The Congo War: the Failed Leviathan and the Forgotten Great War in Africa
About This Novel
In the 1960s, today's Democratic Republic of the Congo was liberated from Belgian colonial oppression, ushering in an era of national independence. However, this mining powerhouse, which is about the size of Western Europe, has not yet prospered. Since 1996, two wars have broken out in the Congo, involving nine African countries. Millions of lives have been lost and countless people have been displaced. In the war that stretches for thousands of miles, inhumane massacres have occurred frequently. Pregnant women have been disemboweled alive, civilians have been buried alive in batches, and children as young as five or six have been sexually assaulted... However, this catastrophe known as the "African World War" has received little attention from the outside world. Its origins are often simply attributed to barbaric backwardness, moral decadence or the shameless greed of Western powers. But is this really the case? Jason Stearns spent ten years of his life going deep into the heart of Africa, interviewing powerful figures behind the Congolese Rebellion and survivors of the massacre, extracting a large number of details from thousands of clues, restoring the true face of this period of history, and breaking the world's stereotypes of Congo and the Central African region. Here, a person may be both a refugee fleeing for his life during the war and a criminal spreading atrocities. He may have a sincere ideal of saving the country and the people while condoning the military's burning, killing and looting. There is no clear boundary between good and evil here, only complex, unpredictable and unpredictable human nature.
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