A sobering look at one of Africa's most devastating civil wars, by
Finnegan (Dateline Soweto, 1988; Crossing the Line, 1986) - a war
whose murky beginnings and stubborn resistance to resolution
reflect old ideological conflicts as well as a clash between the
modern and the traditional. Finnegan's study began as an unsigned
piece in The New Yorker, covering the war from its beginning in
1976 to mid-1991. Defying most conventional wisdom, which has
attributed the Mozambique civil war to South African intervention,
the author considers peace unlikely, even impossible, despite the
end of the cold war, the espousal of a multiparty political system
by Mozambique's governing Frelimo party, and the end of the
insurgents'South African backing. Ostensibly it is a war between
the Marxist-Leninist Frelimo party, which took over Mozambique in
1974 from Portugal, and Renamo, a group of Frelimo dissidents,
former Portuguese colonialists, adventurers, and peasants that was
initially funded by Rhodesia and then South Africa in order to
destabilize the Frelimo regime. But Finnegan also blames the impact
on rural Mozambicans of the original policies of Frelimo - the
compulsory removal of all traditional tribal institutions. After
traveling, often in considerable personal danger, through the
region, Finnegan concludes that, whatever its beginnings, this war,
in which more than 900,000 Mozambicans have died and 3,000,000 have
become refugees, will continue to ravage what little remains of the
national economy. And whatever the original causes, Renamo and
anarchy are now "a fundamentally political problem, a painful
reflection of internal conflicts." Vivid reportage, thoughtful
analysis, and comprehensive research: a seminal work not only on
the war itself but on the conflicts that threaten post-cold-war,
post-apartheid Africa. (Kirkus Reviews)
Powerful, instructive, and full of humanity, this book challenges
the current understanding of the war that has turned Mozambique - a
naturally rich country - into the world's poorest nation. Before
going to Mozambique, William Finnegan saw the war, like so many
foreign observers, through a South African lens, viewing the
conflict as apartheid's 'forward defense'. This lens was shattered
by what he witnessed and what he heard from Mozambicans, especially
those who had lived with the bandidos armado, the 'armed bandits'
otherwise known as the Renamo rebels. The shifting, wrenching,
ground-level stories that people told combine to form an account of
the war more local and nuanced, more complex, more African - than
anything that has been politically convenient to describe. "A
Complicated War" combines frontline reporting, personal narrative,
political analysis, and comparative scholarship to present a
picture of a Mozambique harrowed by profound local conflicts -
ethnic, religious, political and personal. Finnegan writes that
South Africa's domination and destabilization are basic elements of
Mozambique's plight, but he offers a subtle description and
analysis that will allow us to see the post-apartheid region from a
new, more realistic, if less comfortable, point of view.
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