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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa Paperback – March 27, 2012

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A "tremendous," "intrepid" history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa's Congo, with first-hand accounts of the continent's worst conflict in modern times.

At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal war in which millions have died. In Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, renowned political activist and researcher Jason K. Stearns has written a compelling and deeply-reported narrative of how Congo became a failed state that collapsed into a war of retaliatory massacres. Stearns brilliantly describes the key perpetrators, many of whom he met personally, and highlights the nature of the political system that brought these people to power, as well as the moral decisions with which the war confronted them. Now updated with a new introduction, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tells the full story of Africa's Great War.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

PublicAffairs
Publication date

March 27, 2012
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.13 x 8.38 inches
ISBN-10

1610391071
ISBN-13

978-1610391078
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Editorial Reviews

Review

An Economist and Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year

"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."―Douglas Rogers, The Wall Street Journal

"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. . . . [Stearns] 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."
―Adam Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review

"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."
―The Washington Post

"[Stearns] is probably the most widely traveled 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."―The Economist

"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."
―Financial Times

"[A] tremendous book. This is a very complicated, largely unfamiliar subject that's basically off the radar of the American media and he's managed to produce a genuinely readable and engrossing account. To the extent that it's possible to breeze through a book about a years-long bloody civil war I breezed right through it."
―Matthew Yglesias, ThinkProgress.org

"The subject he has tackled is vast and impossible to cover in one book. But for anyone interested in the Congo and the Great Lakes region this is a great read-one I highly recommend."―Stephanie Wolters, Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)

"Perhaps the best account of the most recent conflict in the Congo."―Foreign Policy

"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 Telegraph

"This 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."―Michela Wrong, The Spectator

"Stearns's objective in his book is to pick apart the political causes behind this war, to make sense of the madness-and to select individuals, such as a father in Kisangani who helplessly watches his son bleed to death after a senseless battle, whose stories will make us care... Stearns succeeds. His book is engrossing, persuasive, copiously researched, well-organized, well-sourced, and viscerally disturbing."―Jeffrey Gettleman, The New Republic

"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 chronicle of this rolling conflict involving rival rebel groups."
―Sunday Times

"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."
―Kirkus

"On the ground in Congo for a decade, he has written a compelling history of the turmoil, combining a deep sympathy for the people's plight and a sharp analytical eye on the reasons for the unfolding disasters. Stearns' great strength is his ability to tell the tortuous history of the past decade and a half by bringing on the Congolese people themselves as the central players in the drama.... Unsparing in his critique of the vanity and greed of Congo's political class, Stearns also gives an incomparable eye-witness account of a system that tries to suck everyone into a vortex of compromise and corruption."―The Africa Report

About the Author

Jason Stearns is a CIC Senior Fellow and Director of the Congo Research Group. Jason has been working on conflict dynamics in Central Africa since 2001. He has worked for the International Crisis Group, the UN Group of Experts on the DR Congo, and the Rift Valley Institute.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs; Reprint edition (March 27, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1610391071
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1610391078
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.13 x 8.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #115,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #16 in Central Africa History
- #49 in African Politics
- #141 in Violence in Society (Books)

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Jason K. Stearns

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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.

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Scott Whitmore

Highly readable with focus on people for context; an important book

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2012

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An important, highly readable account of the war raging in heart Africa over the past decade and a half. Nine nations border the Congo, and nearly all have at one time or the other been part of the violence that has consumed millions of lives and left those who survive searching for justice.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns (@jasonkstearns) shed light on a subject which I knew little about, but even the small bit I thought I knew turned out to be incorrect. That we in the West do not understand how and why the conflict began is a bitter truth that bears examination.

The conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo parallel the timeframe for much of the Great War of Africa, yet consider how much more media coverage those much smaller conflicts received in the West. The size of the Congo is roughly the same as all of Western Europe, yet the shameful truth is this: sub-Saharan Africa does not have the "strategic" value that would create enough interest in the West to engage or at least attempt to understand what happened.

And the key word there is "attempt" as Stearns points out in an impassioned conclusion:

"The Congo war had no one cause, no clear conceptual essence that can be easily distilled in a couple of paragraphs. Like an ancient Greek epic, it is a mess of different narrative strands -- some heroic, some venal, all combined in a narrative that is not straightforward but layered, shifting, and incomplete. It is not a war of great mechanical precision but of ragged human edges."

Stearns points out early in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters the difficulty of unraveling the puzzle, but then he does an admirable job of doing just that by centering much of the narrative around the people involved. Heads of state, politicians, soldiers, refugees and villagers, Stearns interviews them and uses their stories to illustrate and illuminate what happened. It is a powerful way to approach this subject, and the writer does well to remain in the background and let those most affected talk.

This is not a military history, although a few battles are discussed in overview as well as some massacres. The timeline skips around a little, and a map of the Congo and surrounding areas would have been very useful, but overall I found this book to be very enlightening. I often look for books on subjects I know little about and in this case I was rewarded greatly.

12 people found this helpful

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R. M. Peterson

The Heart of Darkness redux

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2017

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Of the too many hellholes on this planet, perhaps the worst is the Congo. Starting in the sixteenth century it became the center for the European and Arab harvesting of slaves. Not only were millions of Africans hauled away as slaves, the slave trade devastated what previously had been a relatively stable system of government. Then, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Congo was ravaged by colonialism, led by the monstrous King Leopold II of Belgium. Millions of severed hands; millions of unnatural deaths. When colonial territories in Africa became untenable, Belgium abandoned the Congo in 1960, leaving it without any meaningful political traditions or infrastructure. Military dictators filled the void. They became the new "monsters" of the Congo.

The first was Mobutu, who ruled from 1965 to 1997. He was succeeded by Laurent Kabila (1997 to 2001), who was succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila (2001 to the present). The title of this book comes from Laurent Kabila, who once berated the Congolese for supporting Mobutu: "We saw you all dancing in the glory of the monster." But Kabila père et fils did not reverse the model of big-man politician presiding over a corrupt state so ineffective and inefficient that it scarcely warrants the status of "state". Meanwhile, from 1996 to 2013 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the scene of savage wars in which well over five million people were killed, most of them civilians.

Compounding the tragedy of the Congo is that we in the West know little about it and seem to care even less. DANCING IN THE GLORY OF MONSTERS helps fill the gap. From 2001 to 2009 Jason K. Stearns worked in the Congo as a journalist and analyst, including a stint with the United Nations peacekeeping force. In DANCING IN THE GLORY OF MONSTERS, published in 2011, he provides an account of the seemingly endless wars and the hellish mayhem of the modern-day Congo. It probably is the best book in English on the subject.

Considered simplistically, the Congo Wars were triggered by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. When the incumbent Hutu regime crumbled, over a million Hutu fled across the border into the DRC (then named Zaire), along with the soldiers and militiamen who had carried out the massacres. In 1996, they were attacked by vengeful Rwandan forces, accompanied by Ugandan soldiers. These events became the flashpoint for various pre-existing ethnic and tribal antagonisms to erupt. Angola intervened. Mobutu was overthrown. Political objectives gradually gave way to economic ones -- raiding the rich natural resources of the eastern Congo.

Ultimately, however, the mayhem in the Congo defies simple, straightforward explanation. Stearns summarizes the complexity in the following way: "Like layers of an onion, the Congo war contains wars within wars. There was not one Congo war, or even two, but at least forty or fifty different, interlocking wars. Local conflicts fed into regional and international conflicts and vice versa. Teasing out origins can be a tail-chasing exercise."

And the natives suffered . . . horrifically. The book recounts numerous stomach-turning atrocities. Here is just one of them, involving soldiers seeking to punish a local chief who they mistakenly thought had lied to them: "At least fourteen people were in the chief's house when the soldiers arrived. The rebels killed all of them. * * * [T]he chief's pregnant wife [was] eviscerated, her dead fetus on the ground next to her. The infants of the chief's younger brother had been beaten to death against the brick walls of the house. * * * [T]he chief's heart had been cut out and his wife's genitals were gone. The soldiers had taken them. * * * They disemboweled one woman by cutting her open between her anus and vagina, then propped up the body on all fours and left her with her buttocks facing upwards. Another corpse was given two slits on either side of his belly, where his hands were inserted." In this instance, the perpetrators were Congolese rebels supported by Rwandan army forces, but similar atrocities were committed by seemingly every faction involved in the wars.

Stearns's prognosis for the Congo is not a rosy one: "It will take generations to rebuild institutions or social organizations that can challenge the current predatory state without resorting to ethnicity."

It is a tortuous history, with many strands snaking and twisting around one another. Telling the story in an organized, coherent fashion would have been a very daunting challenge. Stearns was not quite up to that challenge. For one thing, the book is too journalistic; it sometimes resembles a series of separate dispatches strung together. Points or facts are occasionally repeated, seemingly without recognition that they had been made previously. There are too many details, too many quotes from the author's extensive interviews. There is not enough structure and analysis. When I first tried reading the book five years ago, it was too difficult for me to follow and persist. Now, after a more concerted effort, I am glad I finally read it.

8 people found this helpful

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Cesare Cattin

Al cuore della tenebra

Reviewed in Italy on November 9, 2023

Verified Purchase

Il libro, scritto basandosi su un misto di fonti storiche, report ufficiali e interviste dello stesso scrittore sui due conflitti in Congo e delle situazioni politiche, etniche e sociali che hanno portato ad un disastro spesso ignorato da 8 milioni di morti. Il focus é specialmente sul Congo e il vicino Rwanda e si lascia andare a quelche riflessione sulla natura delle violenze di una scala difficilmente comprensibile

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bertrand b

Excellent

Reviewed in France on October 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

Great work, a difficult topic treated with professionalism.

Malarchy

Devastating Account of Congo Wars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2018

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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters is an exceptionally well written set of accounts of the actions in and around the Congo Wars. This is not a history of the wars themselves but a series of expertly interwoven narratives charting some of the actions of the people involved. It is the story of politicians, perpetrators, and victims. The logic and reasoning behind some of the myriad different actors in the Wars is touched on and offers a great introduction to understanding Africa's World War.

The book rightly starts at the genesis of the Wars - the Rwanda massacres of Tutsis by Hutus. Strange that so much suffering in Congo can have been caused by this bout of outrageous violence in small, neighbouring Rwanda. Jason Stearns takes an holistic view, not just looking at the actions within Congo but the motivations of those around. Of course Rwanda is the most important because it was the Government of Paul Kagame who toppled Mobutu Sese Seko.

The thinking behind the Rwandan intervention is fascinating. Impressive to see such access to some of those in the inner circle that Kagame put together. Of course the Rwandans made a terrible mistake in installing Laurent Kabila and there is not really enough here to explain how come they made that error. Kabila does not seem to be such an obvious leader that the Rwandans had to choose him given the comments of those who were around him in the early going.

The capability of the Rwandan forces compared to the impoverished Congolese ones is well laid out. The depredations of Mobutu and his systematic dismantling of the Congolese forces is described as the ultimate cause of their futility. It was only foreign intervention that held the Rwandans in check at all.

The international element is not fully explored. There is description of the Angolan and Zimbabwean intervention gains some coverage but this is not really their story. It is mostly the story of the Congolese themselves and in many cases the proxies used by others for purposes both moral and self-interested.

Some of the savagery carried out in the DRC was utterly heartbreaking. Stearns tells some of those stories like the worshippers burned in a church or villagers being wiped out. The tales told by survivors are devastating to read and there is a lot of human tragedy in this work. Stearns tells victims stories sympathetically without being overly sentimental. It is fascinating that different sides see things so differently and that each side only really knows about atrocities carried out by the other.

Stearns also engages with perpetrators. He meets with some of those who led factions or militias and tells their story or retells the descriptions of those who were close to leadership. These are classic stories of Big Men. Many of them seem to be out to enrich themselves and in a few instances they seem to be utterly incompetent. The tales of people who emerged from the jungle to glorify themselves and then fade away when their facade falls are a level of detail that those without more than a passing interest in the subject will not necessarily have. It is understanding these factions that leads to understanding the overall tragedy.

The reason this book works so well though is because it is structured and written so effectively. The narrative spreads over so many different angles because there are so many different aspects to the conflict. Stearns does not take a strictly chronological order but it is roughly a guide from the Rwanda massacre to the time of Joseph Kabila.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters is not a military history but is an important analysis of the politics and people. It is a seminal work on a conflict that has had a devastating effect in Central Africa. Stearns shines a light on dark corners of the violence and does so with a dispassionate sympathy which makes it so easy to identify with all of those involved.

7 people found this helpful

Brendan

Brilliant

Reviewed in Australia on December 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Nuanced and well written. Mingling personal vignettes , interviews and narrative history, this story is a fascinating overview of a complex period in a complex country.

Peter Pieck

Die Endlosschleife

Reviewed in Germany on March 17, 2016

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Wer sich mit der jüngsten Geschichte der Demokratischen Republik Kongo beschäftigt, gerät schnell in die große Ratlosigkeit, wo jede auch nur annähernde Übersicht verloren zu gehen droht. Zu viele Beteiligte, zu viele Parteien, zu viele bewaffnete Gruppen, von denen jeder dann auch noch - je nach Lage und Gewinnaussicht - kurzfristig die Seiten wechseln kann. Stearns Buch hat das ambitionierte Ziel, ein bisschen "Ordnung" in das Chaos zu bringen - ich weiß, das ist ein Widerspruch in sich, erst recht im Kongo! - oder zumindest, dem Leser zu helfen, das Gesamtbild nicht ganz aus den Augen zu verlieren. Und das ist ihm gelungen.
Er beschreibt und analysiert die Jahre von 1994 bis 2010 mit dem Völkermord in Ruanda als Ausgangspunkt und den zwei darauf folgenden "afrikanischen Weltkriegen" und ihren Konsequenzen. Das gelingt ihm deshalb besonders gut, weil er nicht nur chronologisch Abläufe nachzeichnet und bewertet, sondern beteiligte Personen - Entscheidungsträger wie die sogenannten "einfachen Leute" - zu Wort kommen lässt.
Das Erschreckendste ist, dass ein historischer Fortschritt nicht zu erkennen ist, anscheinend wiederholt sich der immer gleiche Kreis von Gewalt, Brutalität, schneller Gewinnmaximierung und dem allzu bereitwilligen Löcherstopfen durch die Gebergemeinschaft ewig aufs Neue. Dieselben "Techniken" der Tortur, die es im Völkermord in Ruanda gab, wurden von den verschiedenen Lagern auch im Kongo angewandt. Die als Demokraten, Befreier und Menschenrechtskämpfer angetretenen jungen Politiker, Militärführer oder Staatsbeamte, verfallen - einmal an der Macht - in dieselben für viele ihrer Opfer tödlichen Handlungsschemata wie ihre Vorgänger, die sie so entschieden bekämpft haben. Und die Gebergemeinschaft veranstaltet weiter fleißig Seminare über Transparenz und Rechenschaftslegung und sorgt sich, ihr Geld loszuwerden. Einen gangbaren Ausweg aus diesem sich unendlich reproduzierenden Deaster kann der Autor uns auch nicht weisen. Wie sollte er auch?

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