Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda

As a former foreign correspondent (for Australian television)I also spent time in Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan. I picked up this book out of curiosity but without much in the way of expectations.

Having read it, I am stunned and in awe.

There are many more famous and exalted names in foreign journalism than Scott Peterson's - at least until now. The sheer passion of his reporting, the level of his commitment, his fearlessness both when faced by African violence and the equally grotesque rationalisations of those who clumsily intervene (and those who fail to intervene)deserve him a place in the highest rankings.

He stuck with Somalia when most of the rest of the world lost interest (I plead guilty). He took trouble to understand the Somali perspective when most others saw it as an American story. He writes illuminatingly about Sudan - perhaps the world's most overlooked war zone, rich in terrible, hopeless, wasteful loss. His writings on Rwanda add renewed freshness to the gut-churning horrors of the genocide - after Gourevitch's "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" apparently left little more to be said.

Peterson returns the degraded craft of journalism to its purest form: he "bears witness." He risks his life to do so. He loses friends. He confesses his fear. He disdains received wisdom. He redeems the lazy journalism of the pampered hacks with one eye on the room service menu and the other on how well their "heroism" will play back home.

Anyone with an interest in Africa, reporting, the nature of the human condition, the politics of humanitarian intervention, or just a damn good, disturbing read about the ways of the world would do well to read this book.


Courageous, but typically, it's all the West's fault...   February 11, 2002
miked99 (New York, NY)
25 out of 34 found this review helpful

"Me Against My Brother" is the summary of the author's experiences in the middle of the African wars during the mid-1990s. Scott Peterson's bravery in reporting these events, which most of the civilized world simply ignored, is admirable. At the same time, his finger-pointing is overwhelmingly in the direction of the U.S. and the U.N., and it becomes tiresome.

The book is broken into 3 sections focusing on Peterson's experiences in the war zones of these countries: Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. The section on Somalia provided a great background and lead-in to the events recently made famous through Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down." The Sudan chapters gave me a deeper insight into the most widely ignored African country at war in the 1990s, but disappointingly, Peterson's focus was mainly on the in-fighting between Christian factions in southern Sudan, despite the fact that the Muslim government in Khartoum (which sheltered Osama Bin Laden for years) is clearly most responsible for the horrendous slave and murder industry that still exists in Sudan to this day. Finally, Peterson's discussion of Rwanda is easily the most depressing and convicting when one considers what the U.S. and U.N. failed to prevent.

Obviously, the United States and the United Nations (specifically its Western members) are worthy targets of some blame for failure to act and, possibly, for criminal behavior in some acts when intervention was attempted. But Peterson's focus is so lopsided in the direction of these governments that it almost seems he has forgotten who the actual perpetrators of the massacres were. It reminded me of a quote I read recently from a Western diplomat who was frustrated with the amazing ability of the international media to find moral equivalency between the West and the most murderous, tyrannical regimes: "They equate our imperfections with their evil."

Peterson provides the perfect example of this. Despite giving accounts of the most horrific murders and evils performed by Somalian warlords, Peterson harps incessantly on American and U.N. imperfections, even claiming: "If brought before an international court, UN forces in Somalia would almost certainly have been found guilty of violating the laws of war." Reading that, I can only wonder of what Somalian warlords, who machine-gunned the women and children of their own country in order to prevent the success of U.N. airdrops of food, would be found guilty. Moral equivalency...

Again, in Rwanda, the overwhelming objects of Peterson's criticism are the United States and the Clinton administration, the latter of which I was no fan. But the guilt in the United States' failure to intervene and stop the Hutus' genocidal massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, while sad, is simply not morally comparable to what these Rwandan murderers did. Peterson seems to have lost sight of this fact.

One story, for sake of example: several Belgian U.N. troops were dispatched to try and stop the killing of the Rwandan prime minister, a woman. When confronted by the advancing Hutus, these U.N. troops laid down their weapons in hopes of preventing an annhilation of both sides. In return, their Achilles tendons were eached hacked with machetes to prevent their escape. They were then castrated and gagged with their own genitalia, then killed along with the prime minister. One could scan the entire list of atrocities perpetrated by Americans throughout their country's history, and it would take a serious stretch to equate the very worst of that list to this one event in Rwanda, which occurred less than 8 years ago. Even then, those far-stretched incidents would be extreme anomalies, whereas this event was, and is, very close to the norm in Rwanda and many African and Muslim countries. Moral equivalency...

This is a well-written, courageous book full of facts and events that depressingly few Americans know anything about, but it is sadly tainted by yet another member of the mainstream American and European media who is unable to differentiate between the imperfections of our leaders and societies... and the utter evil at the very core of theirs. For those of you hoping or thinking that the United States and its allies will decide once and for all to put an end to these evil regimes (Sudan and Somalia, as well as Syria, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, etc., etc.), look no further than this book for a good example of why our leaders will continue to balk at taking the necessary (and morally justified) steps to do so anytime in the foreseeable future.


An appaling account of modern genocide   May 10, 2000
Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful

Peterson does a great job of documenting the trajedies of Africa that simply doesn't seem to interest most Americans. With Sierra Leonne in the news recently, this book takes on even more urgency. Peterson deserves credit for sticking it out in the destitute war zones, even after nearly losing his life in Somalia (and seeing close friends butchered by the mobs) He is (justifiably) highly critical of the U.S. and UN efforts there, but he also assigns the blame for the famine where it belongs, with the warlords. This is an excellent and informative book that will unfortunately never find as big an audience as it deserves.


Beautifully Written but with Disturbing Moral Equivalency   May 6, 2000
16 out of 23 found this review helpful

I'm about one fourth of the way through this frightening and disturbing book. I commend the author for writing about his experiences and salute his writing skills.

But...

I'm a little disturbed at the constant application of moral equivalency between the United States and United Nations' actions in Somalia and those of the Somali gunmen. I accept that the US and UN made grave mistakes in Somalia, mistakes that cost at least several thousand lives. But these mistakes pale in comparison to the crimes committed by the Somalis, particularly by the likes of General Aidid. I find it particularly offensive when the author alleges that American soldiers, in the wake of a helicopter attack on a house occupied by Aidid's top advisors, shot survivors without mercy. That is a very grave allegation, and the author never tries to substantiate it.

Another thing the author should have stressed about the Somalia debacle is the fact that the Somali gunmen were the ones who drew first blood. They were the ones who killed --and mutilated! -- twenty-five Pakistani peacekeepers in July 1993. Yet the author blames the UN's decision to go after Aidid and not the other clans for causing this hideous act. His thesis is that if the UN had gone after all the clans and tried to make them disarm, the Somalis would have accepted it. Maybe. And maybe there still would have been violence. And maybe in this book the author would have condemned that decision to go after all the clans as being too ambitious. Maybe.

Bottom line: a very good read if you go in realizing it is the epitome of "Monday morning quarterbacking"


The Collapse Of A Continent   May 14, 2000
Gary Carson (Reno, Nevada United States)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

What can be said about Africa? Can slavery and colonialism provide sufficient explanation for the butchery and systemic collapse we see there today? The answers are unclear, but Me Against My Brother provides yet another chilling account of the implosion of Sub-Saharan Africa, in this case through a war-correspondent's view of recent and ongoing mayhem in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda. The book also provides an excellent overview of the West's fumbling, well-intentioned and frequently counter-productive efforts to relieve the massive suffering, most of which is the direct result of tribal conflict, the deliberate engineering of famine by African warlords, and the manipulation of international relief organizations by clans hell-bent on extermination. The story of Western intervention in these conflicts should be required reading for all advocates of humanitarian assistance. The United States, after a misguided, frequently incompetent and murderous fiasco in Somalia, not only disengaged from such pursuits, but actively discouraged other Western nations from intervening in Rwanda, just as the Hutu were sharpening their machetes against the Tutsi. When the RPF invaded from Uganda, ending the mindless slaughter and creating a Hutu exodus out of Rwanda, the West saw only another refugee crisis and proceeded to feed and REARM the Hutu killers, hiding in all too-familiar style behind a human shield of starving and truly innocent Hutus. So, 50 years after the Holocaust in Europe, which we are constantly lectured never to forget, which must never be allowed to happen again, the West not only ignores one of the largest genocides of the Century, but actively feeds and rearms the killers afterwards. The reaction to Rwanda was probably instrumental in our murderous involvement in the former Yugoslavia. This is policy as reaction and counter-reaction, evolving towards...what? Finally, the story of Sudan is perhaps the most chilling of all in its implications for Africa's future. Originally a justified revolt of the South against a harsh and (again) homicidal Islamic government in the North, the Southern resistance splits and re-splits along tribal lines, each clan staging the usual massacres of innocents, herding them through the desert to attract food-relief, most of which goes to feed the armies. Multiply these stories throughout Africa, mix in AIDs and rampant corruption, then ask yourself: can Africa survive? Personally, I think the answer is no. For anyone interested in the collapse of civilizations, I highly recommend this book.