Rethinking exclusion, ethnicity and conflict in Central Africa.

• Author: Webley, Radha
• Position: 'The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa' - Book review

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

Rene Lemarchand

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 327 pages.

Over the course of the past two decades, the Great Lakes Region of central Africa--encompassing the micro-states of Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the southwestern corner of Uganda--has seen some of the world's most devastating civil and interstate wars. The toll of these conflicts is not only in the millions of civilian casualties and unprecedented numbers of refugees produced, but also in self-perpetuating cycles of violence and instability that continue to plague these countries' domestic politics and cross-border relations.

The scale of the situation defies simple explanation. The sheer number of combatant groups in the eastern Congo alone is enough to stump even the most practiced analyst. The ethnic geography of the region is similarly daunting. The history behind each conflict can be enough to occupy a scholar for a lifetime. It is thus no small task to analyze the causes and consequences of conflict in this troubled region. Yet that is exactly what Rene Lemarchand, scholar of central African politics, accomplishes in The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa.

Dynamics of Violence offers no grand analysis and no ultimate solution. In fact, refuting the utility of such definitive analyses stands out as one of the core themes of this volume. The very structure of the text--a collection of stand-alone essays on Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC--questions the value of applying a single macroanalysis to such a diverse set of questions and localities that this region presents. Nonetheless, Dynamics of Violence forcefully justifies the necessity of a holistic cross-border approach to conflict analysis in this region that grasps the volatile politics of these countries as a product of inextricably interwoven and jointly evolving identities, histories and political forces.

Such a comparative analysis, Lemarchand claims, is fundamental to understanding the dynamic and inter-connected rationales driving the region's many conflicts. In discussing the "reciprocal impact" of genocide and mass violence in Rwanda and Burundi, for example, he illustrates the historical linkages between the 1959 revolution in Rwanda and the 1972 mass slaughter of Hutu civilians in Burundi by a Tutsi-dominated army, and articulates the connections between the latter event and the 1994...