Sixteen Million One Understanding Civil War [Hardcover]

Sixteen million people have died in civil wars in the past 50 years. In view of that, civil wars may be the single most destabilizing force in world politics today. The only greater killer is the suffering that pushes individuals into them. Civil wars create regional and global instability that threatens economic initiatives and political continuity. Preventing civil wars is a challenge that the policy community is ill-equipped to handle. Rwanda is an example-a tragedy that the world did nothing to stop. Iraq and Afghanistan are tragedies the world did much to inflame. This book uses argument, evidence, and intuition born of experience to provide an account of civil wars and the steps we can take to reduce them.Acknowledgments CAUSES Chapter 1: Discontent Chapter 2: Forewarnings Chapter 3: Houses Built on Sand Chapter 4: Tipping Point Chapter 5: Perfect Storm WHO FIGHTS? Chapter 7: Exclusion and Solidarity Chapter 8: Bloody Favoritism Chapter 9: Intransigence and Repression Chapter 10: Scylla and Charybdis WORLD STAGE Chapter 11: Lawyers, Guns, and Money Chapter 12: Persuasion Chapter 13: Blue Helmets and Bleu Cheese Chapter 14: The Road to Damascus Postscript Social Indicators of Economic Development for Countries Discussed in This Book Further Reading Index About the AuthorRead this book if you want to understand viscerally why people rebel. Pat Regan has talked with the embittered and dispossessed in Central America, the Occupied Territories, Bangladesh, and elsewhere and weaves their experiences into an analysis of how inequality, discrimination, and repression lead to civil conflict. If you want one book that summarizes our best understanding of the origins, processes, and outcomes of civil war, jargon-free and populated by real people, this is it.
Ted Robert Gurr, author of Why Men Rebel

A magnificent introduction to the fundamental dilemmas facing a world that has witnessed some 16 million deaths due tl#Ž