[insert blogger ethics panel "joke"]...,
2008-02-15 11:18:13
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when the intra-multicultural violence ends...,
2008-02-16 18:10:30
a briefer history of conflict in chad:
If you sometimes find yourself sharing this not-uncommon sentiment about Africa, you need to know that you are not alone, and that there is help.
I was, for example, looking for this earlier in the month. Because I'm permanently out of the loop on everything and spend all my time playing catch-up, I didn't realize Alex de Waal was maintaining a blog on Sudan until this morning during an interview on This Is Hell, where they also discussed de Waal's recent debate pie-fight in Newsweek with John Prendergast of the Save Darfur marketing campaign, over the conflict in the Darfur region.
When rebel forces took the Chadian capital in early February I was having a hard time finding good sources on the background of the conflict. The material available online from Roots of Violence: A History of War in Chad, by Mario J. Azevedo, was very informative, but not exactly something those of us from the school of short attention span web surfing would normally take the time to read. I got up to about French support (p.143) for Idris Deby's 1990 coup (also supported by Sudan and Libya) against the US and French backed regime of Hissene Habre before getting drawn off by some utterly unrelated bauble. The rest of it, now that I found my place, was worth finishing.
De Waal also published a follow-up after the rebel's retreat from N'Djamena in Time, 'A Dangerous Friend'.
After you read all that you should have a moderately improved toehold on some of the problems facing two or three African nations. That leaves only 51 more to go. In no time at all we will be telling them all how to solve all their problems instead of just idly contemplating nuclear holocaust from the comfort of our fuzzy bathrobes and flannel pajamas.