African Wars provides a concise summary of four decades of warfare in sub-Saharan Africa with expert commentary by an experienced and highly respected senior U.S. intelligence officer.

This book examines a decade-long period of instability, violence and state decay in Central Africa from 1996, when the war started, to 2006, when elections formally ended the political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A unique combination of circumstances explain the unravelling of the conflicts: the collapsed Zairian/Congolese state; the continuation of the Rwandan civil war across borders; the shifting alliances in the region; the politics of identity in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC; the ineptitude of the international community; and the emergence of privatized and criminalized public spaces and economies, linked to the global economy, but largely disconnected from the state - on whose territory the "entrepreneurs of insecurity" function. As a complement to the existing literature, this book seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of concurrent developments in Zaire/DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda in African and international contexts. By adopting a non-chronological approach, it attempts to show the dynamics of the inter-relationships between these realms and offers a toolkit for understanding the past and future of Central Africa.

After the Cold War, Africa earned the dubious distinction of being the world's most bloody continent. But how can we explain this proliferation of armed conflicts? What caused them and what were their main characteristics? And what did the world's governments do to stop them? In this fully revised and updated second edition of his popular text, Paul Williams offers an in-depth and wide-ranging assessment of more than six hundred armed conflicts which took place in Africa from 1990 to the present day - from the continental catastrophe in the Great Lakes region to the sprawling conflicts across the Sahel and the web of wars in the Horn of Africa. Taking a broad comparative approach to examine the political contexts in which these wars occurred, he explores the major patterns of organized violence, the key ingredients that provoked them and the major international responses undertaken to deliver lasting peace. Part I, Contexts provides an overview of the most important attempts to measure the number, scale and location of Africa's armed conflicts and provides a conceptual and political sketch of the terrain of struggle upon which these wars were waged. Part II, Ingredients analyses the role of five widely debated features of Africa's wars: the dynamics of neopatrimonial systems of governance; the construction and manipulation of ethnic identities; questions of sovereignty and self-determination; as well as the impact of natural resources and religion. Part III, Responses, discusses four major international reactions to Africa's wars: attempts to build a new institutional architecture to help promote peace and security on the continent; this architecture's two main policy instruments, peacemaking initiatives and peace operations; and efforts to develop the continent. War and Conflict in Africa will be essential reading for all students of international peace and security studies as well as Africa's international relations.

"Provides a graphic account of several of the key campaigns fought between European powers and the native peoples of tropical and sub-tropical Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [The author] describes in ... detail the organization and training of African warriors, their weapons, their fighting methods and traditions, and their tactics"--Jacket.

John Kiyaga-Nsubuga focuses on Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement regime's attempt to bring peace to Uganda. John Prendergast and Mark Duffield look at Ethiopia's long civil war and the role of liberation politics and external engagement. Bruce Jones studies the ethnic roots of the civil war in Rwanda. Elwood Dunn explores political manipulation and ethnic differences as causes of civil strife in Liberia. John Saul examines the role of Western powers in establishing peace in Mozambique. Hussein Adam describes the collapse of the authoritarian regime in Somalia and the subsequent rise of inter-clan and sub-clan rivalry. Taisier Ali and Robert Matthews argue that the forty-year conflict in Sudan is much more complex than the usual view that it results from the pitting of the Arab, Islamic North against the African, Christian South. Shifting the focus to how internal unrest may be managed, Hevina Dashwood examines government initiatives undertaken to maintain stability in Zimbabwe and Cranford Pratt describes the policies and institutions developed by Nyerere that enabled Tanzania to avoid ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism and intra-elite rivalries. James Busumtwi-Sam explores multilateral third-party intervention, highlighting the changing role of the OAU and the United Nations and their effectiveness in averting war. The concluding chapter draws together findings from the individual case studies and incorporates them into the larger corpus of the literature.

This book examines the causes, course and consequences of warfare in twentieth century Africa, a period which spanned colonial rebellions, both World Wars, and the decolonization process. Timothy Stapleton contextualizes the essential debates and controversies surrounding African conflict in the twentieth century while providing insightful introductions to such conflicts as: African rebellions against colonial regimes in the early twentieth century, including the rebellion and infamous genocide of the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia; The African fronts of World War I and World War II, and the involvement of colonized African peoples in these global conflicts; Conflict surrounding the widespread decolonization of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s; Rebellion and civil war in Africa during the Cold War, when American and Soviet elements often intervened in efforts to turn African battlegrounds into Cold War proxy conflicts; The Second Congo Civil War, which is arguably the bloodiest conflict in any region since World War II; Supported by a glossary, a who’s who of key figures, a timeline of major events, a rich bibliography, and a set of documents which highlight the themes of the book, Africa: War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century is the best available resource for students and scholars seeking an introduction to violent conflict in recent African history.

Portugal is a small country, but for many years it possessed the world's third largest empire; and its armed forces deserve to be better known than they are in the English-speaking world. Fortunately, the British co-author was able to meet a Portuguese colleague who was not only an authority on Portuguese military history and uniforms, but who had also served in Mocambique himself. A collaborative venture seemed the best way of providing the kind of 'hard' information about Portuguese weapons, organisation, uniforms and insignia that has been lacking until now.