Comparative book review
Comparative Book Review: Surrender or Starve and Dead Aid
Mohandas Ghandi, the political and ideological leader of India at the Indian Independence period once said, “To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul the dweller in the body.” This quote strongly demonstrates the importance of fundamental human rights. In this regard, Surrender or Starve and Dead Aid, two special books relating to the dismal situation of the postwar period in 1980s is qualified in Ghandi’s view of significance of rights. While Surrender or Starve deeply points out effects of ineffective governments and horrible civil wars on African ordinary people and the world, Dead Aid underscores the state of postwar development policy in Africa today relating to ‘aid, it is apparent by juxtaposing these two works that Africa in 1980s felt trapped in a dismal society that restricted fundamental liberty and had declined economic growth.
Surrender or Starve covers the period from the late 1984 to the early part of 1987. It details the political chain of events throughout the 1980s that were the forerunner for the current civil wars and genocide tearing apart those specific regions. In late 1987, the famine returned, mainly for the very reasons cited inside. Most of the media covered the famines that devastated eastern Africa as caused by horrible droughts, which is partly true. Kaplan, however, asserts that Africans, and not only God, were also to blame, because the famines were greatly aggravated by ethnic conflict and class warfare. Famine in the Horn is both a tool and an aspect of the ethnic conflict, with the Ethiopian Amharas of the central highlands pitted against the Eritreans and Tigreans of the north. He goes further to point out the fact that few U.S. journalists “tended to emphasize the awful conditions of the camp, rather than what had driven the refugees there in the first
Mohandas Ghandi, the political and ideological leader of India at the Indian Independence period once said, “To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul the dweller in the body.” This quote strongly demonstrates the importance of fundamental human rights. In this regard, Surrender or Starve and Dead Aid, two special books relating to the dismal situation of the postwar period in 1980s is qualified in Ghandi’s view of significance of rights. While Surrender or Starve deeply points out effects of ineffective governments and horrible civil wars on African ordinary people and the world, Dead Aid underscores the state of postwar development policy in Africa today relating to ‘aid, it is apparent by juxtaposing these two works that Africa in 1980s felt trapped in a dismal society that restricted fundamental liberty and had declined economic growth.
Surrender or Starve covers the period from the late 1984 to the early part of 1987. It details the political chain of events throughout the 1980s that were the forerunner for the current civil wars and genocide tearing apart those specific regions. In late 1987, the famine returned, mainly for the very reasons cited inside. Most of the media covered the famines that devastated eastern Africa as caused by horrible droughts, which is partly true. Kaplan, however, asserts that Africans, and not only God, were also to blame, because the famines were greatly aggravated by ethnic conflict and class warfare. Famine in the Horn is both a tool and an aspect of the ethnic conflict, with the Ethiopian Amharas of the central highlands pitted against the Eritreans and Tigreans of the north. He goes further to point out the fact that few U.S. journalists “tended to emphasize the awful conditions of the camp, rather than what had driven the refugees there in the first