Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

A disturbing book, but very revealing!, 18 Oct 2004
This is a frightening book, but perhaps one of the most important ever written on the state of the continent over the last 10 years. The author destroys all the myths about tribal politics in Africa, especially that old chestnut about 'age old tribal hatreds' we hear so often in the western media. He shows that most of these hatreds were no more than mere rivalries, but that in modern times these rivalries and prejudices against other tribes have been manipulated and turned into hatred. This has been largely the work of, not military dictators like Amin, but the so called 'intellectuals'. In Rwanda the power of radio broadcasts is shown in its full devastating results with the constant encouragement to continue the killing, because 'the graves are not yet full'.
Besides Rwanda, there are revealing chapters on the Congo, Liberia and South Africa. All are disturbing reports, showing a calculating and brutal leadership all over the continent. The only conclusion I could draw from this book is that Africa has no hope - at least not with the current leadership, and with the attitudes among western governments, many of which benefit from the chaos in those countries.

A picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it, 17 Aug 2001
Bill Berkeley spent a decade writing about Africa for US publications, such as Atlantic Monthly, which left him free from deadlines and indulged his taste for interminable journeys on local transport to places journalists rarely go. Thousands of interviews with those in power and far from power gave him a picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it and lived it across the continent. The great virtue of Berkeley's book - apart from the fact that he is a lovely writer - is that he has a coherent idea of what lies behind the wars in the six countries he writes about: Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Berkeley ended his travels determined to rebut what he calls the "nonsense" written by influential journalists such as Robert Kaplan and Keith Richburg, who have pictured for an American audience a mysterious Africa where people are different - inscrutable and savage. "Fully evolved human beings in the 20th century don't do things like that," wrote Richburg of the Rwandan genocide. Kaplan meanwhile speculated that the Liberian civil war came from "new-age primitivism" born of superstitions that apparently flourish in tropical rain forests. "In places where western enlightenment has not penetrated . . . people find liberation in violence." That such claptrap has been so respectfully received in western intellectual circles underlines what is different about Berkeley - he has spent a decade listening to Africans, unlike most western journalists, academics, diplomats and aid workers, who prefer to talk to each other and recycle their own ideas.

The countries Berkeley writes about all have a long history of racial or ethnically based tyranny, from the oligarchy of the Americo-Liberians and apartheid to Arab domination in Sudan and Belgian colonial rule in Congo. His book is mainly about the methods of tyranny, the way ethnicity is used to maintain it, and the violence that is a product of that strategy.

In Liberia, Charles Taylor ousted the crass Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and then promoted an anarchy that left him in sole power of a ruined country. He did it in part by using the greed of British and French businessmen, who paid him well for their ore and timber firms to continue business as usual while the war raged. During this time 60,000 people, mostly civilians and many of them children, were armed; half the population was displaced, and most of the others were living on international aid.

So far so familiar as an account of Liberia's tragedy, but Berkeley then has a most revealing chapter on the role of Chester Crocker, US undersecretary of state for Africa, in legitimising the tyranny of Doe. "A case study in the ruinous consequences of the cold war at its least-known fringes - what might better be called destructive engagement." Crocker was best known (and loathed in southern Africa) for his policy of constructive engagement with South Africa, which involved redrawing the political map of the region. It meant making apartheid respectable, getting the Cuban military to leave Angola in return for independence for Namibia, and leaving Angola prey to an American-backed covert war by Jonas Savimbi, out of what was then Zaire. The result has been yet another African country as deeply ruined as Liberia.

Berkeley's interviews with Crocker (now an academic), Jenkins Scott ( Liberia's justice minister) and Tienie Groenewald (director of South African military intelligence in the mid-1980s) would be hilarious if these people were not so transparently evil and the consequences of their acts not so catastrophic. They explain carefully to him "the context" in which things happened, and these formulations go to the heart of how personal responsibility was evaded and terrible evil was normalised.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

A disturbing book, but very revealing!, 18 Oct 2004
This is a frightening book, but perhaps one of the most important ever written on the state of the continent over the last 10 years. The author destroys all the myths about tribal politics in Africa, especially that old chestnut about 'age old tribal hatreds' we hear so often in the western media. He shows that most of these hatreds were no more than mere rivalries, but that in modern times these rivalries and prejudices against other tribes have been manipulated and turned into hatred. This has been largely the work of, not military dictators like Amin, but the so called 'intellectuals'. In Rwanda the power of radio broadcasts is shown in its full devastating results with the constant encouragement to continue the killing, because 'the graves are not yet full'.
Besides Rwanda, there are revealing chapters on the Congo, Liberia and South Africa. All are disturbing reports, showing a calculating and brutal leadership all over the continent. The only conclusion I could draw from this book is that Africa has no hope - at least not with the current leadership, and with the attitudes among western governments, many of which benefit from the chaos in those countries.

A picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it, 17 Aug 2001
Bill Berkeley spent a decade writing about Africa for US publications, such as Atlantic Monthly, which left him free from deadlines and indulged his taste for interminable journeys on local transport to places journalists rarely go. Thousands of interviews with those in power and far from power gave him a picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it and lived it across the continent. The great virtue of Berkeley's book - apart from the fact that he is a lovely writer - is that he has a coherent idea of what lies behind the wars in the six countries he writes about: Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Berkeley ended his travels determined to rebut what he calls the "nonsense" written by influential journalists such as Robert Kaplan and Keith Richburg, who have pictured for an American audience a mysterious Africa where people are different - inscrutable and savage. "Fully evolved human beings in the 20th century don't do things like that," wrote Richburg of the Rwandan genocide. Kaplan meanwhile speculated that the Liberian civil war came from "new-age primitivism" born of superstitions that apparently flourish in tropical rain forests. "In places where western enlightenment has not penetrated . . . people find liberation in violence." That such claptrap has been so respectfully received in western intellectual circles underlines what is different about Berkeley - he has spent a decade listening to Africans, unlike most western journalists, academics, diplomats and aid workers, who prefer to talk to each other and recycle their own ideas.

The countries Berkeley writes about all have a long history of racial or ethnically based tyranny, from the oligarchy of the Americo-Liberians and apartheid to Arab domination in Sudan and Belgian colonial rule in Congo. His book is mainly about the methods of tyranny, the way ethnicity is used to maintain it, and the violence that is a product of that strategy.

In Liberia, Charles Taylor ousted the crass Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and then promoted an anarchy that left him in sole power of a ruined country. He did it in part by using the greed of British and French businessmen, who paid him well for their ore and timber firms to continue business as usual while the war raged. During this time 60,000 people, mostly civilians and many of them children, were armed; half the population was displaced, and most of the others were living on international aid.

So far so familiar as an account of Liberia's tragedy, but Berkeley then has a most revealing chapter on the role of Chester Crocker, US undersecretary of state for Africa, in legitimising the tyranny of Doe. "A case study in the ruinous consequences of the cold war at its least-known fringes - what might better be called destructive engagement." Crocker was best known (and loathed in southern Africa) for his policy of constructive engagement with South Africa, which involved redrawing the political map of the region. It meant making apartheid respectable, getting the Cuban military to leave Angola in return for independence for Namibia, and leaving Angola prey to an American-backed covert war by Jonas Savimbi, out of what was then Zaire. The result has been yet another African country as deeply ruined as Liberia.

Berkeley's interviews with Crocker (now an academic), Jenkins Scott ( Liberia's justice minister) and Tienie Groenewald (director of South African military intelligence in the mid-1980s) would be hilarious if these people were not so transparently evil and the consequences of their acts not so catastrophic. They explain carefully to him "the context" in which things happened, and these formulations go to the heart of how personal responsibility was evaded and terrible evil was normalised.

Accuate and Readable, 22 Jul 2008
This is an extremely well researched and written book. It charts the entire life of Jean Bedel Bokassa, and for me perhaps the most interesting chapters are those detailing the events after his 1979 overthrow. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about the Bokassa regime, but this is often backed up by a thorough exploration of official documents and reports. Very interesting, covering an often overlooked area of Africa, Titley has managed to make it supremely readable and it moves at a good pace, unlike many academic histories written by well meaning amateurs.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

Fascinating perspective, 11 Sep 2007
Really enjoyed this book. If one approaches it as a primary source to better understand the US Cold War 1960's mentality then it is a good as anything that I have read. While this viewpoint seems dated today, to put it kindly, its unapologetic tone does at least enable one to understand the drivers of US foreign policy. Felt that the account was reasonably well balanced, although it clearly irks Mr Devlin that he has been besmirched with an assassination plot that he states repeatedly that he was not involved in. He is sympathetic to many of the African politicians that he comes into contact with and was undoubtedly a successful operator throughout his 2 tours in the Congo as he was able to build and maintain significant relationships with the key players. However, this is not a Tom Clancy page-a-minute yarn, as these political moves take up much of the book with only occasional references to the cloak-and-dagger stuff. A good read though and recommended.

A disturbing book, but very revealing!, 18 Oct 2004
This is a frightening book, but perhaps one of the most important ever written on the state of the continent over the last 10 years. The author destroys all the myths about tribal politics in Africa, especially that old chestnut about 'age old tribal hatreds' we hear so often in the western media. He shows that most of these hatreds were no more than mere rivalries, but that in modern times these rivalries and prejudices against other tribes have been manipulated and turned into hatred. This has been largely the work of, not military dictators like Amin, but the so called 'intellectuals'. In Rwanda the power of radio broadcasts is shown in its full devastating results with the constant encouragement to continue the killing, because 'the graves are not yet full'.
Besides Rwanda, there are revealing chapters on the Congo, Liberia and South Africa. All are disturbing reports, showing a calculating and brutal leadership all over the continent. The only conclusion I could draw from this book is that Africa has no hope - at least not with the current leadership, and with the attitudes among western governments, many of which benefit from the chaos in those countries.

A picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it, 17 Aug 2001
Bill Berkeley spent a decade writing about Africa for US publications, such as Atlantic Monthly, which left him free from deadlines and indulged his taste for interminable journeys on local transport to places journalists rarely go. Thousands of interviews with those in power and far from power gave him a picture of the last violent decade as Africans saw it and lived it across the continent. The great virtue of Berkeley's book - apart from the fact that he is a lovely writer - is that he has a coherent idea of what lies behind the wars in the six countries he writes about: Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Berkeley ended his travels determined to rebut what he calls the "nonsense" written by influential journalists such as Robert Kaplan and Keith Richburg, who have pictured for an American audience a mysterious Africa where people are different - inscrutable and savage. "Fully evolved human beings in the 20th century don't do things like that," wrote Richburg of the Rwandan genocide. Kaplan meanwhile speculated that the Liberian civil war came from "new-age primitivism" born of superstitions that apparently flourish in tropical rain forests. "In places where western enlightenment has not penetrated . . . people find liberation in violence." That such claptrap has been so respectfully received in western intellectual circles underlines what is different about Berkeley - he has spent a decade listening to Africans, unlike most western journalists, academics, diplomats and aid workers, who prefer to talk to each other and recycle their own ideas.

The countries Berkeley writes about all have a long history of racial or ethnically based tyranny, from the oligarchy of the Americo-Liberians and apartheid to Arab domination in Sudan and Belgian colonial rule in Congo. His book is mainly about the methods of tyranny, the way ethnicity is used to maintain it, and the violence that is a product of that strategy.

In Liberia, Charles Taylor ousted the crass Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and then promoted an anarchy that left him in sole power of a ruined country. He did it in part by using the greed of British and French businessmen, who paid him well for their ore and timber firms to continue business as usual while the war raged. During this time 60,000 people, mostly civilians and many of them children, were armed; half the population was displaced, and most of the others were living on international aid.

So far so familiar as an account of Liberia's tragedy, but Berkeley then has a most revealing chapter on the role of Chester Crocker, US undersecretary of state for Africa, in legitimising the tyranny of Doe. "A case study in the ruinous consequences of the cold war at its least-known fringes - what might better be called destructive engagement." Crocker was best known (and loathed in southern Africa) for his policy of constructive engagement with South Africa, which involved redrawing the political map of the region. It meant making apartheid respectable, getting the Cuban military to leave Angola in return for independence for Namibia, and leaving Angola prey to an American-backed covert war by Jonas Savimbi, out of what was then Zaire. The result has been yet another African country as deeply ruined as Liberia.

Berkeley's interviews with Crocker (now an academic), Jenkins Scott ( Liberia's justice minister) and Tienie Groenewald (director of South African military intelligence in the mid-1980s) would be hilarious if these people were not so transparently evil and the consequences of their acts not so catastrophic. They explain carefully to him "the context" in which things happened, and these formulations go to the heart of how personal responsibility was evaded and terrible evil was normalised.

Accuate and Readable, 22 Jul 2008
This is an extremely well researched and written book. It charts the entire life of Jean Bedel Bokassa, and for me perhaps the most interesting chapters are those detailing the events after his 1979 overthrow. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about the Bokassa regime, but this is often backed up by a thorough exploration of official documents and reports. Very interesting, covering an often overlooked area of Africa, Titley has managed to make it supremely readable and it moves at a good pace, unlike many academic histories written by well meaning amateurs.

Better than nothing but..., 16 Sep 2008
Given the relative dearth of books in English about the Congo wars, this book is welcome, and Turner brings many years of study and experience of the region to it. As the previous reviewer says, the introductory chapters provide a reasonably good overview of the factors which contributed to the conflict, and Turner's objectivity is helpful too. However, while recognising that the Congo wars were very complicated and not well reported, I found this book rather poorly written and only partially enlightening. Often it seems to lack coherence both within and across chapters, and the writing style is often poor. I too found it quite a slog to get through. It is possibly not Turner's fault that he could not find a broader range of sources, but at times he seems to dwell on certain incidents at some length while leaving other aspects of the war under-represented.

So this book is definitely better than nothing, and it does present a balanced account, but one would have hoped that such a book might have been better written.

Rather sloggy, 21 Jun 2008
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.