Browsing by Author "Balati, Albert Aidan"

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    Total war in Burundi: a realist view on the scrambler for land and strategic minerals: a case study of the nature of the wars and conflicts that rage in the central African region and Africa.
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2001) Balati, Albert Aidan
    Burundi is engaged in a total war. But that war is politely being called a conflict. Current survey in polemology (the study of war and conflict) has shown that the word conflict is euphemic. It has made the war in Burundi to lose its harsh meaning. Euphemism in modern polemology has emerged with the coming of the post cold war period. In today's world war is called conflict and total war is called wars of divestiture. The word war and conflict are semantically paradoxical. The war in Burundi is ambiguous and paradoxical. It has divided scholars into two dominant schools of thought, the ethno-political school of thought and the economic of resource allocation school. The former school regards ethnics, poor leadership and the legacy of colonialism to be the cause of the war. The latter school suggests poverty to be the root cause of the war. This study considers the extent to which such factors as population growth, technological advancement, and resource demand, uneven distribution of earth resources and the play of power politics to be the source of the war. Our work is based on strategic thinking and guided by the realist theory of international relations.