nature of conflict in africanature of conflict in africa

[44] Walther,O. They also exhibited important elements of interstate contestation (noted above), where external states, particularly those from the immediate neighborhood, were directly involved politically or militarily or both. States are more inclined to co-operate if a violent organisation starts attacking their territory than if it respects their territorial integrity. AU-UN IST PHOTO / STUART PRICE. Four sub-themes will be explored in this regard, highlighting the challenges and the meaningful ways to address them, on the one hand; and the unique potential of Africa and its Diaspora that needs to be explored further, on the other hand. Across the border, in Gambia, the British implemented a rather permissive social contract outside of Banjul, with few expenditures and light taxation. [13] Gray,D. and K.Latour (2010), Terrorist black holes: Global regions shrouded in lawlessness. Conflict Trends in Africa, 19892019 - World | ReliefWeb The roots of contested government transitions lie in the deficit in democratic governance, the increasing militarization of Africa (most notable in rising defense budgets since 2002), the growth in political militias and various manifestations of presidential praetorian guard units, the suffocation of free and fair electoral processes, and the willingness of populations to participate in organized protests against their governments.18 Such transitions have taken the form of coups detat as well as other forms of armed conflict.19. 22 See the UCDP non-State Conflict Dataset, available at . However, as shown by Nugent (2019[2]), colonial powers struggled to establish a productive social contract with borderlanders that would promote economic development across the region. [45] Justin,P. and L.De Vries (2017), Governing unclear lines: Local boundaries as a (re)source of conflict in South Sudan, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. WebFigure 1. Safe havens are typically considered to be specific geographical areas existing in states such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Yemen that groups can use to minimise external pressure while conducting necessary strategic activities like planning, recruitment, attacks, organising, and raising resources and revenue (Phillips and Kamen, 2014[21]). Until recently, much of the literature on borders and conflict was state-centric and considered transnational actors through the prism of interstate relations or not at all (Box2.2). This is connected to a third problem of interpretation: the fog of war is as difficult to penetrate in contemporary Africa as elsewhere. (2015), Niger-Benin: The Niger-Mekrou Rivers and the Lt Island, in Brunet-Jailly,E. The LRA criss-crossed the border between South Sudan and the DRC for years to elude the UN peacekeeping mission in the region. The first approach draws on the concept of a states monopoly on violence which refers to a state as having a right to use violence within its own territory. (2021), The diffusion and permeability of political violence in North and West Africa. [35] Brunet-Jailly,E. (2012), Theorizing borders: An interdisciplinary perspective, Geopolitics, Vol. The increasingly transnational nature of conflict in North and West Africa, Border disorders in North and West Africa, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-08-2015-0050, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2014.977605, https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2020.1833567, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040500318449, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2011.629868, https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ECOSYS.2015.08.002, https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2017.1347238, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X15000993, https://www.france24.com/en/20200605-french-forces-kill-al-qaeda-s-north-africa-chief-in-mali-ministry-says, https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-7709.2007.00641.X, https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2017.1294497, https://doi.org/10.5305/INTELEGAMATE.52.6.1215, https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2016.1209982, https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2016.1132906, https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2021.1968926, https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2020.1773254, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.660584, https://doi.org/10.1080/07388940600972685, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1598388, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X19000107, https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2018.1510333, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2015.1010152, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2013.809340, https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070802685619. The French used four helicopters and one drone to track and attack Droukdels white SUV after it crossed the Algerian border (France 24, 2020[63]). Restore order: Cut communication lines, destroy insurgent bases, right of hot pursuit, Relocate to another region or country after being defeated by government forces, Use borderlands to recruit, train and plan attacks, Exploit state weaknesses and local grievances. (ed. The regionalisation of conflict involves physical, social, and strategic costs on both state forces and their opponents. The groups violent activity has declined sharply in all countries since the early 2010s, with only 46 violent events recorded in 2020, more than 10 times less than in 2002 (Figure2.1). To what extent is the character of armed conflict in Africa changing? The ICJ granted possession of 16 of the 25 disputed islands to Niger including the 40 square kilometres island of Lt, which was the main cause of border tensions. [34] Strazzari,F. (2015), Azawad and the rights of passage: the role of illicit trade in the logic of armed group formation in northern Mali, Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre. If the LRA had been conclusively either in the DRC or Sudan, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC, later MONUSCO) or the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) would have theoretically been able to pursue them. In this study, we present Afro-Grid: an integrated, disaggregated 0.5-degree grid-month dataset on conflict, environmental stress, and socioeconomic features in Many of these groups are incoherent inasmuch as they lack a single, unified chain of command but operate instead as relatively decentralized entities with their constituent parts retaining significant autonomy. A Decade of African Governance, 20062015, Freedom in the World 2017, Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy, Report for the African Union on African Politics, African Peace, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change, Africa Uprising? Although the character of Africas current armed conflicts has changed in some significant respects, there are also important elements of continuity. The Bosnian war of the 1990s is a prototypical example, in which the Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian sides of the conflict each wielded their own private militias, many of which were associated with private mercenaries, illicit trade, or other non-state associations (Kaldor, 2012[27]). Peace and Conflict in Africa, Then and Now. Border barriers and the transnational flow of terrorist violence, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. [55] Walther,O. and D.Christopoulos (2015), Islamic terrorism and the Malian rebellion, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. On the one hand, there is little doubt that state forces are more constrained by the existence of international boundaries than rebels and extremist organisations, for whom borders can represent an artificial line in the sand or a political manifestation of state order to be destroyed. The nature of violent conflicts in Africa has changed since before independence when they were mostly ideologically-driven guerilla warfare. This shift in approach is particularly well represented in the border studies literature that initially focused on the United States-Mexico border in the 1980s and has, since then, expanded to cover most regions of the world (Parker and Vaughan-Williams, 2009[38]; Pisani, Reyes and Garca, 2009[39]; Makkonen and Williams, 2016[40]). These developments have intensified rising levels of violent extremism, most notably across northern Africa, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. 377-391, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X19000107. The use of this work, whether digital or print, is governed by the Terms and Conditions to be found at https://www.oecd.org/termsandconditions. Indeed, the elements of both continuity and change currently shaping the character of armed conflict in Africa pose serious challenges to international peacemaking and peacekeeping initiatives. A spike in violence committed in Uganda in the late 1990s and early 2000s was intertwined with Operations North and Ironfist, two Ugandan military campaigns against the LRA. [15] UN (2015), Statement by the President of the Security Council: Peace and security in Africa, S/PRST/2015/24, United Nations, http://undocs.org/S/PRST/2015/24. They killed 4,822 people and wounded more than 9,000.33 Six African countries have suffered most from such asymmetric tacticsAlgeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and Somalia. PRISM. Towards an agenda for critical border studies, Geopolitics, Vol. Walters study noted that by the 2000s, 90 percent of all civil wars worldwide were repeat civil wars, most of which occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. 497-519, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2013.809340. Chapter 2 shows that transnational conflicts involving non-state actors have become an important feature in Africa since the end of the Cold War. WebWhile the approaches to conflict resolution available within Africas indigenous communities are not monolithic, underlying the approaches is the principle that peace is not only about the ending of hostilities or settling of a conflict; it is more about restoring relationships (Malan, 1997; Komuhangi, 2006). Thirty-five out of seventy-two In that sense, border violence is not an isolated phenomenon that can easily be contained within the margins of the state. In the last two decades, for example, nearly 95% of the fatalities and violent events related to Al Shabaab between 2006 and 2021 were in Somalia, even if the armed group was capable of conducting spectacular operations in neighbouring Kenya (Table2.2). These strategies were often born out of or strengthened by opportunism, with the LRA utilising geopolitical dynamics to their advantage. Borders represent an obstacle that armed groups need to overcome when they travel internationally (Box2.4). (2021[65]). A third notable characteristic of the current political context in Africa is the prevalence of incoherent conflict parties. In Southern Africa, the As the Juba Talks were increasingly being held under military pressure by the Ugandan army, violent incidents against Congolese civilians increased, with a dramatic and devastating rise after the ill-planned 2008 aerial bombardment of the LRA camp (Operation Lightning Thunder) that marked the end of this peace effort. It claims that conflict in Africa does not always stem primarily from crises of national governance and the failure of governmental institutions in African countries to Since the end of the Cold War, data collected by the UCDP has identified Africa as the global epicenter of nonstate armed conflicts, with the continent being home to more than 75 percent of the global total between 1989 and 2015.22 During this period, UCDP identified more than 500 nonstate armed conflict dyads in approximately thirty African countries. [68] Pieri,Z. and J.Zenn (2016), The Boko Haram paradox: Ethnicity, religion, and historical memory in pursuit of a caliphate, African Security, Vol. [28] Iriye,A. [49] Aluede,J. 10/4, pp. 31/3, pp. (2017), Rethinking the functionality of the Multinational Joint Task Force in managing the Boko Haram crisis in the Lake Chad Basin, Africa Development, Vol. Thus far, the largest obstacle to the internationalisation of Jihadist organisations has been their inability to create supranational entities that would overcome their localised ethnic and tribal divisions. 887-902, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.660584. Record numbers of peacekeepers have deployed across the continent in recent years with a range of mandates to use deadly force beyond self-defense, usually to protect civilians, degrade spoiler groups, or extend and consolidate state authority.12 Many of these operations would not have been possible without a range of international partnerships, including unprecedented levels of cooperation, particularly between the UN and AU.13. [64] AP (2013), Al-Qaida Sahara Playbook, The Associated Press. Borders are expensive and dangerous to cross for all belligerents, who must assess the advantages and disadvantages of conducting attacks in a distant location. Not all these initiatives are concerted. Finally, a fifth set of relatively novel developments concerns the increasing use of remote violence in some of Africas armed conflicts.31 Especially significant are the more frequent use of IEDs and suicide bombings by a variety of nonstate actors. 38/2, pp. The work is based on a new spatial indicator of political violence designed to assess the long-term evolution of conflicts and provide policy options. Yet, these numbers fail to capture the LRAs strategic and opportunistic use of mobility across borders and in borderlands. All of these circumstances would necessarily involve some form of cross-border interaction, as does the classic interstate war example of two states at war with each other. Unlike traditional rebels who are primordially interested in creating a new country or becoming more autonomous, Jihadist groups recognise that tribal, ethnic, and national divisions are an obstacle to their global project. [5] Brambilla,C. and R.Jones (2019), Rethinking borders, violence, and conflict: From sovereign power to borderscapes as sites of struggles, Society and Space, Vol. By calling his group Macina, Amadou Kouffa tried to recreate one of the few political and religious entities that was not based on local or national identity in the precolonial era. 8 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), A Decade of African Governance, 20062015, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2016. [45] Justin,P. and L.De Vries (2017), Governing unclear lines: Local boundaries as a (re)source of conflict in South Sudan. Looking ahead in this first episode of The Horns second season, our Africa Program Director Comfort Ero tells host Alan Boswell what she sees as the continents complex drivers of It focuses on the recent increase in state-based armed conflicts; rising levels of popular protests; the growing significance of religious (especially Islamist) factors in Africas state-based armed conflicts; the likelihood of more intense livelihood struggles exacerbated by environmental change, especially among some nonstate actors; and the growing use of remote forms of violence, especially IEDs and suicide bombings. [27] Kaldor,M. (2012), New & Old Wars : Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto. The report expands these efforts, by providing a disaggregated analysis of the violent events involving armed forces and their enemies in borderlands. As far as transnational dynamics are concerned, take the example of organized criminal activities, which are deeply intertwined with many of the conflict parties in African theaters where peacekeepers are deployed. Where borders are porous, uncontrolled, or perhaps uncontrollable, the extension of state authority to border regions can be decidedly uneven (Avdan and Gelpi, 2017[6]). WebThe Nature of Conflict in Africa Towards 2020 By Brig. 34/1, pp. Peace operations since 2010 have come close to warfighting or crossed the line against particular spoiler groups in the Central African Republic (CAR), Cte dIvoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali, and Somalia, as have the multinational forces deployed in Central and West Africa against the Lords Resistance Army and Boko Haram respectively. On Christmas Eve 1989, Charles Taylors National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) entered Liberia to overthrow the Doe regime in Monrovia. [43] Zeller,W. (2009), Danger and opportunity in Katima Mulilo: A Namibian border boomtown at transnational crossroads. They failed to conquer Freetown in 1995 and fled to Liberia from where they continued to engage in smuggling, arms trafficking, and violence even after disarmament and peace accords in 2002 (Silberfein and Conteh, 2016[60]). Prominent policymakers focus their attention elsewhere, on the popular conflicts of the day. As discussed further below, most of the nonstate armed conflicts in Africa revolve around struggles to secure local sources of livelihood, notably issues connected to water, land, and livestock. His movement was originally assembled in neighbouring Cte dIvoire. Conflicts International efforts to respond to some of these developments by deploying more robust and militarized forms of peace operations and interventions have met with at best only limited success. Not only were these some of the most deadly wars of the 21st century, most of them reflected the repetitive tendencies discussed above. It is widely accepted that the major threat or great disturbance to peace and security is conflict. This section builds on Walther and Miles (2018[53]) and OECD/SWAC (2020[24]). 18 World Peace Foundation, Report for the African Union on African Politics, African Peace, July 2016, para.37ff. In the Lake Chad region, for example, rights of pursuit have been negotiated between Nigeria and its neighbours on a bilateral basis to facilitate co-ordination against Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) (Albert, 2017[50]). 25 Valerie Arnould, Aleksandra Tor and Alice Vervaeke, Africa Uprising? [52] Alusala,N. (2019), Border fragility and the causes of war and conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Moyo,I. and C.Nshimbo (eds.).