ABSTRACT
For Western news organizations the scramble from Africa began many years ago, with bureaus closed and permanent staff slashed in favor of cheaper local stringers. From this landscape of neglect—a continent routinely overlooked all bar its southern tip—Rwanda and Somalia stand out as sites of intense (if also belated and short-lived) Western media coverage in the 1990s. True, there were brief flurries of attention to famine in Sudan, “warlordism” and grotesque carnivals of carnage in Sierra Leone and Liberia, to the violent re-emergence of the Congo from Zaire, and the forcible break-up of refugee camps along Rwanda’s borders in 1996. But nothing matched the density of cameras and volume of commentary afforded the Western interventions to “Restore Hope” in Somalia (1992–3), and to bandage the aftermath of Rwanda’s genocide (1994). Moreover, both episodes have had a lingering afterlife in western Europe and North America. Since September 11, 2001, US commentators have turned to these troubled expeditions for a variety of object lessons—whether they seek to expatiate on the dangers of such missions’ premature termination (Somalia) or delayed dispatch (Rwanda). Indeed, the former is frequently identified as an explanation, if not an excuse, for the latter.
