PEACE IN AFRICA

Article by Ganiyu Fashola

PEACE IS PRESENT IN AFRICA: Can the peace hold in Africa? It depends on whether African states and their supporters continue to be innovative in their search for political solutions – and whether they build on what they have learned in recent years. About seven million people may have died in Africa’s three biggest wars, in Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan not to mention wars in countries like Rwanda and Zimbabwe. It’s horribly close to the eight million killed in World War I. But after so many years of destruction, something new is happening: at last. The killing has largely stopped; Except for the recent one that erupted in countries like Ivory – Coast, Libya and Egypt. The war is over in Angola, and reconstruction is underway. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the five foreign armies are gone, the military situation is mostly stable, and a transitional government has set about its work. In Sudan, final agreement on a mammoth six-year peace plan may be only weeks away. In Rwanda and Zimbabwe peace talks has already stabilized the country. In Ivory – Coast, Libya and Egypt new government is in place for peace to reign. One point to note in all this: the peace processes are mostly home-grown. Angola’s war, in which an estimated 1.5 million people died, was always fueled by outsiders: Cuba and apartheid South Africa on the ground, with the superpowers behind them. Left alone, the Angolan government put an end to Jonas Savimbi’s three-decade rampage, and the government has since negotiated an accommodation with his Unita supporters. Unita, for its part, is transforming itself into a legitimate political opposition, ahead of national elections to be held in late 2004 or early 2005. In Congo, both the internal settlement and the withdrawal of foreign forces were largely brokered by South Africa. South Africa also leads in the African effort to stabilize war-torn Burundi. In Sudan, it is Kenya which heads a regional consortium of powers trying to bring peace between north and south, supported by the United States, Britain and Norway. These settlements have been worked out largely on an inter-African basis. This is positive, first because inter-African rivalries sometimes fueled those wars, and, second, because the accommodation of African strategic interests will in large part determine how likely the peace agreements are to hold. Post-colonial African diplomacy has developed under some of the worst imaginable conditions, yet it has developed and continues to improve. Nigeria and South Africa, both until recently are part of the problem rather than the solution, are increasingly confident and positive players in the African peace process. Unfortunately, an already poor region hardly has the resources to build on the peace it has made. Apart from the immense problems of economic reconstruction, there remain pressing humanitarian and policing issues. All three countries are devastated. Life expectancy in Angola and Congo is under 40, and it’s not much higher in Sudan. UN humanitarian appeals for the three countries still run to $ 800 million this year just to meet basic needs such as food and shelter. Hundreds of thousands of fighters – men, women and children – have known nothing but war and must be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated into communities that often barely know them, or know them only from the wrong end of a gun. A lapse back into conflict is very possible. The outside world can help. Operation Artemis, the recent European Union peacekeeping effort in Bunia in eastern Congo, was an important advance. The French-led force was in Bunia for 90 days, stanched the violence, got the guns off the streets, saved thousands of civilians and prepared the way for the UN task force now deployed. (www.continentalarticles.com/politics) The world’s most capable militaries are heavily committed elsewhere and expensive to maintain. When they deploy in support of a UN peace operation, it might sometimes have to be as it was in Bunia: a short, sharp injection of force, followed by an early exit. If this approach can work in a very rough town in eastern Congo, we will have a good case for trying a similar approach elsewhere. The UN Security Council is also acting in some innovative ways: targeting sanctions against those who fuel the wars; controlling the flow of “blood diamonds” from West Africa and elsewhere; tracking the plunder of natural resources in Congo; supporting new ways to finance the demobilization of fighters. Finally, the United States has been engaging closely with the African peace process, and not only in Sudan but in the world at large. It provided a small but essential force in Liberia, helping open the door there to the West African and UN forces now trying to repair some of the damages caused by former military dictator Charles Taylor. As in Bunia, we are seeing what can be accomplished when a permanent member of the Security Council