Review: Violence, peacebuilding and state formation in Mozambique

Much has been written on the external linkages of Mozambique’s civil war but much less on what Morier-Genoud et al.’s edited volume calls ‘the war within’. This is an edited volume with chapters focusing on different regions. The outstanding contribution is Michel Cahen’s Chapter 4, ‘The War as Seen by Renamo’: Drawing on original RENAMO military communications, it examines the guerrilla politics and the ‘move to the north’ at the time of the Nkomati Accord, 1983–1985. It is rare for a study of a guerrilla war, using its own written documents—as most analysis to this day is based on oral testimony.