Contemporary Conflict Analysis in Perspective

This book represents a commendable exception to the ‘tyranny of the single- cause’. In fact, the authors of the six chapters do not claim to have discovered “the philosopher’s stone, the magic formula, which, mechanically applied, will produce the desired result and thus substitute for the uncertainties and risks of political action the certitude of rational calculation”. On the contrary, backed by extensive primary data collected in situ, each chapter illuminates the role that resources, both scarce and abundant, play among other variables in the onset and escalation of the violent conflicts portrayed. By focusing attention on the ‘ecological variable’, as an underestimated factor among more commonly cited ethnic, religious, weak state or other reasons for conflicts in places like Sudan, Rwanda and Somalia, this book enriches rather than reduces the debate on Africa’s wars.

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