The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006, by Filip Reyntjens

Abstract

A welcome addition to the literature on a longstanding conflict, this volume is carefully researched and the analysis detailed – although nothing less would be expected of Filip Reyntjens, a distinguished scholar with over thirty years experience in the region. While there is much written on the Great Lakes and the conflict there, his book will secure a select place in this collection as one of the few accounts ‘attempting a global overview’ (p. 1). Owing to this it will have wide appeal, attracting both seasoned scholars and those new to the study of the region – for while it is detailed in some aspects, exposing information in a new light, it likewise puts forward a clear account of the circumstances. The intricate situation in this region has its origins in the events of the early 1960s. From these events stream the instabilities that dominate the contemporary political agenda. The 1959 revolution in Rwanda exiled significant numbers of Tutsi to neighbouring countries, sowing the seeds for the invasion of Rwanda by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in October 1990, and the subsequent civil war and genocide in 1994. The mass exodus of refugees in this period, mostly to Zaïre (as it was then known) and Tanzania, created the situation that triggered the invasion of Zaïre by Uganda and Rwanda in 1996. This invasion ended with the installation of Laurent-Désiré Kabila as President of what was now renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The conflict began again in 1998, and would go on to become known as the First African World War, pulling in much of Central Africa as either aggressors or mediators. Reyntjens carefully details the course of these events and, in the second half of his book, the negation of the transition.