Jason Stearns is an American writer who has worked in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2001. In that time his contacts with the United Nations and various aid and human rights groups have made him a valued source for journalists and other visitors. In this, his first book, he sets out to give a detailed account of the political in-fighting behind the violence that has afflicted the country for the last sixteen years.

The statistics are horrible enough. Eight hundred thousand people were murdered in Rwanda in three months, with one million Rwandans, including about 200,000 killers, taking refuge in the Congo; refugee camps contained up to 400,000 people, of whom 1,500 a day were dying of cholera. Sixteen years of