Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Grard Prunier. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2007. 236 pp.

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Grard Prunier is a research professor at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques at the University of Paris and Director of the Centre franais des tudes thiopienne in Addis Ababa. The first edition of his Darfur, the ambiguous genocide was published by Cornell University Press in 2005.Unfortunately, the Darfur deadlock remains. Two years after the initial publishing of the book, millions of Darfurians continue to live in a precarious situation, threat of famine still lurks behind each corner and the quasi genocidal violence continues, allowing Prunier to publish a revised and updated edition of his book. It is a valuable account of history that places the situation in Darfur in a broader economical and political, African context.

As written on its first page, this book aims at describing and understanding the massive political, security and humanitarian crisis which has enveloped Darfur since February 2003.

The introductory chapter does not intend to give a detailed description of the region's geography, history or ethnography, but wants to provide us with a welcome overview to enable the non-specialist reader to grasp the context in which the crisis has developed. Only those elements necessary to announce and explain later developments, were singled out. Prunier succeeds in unravelling the complex mosaic of tribes and clears up the fog while correcting existing inaccuracies with regard to the fragile situation and complex economical and political influences are at the heart of the atrocities in Darfur. Therefore he provides a long-awaited, eye-opening work. The smart use of references to and comparisons with known European history, lighten the text. Nevertheless, this chapter requires the undivided attention and concentration from the reader, due to the complex terminology and the use of Arabic wording. Fear of oversimplification sometimes leads the author into a detailed narrative. It might make this book an unexpectedly difficult work, which possibly discourages the audience.

The introduction lays the vital foundations. In the build up to the start of the 2003 atrocities, attention is drawn to the socio-political climate at the time. The young democracy never was of the best health, stirring up feelings of deprivation, frustration caused by benign neglect externalised through for instance a lack of education and to little medical facilities. The socio-economic underdevelopment was and still is the seed for further conflict. The pressure of demographic growth due to the degrading ecological situation and the starting desertification worked as an extra fertiliser.

The following Libyan presence in the area, acted like acid on the open socio-economic wounds which started to be reinterpreted in increasingly ethnic and racial terms. It acted as the real trigger for the conflict and it did not take long before the situation reached the point of utter confusion. In the meantime, the international community stayed willfully blind. Even though Darfur was sinking to a point of no return, it never succeeded in grasping the international attention. The situation got unbearable for humanitarian aid organisations. "African solutions to African problems" is indeed a polite way to say that we aren't interested.

In this revised and updated edition, the 2005-conclusion is replaced by a new chapter, entitled "Darfur agonists," written during the summer of 2006, eighteen months after the research and writing for the first edition was completed. Starting with the United Nations Security Council resolutions as a turning point in the position of the international community, Prunier discusses their political implications, and the complex relationship between the referral to the ICC and the idea of setting up a Special Tribunal on Darfur. In the mean time, the African Union Mission in Sudan was faced with a harrowing situation on the ground, there being no "peace to keep," on top of a lack of cash, men, equipment and a clear mandate. Different political ambitions, expanding political hurdles and conflicting geopolitical agendas combined with the worsening situation in Chad and the collapse of agricultural production in Sudan , made the road to peace even more bumpy than it already was. The bitter and cynical narrative makes no attempt in hiding Prunier's anger and disappointment. At times he is a little too harsh and portrays the international community as nave and incompetent even though there is a lot more to it. Statements are not always finely tuned.

It must be said that the book loses some of its power due to a number of flaws and inaccuracies. Even though most of the grammatical and spelling mistakes in the first edition have been corrected, some still remain. Additionally, the word divisions at the end of the line are often incorrect. Hyphenations are placed in the most bizarre places. Funny in the beginning, distracting after a while. Unfortunately the sentence that 'Even the usually well-informed advocacy NGO Justice Africa not mention Darfur in its October 2003 Monthly brief" is still there, even though reviewers of the first edition already noticed its incorrectness. The indignation caused by that sentence makes interested readers turn to Google to double check. The brief does in fact - though very briefly and maybe a bit disrespectfully - state that "The Darfur conflict continues to cause ripples more widely." The situation is dealt with in four rather short paragraphs. Whereas some sources are treated inaccurately, an impressively large number and wide variety of sources are brought together in this short book. Interviews and field information have a strong added value and give a crucial insight, complementing the literature overview.

Prunier provides us with a lot of food for reflection, certainly a contribution to the field and a practical source of reference for students interested in the historical, socio-economic and political roots of the ambiguous genocide in Darfur.

Wendy De Bondt
Ghent University, Belgium