From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,soc.culture.african,soc.rights.human,talk.politics.misc
Subject: 3rd WORLD RESOURCES BOOKS(3): MOZAMBIQUE: HARROWING WAR
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:20:05 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB


    The brutality of Renamo's terrorism drove one U.S. State
    Department official to accuse Renamo of perpetrating "one of the
    most brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World
    War Two."

[Via misc.activism.progressive from PeaceNet's  twr.nl]
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        The following is from the quarterly magazine, THIRD WORLD
        RESOURCES: A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF RESOURCES FROM AND ABOUT THE THIRD
        WORLD; subscriptions to the 24-page hardcopy edition are $35/year
        (organizations) and $35/two years (individuals). For rates outside
        North America, write to: Third World Resources, 464 19th Street,
        Oakland, CA 94612-2297 USA. See also their conference `twr.nl' on
        PeaceNet, or email to tfenton@igc.org (Tom Fenton)
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Topic 123       BOOKS, 8:3 - 1992       Response  3 of 16 
tfenton 
twr.nl  11:09 am  Jul  8, 1992 
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***<A COMPLICATED WAR: THE HARROWING OF MOZAMBIQUE.> William  
Finnegan. University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way,  
Berkeley, CA 94720. 1992. xiv + 325 pp. $25. Cloth. ISBN 0- 
520-07804-7. Notes, index, maps. 

William Finnegan, a staff writer for <The New Yorker> and  
author of <Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of  
Apartheid> (Harper & Row, 1986), emerged from his extensive  
travels up and down the 1,050-mile length of Mozambique in  
the latter part of the 1980s with notebooks crammed with  
journalistic anecdotes and with a mind obviously clouded by  
the complexities of ground-level encounters with the effects  
of a brutal war that has held the government and people of  
the former Portuguese colony in its grip since the mid- 
1970s. 

The war is being waged by a terrorist force called  
Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana or Renamo. Initially  
operating as a proxy for the white minority regime in  
neighboring South Africa and with support from the U.S.  
government Renamo forces are now acknowledged to be more  
diverse in their aims, sources of support, and areas of  
operation. But their methods of operation have been  
consistent throughout their 15-year reign, as Finnegan  
details in the first half of <A Complicated War>.

The war, Finnegan states, has "destroyed the national  
economy, most of the country's transportation and  
communications systems, and much of rural society." Finnegan  
quotes reports that put the number of deaths as a result of  
the war at around 900,000 (October 1989), the number of  
Mozambicans driven from their homes at 3 million (late  
1990), and the number facing starvation or severe food  
shortages at 8 million--nearly one-half the population of  
the East African country at the end of 1990. The brutality  
of Renamo's terrorism drove one U.S. State Department  
official to accuse Renamo of perpetrating "one of the most  
brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World  
War Two." 

Finnegan draws on his notebooks of evidence from personal  
research and travels in East Africa, Portugal, England, and  
the United States to document the case against Renamo in  
gruesome detail. He is forthright, at the same time, in his  
criticisms of the failures of the Frelimo government. But  
even the harshest criticisms he can level at Frelimo so pale  
in comparison with the case he advances against Renamo that  
it is difficult to understand how Finnegan can describe this  
as a "complicated" war.  

Consider the evidence that Finnegan so clearly and  
authoritatively advances in this book and decide for  
yourself how "complicated" it is to sort out right from  
wrong in Mozambique. 
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