AFRICA: Africa World Press Guide
compiled and edited by WorldViews
CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
Causes and prospects for resolutions
Believe the headlines and one would think that the entire continent of Africa is engulfed perpetually in armed conflicts. True, Africa has been judged to be "the most warring region on the planet" (see Project Ploughshares map below)
, but it is important to put conflicts in African nations into perspective--in regional and global terms--and to exercise extreme caution in drawing conclusions about these conflicts that one would not apply to the incredible devastation of the "world war
s" between Western powers in this century or to the social and economic toll that the innocent citizens of many nations have paid as a result of the cold-war arms race between the superpowers.
Another caution in approaching this subject is the need to put to rest the mistaken notion that Africa's conflicts are "tribal" wars. For one thing, the term "tribal" is inaccurate and pejorative, a term that would never be used to describe the warring
factions in northern regions (Bosnia or Ireland, for instance). For another reason, the origins and nature of conflicts in African nations are as complex as they are in other parts of the world. They cannot be explained simplistically, as the resources i
n this chapter make clear.
The resource materials cataloged in this chapter also show that African nations have developed conflict resolution initiatives that are held in high regard worldwide. These breakthroughs deserve to be acknowledged.
Background on world conflicts
The Armed Conflicts Report produced annually by Project Ploughshares Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, Ontario) is the best place to begin for a clear and informed presentation of the nature and extent of con
flicts on a world scale. The 1997 report (Epps et al.) determined that there were 34 states engaged in "major armed conflicts" in 1996, in varying degrees of intensity. The African continent accounted for 15 armed conflicts in that year.
Handy sources of information on conflicts and related military issues include:
- State of the World Conflict Report for the years 1991 and 1992 (Spencer et al. 1993), produced by the International Negotiation Network of the Carter Center of Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia);
- 1995 CDI Military Almanac, compiled by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Defense Information (CDI 1995); and
- World Military and Social Expenditures 1996, published annually by another Washington, D.C.-based organization, World Priorities (Sivard 1996).
Books that explore the origins and conduct of conflicts on an international scale include
- Arms and Warfare: Escalation, De-escalation and Negotiation (Brzoska and Pearson 1994);
- Between Development and Destruction: An Enquiry into the Causes of Conflict in Post-Colonial States (Van de Goor et al. 1996);
- Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict(Crocker et al. 1996); and
- World Security: Challenges for a New Century (Klare and Thomas 1994).
Conflicts in Africa
Arms and Daggers in the Heart of Africa: Studies on Internal Conflicts (Nyong'o 1993) offers the best overall perspective on internal conflicts in Africa, with particular attention paid to the social forces that cause and perpetuate conflicts. Chap
ter-length case studies deal with conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, and Liberia.
Other Africa-related studies include
- Africa: Perspectives on Peace and Development (Hansen 1987);
- Coups and Army Rule in Africa (Decalo 1990);
- Disarmament and Security in Africa (United Nations 1993);
- No Farewell to Arms? Military Disengagement from Politics in Africa and Latin America (Welch 1987);
- Peace and Security in Africa: A State of the Art Report (Hansen 1988);
- Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Africa: Essays in Contemporary Politics (Nzongola-Ntalaja 1987); and
- The State of War and Peace in Africa in 1992 (Suliman and Verney 1993.
Issues
Arms sales:
- Lethal Commerce: The Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons (Boutwell et al. 1995);
- Arms and Warfare: Escalation, De-escalation, and Negotiation (Brzoska and Pearson 1994);
- Armscor: South Africa's Arms Merchant (McWilliams 1990);
- The International Arms Trade (Laurance 1992).
Children:
- Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflicts (Goodwin-Gill and Cohn 1994);
- Orphans of the Storm: Peacebuilding for Children of War (Walker 1993);
- Reaching Children in War: Sudan, Uganda, and Mozambique (Dodge and Raundalen 1991).
Landmines:
Contact the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, c/o Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 1347 Upper Dummerston Rd., Brattleboro, VT 05301, USA, or the Mines Advisory Group, 54a Main St., Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13 9LU, England.
Women:
- Women and War in South Africa (Cock 1993);
- Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers (African Rights 1995);
- Arms to Fight, Arms to Protect: Women Speak Out about Conflict (Bennett et al. 1995). Chapters on Liberia, Somaliland, Tigray, Uganda, among others.
Region/country studies
The New Insurgencies: Anticommunist Guerrillas in the Third World (Radu 1990) contains case studies of Eritrea, Angola, and Mozambique.
- Horn of Africa:
-
- Arms for the Horn: U.S. Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia 1953-1991 (Lefebvre 1991);
- Beyond Conflict in the Horn: The Prospects for Peace, Recovery and Development in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and the Sudan (Doornbos et al. 1992);
- Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Fukui and Markakis 1994);
- The Horn of Africa (Gurdon 1994);
- Eritrea and Ethiopia: From Conflict to Cooperation (Tekle);
- The Horn of Africa: From War to Peace (Henze 1991).
- Southern Africa:
-
- African Nemesis: War and Revolution in Southern Africa, 1945-2010 (Moorcraft 1994);
- Recolonization and Resistance in Southern Africa in the 1990s (Saul 1993);
- Conflict in Southern Africa (Smith 1992);
- Front Line Africa: The Right to a Future (Smith 1990);
- A Political History of the Civil War in Angola, 1974-1990 (James 1992);
- Renamo: Terroris in Mozambique (Vines 1991);
- The Suffering Grass: Superpowers and Regional Conflict in Southern Africa and the Caribbean (Weiss and Blight 1992);
- Southern Africa in a Global Context: Towards a Southern African Security Community (Nolutshungu 1994).
- Angola:
- Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique (Minter 1994); A Political History of the Civil War in Angola, 1974-1990 (James 1992); UNITA: Myth and Reality (Conchiglia 1990).
- Burundi:
- Burundi: Breaking the Cycle of Violence (Reyntjens 1995); Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (Lemarchand 1994).
- Kenya:
- Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (Berman and Lonsdale 1992).
- Liberia:
- Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts (Damrosch 1993, chapter 4); Uprooted Liberians: Casualties of a Brutal War (Ruiz 1992).
- Mozambique:
- Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique (Minter 1994); Invisible Crimes: U.S. Private Intervention in the War in Mozambique (Austin 1994); Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (Vines 1991); Unm
asking the Bandits: The True Face of the M.N.R. (Nilsson 1990).
- Rwanda:
- The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (Prunier 1995); Rwanda: Which Way Now? (Waller 1996); Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Destexhe 1995); Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its A
ftermath (Nowrojee 1996); The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993-1996 (United Nations 1996). African Rights (London) has published a number of excellent analyses of the conflict in Rwanda, including Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (1995
).
- Somalia:
- Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts (Damrosch 1993; chapter 5).
Conflict resolution
The entire April-June 1996 issue of Africa Today (Boulder, Colo.) was devoted to studies of "Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Africa" (Vol. 43, no. 2.).
Other publications that feature discussions of conflict resolution in Africa are
- Beyond Traditional Peacekeeping (Daniel and Hayes 1995);
- Conflict Resolution in Africa (Deng and Zartman 1991);
- Controlling and Ending Conflict: Issues Before and After the Cold War (Cimbala and Waldman 1991);
- Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Zartman 1995);
- Ending Mozambique's War: The Role of Mediation and Good Offices (Hume 1994);
- Peaceful Settlement of Disputes between States: A Selective Bibliography (Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations, 1991);
- Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974-1980 (Stedman 1991);
- Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Zartman 1985);
- Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Deng et al. 1996).
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