Historical Dictionary of Civil Wars in Africa
ARNOLD AFRICA • HISTORY Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest, No. 34 HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF Since the end of World War II, and especially after 1960 when seventeen African colonies became independent of colonial rule, the African continent has been rav- aged by a series of wars. They have ranged from liberation struggles against former colonial powers to power struggles between different factions in the aftermath of in- dependence to border wars between newly independent states to civil wars between different ethnic groups. As with many confl icts, outside forces were drawn into SECOND EDITION many of these wars, intervening on one side or the other for a variety of reasons, including political ideology, Cold War considerations, and ethnic alignments. HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF DICTIONARY HISTORICAL This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Civil Wars in Africa reviews the wars that have occurred in Africa in the past half century: Algeria’s struggle for independence from French colonial rule, Nigeria’s fi ght to achieve a balanced state after the British departure, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and the current ethnic cleansing in Darfur, to name only a few. It contains a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and cross-referenced dic- SECOND EDITION tionary entries on wars, confl icts, major political and military fi gures, and topics such as child soldiers, mercenaries, and blood diamonds. GUY ARNOLD is the author of more than 40 books, including the Historical Dictionary of Aid and Development Organizations (1996), Historical Dictionary of Civil Wars in Africa: First Edition (1999), Historical Dictionary of the Crimean War (2002), and Historical Dictionary of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World (2006), all published by Scarecrow Press.
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