What happens when an aid worker gets romantically and politically involved in the field? This is the true story of Emma Mccune, a British worker in Sudan, whose romance and marriage to a Sudanese rebel leader destroyed the ideals that brought her to Africa.

The man Emma married, Riek Machar, is one of two main combatants in the current civil war in South Sudan . ( )

Fascinating- the author does a great job of sequencing background information about Emma, interview with colleagues and friends from different times in her life, and presenting the actual events as she observed them in Sudan. You end up feeling jealous of Emma for her verve, then awed by her dedication, then annoyed at her blindness and impracticality, then just sorry for her because it seems that everything led up to her impossible predicament. I sympathized with a lot of the people presented, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what some of Africa is like... ( )

Fascinating- the author does a great job of sequencing background information about Emma, interview with colleagues and friends from different times in her life, and presenting the actual events as she observed them in Sudan. You end up feeling jealous of Emma for her verve, then awed by her dedication, then annoyed at her blindness and impracticality, then just sorry for her because it seems that everything led up to her impossible predicament. I sympathized with a lot of the people presented, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what some of Africa is like... ( )

I found value in this book for its reportage from the horn of Africa in the 80’s and early 90’s. I was also interested in reading the author’s perspective of the Sudanese civil wars, as there isn’t that much out there on the topic that is easily digestible. Scroggins does a good job of explaining some of the geo-political and ethnic dimensions that led to strife in the country. I appreciated her examination of the events surrounding the oil finds, the practice of Arab slavery over the blacks, the famine migrations, and the politics surrounding UN efforts at providing food to the starving. She gives the reader a lot of information that connects various threads on the Islamist Movement in North Africa from the tycoons Tiny Rowland and Adan Khoshoggi, to Ossama Bin Laden and Muammar Gadaffi. I just can’t call this a “good read” because there are so many disconnected tangents that the author takes the reader on for pages and pages, often inserted with her own opinions, which I found at best annoying. It is chock-full of historical events and personalities, which I did like. The story of the polygamous marriage of Emma McCune and Riek Machar, the former war-lord and current first vice-president of independent South Sudan, is rather peripheral to the author’s meanderings on her own personal experiences in the region and the events of the time period. Their story is of two opportunists, whose lives collided, providing little meat in way of her humanitarian efforts or their great love story, as the book’s description promised. Emma is depicted as a vainglorious, promiscuous, adventure-seeker whose life does not merit nor can fill an entire book, as Scroggins demonstrates. After Emma’s accidental death, Riek goes on to yet again break his promise of monogamy to his first wife, Angelina Teny, when the next western woman offering to provide assistance to his cause comes along. In contrast to Emma McCune, Angelina Teny, former minister of energy of mining and extremely active in the women's movement in Sudan, would indeed merit having a book written about her life. ( )

provides copious information about the political complexities of Sudan and its long civil war. Helpful insights into development and function of NGOs.

This is more of an impression than a review, because I read the book some years ago. My copy has since gone into orbit, crossing continents and ending up with someone in London. (I know who you are, and I would like my book back please!)
My impression was that, whether the author intended it or not, it is a cautionary tale, a warning for any naive young British woman choosing to embrace Africa.
There are more informative reviews below, but, someone please tell me, how do they get away with revealing the end of Emma's story? That's not on, surely? ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1263632.html?#cutid3

Emma McCune was the daughter of colonial parents, kicked out of India in the 1960s. They split up and her father committed suicide; Emma grew up with that missionary zeal which one sometimes encounters, to make the world a better place regardless of the personal consequences.

A lot of Scroggins' narrative isn't actually about Emma McCune, but about the horrors of the Sudanese conflict and the ensuing famine, which she covered as a journalist. She gives a decent summary of the background history but her strength is the human dimension. Both Collins and Johnson record, for instance, that when the refugee camps in Ethiopia closed in 1991, their inhabitants returned to South Sudan, causing further strain on local and international resources; but Scroggins was actually there, and converts the historical record into the sight of thousands of human beings trudging desperately along the Sobat river, being strafed by Sudanese planes and raided by bandits, in just one of many vivid descriptive passages which will linger with me for a long time.

Scroggins is also very good at describing the mentality and lifestyle of the foreign aid workers in a crisis situation. Where Johnson raises (reasonable) doubts about the entire enterprise, here we have an explanation of the zeal that motivates people to get into the field and do what they can for humanity. It's a world I have dipped into and I recognised most of the characters who Scroggins describes. (And one or two of the actual people.) Her insider critique of why the rest of the world engages with humanitarian crises is very well argued.

One of the most intensely engaged of the expats was, of course, Emma McCune, who got heavily involved with delivering educational aid and trying to liberate child soldiers, largely in the Nuer areas of the SPLA-held south. She then went one further by marrying the local warlord, Riek Machar, who shortly after split from John Garang, creating a civil war within the SPLA. Machar's new English wife was blamed for this by Garang's supporters, but Scroggins is pretty clear that 'Emma's War' was not her fault.

One other figure who repeatedly appears in the narrative is the British businessman Tiny Rowland, who I knew of only as the owner of the Observer newspaper, but who of course had made his fortune by building up his company, Lonrho (from London and Rhodesia) into a conglomerate with tentacles all over the continent. Rowland, never a man for modesty, claimed in one conversation to have created the SPLA. He certainly played a crucial role in its history, and in the internal politics of many other African countries; like Emma McCune, he had a particular obsession with Sudan.

Emma McCune and her unborn baby were killed in a traffic accident in Nairobi only two years into her marriage. Scroggins follows the story a bit further - Machar signed a separate peace with Khartoum, and found another wife, this time from Minnesota; after Scroggins' book was published, Machar actually reconciled with Garang and, with Garang now being out of the picture, is again one of the leading figures in south Sudan.

Emma's War is one of the best books I have read this year, and is I think essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the human condition. ( )

This is an absolutely amazing book. The author, a young reporter, was assigned by the new AJC editor to go to the Sudan to report on stravation for this metropolitan Southern newspaper. At first she had trouble finding the starving people as she stumbled through unexpected pitfalls of the Civil War. She filed her reports, but ultimately the editor moved on and there were no similar assignments.

What she has in this wonderful book are stories on several levels.

1. First she gives a short, very clear history of the Sudan itself.
2. Then she described the Civil War, highlighting on particular leader.
3. Finally she zeros in on Emma, the British young woman , facinated by the country, who marries the rebel leader, then finally dies at a very young age.

It was very hard for me to understand the Civil War, until now, 3 years after reading Emma's War I have stumbled on Angola in the Front Line by Wolfers and Bergerol, which explains in terms of another country, and for only the period 1974 to 1982, how there are in fact so many different competing rebel groups that it makes it hard for individuals outside the country in question (and probably inside the country) to understand what is or was going on.

Obviously the Sudan question is no more resolved than is Angola, now in 2009. ( )

Emma's War is a fascinating account of what's been going on in the Sudan for the last thirty years. From the cover, and the squib on the back, I mistakenly assumed it was about the "tragically short life" of a "young British relief worker, Emma McCune". I assumed she had been doing great works and was shot in the cross-fire of a war, or perhaps worse. The book was in fact much more about the complexity of politics in Eastern Africa, the romantic notions and sheer hubris of those who offer to work in countries such as the Sudan with a mind to solve centuries-old issues.

While the book isn't really about Emma, it had to start somewhere. Where do you begin when speaking of Sudan? It is dizzying to try to keep track of the multitude of factions and shifting alliances without something to center on, so why not a charismatic British woman who married a warlord? She came to the Sudan because she loved the romance of Africa, because any ordinary day in Sudan is worthy of a tale to your British comrades back home or in Nairobi. She stayed in a Master's program just long enough to get contacts and then skipped out to the Sudan to hand out pencils to children and recruit teachers for schools. She was fearless, or reckless, however you chose to see it, and soon was known to everyone because of her willingness to go to the furthest reaches of Sudan on her own. And like everyone else she was maddened by the politics that led to such destruction, famine, disease, war. Name the horseman of the Apocalypse, he was there. So when she met and fell for a sweet-talking warlord who promised peace, she married him. She would be in a position of power, she could bring Western influence to help his side, she could be the key to peace in Africa!

But (there is always a but) the UN can't work in a partisan fashion. It goes where the government lets it go and if the food goes towards feeding one rebel faction over another, well it's no longer humanitarian relief, it's fuelling a war. And Riek Machar, her husband, was still a warlord: incredibly good at saying what people want to hear -- so good that Emma remained faithful to his cause -- but perfectly willing to execute anyone who disagreed, willing to force refugees to stay near his camp so the UN would bring food, and then ready to steal food from starving children to feed his soldiers. Through the course of the book you see the Sudanese rebels sink from one or two major groups fighting against the government to dozens of tribal factions fighting each other with machetes and machine guns. You read about the famine, about the refugees, about the killings, and it is tribute to the book that the Bor Massacre is still horrifying in comparison. Thousands dead, women hacked in two, children with their skulls smashed in. You don't need pictures to have the images fresh in your mind.

In the end, Emma dies in a car crash, proof yet again that the most dangerous thing I did in Guatemala was be on the roads. Some people felt she was a self-sacrificing do-gooder, not least the hundreds of Africans who came to her funeral, believing that because she was white she had power even though she was a young and not terribly gifted woman from a middling English family who hadn't been employed by any relief agency for two years. One said of her "She was really nothing. She was just an adventurer. If she were in a European setting, she would never even have been noticed." It is that sentiment which frightens me a little. We all try to be exceptional in some way, and for Emma, simply by existing in the Sudan she drew attention. Of course, it isn't news that some people are exceptional in some places and unexceptional in others. Lawrence of Arabia made a terrible clerk and a wonderful commander. But it seems Emma's attempts to be exceptional simply made her sensational, worthy of gossip but in no way effective either in furthering her husband's cause or in helping starving Africans.

At several points the author makes a point of saying what a travesty it is that Americans don't care about genocide, in Rwanda, in Sudan, in Sierra Leone, in Somalia. Then in the next chapter she talks about how little aid actually helps, how much it is guided by and used for political purposes. You are left uncertain what to do. If you send troops into Somalia, well, what do you hope to achieve? How can you stop people from war when they have nothing, when all it takes to kill someone is a machete and each tribe runs over to the next village to burn it down, when soldiers steal from the starving and parents send their young boys to the military camps simply because they know soldiers are more likely to eat than civilians. It all seems a horrible horrible mess, and solidifies my opinion that I don't want to work there, at least not in the wartorn segments. So what to do? This book provides no answers, but it certainly provides illumination into the awful things that still continue in today's world.

One of my colleagues was asked to review this book when it first appeared, and I agree with her opinion - that we are not too interested in reading about yet another rich white woman in Africa, but that the background material on Sudan's war is very good. Deborah Scroggins is a journalist who has been around Sudan a long time and she has done her homework for this book. That's mainly why I rate it 3.5 stars, and I would recommend it as a readable partial background to the war in southern Sudan. Scroggins is rightly critical of the aid industry, but I know some of the sources that she quotes in this respect and I would have thought that they were themselves part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The manipulation of food aid as a military, political and economic strategy was a reality in the Sudan civl war (and probably in most wars) and the forces of Emma's husband, Riek Machar, also benefited from this. ( )

The Emma in question is a want-to-be aid worker who got caught up in the feuds of Sudan, marrying the warlord leader of one of the multiple factions in Sudan's wars. It is an interesting story in itself but it is only part of Scroggins' book, which explores the Sudan and its fractious history, building some kind of explanation of how Sudan got itself into the mess it is in today. She also explores the influence of Western humanitarian aid, questioning the motives of those involved. The conclusions reached are bleak and depressing, yet sadly realistic.
There is a lot of detail in the book - tribes involved, their interwoven politics, the personalities of those involved and their backgrounds. What could have been a very dry read is made fascinating by Scroggins - she never takes anything or anyone at face values, exploring the story behind the story.

Anyone who thinks they understand what the Horn of Africa needs should read this book before saying anything. It may not be the full story, but it makes many valid and well thought out points. ( )

http://mattluce.com/blog/2005/12/15/emmas-war/ ( )

Author Dan Morrison has chosen to discuss Deborah Scroggins’s Emma’s War on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject – The Nile, saying that:

“…It’s a great read and extremely informative about Sudan’s civil war. Scroggins’s vehicle for talking about the war is a British aid worker, Emma McCune, who married a rebel warlord in south Sudan…”
The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/dan-morrison
( )