Darfur : the ambiguous genocide /

This superb analysis offers the best insights to date of a complex tragedy--and much-debated genocide. Prunier (Univ. of Paris) is the author of several analyses of Africa, including an excellent book on Rwanda (The Rwanda Crisis, 1995). He draws on Arabic, French, and German sources to show the historic roots of the distinct identity of Darfur, the region that has suffered from neglect and inattention for most of its history. The crisis, characterized as genocide by former secretary of state Colin Powell, met what "seems to be the escapable fate of African political problems.... There are no big political, economic or security stakes for the developed world in these conflicts--just the deaths of human beings." Prunier divides his book into six chapters covering land, people, and history; the region's "unhappy relationship" with Khartoum; manipulated Arabism and racial anarchy; counterinsurgency to quasi-genocide; the world and the Darfur crisis, issues of secondary guilt; and conclusions. This volume argues more cogently than many other major works, such as Francis Deng's War of Visions (CH, Mar'96, 33-4046), Alex de Waal's Famine That Kills (revised edition, 2004), or Douglas Hamilton Johnson's The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (2003). Helpful glossary of Arabic terms. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through research collections. C. E. Welch University at Buffalo, SUNY

The public clamor over Darfur in western Sudan has somewhat subsided in recent months, but the emergency there is far from over, as Prunier points out in this comprehensive and authoritative treatise. He concisely covers the history, the conflicts, and the players. Darfur (population over 3 million) has always been an area of conflict between ethnic groups, including non-Arab black Africans and Arab tribes. Both groups are Muslim. Since 2003 the Arab militia, called the Janjaweed,has caused much death and destruction in the west with support from the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Comprising an area three times the size of North Carolina, Darfur has had closer ties to Chad and the western countries of Africa than with the Nile valley countries, including its own. With the south and north of Sudan in outright civil war over the past two decades, much energy has been spent on solving that crisis. With that civil war ended and with Darfur having experienced, by the author's erudite accounting, 280,000 to 310,000 casualties, pressure has been put on Sudan to solve the catastrophe. Prunier warns that a conflict crossing many tribes, ethnic groups, and countries, with concerns of racial, religious, economic, geographic, and militaristic origin, is not likely to end soon. Essential for anyone wanting to learn about this complex conflict; recommended for academic as well as all African and international collections.-James Thorsen, Central North Carolina Regional Lib. Syst., Burlington (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.