"The Congo War" by Jason Stearns Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

Introduction
In the 1960s, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was liberated from Belgian colonial oppression and ushered in an era of national independence. However, this mining powerhouse, which is as large as Western Europe, did not prosper. Since 1996, two wars have broken out in Congo, involving nine African countries, millions of lives have been lost, and countless people have been displaced; in the war that lasted for thousands of miles, inhumane massacres occurred frequently, pregnant women were dissected alive, civilians were buried alive in batches, and children as young as five or six were sexually assaulted...
However, this catastrophe, known as the "African World War", has received little attention from the outside world. Its origins are often simply attributed to barbarism, moral degradation, or the shameless greed of Western powers, but is this really the case?
Jason Sterns spent ten years of hard work, going deep into the heart of Africa, interviewing the powerful figures behind the Congolese riots and the survivors of the massacres, extracting a lot of details from the myriad of clues, restoring the true face of this period of history, and breaking the world's stereotypes about Congo and Central Africa. Here, a person may be both a refugee fleeing for his life in the war and a criminal spreading atrocities. He may have a sincere ideal of saving the country and the people, while condoning the army's burning, killing and looting. There is no clear boundary between good and evil here, only complex and unpredictable human nature.
About the Author
Jason Stearns is an American political scientist and senior fellow at New York University. He is dedicated to studying violence and social dynamics in Africa, with a particular focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has worked for the International Crisis Group, the Rift Valley Institute, and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. In 2001, he began to focus on the conflict in Congo. In 2014, he established the Congo Research Group at the Center for International Cooperation at New York University to promote conflict-related foreign policies in a more transparent and responsible direction.