Preface

The central role of warfare in human history can hardly be in doubt. Yet the factremains that the key centres of research into the history of war have in recentdecades been clustered, with few exceptions, in Europe and North America,societies in which direct experience of conflict – no matter how fresh inthe memory it might be for a dwindling few – is largely lacking. It meansthat war is something that either happened some time ago, itssignificance hardly questioned but the interpretation of it necessarilyabstract, or is happening somewhere else, usually in parts ofAfrica and (perhaps rather better known, and certainly better reported) centraland western Asia. For the peoples of those regions, war is emphatically notabstract: It is something very much here and now, constantly evolving, part andparcel of daily existence, reaching some way into the past and, it would seem,for some distance into the future. This most fundamental global division is nocoincidence, for it may well be that the ability to reflect historically onorganised violence is a luxury – a dividend of peace, perhaps –but it also reflects the broad distinction between those who have largely‘done with’ war, and those who have not. Whereas generations ofEuropeans have recently grown up only with the celebration or commemoration ofconflict, and with a considered narrative of the role of war in their historiesclose to hand, millions of Africans – the subject of this book –have no such cultural and intellectual equipment at their disposal, yet. Thestory of war is still unfolding around them, often in the most horrific ofways.