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The Trouble with the Congo
The Trouble with the Congo suggests a new explanation for international peacebuilding failures in civil wars. Drawing from more than 330 interviews and a year and a half of field research, it develops a case study of the international intervention during the Democratic Republic of the Congo's unsuccessful transition from war to peace and democracy (2003-2006). Grassroots rivalries over land, resources, and political power motivated widespread violence. However, a dominant peacebuilding culture shaped the intervention strategy in a way that precluded action on local conflicts, ultimately dooming the international efforts to end the deadliest conflict since World War II. Most international actors interpreted continued fighting as the consequence of national and regional tensions alone. UN staff and diplomats viewed intervention at the macro levels as their only legitimate responsibility. The dominant culture constructed local peacebuilding as such an unimportant, unfamiliar, and unmanageable task that neither shocking events nor resistance from select individuals could convince international actors to reevaluate their understanding of violence and intervention.
345 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
9 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Severine Autesserre
6 books67 followersSéverine Autesserre is an award-winning author, peacebuilder, and researcher, as well as a Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of the books
The Trouble with the Congo
,
Peaceland
, and
The Frontlines of Peace
, in addition to articles for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.
Autesserre has been involved intimately in the world of international aid for more than twenty years. She has conducted research in twelve different conflict zones, from Colombia to Somalia to Israel and the Palestinian territories. She has worked for Doctors Without Borders in places like Afghanistan and Congo, and at the United Nations headquarters in the United States. Her research has helped shape the intervention strategies of several United Nations departments, foreign affairs ministries, and non-governmental organizations, as well as numerous philanthropists and activists. She has also been a featured speaker at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and the U.S. House of Representatives.
Autesserre has been involved intimately in the world of international aid for more than twenty years. She has conducted research in twelve different conflict zones, from Colombia to Somalia to Israel and the Palestinian territories. She has worked for Doctors Without Borders in places like Afghanistan and Congo, and at the United Nations headquarters in the United States. Her research has helped shape the intervention strategies of several United Nations departments, foreign affairs ministries, and non-governmental organizations, as well as numerous philanthropists and activists. She has also been a featured speaker at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 15, 2010
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a huge country--the third largest by area in Africa--with almost unimaginable mineral wealth, a intelligent and hard working population and productive farmland with several growing seasons per year. Mobutu Sese Seko ruled the DRC/Zaire for 32 years in a brutal kleptocracy which kept the Congo an impoverished giant. While there had been revolts against his rule over the years it was not until the mid-1990s, following the genocide in neighboring Rwanda that warfare became a permanent part of the DRC. Since 1997 the United Nations has had its largest and most expensive peacekeeping deployment in the eastern Congo. There have been well funded and well meaning attempts at nation building. Warfare continues almost unabated. Refugees and internally displaced people stuck in huge camps unable or afraid to return to their homelands number in the millions. Clearly things aren't working and "The Trouble with the Congo" goes a long way in telling why.
Severine Autesserre's insights are amazing, particularly her discussion of how the peacebuilding community almost universally considered people in the Eastern DRC to be savages who are inherently murderous. This, by the way, is not a white or even western view of the Congolese. South Africans and many from neighboring countries felt that extensive and constant violence was the norm in the Congo. Another is how UN representatives convinced themselves that pitched battles between large groups of armed men in an area covered by a truce was still part of a post-conflict world and not even a violation of the truce.
The most striking aspect of the book is her low key scholarly approach--although I realize that is both necessary and appropriate in academic work, I keep expecting to get to the section where she starts ripping into those people who were so responsible for "The Trouble with the Congo".
Autesserre's very temperate perhaps even restrained presentation makes her conclusions all the more powerful. And her immersion in and mastery of the sources--it seems she has read everything and interviewed everyone--means her method is rock solid, or so it seems to this non-academic. Spending a couple of years in North and South Kivu, sometimes as a humanitarian worker--her first trip to the area was for the Spanish chapter of Doctors without Borders--and sometimes as a researcher has given her access to the depth and breadth of contacts necessary to understand the situation on the ground. She established her intellectual framework through deep reading of both theoretical and journalistic accounts of how the peacebuilding process has failed and succeeded in Africa and elsewhere.
The solutions toward which her work point at first seem so obvious as to not need saying: a combination of a top down approach that deals with national and regional issues combined with a bottom up approach that deals with local issues would work much better than doing only one or the other. But because that integrated plan of attack hasn't been tried in the Eastern Congo the war that is officially not a war continues.
Autesserre's prose is both rigorous and technical enough so that the reader knows exactly what she means but also clear and accessible to the non-specialist--like me. I just beginning to learn a bit about the Congo and the African Great Lakes region and "The Trouble with the Congo" has been invaluable. I figure that reading about 20 books on such a huge subject will be a good start and I only with they could all be as good as this one.
Severine Autesserre's insights are amazing, particularly her discussion of how the peacebuilding community almost universally considered people in the Eastern DRC to be savages who are inherently murderous. This, by the way, is not a white or even western view of the Congolese. South Africans and many from neighboring countries felt that extensive and constant violence was the norm in the Congo. Another is how UN representatives convinced themselves that pitched battles between large groups of armed men in an area covered by a truce was still part of a post-conflict world and not even a violation of the truce.
The most striking aspect of the book is her low key scholarly approach--although I realize that is both necessary and appropriate in academic work, I keep expecting to get to the section where she starts ripping into those people who were so responsible for "The Trouble with the Congo".
Autesserre's very temperate perhaps even restrained presentation makes her conclusions all the more powerful. And her immersion in and mastery of the sources--it seems she has read everything and interviewed everyone--means her method is rock solid, or so it seems to this non-academic. Spending a couple of years in North and South Kivu, sometimes as a humanitarian worker--her first trip to the area was for the Spanish chapter of Doctors without Borders--and sometimes as a researcher has given her access to the depth and breadth of contacts necessary to understand the situation on the ground. She established her intellectual framework through deep reading of both theoretical and journalistic accounts of how the peacebuilding process has failed and succeeded in Africa and elsewhere.
The solutions toward which her work point at first seem so obvious as to not need saying: a combination of a top down approach that deals with national and regional issues combined with a bottom up approach that deals with local issues would work much better than doing only one or the other. But because that integrated plan of attack hasn't been tried in the Eastern Congo the war that is officially not a war continues.
Autesserre's prose is both rigorous and technical enough so that the reader knows exactly what she means but also clear and accessible to the non-specialist--like me. I just beginning to learn a bit about the Congo and the African Great Lakes region and "The Trouble with the Congo" has been invaluable. I figure that reading about 20 books on such a huge subject will be a good start and I only with they could all be as good as this one.
February 9, 2021
I have many, many feelings right now regarding this book.
I value it for what it is worth, a pioneering and insightful take on the need for bottom-up approaches to peacekeeping efforts worldwide. Though other authors have brought this necessity to the forefront in the literature, Autesserre is the one who brings the well-needed attention from all disciplines by providing a historical, political, and social account mission in the DRC.
I am left with a lot of questions. Autesserre points out much of what the U.N., NGOs and many peace actors can do to change the culture and methods of peacebuilding efforts and successfully combats many critiques. But is it as easy as it is written? From its looks, over ten years later, peacekeeping will need a much stronger reframing. Autesserre remains undoubtedly correct that much more needs to be done to focus on the local and push from the bottom up.
I value it for what it is worth, a pioneering and insightful take on the need for bottom-up approaches to peacekeeping efforts worldwide. Though other authors have brought this necessity to the forefront in the literature, Autesserre is the one who brings the well-needed attention from all disciplines by providing a historical, political, and social account mission in the DRC.
I am left with a lot of questions. Autesserre points out much of what the U.N., NGOs and many peace actors can do to change the culture and methods of peacebuilding efforts and successfully combats many critiques. But is it as easy as it is written? From its looks, over ten years later, peacekeeping will need a much stronger reframing. Autesserre remains undoubtedly correct that much more needs to be done to focus on the local and push from the bottom up.
March 15, 2023
A lot of original data but I really wish Autesserre had problematized the neo-imperial structure of international interventions more!
January 25, 2013
A serviceable book with some well collated insights; especially with regards to the internal activities of the UN and its agencies. Perhaps a little over-reliant on official sources and press releases, the same source is either accepted wholesale or criticized in the face of countervailing evidence when it is available.
The prose is lack-lustre but usually doesn't distract, while it is informative it is not especially evocative. The material is dense but well organized, greater care could have been taken to sign-post the over all structure of the book. Chapters are quite scatter-shot and chronology is occasionally wending - readers should take care to keep track of location and time.
The prose is lack-lustre but usually doesn't distract, while it is informative it is not especially evocative. The material is dense but well organized, greater care could have been taken to sign-post the over all structure of the book. Chapters are quite scatter-shot and chronology is occasionally wending - readers should take care to keep track of location and time.
December 2, 2013
One of the best books covering both, the local events & the international interventions happening in the Congo during recent years. While I found that most other authors approach the situation in the Congo with a rather one sided view, I feel that Autesserre made real efforts to address the huge variety of reasons the conflicts in DRC have.
Just a warning for you to not acquire this book with wrong expectations: The Trouble with the Congo is written in a rather try, scientific language, almost exclusively addressed to people with a good amount of prior knowledge about the DRC. If you just want to get into the topic, you might want to start with another book.
Just a warning for you to not acquire this book with wrong expectations: The Trouble with the Congo is written in a rather try, scientific language, almost exclusively addressed to people with a good amount of prior knowledge about the DRC. If you just want to get into the topic, you might want to start with another book.
November 28, 2012
Smart analysis of why top-down peacebuilding efforts fail to achieve lasting results.
January 18, 2021
If your passion is the Congo and / or international peacebuilding, this is a book for you.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews