits of the stories' protagonists. Historically situating the war within the struggle for supremacy along the borders of the Islamic world, the book seeks to explain why so many governments invested so much for so long in the control of such seemingly worthless expanses of sand and rock."
--Foreign Affairs

"This is a fine work, well documented and well argued, and convincing."--Journal of Military History

"This fascinating study combines analytical depth with accessible lucidity. It should be essential reading for any student of African history and politics." --African Studies Review

"...a timely, useful contribution. ... The volume is replete with meticulous detail. ...well documented and lucidly written...useful for years to come." --International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies