The Trouble with the Congo
Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding

The Trouble with the Congo suggests a new explanation for international peacebuilding failures in civil wars.

Séverine Autesserre (Author)

9780521156011, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 June 2010

344 pages, 1 b/w illus. 7 maps 1 table
22.6 x 15 x 2.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'In this impressive volume, Séverine Autesserre [offers] a compelling and engaging account … Her analysis is clear and its implications are highly relevant for making sense of other peacebuilding failures in troubled states. Along the way, she provides a great deal of rich detail about specific forces needed to understand the long term violence in the Congo's eastern provinces.' Marc Howard Ross, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflicts

The Trouble with the Congo suggests a new explanation for international peacebuilding failures in civil wars. Drawing from more than 330 interviews and a year and a half of field research, it develops a case study of the international intervention during the Democratic Republic of the Congo's unsuccessful transition from war to peace and democracy (2003–6). Grassroots rivalries over land, resources, and political power motivated widespread violence. However, a dominant peacebuilding culture shaped the intervention strategy in a way that precluded action on local conflicts, ultimately dooming the international efforts to end the deadliest conflict since World War II. Most international actors interpreted continued fighting as the consequence of national and regional tensions alone. UN staff and diplomats viewed intervention at the macro levels as their only legitimate responsibility. The dominant culture constructed local peacebuilding as such an unimportant, unfamiliar, and unmanageable task that neither shocking events nor resistance from select individuals could convince international actors to reevaluate their understanding of violence and intervention.

1. The peacebuilding world
2. A top-down problem
3. A top-down solution
4. A bottom-up story
5. The defeat of bottom-up solutions
6. Beyond the Congo
Appendix. Chronology.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP], Peace studies & conflict resolution [GTJ]