Adebajo, Adekeye; Landsberg, Chris-Pax Africana

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Pax Africana in the age of extremesAdekeye Adebajo a & Chris Landsberg ba Research associate at the International Peace Academy, Oxford University, New Yorkb Deputy director of the Centre for Policy Studies, Oxford University, Johannesburg

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To cite this article: Adekeye Adebajo & Chris Landsberg (2000): Pax Africana in the age of extremes, South African Journal ofInternational Affairs, 7:1, 11-26

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11

Pax Africana in the Age of Extremes

Adekeye Adebajo and Chris Landsberg1

Introduction

Eric Hobsbawm described the bloody 20th century as the age of extremes.One hundred years of troubles saw Europe drag the rest of the world into

its two civil wars and suffer through communism, fascism, and a genocidalholocaust. Post-colonial Africa has experienced its own age of extremes.Since 1960, more than 32 African wars have resulted in over seven milliondeaths and spawned more than nine million refugees. Ali Mazrui, theforemost academic prophet of Pax Africana, was one of the earliest analyststo articulate the need for Africans to take on the responsibility of policingtheir own continent. Kwame Nkrumah was an early political visionary whounsuccessfully pushed for an all-African army to keep peace on thecontinent. African leaders were too busy attempting to transform theirnewly-independent states into nations; their sovereignty was still too tenuousto cede to a supranational military body. But with conflicts continuing torage in parts of the African continent, the need for a Pax Africana is aspressing today as it was four decades ago.

This essay will argue that Africa's conflicts have both internal and externalroots. We will situate the causes of African conflicts in both contemporaryand historical structures and events. Focusing on post-Cold War Africa, theessay will examine the various methods and actors available forextinguishing local brushfires — hegemonic pacification, balance of power,concert of powers, regional security mechanisms, coalitions of small states,eminent elders, civil societies — and judge their efficacy. We will challengecalls by Western analysts for mercenaries and private security outfits to beintroduced into African conflicts as an alternative to Africa's weak armies.This is an option that we regard as irresponsible and illegitimate. Instead, we

1 ADEKEYE ADEBAJO is a research associate at the International Peace Academy in NewYork. CHRIS LANDSBERG is deputy director of the Centre for Policy Studies inJohannesburg. Both were Rhodes scholars at Oxford University and Hamburg fellowsat Stanford University.

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suggest that while regional security efforts by African actors have been farfrom perfect, supporting such efforts, as well as strengthening the Africanstate, is still the most effective means of managing conflicts on the continent.

The causes of Africa's conflicts

Colonialism and its legacies

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, noted in his 1998 report on 'thecauses of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainabledevelopment in Africa' that the causes of African conflicts are multifacetedand include historical, external, and internal factors. Scholars like MahmoodMamdani have also stressed the profound effect of colonialism and the ColdWar in shaping the African state system. Crises of legitimacy, a lack ofpolitical accommodation, and the existence of weak states are major factorscontributing to African conflicts. Colonialism created the conditions formany of the ethnic grievances of the post-independence era, througharbitrarily drawn colonial boundaries which merely reflected the politicalcompromises of European colonial overlords rather than the politicalconsensus reached by African peoples. British colonial policies in Sudan andNigeria, Portuguese policies in Angola and Mozambique, and Belgianpolicies in Burundi and Rwanda sowed the seeds for future conflicts.Unresolved disputes concerning inherited colonial borders resulted in post-independence conflicts between Burkina Faso and Mali, Nigeria andCameroon, and Morocco and Algeria. Irredentist claims have been made byMorocco in Western Sahara, Somalia in Ethiopia, and Libya in Chad.

European imperialists embarked on a scramble for the riches of the Africancontinent, imposing autocratic colonial rule that only belatedly and half-heartedly undertook political and socio-economic reform to prepare the newAfrican states for independence. Tanzania and Zambia had fewer than 100university graduates at independence; Zaïre had fewer than 10. No durableinstitutions were built to manage conflicts and to facilitate effectivegovernance. The entrenched colonial trading patterns and continuingpolitical ties, particularly in Gallic Africa, further limited the optionsavailable to African leaders. As the late Claude Ake noted: at independence,African leaders were in no position to pursue development; they were tooengrossed in the struggle for survival and the need to cope with the manyproblems threatening their states and their power. Non-alignment and self-sufficiency became mere slogans, representing more hope than reality.

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The Cold War circus in Africa

The Cold War affected the African state system by prolonging destabilisingliberation wars and creating military stalemates. Following independence,Africa became a strategic playground for the superpowers and the Frenchgendarmerie. The early difficulties encountered by the UN in putting theZairean Humpty Dumpty back together again amidst superpower rivalry ledthe global body to avoid entanglements in African civil wars. The Africancontinent was flooded with arms, leading to a continuation of conflicts inAngola, Ethiopia and Mozambique, and the delaying of the liberation ofZimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

After the Berlin wall fell and communism collapsed, the West abandonedAfrican autocrats who had served as reliable Cold War allies. The departureof the Cold Warriors from Africa has combined with the indifference of theWest to African suffering following the Somali débâcle in 1993. The clearestsign of this indifference was the stalling of action by Western powers toprevent genocide in Rwanda in 1994. As Sudanese scholar, Francis Dengcorrectly observed, Africans have now been forced to recognise that theworld does not care much about them and that they must take their destiniesinto their own hands.

Even as the foreign aid that sustained Cold War clients in power was cut off,their trading networks came under escalating challenges from armedrebellions, which increasingly replaced military coups as the main methodfor removing sitting regimes. Economic reforms mandated by the BrettonWoods institutions further eroded the control of African autocrats, as urbanriots and social instability accompanied cuts in health and education, andthe removal of government subsidies on food and fuel. In an increasingnumber of states, governments could not exercise the normal state functionsof providing security, order and social services to their citizens, and lostcontrol over the monopoly of violence and state bureaucracies. Africa'serstwhile strongmen revealed themselves to be emperors without clothes.Street protests led to multiparty reforms of varying degrees of transparency,while warlords led popular rebellions from the countryside to topple ColdWar dinosaurs like Zaire's Mobutu, Somalia's Barre, and Liberia's Doe.

Strong rulers, weak states

Besides these external sources of conflict, Africa's post-independenceleaders, notably through their brutal power struggles and politics of socialexclusion, have also contributed to conflicts on the continent. Federation

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and the conceding of autonomy to minority groups were rejected by manynation-builders, who argued that one-party states were the only means toavoid destabilising ethnic wars and to preserve the unity necessary to buildtheir nations. Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania, Kenya, Zaïre, Malawi, Algeria,Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire were some of the early pioneers. In South Africaand Rhodesia, racist white regimes obdurately maintained their atavisticalbinocracies.

The African state became a highly contested arena, and spawned an era ofpersonalised rule. The centralisation of state power by autocrats preservedtheir own rule but eventually led, in cases like Ethiopia, Liberia, Zaïre andSomalia, to injustices that perpetuated the very conflicts they claimed to beattempting to avoid. Ethno-regional differences were exacerbated bynepotism and favouritism in appointments to military, political, andbureaucratic positions. The state became a cash cow to be milked forpolitical patronage. Urban bias in development policies also created anaggrieved countryside full of a ready army of unemployed youth who havetoday become the cannon fodder of Africa's warlords. The era of personalrule in Africa was carried to absurd levels of tragi-comic farce as tyrannical'presidents-for-life' like Emperor Bokassa, Field Marshall Idi Amin, Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe, Mobutu Sese Seko and Macias Nguema squanderedtheir countries' wealth and murdered their own citizens.

Africa's military 'men on horseback' also made a spectacular entry on to thepolitical stage, led by Egypt's Nasser in 1952. There was too much militaryin politics and too much politics in the military. But Africa's military brasshats failed as spectacularly as the politicians to transform their societies inany fundamental way. They often relied heavily on powerful civil servantsand opportunistic political classes to rule, and their claims to legitimacywere even more threadbare than those of the politicians they displaced. InAfrica's four post-independence decades, 80 successful military coups d'étatwere staged, and over two dozen leaders assassinated.

African solutions to African problems

Old conflicts, new actors

There are several factors that have hampered efforts at finding Africansolutions to Africa's post-Cold War conflicts. Domestically, some belligerentswere never really interested in resolving conflicts despite signing peaceagreements. They were more interested in other rationales: the belief in thepossibility of total victory and their desire to inherit the entire state; the

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economic benefits they derived from the exploitation of economicresources; the desire to secede from a territory as the only long-term methodof achieving security. At the subregional level, many states have failed toagree on a common strategy to resolve conflicts. Some have developedparochial political and economic interests in the crises and supportedindividual factions, leading to neighbourhood rivalries in efforts to preservesubregional power balances. This has resulted in the questioning of thelegitimacy of regional peacekeepers, and sometimes to the withholding ofexternal support for their efforts. Finally, Africa's weak armies still lack the.logistical and financial means to act effectively in enforcing or keeping thepeace.

The end of the Cold War and the political liberation of Africa have changedboth the role and nature of African actors seeking to resolve the continent'sconflicts. Regional actors like the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), theEconomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the EconomicCommunity of Central African States (ECCAS), the Southern AfricanDevelopment Community (SADC), and the Intergovernmental Authority forDevelopment (IGAD), many of them primarily economic organisations, havehad to adapt to new realities, and carve out niches for themselves in Africa'sevolving security architecture. Internal conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone,Guinea-Bissau, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congo-Brazzaville, and Lesotho have seen interventions by neighbouring states.New actors and new mechanisms of security, both collective and unilateral,such as aspiring hegemons, small states, eminent elders, civil societies, andgreedy mercenaries have all emerged as players in African conflicts.

With the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from Somalia and Rwanda, thepowerful members of the UN Security Council became unwilling to bolsterthe role of the UN in managing African conflicts. The world's sole 'hyperpower', America, not only urged the UN to disengage from Africa, but alsocontributed to disempowering the world organisation by irresponsiblycontributing to its financial crisis. With the West unwilling to send its boysto die in Africa, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali hadlittle choice but to stress the importance of Africa's regional organisations inkeeping the continental peace. Pax Africana became a matter of practicalnecessity rather than a forlorn hope.

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Regional hegemons

The two African states that have demonstrated the potential to act as regionalhegemons in post-Cold War Africa are Nigeria and South Africa. TheECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) interventions in Liberiaand Sierra Leone were the most visible manifestations of an attempt athegemonic pacification. A Nigerian-led force intervened in former Americanand British spheres of influence that had become areas of indifference tomuch of the world. The diminished French role in Africa after débâcles inRwanda and Zaïre seemed to offer the chance for Nigeria to fulfil itsleadership ambitions in west Africa.

But the financial and logistical difficulties experienced by ECOMOG, theopposition of several francophone states to what they condemned as aNigerian attempt to dominate the subregion, and the continuation of fragileand precarious security situations in Liberia and Sierra Leone, revealed theshortcomings of Pax Nigeriana. Facing more pressure than his militarypredecessors, the new Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has alreadyresponded to the hostility of the Nigerian parliament, press and publiccaused by the high costs of the missions in west Africa by starting a militarywithdrawal from Sierra Leone. It is unlikely that Nigeria will continue itssubregional fire-fighting role unless the burden is more equitably sharedwith other regional and extra-regional actors.

South Africa is potentially Africa's most effective hegemon. But Pretoriacarries historical baggage: it used its power destructively during theapartheid era by destabilising its neighbours. This inheritance, coupled withpressing domestic problems, caused Nelson Mandela to shy away fromattempting to impose a Pax Pretoriana on regional conflicts in the post-apartheid era. A blushing South Africa eventually lost its peacekeepingvirginity by sending armed forces to Lesotho in 1998, along with Botswana.Despite the mission's inauspicious start, which led to widespread lootingand killings, a fragile peace was eventually established, allowing for politicaldialogue. Like Nigeria, South Africa as hegemon would face challenges fromstates like Zimbabwe and Namibia, which have already pursued their ownindependent policies in the DRC in defiance of Pretoria's wishes. UnlessThabo Mbeki builds regional alliances and coalitions with countries such asZimbabwe and Namibia, he will find it difficult to realise his regionalobjectives.

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Balance of power

During the 19ch century, Europe's Great Powers attempted to keep thecontinental peace through an intricate system of alliances in which statesthrew their weight behind others to oppose challenges to the regional order,in an effort to balance the strength of an expansionist state or rival alliance.A similar pattern of security may be evolving in central Africa. Militaryalliances, secret agreements, and regional congresses are the stuff ofbalance-of-power politics in this subregion. But this system of security isnotoriously unstable. Measuring a balance is rarely an exact science, andstates usually prefer an imbalance of power in their own favour. It ishowever worth keeping in mind that the rules of central Africa's balance ofpower game have still not been fixed, the players do not even consciouslytalk of themselves as engaging in such a game, and no territorial adjustmentsto satisfy interested parties have yet been reached.

In the DRC, three SADC members intervened militarily to come to therescue of beleaguered President Laurent Kabila. During Mobutu's end-gamein Zaïre, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Angola were deeply embroiled inthe war and eventually delivered Kabila to power. Following tensionsbetween Kabila and Kagame, Rwanda and Uganda sought to replace Kabilawith a more pliant client. Not only did these actions break the importantpost-independence African taboo on non-intervention in the internal affairsof other states, they also served to balkanise the entire central and southernAfrican subregions. Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad reacted bysending troops to assist Kabila in an attempt to restore the regional balanceof power and to help maintain their own influence in the region. Kagameand Museveni's Bismarckian delusions were embarrassingly exposed, andtheir support for separate rebel factions has led to military clashes betweentheir troops in Kisangani.

A similar security pattern may be emerging in Angola, where a Congo-styleintervention by Zimbabwe and Namibia is a distinct possibility. Zimbabwe,Namibia, Angola and Congo have signed a mutual defence pact formalisingtheir anti-Uganda/Rwanda alliance. Amid these conflicts, South Africa hasconducted a policy of not-so-splendid isolation under Mandela. UnlikeBritain, which maintained the European balance in an earlier age, Pretoriahas been reluctant to throw in its weight militarily to maintain a regionalequilibrium. Instead, it has tried to rely strictly on diplomatic tools. But evenif only to provide military peacekeepers to guarantee negotiated settlements,Pretoria will eventually have to shed its reluctance to put its military musclewhere its diplomatic mouth is. Mbeki has already agreed to send South

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African troops to enforce a peace agreement in the DRC, perhaps markinga major shift from the Mandela era.

A concert of African powers

A concert of African powers, modelled on Metternich's European concert ofthe 19lh century, would see the continent's potential great powers — Algeria,DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa — come together ina bid to impose regional order by maintaining a consensus of the strongagainst the weak, backed up by unassailable military might. But the difficultyof this approach is that Africa's giants do not yet perceive common interestsin such a security system, and some of them — Algeria, DRC, Ethiopia — arefacing internal and external military threats that continue to sap theirstrength. But ad hoc coalitions of some of these states could still act inconcert to promote continental stability. The most obvious example is theevolving alliance between South Africa and Nigeria. Evidence suggests thatthese two African powers collectively have the potential to fill the vacuumcreated by the departure of external powers.

South Africa and Nigeria are responsible for over half of sub-Saharan Africa'seconomic strength and have two of the continent's largest armies. Obasanjohas already called for deeper and wider co-operation between ECOWASand SADC in conflict resolution. During the recent OAU summit in Algiers,Mbeki and Obasanjo articulated what amounted to an emerging Africandoctrine: the denunciation of military coups d'état as a form of regimechange in Africa. These leaders are essentially promoting the need for apolitics of democratic contestation in Africa. They put potential putschistson notice by warning that they will consider putting in place punitivemeasures against the perpetrators of coups in Africa. They toyed with the'yellow card', 'red card' football analogy as forms of punishment: a warningwould first be issued to putschists and efforts made to persuade them toreverse course; if this failed, automatic moves would be made to expel theputschists from the OAU, and economic sanctions would eventually beslapped on them.

The articulation of this emerging African doctrine came in the wake ofseveral statements by both Mbeki and Obasanjo that their two countriesneed to cement a special relationship in the interest of the promotion ofdemocracy, peace and stability in Africa. Both countries are in the processof establishing a bi-national commission that will be led by their twopresidents. Under Mbeki, South Africa will have to be activated to play a

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more active diplomatic, economic, and military role in Africa. Burundi'sBuyoya has already successfully approached Mbeki to help mediate hiscountry's six-year conflict, while Kabila has asked for Pretoria's assistance inreconstructing his shattered economy. Nigeria could become instrumentalin nudging South Africa into becoming more activist in keeping thecontinental peace. Both countries could end up being the conductorsdirecting the tuneful symphonies of Africa's security concert. A significantAfrican alliance may be in gestation.

Regional security mechanisms

Regional security mechanisms are systems of'collective security' in whichstates are expected to participate as roughly equal partners in efforts tostabilise their neighbourhoods. The disadvantage of some of thesemechanisms is that subregional states tend to have an interest in theconflicts, support different factions, and are often regarded with suspicionby the belligerents. The clear advantage is that such states tend tounderstand their subregions better than others and have a real stake inresolving the conflict, not out of sheer altruism or moral obligation, but dueto the threat of instability affecting their own countries. Even in cases ofconflicting interests, the existence of regional mechanisms gives local actorsa forum in which to attempt to narrow their differences and forge commonpositions. The UN and OAU could send peacekeepers and envoys to makesubregional efforts more neutral, as has occurred in Liberia and Sierra Leone.The ECOMOG experiences in west Africa and SADC's difficulties in centralAfrica serve to illustrate the importance of building permanent securitymechanisms in Africa.

The OAU has historically been weakened by financial and capacityconstraints. In the post-Cold War era, it increasingly sees itself as a bridge-builder between various African regional organisations. The OAUMechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, and Resolution stressesthe early detection and prevention of conflicts before they erupt. It hascreated military and political institutions to improve its logisticaleffectiveness and decision-making process. In recognition of its ownorganisational limitations, the OAU has left large-scale peacekeepingmissions to the subregions and the UN, deploying instead military andelectoral observers and special envoys to conflict areas like Burundi,Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Comoros, Gabon,Zambia, Zaïre, Togo, Liberia,and Sierra Leone. The OAU still has staffing problems and can sometimesbe too politically cautious. Its links with subregional organisations need to

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be strengthened, and it must design a proper division of labour with themwhereby it can lend legitimacy to interventions through its special envoysand observers, while co-ordinating the deployment of troops andinformation-sharing between subregions.

In west and central Africa, subregional leaders have agreed to the creationof a security mechanism to manage conflicts. They have committed tostrengthening the powers and decision-making bodies of their subregionalsecretariats, ECOWAS and ECCAS, in the security field, and establishingearly-warning systems involving information bureaux. Both subregions havesigned non-aggression pacts. In southern Africa, the fledgling SADC Organon Politics, Defence and Security has been embroiled in regional politics,with its Zimbabwean chair accused of taking unilateral decisions. With arecent agreement having apparently been reached on the rotation of thechair and consultation with other states, there are hopes that SADC memberswill ratify the draft protocol to render the Organ operational. Joint militaryexercises have already been conducted by the armies of all three subregions.ECOWAS has gone a step further in proposing a stand-by force of brigadesize consisting of national units for use in future interventions. Despite theseencouraging steps, subregional divisions still continue to hamper efforts tomanage conflicts in the DRC and Sierra Leone. ECOWAS, ECCAS andSADC, like the OAU, will also have to ensure that they hire a professionalstaff to run their security mechanisms and that their members pay their dues.

There have been efforts to create security mechanisms in two other Africansubregions. On the Horn of Africa, IGAD has been spectacularly ineffectualin efforts to resolve the Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan conflicts. TheSudan conflict has been caught up in subregional splits similar to thosewhich bedevilled efforts in west and central Africa. The support of Ethiopia,Eritrea and Uganda for the SPLA rebels has made compromise difficult. InNorth Africa, Algeria and Morocco have used the Western Sahara as a stagefor pursuing their regional rivalry in the Maghreb, with Algeria backingPOLISARIO independence fighters against the Moroccan occupation.Though the identification of voters by the UN fora planned referendum inWestern Sahara in 2000 is nearing completion, it is still unclear whether thevote will ever take place. This 25-year dispute, coupled with the bloody civilwar in Algeria, has hampered the effectiveness of the subregion's ArabMaghreb Union (AMU).

Another difficulty in establishing Africa's security mechanisms has been therole of external actors. America, Britain, and France have been divisive in

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their assistance to Africa's security mechanisms, raising suspicions amongAfricans of Western efforts to maintain indirect 'spheres of influence' inAfrica. Each country has supported military exercises and set up trainingschools without much co-ordination among contributing countries orconsultation with African states. This led to fierce opposition to theAmerican 'African Crisis Response Initiative' (ACRI), which has so farinvolved a select group of favoured recipients in peacekeeping training andlogistical support. The financial and logistical assistance of these externalactors will still be crucial for Africa's cash-strapped armies, but for suchassistance to be effective, it must be given after consultation with Africansto determine their needs.

Small states, big conflicts

If the conflicts currently raging in Africa are anything to go by, then otherapproaches to managing conflicts besides hegemony, concerts of powerandsecurity mechanisms should also be considered. One possible approach isto focus on building ad hoc coalitions of 'willing' small African states tocomplement security mechanisms. A precedent was set in February 1997when Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Mali, Senegal and Togo sent apeacekeeping mission, eventually under UN auspices, to monitor theconflict in the Central African Republic (CAR). Though there are continuingtensions in Bangui that have periodically had to be defused by thepeacekeepers, the peace appears to have held. Events in CAR suggest thatconflicts on the continent can sometimes be managed through suchpartnerships rather than through the development of ponderous andambitious structures that are unable to respond flexibly to crises. A coalitionof small states could provide another dimension where subregional solutionsare not viable or fail to provide a solution to a crisis.

Apart from the CAR example, it should be remembered that many smallstates on the continent have helped to keep the peace. Several such stateshave reasonably good infantry units. Over 20 African states have beeninvolved in UN peacekeeping missions abroad: Ghanaians have kept peacein Lebanon; Senegalese in Kuwait; Botswanans in Somalia; Zambians inMozambique; Ethiopians, Malians and Malawians in Rwanda; andTanzanians and Namibians in Angola. To improve their armies, these statesneed serviceable weapons, good communications equipment, tacticalmobility, logistical support, and knowledge of basic doctrine.

The main advantage of a coalition of small states is that it avoids the political

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baggage and interests that regional hegemons carry into such interventions.It can help allay suspicions about the motives of the ¡ntervenors and helpreassure belligerents of the neutrality of the mission. But the Guinea-Bissaucase also exposes the weaknesses of this approach. Senegalese and Guiñeansoldiers were no more successful than Gambian, Béninois, Nigérien andTogolese troops in imposing a political settlement on the warring factions inGuinea-Bissau. The issue was settled by military force only in May 1999,leading to the exit of the peacekeepers. The absence of Nigeria from thisintervention deprived the mission of vital logistical and financial supportsufficient to keep ECOMOG alive in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Lacking theregional Gulliver, the Lilliputian peacekeepers had to withdraw from Bissauafter the capital had been overrun by General Mane's forces. The two casesserve to stress the point that peacekeepers can achieve their goals only whenthe parties to the conflict are genuinely ready to stop fighting, and have notjust accepted the force for purely tactical reasons.

Of wily wise men, eminent elders, and civil societies

It is important to note that military solutions can be only short-term band-aids to more complex and deep-rooted social, economic, and politicaldomestic problems. External military power can provide peaceful conditionsto work out differences between parties, but viable institutions for managingconflicts and preventing them from becoming violent will still have to bebuilt. The weapons of the weak in Africa may turn out to be smart diplomatsto undertake preventive d ¡plomacy and negotiate astute accords, rather thansmart bombs to undertake humanitarian war.

There are other non-military approaches to managing conflicts. The OAUhas created several aa1 hoc committees of 'wise men' to mediate conflicts inthe Western Sahara, Chad/Libya and Senegal/Mauritania. 'Presidentialmediation' has also been undertaken by several African leaders: HaileSelassie and Modibo Keita in the Morocco-Algeria conflict; Omar Bongo,Blaise Compaoré, Idriss Deby, and Amadou Touré in the CAR; JuliusNyerere in Burundi; and Mandela and Mugabe in Lesotho. Africa's regionalmechanisms all support the idea of a Council of African elders, consistingof former heads of state and prominent leaders, to promote peace anddemocracy in Africa.

Aside from eminent elders, Africa's civil society actors — women's groups,religious leaders, journalists, the business community and academics—havealso been involved in efforts at promoting local justice and national

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reconciliation, socio-economic reconstruction, integration of child soldiersinto society, and collecting information ior early warning systems. Women'sgroups in Mali have been involved in efforts to mediate the Tuareg problem,religious groups in Liberia devised the first peace plan to resolve the civilconflict, and women's groups in Sierra Leone pressured the military to cedepower in 1996.

But despite these noble efforts, it should be acknowledged that civil society'sinfluence on conflicts has not always been benign. In Rwanda, the mediawas involved in 'hate radio' inciting the killing of Tutsis, while local groups-from Somalia to Angola have been involved in arms trafficking. One shouldalso not overestimate the ability of civil society actors to temper the excessesof warlords in civil conflicts: in Liberia, religious groups proposed but thewarlords disposed; in Sierra Leone, the women were able to push out thesoldiers but not defeat the rebels. In both cases, power largely flowed fromthe barrel of a gun rather than from local elders, civic groups, or traditionalchiefs.

White mercenaries, black armies

Turning now to the role of mercenaries in Africa, it is clear that while theCold War's end has forced Africans to seek indigenous solutions to thecontinent's conflicts, post-Cold War vacuums have also encouraged somenon-state actors to promote anachronistic solutions to the continent'sconflicts. Many Western academics, humanitarianists, and journalists havepushed for the use of mercenaries, recruited main ly from former white SouthAfrican and European soldiers, to be deployed in African conflicts to savethe 'natives' from themselves. Many Africans are critical of this practice andhave instead focused on developing their own regional securitymechanisms. Even governments like Angola and Sierra Leone that haveemployed the services of mercenaries over the past five years, haveabandoned their use following political pressure. We provide fourarguments against the use of mercenaries and in favour of strengtheningregional mechanisms.

• First, regional security mechanisms are far more representative andaccountable than mercenary outfits. ECOMOG, for instance, had to sendreports to ECOWAS and the UN and account for its actions in Liberiaand Sierra Leone. Its interventions sought and eventually obtainedinternational legitimacy, which mercenaries, with no international legalstanding, have little chance of obtaining.

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• Second, regional security systems can more easily be democratised andeven legitimised with the participation of extra-subregional actors andlocal civil society actors. ECOMOG may have been considered aNigerian-dominated effort, but Nigeria did not prevent Burkinabé,Ivorian, Malian, Nigérien, Senegalese, Ugandan, Tanzanian and UNpeacekeepers from diversifying the military presence in Liberia. The UNand OAU also sent their own special envoys. In both Liberia and SierraLeone, domestic civil society groups played an active role in the peaceprocess.

• Third, mercenaries in Africa have deservedly acquired a reputation aspsychopathic 'dogs of war' after committing atrocities against civilians.They cannot be held accountable for such actions in the way thatmembers of national or international forces can, since they have no legalstatus and the governments who hire them are often unwilling to offendthose on whom they depend to provide security. Mercenaries typicallyhave little knowledge of, or desire to get to know, African societies andtheir people, and enter conflicts not so much to bring and keep thepeace, but to build and keep their bank accounts. Some ECOMOCtroops committed atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as did theirWestern counterparts in Somalia. Because international pressure wasbrought to bear on the ECOMOG High Command it was ultimatelyforced to justify its soldiers' actions. In some cases, individuals wereactually punished for crimes committed.

• Fourth and finally, it is in the interest of mercenaries to prolong conflicts.In contrast, for Africans the fact that conflicts directly affect the securityand stability of most African states — through refugees, arms traffickingand border incursions — gives them an incentive, in many cases, to tryto end the conflicts.

Conclusion

The approaches to conflict management outlined in this essay are, of course,not mutually exclusive and can sometimes be used in combination. Aconcert of powers has historically operated a balance of power system, andeven within the 'collective security' system of the regional mechanisms,there is scope for the prominence of powerful actors. Without regionalhegemons lending their diplomatic weight, economic resources, andmilitary muscle, it is hard to imagine a regional security mechanismsucceeding in west or southern Africa. The use of trouble-shooting eminentelders can also be combined with regional security mechanisms or concerts

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Adebayo and Landsberg: Pax Africana In the Age of Extremes 25

of power. Africa's security systems are still in the process of being workedout. The continental security architecture for the next millennium is stillbeing painstakingly built, block by block, almost unconsciously. This essayhas captured only some of the trends and possibilities of Pax Africana.

We argued at the start that the legacy of colonial borders has been one ofthe main factors contributing to African conflicts. Some prominent Africanslike Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka have asked that the continent's colonially-inherited map be redrawn to reflect better the ethnic realities of its societies.However, these borders cannot be so easily changed through another Berlinconference in Africa: entrenched élites and new states are unwilling to giveup their privileges and territories. The OAU's founding fathers froze thecolonially-imposed map of Africa in 1963, not because they were contentto live happily with externally-ordained frontiers, but because they saw noother practical solutions to preserving the peace on a fragile continent ofunconsol¡dated and insecure states.

With no consensus existing to change the borders at the negotiating table,it was clear that such efforts would occur on the battlefield. With all statesvulnerable to such challenges, universal maintenance of the status quoappeared the best way of establishing predictable rules of conduct andavoiding perennial border claims. Current events between Ethiopia andEritrea seem to confirm the wisdom of opposing secessionist efforts inKatanga and Biafra. But new leaders like Charles Taylor, Yoweri Museveniand Paul Kagame, who achieved power largely through armed force, seemless inclined to observe this post-colonial norm.

We also argued that the end of the Cold War left security vacuums in Africawhich regional actors have attempted to fill. But the inability of Africansoldiers and mediators to defeat the ambitions of local warlords has led toefforts to include them in peace agreements. The appeasement of warlordsand the power-sharing arrangements that have been reached in Liberia,Sierra Leone, Mozambique, and Angola have so far been unsuccessful. Onlyin Mozambique does the deal appear to be holding. It is therefore importantthat peace agreements not simply restore the status quo ante bellum and thestructures that led to the conflict in the first place; inclusive institutions muststill be built and grievances corrected to ensure durable peace.

One must always remember, however, that African peacemakers, unlikepolicy boffins and armchair critics, inhabit a practical world, whereresources are short and options limited. It is no good calling for the

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exclusion from negotiations and the trial of warlords if the counterforceneeded to achieve these goals simply does not exist. A NATO-stylehumanitarian intervention combining awesome military prowess withmultilateral diplomacy seems decades away in the African context. For now,African states have to be content with their low-tech alternatives that seekto stem the destabilising flows of refugees and arms across borders. Theywill have to manage the sources of conflicts through their modest diplomaticand military tools, while hoping that the international community providesthe resources for humanitarian assistance, strengthening institutions, andreconstructing and rehabilitating war-torn societies.

A central aspect of understanding contemporary African politics is to see itprimarily as a crisis of the state. Many observers of African politics havetended to ignore the degree to which neither democracy nor stability arepossible unless the state functions effectively, as analysts like AdebayoOlukoshi have noted. The state is not merely an instrument of publicmanagement, or consumer and distributor of goods; it is fundamentally alsoa manager of disputes and conflicts. Indeed, the state's primary function isto maintain order. The continuation of conflicts in Africa should thereforebe seen as a sign of the weakness of the state. The inability of many Africanstates to maintain effective order and resolve conflicts has been a primarymotivation behind the militarisation of the African state. It is therefore vitalthat the African state be strengthened as a means of resolving conflicts.Elections in Angola, Burundi, Liberia and Sierra Leone have failed to bringlasting peace, and in some cases even led to renewed fighting.

Post-independence Africa has experienced both successes and failures. Thepolitical, military and diplomatic energies of African leaders and states havepaid off in the liberation of the entire continent from foreign rule. The morerepresentative forms of government that arose in the 1990s encourage hopesfor a more democratic future for the continent. But contrasting with thesepositive developments have been the spate of conflicts, rebellions, refugeecrises and the continuing impoverishment of Africa's masses. The two forcesidentified at the start of the essay as having crippled African states at birth —colonialism and the Cold War — have now receded into the past. But theirlegacies remain to haunt the present. If Africa is to have a future worthcelebrating in the next millennium, fulfilling hopes for a renaissance, a newgeneration of Africans will have to muster the ingenuity and courage tomake the dream of Pax Africana a living reality.

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