Gérard Prunier – författare

In the spring of 1994 the tiny African nation of Rwanda exploded onto the international media stage, as internal strife reached genocidal proportions. But the horror that unfolded before our eyes had been building steadily for years before it captured the attention of the world. In The Rwanda Crisis, journalist and Africa scholar Gerard Prunier provides a historical perspective that Western readers need to understand how and why the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass. Prunier shows how the events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic, a plan that served central political and economic interests, rather than a result of ancient tribal hatreds-a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize the fighting. The Rwanda Crisis makes great strides in dispelling the racist cultural myths surrounding the people of Rwanda, views propogated by European colonialists in the nineteenth century and carved into "history" by Western influence. Prunier demonstrates how the struggle for cultural dominance and subjugation among the Hutu and Tutsi-the central players in the recent massacres-was exploited by racially obsessed Europeans.He shows how Western colonialists helped to construct a Tutsi identity as a superior racial type because of their distinctly "non-Negro" features in order to facilitate greater control over the Rwandese. Expertly leading readers on a journey through the troubled history of the country and its surroundings, Prunier moves from the pre-colonial Kingdom of Rwanda, though German and Belgian colonial regimes, to the 1973 coup. The book chronicles the developing refugee crisis in Rwanda and neighboring Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s and offers the most comprehensive account available of the manipulations of popular sentiment that led to the genocide and the events that have followed. In the aftermath of this devastating tragedy, The Rwanda Crisis is the first clear-eyed analysis available to American readers. From the massacres to the subsequent cholera epidemic and emerging refugee crisis, Prunier details the horrifying events of recent years and considers propsects for the future of Rwanda.

The Somali people are fiercely nationalistic. Colonialism split them into five segments divided between four different powers. Thus decolonisation and pan-Somalism became synonymous.In 1960 a partial reunification took place between British Somaliland and Somalia Italiana. 'Africa Confidential' wrote at the timethat the new Somali state would never be beset by tribal division but this discounted the existence of powerful clans within Somali society and the persistence of colonial administrative cultures. The collapse of parliamentary democracy in 1969 and the resulting army—and clanic— dictatorship that followed led to a civil war in the ‘perfect’ national state. It lasted fourteenyears in the ‘British’ North and is still raging today in the ‘Italian’ South. Somaliland ‘re-birthed’ itself through an enormous solo effort but the viable nation so recreated within its former colonial borders was never internationally recognised and still struggles to exist economically and diplomatically.This book recounts an African success story where the peace so widely acclaimed by the international community has had no reward but its own lonely achievement.

The Somali people are fiercely nationalistic. Colonialism split them into five segments divided between four different powers. Thus decolonisation and pan-Somalism became synonymous.In 1960 a partial reunification took place between British Somaliland and Somalia Italiana. 'Africa Confidential' wrote at the time that the new Somali state would never be beset by tribal division but this discounted the existence of powerful clans within Somali society and the persistence of colonial administrative cultures. The collapse of parliamentary democracy in 1969 and the resulting army—and clanic— dictatorship that followed led to a civil war in the ‘perfect’ national state. It lasted fourteen years in the ‘British’ North and is still raging today in the ‘Italian’ South.Somaliland ‘re-birthed’ itself through an enormous solo effort but the viable nation so recreated within its former colonial borders was never internationally recognised and still struggles to exist economically and diplomatically.This book recounts an African success story where the peace so widely acclaimed by the international community has had no reward but its own lonely achievement.

When we think of Ethiopia we tend to think in cliches: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the Falasha Jews, the epic reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, the Communist Revolution, famine and civil war. Among the countries of Africa it has a high profile yet is poorly known. How- ever all cliches contain within them a kernel of truth, and occlude much more. Today's Ethiopia (and its painfully liberated sister state of Eritrea) are largely obscured by these mythical views and a secondary literature that is partial or propagandist. Moreover there have been few attempts to offer readers a comprehensive overview of the country's recent history, politics and culture that goes beyond the usual guidebook fare. Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia seeks to do just that, presenting a measured, detailed and systematic analysis of the main features of this unique country, now building on the foundations of a magical and tumultuous past as it struggles to emerge in the modern world on its own terms.

Offering an up-to-date historical perspective which should enable readers to fathom how the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass in 1994, this volume includes a new chapter that brings the analysis up to the end of 1996. Gerard Prunier probes into how the genocidal events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic - a plan that served central political and economic interests - rather than a result of primordial tribal hatreds, a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize genocide.

In mid-2004 the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan forced itself on to the centre stage of world affairs. A formerly obscure 'tribal conflict' in the heart of Africa has escalated into what could be the first genocide of the twenty-first century. Its characteristics - Arabism, Islamism, African consciousness, famine as a weapon of war, mass rape, international obfuscation and a refusal to look evil squarely in the face - reflect many of the problems of the global South in general and Africa in particular. Because of the urgent need for knowledge about this humanitarian catastrophe, journalistic explanations of the unfolding crisis have often been rushed and given to hurried generalisations and inaccuracies. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains what lies behind the conflict, how it came about, why it should not be over-simplified and why it is so relevant to the future of the continent. Prunier sets out the ethnopolitical make up of the Sudan and explains why the Darfur rebellion is regarded as a key threat to Arab power in the country, much more so than the secessionism of the Christian south. This, he argues, accounts for the government's deployment of 'exemplary violence' by the Janjaweed militias in order to cow other Black Muslims into subservience.

France is the only country that never decolonised its colonies, emotionally, financially or strategically. In the aftermath of losing the Second World War, notwithstanding de Gaulle's attempts to convince his people otherwise, the French knew the game was up. (The Resistance fighters were heroes; but heroes are lonely.) For France, after 1945, the Second World War blended into the early Cold War, which Paris jumped into the day before it began. It fought in Indochina, and lost again. The independence war dragged on in Algeria. Then France lost there, too--painfully, with millions of its ordinary citizens expelled to a homeland that many of them hardly knew. But Sub-Saharan Africa was still there. France produced a postcolonial antidote: 'Françafrique', France's sphere of influence (or 'backyard') over its former West and Central African colonies. France loved Africa. Some Frenchmen died for 'Françafrique'; others made millions from it. The entire toxic edifice is now crumbling away. Young Africans are happy about this--but not so many of their parents, who often live in France. In his inimitable style, Gérard Prunier recounts a tragic transcultural saga, with one leg in the past and one in the future: the end of 'Françafrique'.