Travel to Eritrea

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Format: Paperback
Author: Robert D. Kaplan
ReleaseDate: 11 November, 2003
Publisher: Vintage
Rating:

more relevant than ever
Although some critics consider Kaplan's analyses as overly pessimistic, most give him high praise for his skill in combining first person travel narrative, history, geo-political analysis, and a street-level view of what is unfolding in the farthest corners of our world. I have enjoyed reading a half-dozen books by Robert Kaplan, a journalist who writes about foreign affairs for the Atlantic Monthly, and this one was no exception. Surrender or Starve was first published in 1988, right after the epic famines that devastated the Horn of Africa from 1984-1987; this new edition includes a new foreword and a postscript on Eritrea (which declared independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a thirty-year war).

Kaplan is an unapologetically opinionated writer. Most of the media covered the famines that devastated eastern Africa as caused by horrible droughts, which is partly true. But Kaplan insists that Africans, and not only God, were also to blame, because the famines were greatly exacerbated by ethnic conflict and class warfare. In Sudan, the northern Muslim government in Khartoum ignored the plight of Christians in the south. In Ethiopia, the ruthless Marxist regime of Mengistu Hailie Mariam (1977-1991) turned the famine into a weapon of war against the ethnic Oromos, Tigreans and Eritreans. Massive "villagization" or forced collectivizations that displaced five million people were hailed by Mengistu as "famine relief. " In 1986, for example, the World Human Rights Guide "gave Ethiopia the lowest rating of any country in the world" (p. 81). Today Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. What makes Kaplan such an engaging writer is his stated intention to think and write about Africa in "a bold, unpopular, but more realistic way, judging Africa by the same standards of moral conduct that would apply to any other part of the globe" (p. xii). Characteristic of all his books, Kaplan thus places himself squarely in the tradition of realpolitik as opposed to all forms of political idealism. .

The crimes of Mengistu and the Dergue.
Most remember this as the time when the charitable West stepped in with huge donations of grain and musician celebrities formed to perfom Band Aid. This book is almost completely about how the Communist government of Ethiopia misled the West into thinking that a small harvest was the reason for the mass starvation of 1984. It is bad because the main culprit was the dictator Mengistu and his Communist buddies doing forced resettlement, collectivization, and centralized villages. They wanted to win the civil war raging in Ethiopia and install a Marxist government. Millions died, the Hollywood establishment blamed bad weather, and leftists told the West they weren't doing enough. Well the Ethiopian government could have stopped the genocide by stopping its failed policies.

This is an eye awakening book about how the West was deceived by a Marxist Third World government. There is some material in the book about Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen but the main focus is Ethiopia. The fallen Ethiopian government failed the people it governed.

Robert kaplan need more research
I lived in Ethiopia in the 1980's and most of the staff Mr. The book takes a view of one side approach. Kaplan talked about never happened. The historical facts are missing. Emperor Menelik was not the first Amhara king there was Emperor Tewdros form Gojam which is the main Amhara region who united Ethiopia from Red Sea to Showa. Reading the book makes me think that the author had a good close relationship with then gorilla fighters now the people in power in Ethiopia and its former province Eriteria. .

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Eritrea travel books.

	Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus