Surrender Or Starve: The Wars Behind The Famine
This vivid account of deliberate government design in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia and the Sudan from 1984 to 1987 tells very convincingly a story which the author claims was almost entirely ignored by Western media, diplomats and relief officials. Kaplan paints a horrific picture of often fatal cruelty perpetrated by Ethiopian soldiers in their government's resettlement program (and related famine relief programs) and does a preliminary sketch of a similar picture in the Sudanese civil war. While indicting both the inhumanity of African elites and the human rights policies of the Carter Administration, he offers no ameliorative solutions, beyond a weak effort to enshrine the Reagan Doctrine as a moral precept.
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AFRICA is no longer a minor if passionate theme of the Concert of Europe; it commands increasing attention in its own right. As time goes on, the course of African nationalism, and even the direction and pace of economic development, will be determined more and more by agreements and disagreements between African peoples themselves and by the balance of power struck within an African region.
The ICC's latest move against the Sudanese president will harden Khartoum's stance, push Darfuri rebels to make unreasonable demands, and raise expectations in Sudan -- complicating efforts to secure peace and justice.
As western Sudan continues to suffer, much international attention has focused on whether to call what is happening there "genocide." Yet once the term was invoked, it did not trigger outside intervention. Terminology turns out to matter far less than was expected. And once more, the world has dithered while people die.

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