Book Review: Aftican Guerrillas, Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa Since 1950
Abstract
Armed Forces & Society/Fall 2000 Christopher Clapham, ed., Aftican Guerrillas. Oxford, U.K.: James Currey; Kampala, Uganda: Fountain Publishers; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. Pp. 208. $17.95, paperback; $39.95, hardcover. Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa Since 1950. London: UCL Press, 1999. Pp. 235. $24.95, paperback; $79.00, hardcover. African Guerrillas and Frontiersmen both grapple with creating analyti- cal order out of violent conflicts that continue to bedevil parts of Africa. Christopher Clapham, editor of African Guerrillas, provides a comparative framework for understanding the types, causes, and outcomes of African insurgencies. The other chapters, based on field work, cover insurgencies in postcolonial Africa, and more specifically in West and East-Central Africa. Some armed groups achieved military victory: the Eritrean People's Libera- tion Front (EPLF) in Eritrea (David Pool); the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in Ethiopia (John Young); the National Resistance Army (NRA) in Uganda (Pascal Ngoga); The Rwanda People's Front (Gerard Prunier); and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/ Zaire in Congo-Zaire (Cyrus Reed). Other "guerrillas" were unable to obtain military victories-in Somalia (Daniel Compagnon); in Liberia (Stephen Ellis); in northern Uganda (Heike Behrend); and in Sierra Leone (Ibrahim Abdulla and Patrick Muana). Frontiersmen is