.png)
This book is the product of a chain of unexpected circumstances. In 1989, I moved to West Africa to conduct field research for what I thought would be a dissertation on the politics of economic reform. In hindsight, I arrived just in time to experience the start of a series of West African wars. This was a most unwelcome development. Yet this disruption led to field work, a dissertation, and a larger research agenda focused on the study of warfare in sub-Saharan Africa. I am indebted to Crawford Young and Michael Schatzberg for their enthusiastic support as I abandoned my initial focus late in my graduate career and shifted to this absorbing topic, and to Christopher Clapham, whose work and advice guided me in the right direction as I grappled with the intellectual challenges of this research venture.
Field research into the politics of violence eventually took me farther east and onward to the Horn of Africa as West Africa’s wars began to wind down. Not surprisingly, the conduct of research in this kind of environment is not easily separated from the nonacademic aspects of war. There are no simple spectators in this kind of work. With the mundane process of research come the sudden rude anxieties that hit in the midst of chaos, or more typically in nighttime hours long after, or the impatient irritation at smooth-tongued spokespersons for the UN, various governments, and NGOs who never seem to act as effectively as one might wish. Then there are the desperate insults to one’s soul that are integral to warfare.
Through these encounters with conflicts over the past two decades it has been through the networks of friends, hosts, brokers, and honest xiii xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS protectors who have provided me with insights, suggestions, and criticisms that I have been able to keep focused on research for this book and for my other projects. I cannot imagine what research in the field would have been like without the guidance and companionship of these often sharp-minded people who opened their doors to me. I have benefited from their experience and wisdom, and the protection of those who have extended their hospitality. They and others have opened doors and directed me to others with whom I needed to speak. This short book does little justice to the emotion, intelligence, and fervor with which they spoke of their ideas, beliefs, and hopes for the future. One way for the guest to repay the host is through commitment to the promise of anonymity.