The tragic conflict in Rwanda and the Great Lakes in 1994-1996 attracted the horrified attention of the world’s media. Journalists, diplomats and aid workers struggled to find a way to make sense of the bloodshed. The author’s troubling study shows that the post-genocide regime in Rwanda was able to impose a simple yet persuasive account of Central Africa’s crises upon international commentators new to the region, and he explains the ideological underpinnings of this official narrative. He also provides a sobering analysis of the way in which this simple, persuasive, but fatally misleading analysis of the situation on the ground led to policy errors that exacerbated the original crisis.