i finished emma's war today. it's nonfiction and tells the story of emma mccune, a british woman who worked and lived in sudan. in the process it also the story of sudan itself, its colonial history and civil war. mccune was a british woman who was drawn to southern sudan as a relief worker during a famine caused by the civil war. later she married one of the rebel leaders, violating the neutrality international aid agencies try so hard to maintain in such circumstances.there are really several different stories that thread through the book. there's the story of sudan itself, it's colonial history and the uneasy relations between the arabs of the north and all of the other ethnic groups that form the country and who dominated in the south. there's also the story of the impossible situation aid agencies are put into. where they must deal with unsavory combatants, who have every incentive to use the agencies and their aid for their own benefit, at the same time that they try to hold themselves outside the conflict itself. and then there's the story of the ex pat community of aid workers, their idealism, compromises, and hypocrisy--and also their nobel persistence in the face of truly horrible things. then there's the story of emma herself, who went from flamboyant champion of starving children and human rights, to apologist the attrocities of her husband's forces.
the book was written in 2002, 9-11 is mentioned only in the last few pages. it's interesting to see how many of the minor tangiential things mentioned in the book have since come to the fore. osama bin laden comes up a few times (i wonder if he was hastily edited in after 9-11). darfur comes up briefly, but it is just a sideshow to the overwhelmingly calamity of the civil war southeast of there. (now, of course, the situation is reversed. with the civil war in the south suspended under a tentative peace, just as darfur spins out of control).
it's a complicated book. though there's no shortage of tragedy and death, there's no real villain in the story. or maybe there's just too many. in any case, in the process of telling the story of emma mccune the book manages to get across the convoluted tangle of issues that is the nation of sudan. i highly recommend it, even if you're just looking for a good primer to a very complicated place.
