BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Point of No Return:  Kabila\, Rwanda and the Internal Dynamics of 
 Africa's Great War - Dr Philip Roessler and Mr Harry Verhoeven\, Universit
 y of Oxford
DTSTART:20100525T130000Z
DTEND:20100525T143000Z
UID:TALK24765@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sharath Srinivasan
DESCRIPTION:_In May 1997 the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Li
 bération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL)\, backed heavily by the Rwandan military 
 and other regional powers\, toppled the long-running dictatorship of Mobut
 u Sésé Seko.  The post-Mobutu government\, with Laurent-Desire Kabila as
  president and Rwandan James Kabarebe as chief of staff of the new Forces 
 Armées Congolaises (FAC)\, promised to restore stability to a region wrac
 ked by spreading violence and conflict since the early 1990s and punctuate
 d by the 1994 Rwandan genocide.  But in late July 1998\, a mere fifteen mo
 nths after taking power\, Kabila\, in a hasty move designed to catch the R
 wandans off-guard\, expelled his comrade-in-arms and all foreign forces fr
 om the Congo\, igniting a second war that would draw in nine regional gove
 rnments and become the most devastating conflict since World War II.  This
  paper\, based on interviews with key players on each side of the conflict
 \, explores the internal dynamics that led to the breakdown of the post-Mo
 butu government and the onset of the August 1998 war in the DRC._\n\nPhili
 p Roessler is the Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of 
 Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.  Before 
 his present post\, he held fellowships from the Center for International S
 ecurity and Cooperation (CISAC)\, Stanford University and the Woodrow Wils
 on International Center for Scholars.  He has published articles in the Am
 erican Journal of Political Science and Comparative Politics.  He is finis
 hing a book\, In the Shadow of the Coup D’état:  Threat Substitution an
 d Civil War in Africa\, that examines the link between regime instability 
 and civil war.  It combines cross-national data on the relationship betwee
 n internal regime rivalries and civil war in Africa combined with in-depth
  case studies of conflict escalation in Sudan\, Democratic Republic of Con
 go and Chad.\n\nHarry Verhoeven is a DPhil student at the Department of Po
 litics & International Relations\, Oxford University (St-Cross College). H
 is doctoral research focuses on the political economy of the Al-Ingaz Revo
 lution and the links between political violence\, ecological scarcity and 
 the idea of development in Sudan. He is the Convenor of the Oxford Univers
 ity China-Africa Network (OUCAN) and previously worked for the Belgian gov
 ernment in Congo. He is currently involved in new research with Dr. Philip
  Roessler on the Great African War and the internal dynamics that lead to 
 the rise and fall of the coalition between Laurent Kabila and his "Eastern
 " backers.
LOCATION: Senior Common Room\, Polis\, 17 Mill Lane.
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR