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Title: Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda by Scott Peterson ISBN: 0-415-93063-4 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.16 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Don't miss it
Comment: A previous Amazon reviewer described this book as "dispassionate." Must have been reading a different book to the one I bought.
As a former foreign correspondent (for Australian television)I also spent time in Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan. I picked up this book out of curiosity but without much in the way of expectations.
Having read it, I am stunned and in awe.
There are many more famous and exalted names in foreign journalism than Scott Peterson's - at least until now. The sheer passion of his reporting, the level of his commitment, his fearlessness both when faced by African violence and the equally grotesque rationalisations of those who clumsily intervene (and those who fail to intervene)deserve him a place in the highest rankings.
He stuck with Somalia when most of the rest of the world lost interest (I plead guilty). He took trouble to understand the Somali perspective when most others saw it as an American story. He writes illuminatingly about Sudan - perhaps the world's most overlooked war zone, rich in terrible, hopeless, wasteful loss. His writings on Rwanda add renewed freshness to the gut-churning horrors of the genocide - after Gourevitch's "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" apparently left little more to be said.
Peterson returns the degraded craft of journalism to its purest form: he "bears witness." He risks his life to do so. He loses friends. He confesses his fear. He disdains received wisdom. He redeems the lazy journalism of the pampered hacks with one eye on the room service menu and the other on how well their "heroism" will play back home.
Anyone with an interest in Africa, reporting, the nature of the human condition, the politics of humanitarian intervention, or just a damn good, disturbing read about the ways of the world would do well to read this book.
Rating: 3
Summary: The Dark side of humanity on the Dark
Comment: Scott Peterson has written a first hand reporter's account of his experiences in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda. It is a compelling read for all interested in war, ethnic conflict, genocide and international relations. If you are interested in only one of the three debacles, the book is broken into three sections that make it easy to focus on, say, Sudan, and ignore the other two. Finally, the book includes three maps, one of each region, that are helpful in reading the text.
The most detailed section (fully half the book) focuses on Somalia. Other books and monographs have given a good view of the difficulties of United Nations mandated versus authorized Peace Operations, and of the tactical details of various battles (Mark Bowden's "Blackhawk Down.") The advantage of Peterson's work is that it is fresh, almost unedited, and thus a grisly look at war, tribalism, ethnic conflict, scarce resource competition and the inability of international will to alter these stark realities. The last chapter "Back to Zero" is a damning indictment of President Clinton his foreign policy, especially Presidential Decision Directive 25. The most salient lesson in all the revealed savagery of Somalia, though, is in the story of British Colonel "Somali" Smith-after a camel-seizing raid in 1947, he left the country for several years. When he returned in 1967, he was stabbed to death the day after his arrival by the son of one of the men killed in the 1947 raid. It seems Somalis DO bear a grudge a long time-regardless of where the problem originated, Americans would do well to remember this before returning to Mogadishu.
The second part of the book tries in some detail to come to grips with the endless bloodletting of Sudan's civil war between (alleged) Christians and Muslims. This section is not as well written as the first, and the reader begins to tire of one dusty corpse and massacre after another, but Peterson makes his point. The would be "solver" of this religious quagmire, fueled by poverty and generational cycles of violence, will have untied a modern Gordian Knot. Peterson gives a quick overview of the history of Sudan, the tides of fortune sweeping back and forth, raiding for slaves, attacking Sufism, a mystical sub sect of Islam, and always, always fighting for control of the Nile. In some ways, then, nothing has changed, only the technologies for spreading propaganda and death. A new twist to which Peterson pays particular attention, and wrestles with well, is the dilemma of aid organizations. If you are providing aid that "others may live" many of them shall live to fight, and either live some more, or die at the hands of others. Second, your very aid shall become a resource worth fighting over, so your provision of sustenance is actually an incentive TO fight, rather than not.
The last part of the book focuses on the carnage of Rwanda. Peterson jumps into the fray of whether or not a "Peace Operations force" could have averted the carnage, or at least slowed it down. Peterson sides with Monsieur Prunier, a French scholar who believes that as few as 20 armored vehicles would have made the difference. I think this understates the calculated assault, led by a military sometimes called "the Prussians of Africa." I think it would have taken tens of thousands of soldiers, with helicopters and fixed wing transports, lots of communications gear and fierce political resolve to staunch the flow of blood here.
All in all, a good "raw" book, well worth the read, but by no means a definitive scholarly work on the central African swamp of the last 20 years.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Must Read Regarding Our Future & Our Past
Comment: Peterson has written an excellent report on the atrocities that have taken place under our eyes in Africa. Most Americans know about Somalia from "Black Hawk Down" but Peterson reports from a different perspective and brings new light to an old meaning. He reports on what both the UN and the US did wrong while on a "peace mission." I would have hoped we would have learned our lesson but some aspects Peterson describes ring much too true for our involvement in Iraq as well.
The most horrifying account that Peterson writes so vividly about is the genocide in Rwanda. How does a world ignore such atrocity? I cried often during the reading of this section. I can't imagine how any country could ignore the pleading of such a dying nation in such a beautiful part of the world. To read about a man living in a wall for months to avoid being murdered, a child hiding under her parents while they were hacked to death, and see pictures of streets lined with death is beyond understandable. This is where our billions in defense should have gone!
I believe this book to be a must read for all humanity. From each horrible account something is learned. Africa is a beautiful country on the verge of catastrophe while the rest of the world ignores its pleas. From such anger, bitterness and hate comes furure generations of the same unless the world steps up with bravery and defends a peaceful solution. A billion dollars of understanding would go alot further in this country than the others we chose to toy with. Peterson has brought the injustices to life masterfully. This book NEEDS to be read by anyone who cares about a global existence and our future.
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Title: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch ISBN: 0312243359 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Surrender or Starve : Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea (Vintage Departures) by ROBERT D. KAPLAN ISBN: 1400034523 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (African Issues (Paperback)) by Douglas Hamilton Johnson ISBN: 0253215846 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa by Bill Berkeley ISBN: 0465006426 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 05 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Inside Sudan: Political Islam, Conflict, and Catastrophe by Donald Petterson ISBN: 0813336570 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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