Africa's Wars

Jeffrey Gettleman, East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, has a scary survey for Foreign Policy of the bush wars that are commonplace across the 53 countries of Africa. As he describes these "wars," they are little more than predations by armed gangs of child soldiers brutalizing their own country's people.

Gettleman's bottom line is that many of these countries are headed toward the ungovernability typified by Somalia. I won't try to summarize his discussion, you should read it. It isn't pretty.