Description: How do Tutsis and Hutus learn to coexist with one another after the killing has subsided? How can ethnic Albanians come home and live in harmony with Bosnian neighbors after months of slaughter by Serbian troops? From Rwanda to Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kosovo and beyond, devastating human tragedies have shredded the complex fabric of communities and nations -- and, too often, the international response has been ineffective.

In the language of relief workers, these situations -- much more evident in recent years than during the Cold War -- are known as complex emergencies. While many books on the subject are dry academic or technical appraisals of leadership challenges in this new world disorder, or of the bureaucratic role the UN ought to play, "Healing Communities In Conflict" is the first book to address directly the communities that hang in the balance. Too often, Maynard explains, efforts are focused on "task" completion -- food, medical assistance, refugee repatriation, and so on -- and fail to take into account the long-term process of creating a sustainable peace.

Maynard, who has been an on-site consultant in the former Yugoslavia, Tajikistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many other battle-scarred areas, brings a perspective to complex emergencies born of immersion rather than armchair political grandstanding. She shows how policymakers' lack of knowledge about local realities -- the coping mechanisms different cultural groups have to deal with their own tragedies -- adversely affects their ability to respond effectively to specific incidents.

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