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Summary
Summary
As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia's descent into war and its battle against US troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan's Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half century: the genocide in Rwanda. In Me Against My Brother, he brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders.In Somalia, Peterson tells of harrowing experiences of clan conflict, guns and starvation. He met with warlords, observed death intimately and nearly lost his own life to a Somali mob. From ground level, he documents how the US-UN relief mission devolved into all out war - one that for America has proven to be the most formative post-Cold War debacle. In Sudan, he journeys where few correspondents have ever been, on both sides of that religious front line, to find that outside "relief" has only prolonged war. In Rwanda, his first-person experience of the genocide and well-documented analysis provide rare insight into this human tragedy.Filled with the dust, sweat and powerful detail of real-life, Me Against My Brother graphically illustrates how preventive action and a better understanding of Africa - especially by the US - could have averted much suffering. Also includes a 16-page color insert.
Author Notes
Scott Peterson is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Peterson files this report from the front lines of three of Africa's most virulent wars of the 1990s. It has the immediacy and vividness of eyewitness testimony, because Peterson, who was reporting from Africa for London's Daily Telegraph, was present at the scenes of battle, recording his impressions as the carnage went forward. His reporting is visceral and close to the ground: "in the dust and the sweat, and the laughter mixed with misery that permeates the flavor of war in Africa." In Somalia, he observed how clan hatreds, combined with grossly excessive arms shipments from the developed nations, resulted in an explosion of anarchy and violence. The U.S. comes in for a substantial share of blame for its ill-considered, violent and ultimately disastrous intervention. In the Sudan, Peterson witnessed what he calls an apocalyptic civil war in which neither side was strong enough to win or weak enough to lose. Rwanda was even worse; at the height of the Hutu war of extermination against the Tutsis, one murder took place about every two seconds for an entire month. In his firsthand account of these genocidal conflicts, Peterson neither flinches from the appalling bloodshed nor closes his mind to the many scenes of generosity and honorable conduct he also witnessed. The author's purpose is made clear in the book's introduction: the catastrophic wars of Africa, "largely unrecorded, ...require exploring for what they tell us about the human capacity to conduct evil, and also to survive it." With tribal, ethnic and religious conflicts now so pervasive, the lessons Peterson communicates about Africa should claim the attention of everyone trying to make sense of today's world. 16 pages of color photos not seen by PW. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Peterson, now Christian Science Monitor's Middle East correspondent, spent much of the 1990s wandering across Africa for the London Daily Telegraph. There were positive stories to be covered; an end to apartheid in South Africa, for example. But Peterson reports here on the more painful, challenging stories of Africa in the '90s: Somalia's "Warlords Triumphant"; the "Endless Crusade" of civil war in Sudan; and the genocidal "Machete War" in Rwanda. These are tales of war and war crimes, of food shortages and international relief efforts, of devastating terror and astonishing resilience. Peterson thoughtfully assesses the consequences of UN intervention in Somalia (and failure to intervene in Sudan and Rwanda); he offers nuanced analysis of the argument that international food aid has extended war in the Sudan, and suggests Western nations alternate between arrogance and indifference in their dealings with Africa. A worthy new contribution to the study of disruption in the developing world as a counterweight to dreams of a "new world order." --Mary Carroll
Choice Review
Peterson, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, rivets one's attention on that brutal and senseless violence of the 1990s perpetrated by indigenous peoples and connived at by foreign governments and the UN. For Somalia, Peterson pinpoints the villainy: clan and subclan system; countless weapons left over from Soviet and then US assistance to dictator Barre; US obsession with hunting down General Aidid. For Sudan, Peterson illuminates factors for incessant civil war: the Khartoum government's remorseless drive to impose Islamic law; interminable splits among the rebellious southerners; foreign relief agencies' contributing to the strife's continuation. Concerning Rwanda's holocaust, Peterson describes causes: German and Belgian colonial authorities falsifying history; Hutu plans for Tutsi extermination; the Roman Catholic hierarchy's involvement; US, French, and UN complicity. Peterson buttresses his eyewitness accounts about Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda with careful choices of secondary sources. The resulting analysis superbly exposes war criminals in the three countries but also assigns guilt internationally: Presidents Clinton and Mitterand; US Ambassador Albright; UN Secretaries-General Perez de Cuellar and Boutros-Ghali, and Undersecretary-General Annan. Good print, instructive maps, well-captioned photos, helpful index. A book for all humanity. E. E. Beauregard; emeritus, University of Dayton
Kirkus Review
The appalling tragedies of Somalia, the Sudan, and Rwanda during the 1990s told with breath-stealing intensity by war correspondent Peterson (Wall Street Journal). Peterson's hope in these pages is that by vividly detailing his experiences as a journalist with both the military and political forces at play in these African countries, he might twist readers' sensibilities just enough to make them react the next time a place is visited by those four old familiars: war, famine, pestilence, and death. In writing as agile and alert as a ranger in a combat zone, Peterson takes the story into the extremes, where war crimes are standard fare and everyone from locals to foreign interventionists to church and relief officials can display a savage wickedness (though he is fast to note that there are angels, too, if hardly thick on the ground). Peterson cannily and quite judgmentally serves forth the grotesque consequences of an inept US foreign policy, showing how neglect on the part of the international community inspired overreaction or simple abandonment on the part of the US'as in Rwanda. There are also the unedifying examples of the humanitarian missions that began to choose sides, and the chronic rhythms of religious conflict. And the generally antagonistic relationship between the military and the correspondents, which colonizes the book like a disease, only adds to the atmosphere of every-man-for-himself-and-God-against-all. Rising like the dead from the narrative are a scattering of rude truths and more grim encounters than can be taken in, including those moments that correspondents always keep a lookout for: ``The mob surrounded me and a machete smashed into my head.'' Just as Peterson intends, these exposures to war in Africa ``tear at your heart, and make you angry, very angry.'' (16-page color insert, not seen)
Library Journal Review
Most journalists will witness perhaps one major crisis and report it in detail. Peterson, currently Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, experienced three major catastrophes in as many countries between 1992 and 1994. This affecting book provides an inside look at the crises in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. Peterson spends half of the book detailing the failed mission in famine-stricken Somalia, where the U.S. military failed to unarm the warlords, favoring instead a "plucking the bird" strategyDthat is, taking one feather at a time until the unsuspecting bird finds that it can't fly. Unfortunately, this strategy drew the U.S. military into a battle it could not win. Peterson covered the battles and nearly got killed by a mob that wanted revenge on an American. In the Sudan, he had the rare privilege of visiting both sides of the religious holy war to see how the people lived and how the fighters are recruited. And he also reported the genocide that occurred in Rwanda; he not only describes the tragedy that led to the mass killings but provides some thoughtful analysis. For African history or journalism collections.DMichael Sawyer, Northwestern Regional Lib., Elkin, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Introduction | p. xi |
| Maps | p. xxiii |
| Part I Somalia: Warlords Triumphant | |
| 1 Laws of War | p. 3 |
| 2 "City of the Insane" | p. 19 |
| 3 A Land Forgotten by God | p. 37 |
| 4 "Club Skinny--Dancers Wanted" | p. 51 |
| 5 "Camp of the Murderers" | p. 71 |
| 6 The Fugitive | p. 93 |
| 7 Bloody Monday | p. 117 |
| 8 Mission Impossible | p. 137 |
| 9 Back to Zero | p. 157 |
| Part II Sudan: Endless Crusade | |
| 10 Divided by God | p. 173 |
| 11 War of the Cross | p. 197 |
| 12 The False Messiah | p. 217 |
| 13 Darwin Deceived | p. 229 |
| Part III Rwanda: The Machete War | |
| 14 A Holocaust | p. 247 |
| 15 "Dreadful Note of Preparation" | p. 267 |
| 16 Genocide Denied | p. 289 |
| 17 In Perpetuum | p. 303 |
| Epilogue | p. 323 |
| Notes | p. 329 |
| Index | p. 351 |
