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Reviewed by:
  • Security Dynamics in Africa's Great Lakes Region
  • John F. Clark
Gilbert M. Khadiagala , ed. Security Dynamics in Africa's Great Lakes Region. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2006. A Project of the International Peace Academy. xii + 229 pp. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Cloth. $19.95. Paper.

This edited volume makes a welcome addition to the scant literature in English on the multiple crises of the Great Lakes region and particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Moreover, several chapters provide lucid and analytically deep expositions on crises in the area; the volume is well worth reading despite some shortcomings.

The analytical foci of Khadiagala's introduction and conclusion are peace, security, and governance. The author appreciates the interdependence of the first two social goals, and he ably draws out their connections across the borders of the states of the subregion; the latter concept, however, receives short shrift, and disappears entirely in the conclusion. While this focus is valuable, the editor might usefully have considered the concepts of justice and reconciliation, as well. Subsequent chapters demonstrate that enduring peace and security depend on a perception, at least, of justice for the guilty and reconciliation among the contestants for power. The editor perhaps pays more attention to subregional organizations than their influence merits.

Part 1, "Regional Actors and Issues," contains four country studies of varying quality and a chapter on the economic dimensions of "conflict in the region." The study of Rwanda governance and security in Rwanda under the rule of Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front by Filip Reyntjens is deeply informed and elegantly presented. The chapter focuses on the increasing repressiveness and coercion used by the RPF regime to maintain itself in power since 1994, a topic much less studied than the genocide of that year. A valuable section at the end situates Rwanda in the subregional context. René Lemarchand's chapter on Burundi provides an equally sophisticated analysis, identifying the mass killings of 1972—which he calls "genocide" (43)—as the political milestone in Burundi's independent political history, an event around which all subsequent politics has revolved. Lemarchand shows keen awareness that neighboring states have been both a source of Burundian political consciousness and an alternant battleground in which local battles are fought. These two chapters illustrate the impossibility of stability or good governance without reconciliation and justice—however partial—beforehand. The focus of the economic chapter, by Gérard Prunier, is on the consequences of the 1998–2002 Congo war, and its structure parallels his chapter in my edited volume, The African Stakes of the Congo War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

Two other country studies in this section are less successful. The chapter "Congo in the [sic] Great Lakes Conflict" by Mwesiga Baregu pays little attention to the internal sources and dynamics of the war within Congo; it focuses instead on the international diplomacy of the war, covered elsewhere in the volume. The author overemphasizes the alleged legality of [End Page 150] Zimbabwe's intervention in the DRC, wrongly implying that its motives were better than those of others. Meanwhile, Angela Muvumba has contributed a nicely written and well-researched chapter, "Nonstate Actors and Governance in Uganda," but the chapter fits poorly into the overall volume. It focuses on the contribution of civil society organizations to development and political reform, rather than on Uganda's internal and external security challenges. The author does not explore whether the proliferation of such organizations is a cause or consequence of greater political stability.

Part 2 features three chapters on external actors, including one on South Africa's role (Chris Landsberg), one on the United Nations (Adekeye Adebajo), and one on three key Western actors (Belgium, France, and the United States) (Peter Schraeder). In a soberly realistic assessment, Landsberg concludes that South Africa's diplomacy aims to restore political order to the end of advancing its own economic interests in the Great Lakes, thereby promoting development at home. Adebajo's chapter takes a glance back at the 1960–64 U.N. mission in the Congo, and then proceeds to present the great challenges that the organization has faced in its more recent missions in Rwanda...

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