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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

by Jason Stearns (Author)

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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: #106,337 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in Central Africa History
- #47 in African Politics
- #128 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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David Hoffman

History of a Catastrophe

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2013

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The recent history of the country known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo is singularly melancholy, even by the depressing standards of colonial and post-colonial Africa. In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium somehow managed to convince an international conference held in Berlin to give him control of the region that now makes up the Congo. He made the entire country into his personal possession and named it the Congo Free State. Without any necessity of dealing with a parliament or any other institution that might limit his control over his colony, Leopold hardly made any pretense of bringing civilization to Africa, as the other colonial powers did. The Congo Free State existed solely to enrich King Leopold with its rubber plantations, by the most efficient or brutal means possible.
The situation in the Congo became so notorious that in 1908 the Belgian parliament took control of the colony from Leopold. The Belgian government ruled the colony somewhat more humanely than King Leopold had but the Belgian colonial officials made no effort to prepare the Congolese for self-government. No African was placed in any position of authority. The colonial army had no black officers. Needless to say, when the Congo achieved independence in 1960, there was virtually no chance that the new nation would be governed in an effective or democratic manner. In fact, there was considerable political unrest until Joseph Mobutu or Mobutu Sese Seko as he came to call himself, took power in 1965.
The only good thing that can be said about Mobutu was that he was not a Communist and so did not slaughter his people by the millions, as Communists invariably do. Unfortunately, Mobutu was dictator and a kleptocrat. He changed the name of the country to Zaire and pillaged it, filling his Swiss bank accounts from the Zairian treasury. Despite this Mobutu might have died in peace, had he not made it a habit to intervene in the internal affairs of Zaire’s neighbors.
Mobutu was overthrow in the First Congo War from 1996-1997. This war and the following Second Congo War which was fought from 1998-2003 is the subject of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns
Stearns begins with the genocide in Rwanda that preceded and sparked the Congo Wars. After the Hutu massacred the Tutsis of Rwanda, Tutsi rebels took control of Rwanda and drove thousands of Hutus into neighboring Zaire. With support from Mobutu, the Hutus began attacking the Tutsis across the border. The Tutsis in response decided to overthrow Mobutu but assembling a coalition of southern African nations and arming Congolese, predominantly Tutsi, rebels. This first Congo War was a success as the rebels drove Mobutu from power and installed Laurent Kabila as the new president of the renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kabila turned out not to be very competent and the policies he favored seemed to be unchanged since the 1960’s. The Rwandans began to be exasperated with him, especially after he began harassing the Congolese Tutsis, so the Rwandans supported a new rebel movement against Kabila. Meanwhile, there was a falling out between the former allies Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Angola, and each nation supported its own movement in the Congo and fought over the natural resources of the Congo. This was the Second Congo War.
Jason Stearns writes the history of these two wars from the perspective of several participants in these wars and the aftermath. Some of these stories are from prominent players in the politics and fighting of the region, some are from people who were simply in the way. Dancing in the Glory of Monsters is not primarily a military history but a story of a disaster that has blighted the lives of millions of people in central Africa. Stearns writes of mass murders and refugees as much as he does of troop movements and political deals, leaving the reader with a true appreciation of the scope of the suffering these wars brought.
The fighting in the Congo is mostly over now. Joseph Kabila, the son of Laurent rules the Congo and has proved to be a relatively effective leader, though one reluctant to create the kind of institutions the Congo needs. The suffering of the Congolese people continues as they try to rebuild their wrecked country. Still, as Stearns points out in the end of his book, they have an indomitable spirit and may yet overcome the bad hand history has played them.

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J. Scott Shipman

Monsters, indeed.

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2011

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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.

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Cesare Cattin

Al cuore della tenebra

Reviewed in Italy on November 9, 2023

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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

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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

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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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