Conflict and peace in West Africa
Although West Africa has in the last decade and a half emerged as one of the most unstable and conflict-prone regions in the world, it has also been a place for some of the most successful experiments in regional approaches to peacekeeping, and democratic transitions. The Economic Community of West African States Peace Monitoring Initiative (ECOMOG) has been instrumental to the return of peace to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea Bissau. Most recently, ECOWAS troops have been involved in Côte d’Ivoire where they are operating under a UN peacekeeping arrangement. Thus, apart from Côte d’Ivoire where an uneasy truce holds between the government forces and rebels in control of the northern part of the country, all civil wars in the region have recently come to an end. However since 1999 when Nigeria returned to democratic rule, there has been a rash of low intensity conflicts sometimes along communal, religious and ethnic lines. From 2003, there has also been an escalation of violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region where armed ethnic minority youth seek the control of oil and confront security forces. More recently, national strikes over the increase in the price of petrol have rocked Nigeria, heightening concerns within the region and the international community about the security situation in the region’s powerhouse.
The foregoing clearly shows that although there are no longer civil wars, West Africa still faces the challenge of winning the peace. Although violent conflict has been considerably reduced, the foundations of peace as yet remain fragile, and the risk of regression exists. Therefore, the promotion of democratic governance, economic reconstruction and human security remain very critical to peace in the region. Since the states have been traumatised by decades of authoritarianism, misrule and economic crises, it should be emphasized that dealing with these challenges would be a formidable task.
Fortunately, democratically elected governments are the norm across the sub-region, and in countries like Senegal, Benin and Ghana, opposition parties have come to power by defeating erstwhile ruling parties/governments in elections. In other countries such as Togo, Burkina Faso, Guinea and the Gambia, the picture is more complicated as in spite of holding elections, incumbents use the power of the state to win, and hang on to power. But everywhere, some form of political pluralism is allowed for relatively freer political competition. With the political process moving broadly in the direction of multiparty democracy, a lot of effort still has to be made to consolidate democracy in ways that symbolise the real transfer of power to the people and the adoption of policies that promote their welfare and dignity. The need also exists for the democratic process to address issues of social and gender equity, poverty, equal access to power and resources, the youth, national reconstruction and development and social justice. However, this process must take cognizance of the critical role of international actors and institutions in West Africa.
The recent news that government forces in violation of the 2003 Linas-Marcousis Agreement launched air strikes against the rebel-held northern part of the country threatens the fragile peace in Côte d’Ivoire. However peace is gradually returning to Liberia, and the various factions have been disarmed and disbanded in preparation for elections in 2005. Neighbouring Sierra Leone has held post-conflict elections and is undergoing reconciliation, re-integration and reconstruction. Thus, any resumption of hostilities in Côte d’Ivoire would endanger the newly won, but fragile, peace in the entire Mano River sub-region of West Africa. A lot of effort has to be made by regional actors (ECOWAS and the African Union) and the international community to ensure that civil war does not recur in Côte d’Ivoire, since it would affect the entire region.
The roots of conflict
While there have been various attempts to explain the roots of conflict, and recommend appropriate policies and strategies for conflict management and post-conflict transitions, more still has to be done to build peace in West Africa. The four broad approaches to explaining the roots of conflict in West Africa are: historical/political, socio-economic, population size and resource insecurities, and war economies. The historical and political approach to conflict focuses on the structural problems arising from the ways in which the states in West Africa were created by the forces of British, French and Portuguese imperialism. Some of these structural problems relate to the monocultural and dependent nature of the economies, authoritarian political cultures linked to the character of the colonial state that survived after independence and fuelled dictatorships and the politics of exclusion in most countries of the region.
The socio-economic contradictions that lie at the heart of the conflicts are linked to the ways in which the majority of the populace has been excluded from politics and governance, and denied access to resources and power. Attempts by the people to protest such exclusion and demand their rights as citizens were often met by brutal repression by security forces acting at the behest of the state. With all legitimate avenues for redress closed to them, and in the face of the loss of legitimacy of the state as a social force acting in the interest of all, it has been challenged by various social forces and armed groups. This has been a feature of the violence in the region, and is illustrated in the cases of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire.
Another dimension of the crisis in West Africa is linked to the collapse of the external sector of the primary product export economies in the 1980s following the collapse of international commodity prices. The resultant shocks generated by the fall in the prices of West Africa’s traditional exports had far-reaching social implications in the region. It led to increased pressures from the citizens for access to resources and democratisation, while the states sought to repress such demands by using force. In the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone, such pressures led to military coups, and the emergence of insurgency movements as the states buckled under the weight of their contradictions and social pressures. Elsewhere in Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Mali, Gambia, Burkina Faso and Senegal, the socio-economic crisis led to protracted struggles either against military regimes or one party states. These were further compounded by the adoption of IMF/World Bank-type Structural Adjustment Programmes by their governments. With the new emphasis on state retrenchment from the economy, removal of subsidies on social services and energy, more hardship was inflicted on the middle class and the poor, leading to unparalleled tensions and struggles for democratic opening up. It was within this context that some countries slid into civil war.
Some scholars have also tried to trace the roots of violent conflict in West Africa to the ways in which rapid population growth beyond the carrying capacity of the environment has bred resource scarcities and violence. It is believed that resource insecurity is at the heart of resource wars as people struggle over shrinking resources. However, it appears that the roots of conflict lie more in terms of distributive inequities and oppression. This is usually a situation in which the small elite controls a disproportionately large amount of resources at the expense of the majority of the populace.
The war economies’ approach imposes a logic of economic rationality on civil wars and violent conflict in West Africa. It seeks to explain conflict in relation to greed rather than grievance. This suggests that people engage in conflict either for the profit they will make from the plunder of natural resources or the opportunities that a breakdown of the system would provide for them to loot such resources. The implication of this perspective is not so much that it seeks to provide an economic model for civil wars, but that it also seeks to prove that civil wars cannot end except when economic opportunities for the combatants no longer exist. This approach has been used to explain the war that ravaged Sierra Leone and Liberia in terms of the quest of warlords for diamonds. The danger in this approach lies in its monocausality and the way it tends to conflate violence with economic rationality, and downplays the salience of other sources of conflict.
The roots of conflict in West Africa are much deeper and complex, and are embedded in the interplay of historical factors, socio-economic crisis, the legacies of authoritarianism and the politics of exclusion, international forces, and local struggles. It is from a holistic perspective on the roots of conflict that its transformation to peace can be engaged in a sustained and meaningful manner.
Transforming conflict into peace
West Africa is placed between the dire needs of post-conflict transitions and the challenges of democratic consolidation. Either way, there are no easy choices as the people who have borne the trauma of misrule and conflict have high expectations of the peace and democratic dividends. In all this, several issues are relevant; the nature of local politics, the economy, the role of international actors and regional institutions.
The nature of politics in West Africa is underlined by a zero-sum contest for power and access to resources. In spite of two decades of economic adjustment the state remains the focus of power and vortex of factional struggles for power. The democratic institutions in place are largely weak, while the political class is still influenced by the legacy of decades of military or one party rule. In this regard, the political process though formally democratic has been adversely affected by the reality that the character of the state has remained the same, and the hegemonic elite that is in power continues to rule rather than govern. Beyond participating in periodic elections, the people are largely alienated from democratic governance and its dividends, thereby further weakening the social-economic basis of their human security.
In terms of the role of international actors, while globalisation and economic reform have led to greater informal cross-border flows of goods and persons, there is also a large inflow of goods and capital from South Africa, Asia and the West. This has had implications for the economies of the region, particularly local manufacturers. As a result, unemployment, deepening poverty, falling prices of cash crops and reduced state spending on social welfare continue to pose serious problems for development within the region. It is also important to note that although ECOWAS has been active in promoting market integration as a way of pooling resources for economic growth across the region, this has met with limited success. Rather ECOWAS has demonstrated more competence in conflict management and peacekeeping, but still faces some limitations in terms of logistics and resources. It is in this connection that multilateral organisations like the United Nations, the European Union and other members of the international community have provided some support for ECOWAS peacekeeping operations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire. The need exists for increased support for peace building in West Africa.
West Africa appears not to have fully emerged from the legacy of linguistic divisions from the colonial period. The Francophone/Anglophone/Lusophone divides continue to persist, thereby weakening the unity and trust required for sustained regional integration. In addition, ECOWAS is affected by the lack of political will of its members, compounded by their economic weakness and lack of resources. There is also the need to strengthen its institutions and capacities, and transform the organisation in ways that integrate the participation of the people of West Africa in its affairs and decision-making processes.
For some time to come, post-conflict transitions will remain one of the most critical issues in West Africa. The most critical components of the process will include democratic transitions, demobilisation, reconciliation, re-integration, and reconstruction. Critical to these will be the demilitarisation of politics and governance, and the nurturing of a culture of civic engagement and popular participation. In relation to economic reconstruction, reforms that do not provide for the human security of the people will fail and increase the risk of reviving the roots of grievance. In the same manner issues of reconciliation and reintegration should provide concrete succour and justice both for the victims and perpetrators in ways that touch the person or group positively. Both at the national, ECOWAS and international levels, a lot will have to be done to rebuild the socio-political roots of peace and development. Ultimately however, the foundations of the transformation of conflict into peace rest upon the people, the political class and civil society, and the place of West Africa in the geo-politics and economics of a rapidly globalising world .
Selected reading
Abdullah, I. (Ed.), Between Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone War. Dakar: CODESRIA Books, 2004.
A debajo, A. and I. Rashid. (Eds), West Africa’s Security Challenges: Building Peace in a Troubled Region. Boulder and Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
Akindes, F., The Roots of the Military-Political Crises in Côte d’Ivoire. Uppsala: the Nordic Africa Institute, 2004. (Research Report, no. 128).
Ballentine, K. and J. Sherman, (Eds), The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance. Boulder and Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
Berdal, M. and D. Malone, Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil War. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2000.
Obi, C. “Civil Society, Good Governance and the Challenge of Regional Security in West Africa”. In R. Akindele (Ed.), Civil Society, Good Governance and the Challenge of Regional Security in West Africa, Lagos: AFSTRAG (in co-operation with Vantage Publishers), 2003.
Sesay, A. (Ed.), Civil Wars, Child Soldiers and Post-Conflict Peace-Building in West Africa. Ibadan: College Press, 2003.
West Africa Network for Peace-Building website: www.wanep.org
