Editorial

AFRICA

Understanding Conflict on the Continent

Published in African Security Review Vol 10 No 3, 2001

While conflict is not the only cause of sub-Saharan Africa’s current plight, it surely counts among the principal ones.

Over the past few years, a number of academic contributions have considered the dynamics of particular conflicts in Africa in detail. Many of these studies were path-breaking, based on research conducted in uncomfortable and often dangerous conditions. Building on these empirical studies, and carefully noting the variety of incidences, there is an emerging literature on the phenomenon viewed in its entirety. This also draws on comparative studies from other regions embroiled in endemic and low-intensity war such as those of South and South-East Asia, South-Central America, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

Parallel to these empirical studies and their theoretical offspring, another body of literature contemplates the interventions, real or prospective, of militarily and economically powerful states outside the cone of violence. How are they to interact with zones of conflict, on what conditions and for what reasons? This falls in the realm of virtual and post-modern war, somewhat removed from the classical interstate wars on which so much current theory is based. In this paradigm, the soldier may become an instrument of deliberate social engineering, an enterprise not always identical with peacekeeping.

The economic agendas of wars in which the business of war merges almost imperceptibly into criminal activity of an organised or opportunistic nature, have gained increasing currency. At the same time, the African continent is witnessing an overlap between conflicts of an intrastate and interstate nature, and neo-mercantilist wars seem to have re-emerged as a trend.

This type of war has acted as a market to attract external adventurers in search of profit and a lifestyle denied them in more staid societies that no longer require their services. As in previous periods when old orders have crumbled and military imperatives have changed, a large number of men-at-arms are on the market to sell the only skills they possess or wish to use, often accompanied by equipment that may render conflict more deadly and initiate arms races of their own.

This state of affairs is certainly abhorrent, but is it really that extraordinary? In a recent essay, Professor Michael Howard looked at the unusual nature of peace in history, arguing that the assumption that peace is a natural state of affairs, in historical terms at least, is false. In ten, or maybe twenty years, when considering the Africa of today, will current upheavals be discernible as the birth pangs of an African Renaissance? This remains the hope.

In this issue of the African Security Review, the feature articles adopt various perspectives in analysing the nature and meaning of African conflict. Christopher Clapham’s article looks at the paradox between the radical alterations in recent history of the borders of Europe’s ‘strong’ states and the OAU’s insistence upon the immutability of the official frontiers of Africa’s arbitrarily demarcated states, some of which are themselves little more than fictions within the international structure. Does this suggest that African states are somehow different from those of Europe in a fundamental way, or are they doomed to collapse? The answer to these questions, he argues, are essential to the understanding of what Africa’s current conflicts are about. He also notes the altered international environment of the post-Cold War era and the marked reduction in the reluctance of some African states to intervene in the affairs of their neighbours. This is partly the result of the shifting patterns of the military balance within states, and the relationship between the physical control of exploitable material resources and the ability to mount armed challenges to those in nominal authority. From here, as he shows, the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and the current upheavals may be merely a stage in a process of reconstructing the architecture of African sovereignty.

In the second article, Antoine Rozès provides insights derived from the Francophone discourse on contemporary Africa. It also serves as a reminder that, while African conflict in general may be addressed, its historically discreet forms should be considered. He reviews the changing shape of Angola’s civil war, apparently a conflict without end in which the Clausewitzian adage about conflict being the pursuit of politics by other means may prove inappropriate. As the author points out, the attempt to link the pursuit of the war to any political resolution of Angola’s internal tensions and their external adjuncts has thus far proven fruitless, and impasse has replaced impasse in a war of which the conclusion seems almost unimaginable.

The unending quest of trying to understand African conflicts involves a constant movement between the general and the particular and demands the continuous questioning of established assumptions. In the light of the sheer weight of human suffering that results from these conflicts, it is difficult to remain dispassionate or detached. The awful icons captured and preserved by today’s technology, the carefully noted and catalogued statements of survivors and participants make a vast difference in perceptions held today as opposed to those of people recording and analysing war fifty years ago. Under these circumstances, what has been called ‘the pornography of violence’ leads only too easily to the dismissive conclusion that Africa is descending into barbarism. The temptation must be resisted to suspend critical thought and analysis by taking recourse to explanation by metaphor.

Yet, this is a simple alibi for those from outside and inside Africa who continue to fuel and profit by conflict, however indirectly, and with however many cut-outs facilitating deniability. Only by continuing to gather and interpret information and by publishing what is known and can be verified will it become more difficult to prosecute conflicts that are too often characterised by the slaughter of the unarmed by the armed. The day is probably far off when war crimes tribunals and truth and reconciliation mechanisms can curb mankind’s ability to inflict inhumanity. Recognising and naming the instigators, perpetrators and profiteers of individual conflicts for what they are, would not be a bad start.