[.ca] Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, ... (ISBN 1400034523)

True Knowledge from the Ground:
This book details Kaplan's reporting from the African famine zones in the mid-1980s. While specific events are getting outdated, Kaplan does provide plenty of insight and realism about famine and power in Africa. This book mostly covers developments in Ethiopia, with important details on the separatist provinces of Tigre and Eritrea. Despite the book's subtitle, there is only some tangential coverage of Somalia as it related to events in Ethiopia at the time. Note that Somalia's well-publicized disasters hadn't happened yet. The same is true for coverage on Sudan, except for the latter parts of the book when obscure struggles in the inaccessible southern parts of the country caught Kaplan's attention. Also note that this new edition is supplemented with an enlightening update from the newly independent nation of Eritrea. What matters most in this book in Kaplan's use of realism when interpreting events in the Horn of Africa, as he has done in all his other books covering various hellholes around the developing world. While the famines in the mid-80s shocked the world, most Western people (and governments) thought that drought was the unavoidable culprit. However, Kaplan proves through ground-level experience that the famines were really the outcome of murderous political policies, as food (and the withholding of it) was used as a weapon by the ruling regimes to control dissident groups, while never-ending civil wars and power politics impeded distribution of aid money and supplies. Beware that this book nearly collapses in Part 4 as Kaplan analyzes the actions of the US and USSR when the Horn became embroiled in Cold War politics. Kaplan behaves like a Monday morning quarterback in criticizing the actions of both sides, with a rather bigheaded display of second-guessing toward the actions of international leaders, that only demonstrates Kaplan's unfair advantage of 20/20 hindsight. Fortunately, this problem (which also infects several of Kaplan's other books) does not sink this mostly powerful study of how ground-level knowledge from such Third World hot spots, and a truly realistic outlook, are the only ways to understand what's truly going on behind attention-grabbing stories of war and famine. \o~doomsdayer520~\c

Not one of his best works:
I was not particularly impressed with this book. Kaplan tend to repeat the same thoughts (and phrases) in each chapter. Obviously, he did not want to do much research into the area as the same handful of sources are referred to. It is a shame that such short shrift is given to this region as it is one continuously neglected by the popular media.

Heavily biased:
I picked up this book hoping to find some deeper insight into Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia of the 1980's. Though I did come away with a slightly better understanding of Ethiopia, the coverage of Sudan and Somalia was non-existent except where it impacted on Ethiopia. This book is so heavily biased in favour of the US that it began to give the feel of being pro-US propaganda. Kaplan talks in great detail of how the actions of the US in Ethiopia counteracted the actions of the USSR which he claims made the situation worse. Using this example he then moves further to say that US policy in Africa at that time was more humane than USSR. What he fails to take into account was the US policy towards west African nations where their support of corrupt and inhumane regions caused untold misery for the populace. As an example the US supported Mobuto in Zaire because he aided their ally Savimbi in Angola. By doing this the US policy cause famine, death and war for millions of Angolas and Zaireans the effects of which are still being felt in the 2000's when Zaire became a failed state due to US policy and involvement. This book does provide a small insight into a complex region but it could have been so much more had Kaplan not become stuck with the idea of US vs USSR (or good vs bad in his view) being the only cause of the suffering. I could have forgiven this if the additional foreword and postscript added in 2000's had reflected this change of politics in the world. So read this book but be prepared to wade through a high level of pro-US propaganda.