Intervention as Indirect Rule

There are two basic ways of questioning intervention: interrogating its legitimacy or showing its ambiguous effects. Alex Veit's compelling ethnographic study of intervention in the Congo's Ituri District does the latter. Moving beyond common criticism of a lack of coherence and coordination between intervening organizations, he digs deeper and illustrates the unintended effects of intervention in the course of a meticulous historical sociology that spans the century between the late nineteenth century and 2008. Veit argues convincingly that interventions modify but fail to alter fundamentally the entrenched power relations existing since colonial times. Seen in this light, trying to establish liberal societal order with the help of UN peace operations and international assistance may appear as hubristic and even counter-productive. Alex Veit's book is part of a troika of recent books on the conflict in Congo and international attempts at dealing with it. Intervention as Indirect Rule has received less attention but is on equal footing with Jason Stearn's Dancing in the Glory with Monsters (2011) and Séverine Autesserre's The Trouble with Congo (2010), which cater for a more policy-oriented audience. Like the arguments advanced by Autesserre and Stearn, Veit's is bolstered by a wealth of first-hand evidence gathered during extended field research in the Congo. He travelled across Ituri and to Kinshasa, interviewing Congolese army leaders, villagers, administration officials, a large number of MONUC civilian and military staff, and humanitarians.

Colonialism · Indirect rule · Intervention (counseling) · Legitimacy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · State (computer science) · African Studies and Geopolitics · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Psychology

• Malevolent politics

  Kai Koddenbrock•Third World Quarterly•2014

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