
Making Sense of the Central African Republic
Description
Lying at the centre of a tumultuous region, the Central African Republic and its turbulent history have often been overlooked. Democracy, in any kind of a meaningful sense, has eluded the country. Since the mid-1990s, army mutinies and serial rebellion in CAR have resulted in two major successful coups. Over the course of these upheavals, the country has become a laboratory for peacebuilding initiatives, hosting a two-decade-long succession of UN and regional peacekeeping, peacebuilding and special political missions.
Drawing together the foremost experts on the Central African Republic, this much-needed volume provides the first in-depth analysis of the country's recent history of rebellion, instability, and international and regional intervention.
Product Details
Publisher | Zed Books |
Publish Date | August 15, 2015 |
Pages | 384 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781783603794 |
Dimensions | 8.4 X 5.4 X 0.9 inches | 1.2 pounds |
About the Author
Ledio Cakaj is a researcher and writer focused on armed groups, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, both adults and children. He has worked for close to two decades in the Balkans and Central Africa. Cakaj spent eight years studying the Lord's Resistance Army, initially during a master's degree at Princeton University, and later working as a consultant for the World Bank, the Enough Project, Small Arms Survey and Resolve, among others.
Cakaj is a native Albanian, born in 1978. He left home at 16 years old, as Albania was plagued by violence and struggling to shed its communist past. He walked along with other unaccompanied minors to Greece where he worked odd jobs to survive. After four years without a legal status in Greece, Cakaj managed to migrate to England where he was able to return to school. Several years later, he completed high school and graduated with a degree in ancient and modern history from St. John's College, Oxford University, in 2005.
He now he lives in Washington DC with his wife and three young children.
Reviews
"[T]his book is a much-needed contribution to our understanding of the CAR crisis." --African Affairs
"This is the essential book on CAR. Tatiana Carayannis and Louisa Lombard have assembled the scholars and analysts who know most about this important but under-researched country, and have produced the authoritative volume on its history, society and politics." --Alex de Waal, author of Darfur and Advocacy in Conflict
"Bringing together the most prominent experts, this book provides a unique, compelling and definitive analysis of the deeply rooted political crisis in the CAR. With no issue left untouched, it is essential reading for anyone interested in, or dealing with the current conflict." --Koen Vlassenroot, Ghent University
"Carayannis and Lombard definitively depict what Africans call "the heart of the continent" not as a blank spot on colonial maps, nor as an aberrant absence or failure of contemporary national and international governance, but rather as a complex "hive" of geopolitical, cultural and economic rivalries and alliances key to Africa's prosperity and stability in coming decades. It is a boldly executed and timely corrective to much recent media and policy analysis on civil conflict and prospects for sustainable peace in the Central African Republic." --Rebecca Hardin, University of Michigan
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