Peace and Conflict in Africa: Reflections From an African Peacebuilder
Part II: Patterns of Peace and Peace Building: Lessons and Reflections
The following remarks were delivered by Ethiopian-born conflict mediator Hizkias Assefa, who was in residence at Brandeis University for a week during the 1999-2000 academic year, where he led faculty seminars on reconciliation, forgiveness and impunity.
Today I will talk about emerging patterns in conflict and peace in current-day Africa, and illustrate what I mean by telling you a story about a process of peace-building that I have been engaged in for the past six years. And then we can see what kinds of generalizations might be drawn from that experience. When we talk about conflict and peace in Africa, we can see about four patterns emerge. There are a group of countries, like Somalia and Sudan, which have been in crisis for decades and where there still seems to be no discernable signs for peace. Then, there are others like Mozambique and South Africa that have overcome conflicts and are now trying to build sustainable peace. In these countries, it might be a bit too early to talk about reconciliation, but they are working on it. Then there is a third category of countries that have begun building stable peace, but are recidivists. They are addicted to conflict and are slipping back into it. These are countries like Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda. A fourth pattern that is that of international wars. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we thought that there were primarily going to be internal wars. But in Africa, we have seen the resurgence of international wars. For example in the Congo, many countries, including non-African countries, are drawn into a conflict that revolves around the exploitation of resources in the Congo area. On one side you have Rwanda and Uganda fighting against the government of the Congo. Some people say the United States government is assisting them against the Congo. And on the other side are Zimbabwe, Namibia, Chad and Sudan that have come to the aid of the Congo.
And what are the responses for resolving conflict? We can identify a number of categories. One is direct negotiation between conflicting parties, such as what happened in South Africa between the white minority regime and the African National Congress. But the difficulty with direct negotiations is trying to get the parties to the table. The moment one side signifies that they want to talk, the other side takes this as a signal of weakness and tries to intensify its offenses. And neither side is willing to be the first to ask for negotiation. Therefore, an unmediated negotiation has been quite difficult in the African context.
There have also been a number of different kinds of mediation efforts made both by African states and outside states. Examples are the British mediation in Zimbabwe, the United States’ attempt in the Ethiopian conflict, and the Tanzanian mediation in Burundi and Rwanda. And then there are regional responses to conflict in Africa such as the Organization of East African States that is trying to intervene in Liberia and Sierra Leone by employing negotiation and military means to bring peace.
When we look at all these responses there is a certain pattern about them — they are undertaken by state actors: single states, international bodies or a group of states. Secondly, they are done at the top political level. They are what we call ‘top-down’ or
‘trickle-down’ approaches. The assumption is that if there is an agreement made at the political level, it will somehow percolate down to the rest of the society. But this assumption hasn’t held true in many instances. In international conflicts, if you negotiate between state leaders and they agree, to a very large extent you can expect this to hold for the rest of the society because nation-states are separated by boundaries. But when you talk about civil wars in which communities have turned against communities, just to have an agreement between leaders without involving the community in the reconciliation process is futile. Here peoples lives are so intertwined with each other that just signing a peace accord cannot dismiss the animosity and hostility that exists between them. So, in one way or another, communities must be part and parcel of this peace-building process.
We can identify two kinds of top-down processes. One is what we call “first track” which is highly visible, political and driven by power considerations. The mediation process that Richard Holbrook used in Kosovo and Bosnia is a good example of that kind of an approach. There is also what we call a “second-track” approach, which is quiet, behind-the-scenes, away from the media, aimed at developing trust and confidence and helping conflict parties work out their problems in a satisfactory way. This could be done by state actors, but in most instances no state actors are involved. A good example of this could be the Oslo accord, which got the Palestinians and the Israelis together. Among these various approaches, the power-based first-track one is considered efficient since that it can forge agreement quickly by either trying to punish those that are unwilling to agree, or by trying to provide economic inducement for those that cooperate. In this way, it can get to an agreement quicker than the alternative process of second track. But because the agreement does not take care of the deep interests and needs of the parties, it will collapse sooner or later. And we have seen a number of such agreements that have been signed and not respected later on. A good example of this is the Arusha accord of 1993 which was mediated by a lot of international actors including France, the United States and Britain and that ended the war between the insurgency of Rwanda and the government of Rwanda at that time. But, before the ink dried, the agreement collapsed and it led to one of the worst genocides in human history: the genocide of 1994.
Alternatively, the second track trust-based approaches are relatively inefficient since they take a long time to reach agreement. But the result of the agreement is more likely to stick. In fact, in Rwanda there were a number of attempts to get the rebels — the insurgency — to dialogue with the government in power, and there were many promising possibilities. However, the French government overtook this initiative and the whole methodology changed from trust to coercion and arm-twisting, which eventually led to the accord that ended up collapsing.
And increasingly, there is an emerging approach to peace building which is coming from the ground up. Comparatively, this approach is new and its methodology is not yet very well developed or understood. And what I will try to do is to illustrate this method by giving an example of a process that I have been engaged in for the past six years in the northern region of Ghana.
The conflict I am talking about happened in February 1994. It was called the Guinea Fowl War and how it came about is rather interesting.
In conclusion, it was the reconciliation process that challenged people to think of
a greater inter-ethnic regional identity. And recently we are increasingly discussing pan-Africanism. Of course, African identity is not an end in itself. We should be challenged to have an even greater identity — our human identity. Thank you.
Question and Answer
Expand All
Dr. Assefa: For me, peace building really implies working on peace from the grassroots up. I use the metaphor of constructing a house. When you build a house, you start from the foundation, then you build the walls and then the roof. For me, peace-building and the way I use it in my practice is trying to work with grassroots organizations like NGOs, women's groups, and youth groups to mobilize people to work together for peace and reconciliation in their society. For example, if the people have been denied peace because their leaders are at war with each other, we start by demanding peace from their leaders, and actively working for negotiations to identify alternatives to war. Or, in situations where societies have been torn apart by violence, peace buiding work begins by examining how reconciliation can be promoted between warring groups or groups that have suffered brutalities from each other.
Dr. Assefa: The current situation in Rwanda is very directly linked with what happened in that country during Belgium colonialism. And the conflict is astounding because the Hutus and the Tutsis of Rwanda are the same people; they speak the same language, they have the same culture, they intermarry, and they share the same geographical territory. Instead of thinking of them as ethnic groups it is probably more appropriate to consider them caste systems. To a large extent the Hutus are farmers, while the Tutsis are pasturalists. But what happened during the Belgium era was that the Belgians selectively privileged the Tutsis and gave them political power and the Tutsis became proxies for collecting the products that Belgium expected from Rwanda from the Hutus. Naturally this generated a tremendous animosity between the two groups as the Tutsis were now see as the agents of the foreign masters that exploited the poor Hutus. Ultimately the Belgians even began to identify physical characteristics that would distinguish the Hutu and the Tutsi. They said that a Tutsi is tall and has European features and is therefore qualified to govern, while the Hutu is much more African looking, and more appropriate for running non-administrative and non-government matter in the state. And after that, the distinction between Hutus and Tutsis began to take on a racial character. But this is not a watertight categorization because that there are still many Hutus that are tall and have Tutsi features and vice versa. In fact, during the war many people were killed by mistaken identity, and there were others that bribed their way to get a different identity. So it is the perception rather than the reality of differences between these people that really was the stuff of this conflict.
After the Belgians left, bad political leaders continued taking advantage of the situation. But the Hutus were numerically superior, and their leaders felt that the time had come for political power to be in their hands. Which meant that the governing Tutsis had to be thrown out. And this started a cycle of revenge that when the Hutus were in power they would punish the Tutsis for what they had done in the past, and when the Tutsis were in power they punished the Hutus for what they had done or what they might do. And this was the cycle that led to the genocide in April 1994.
Dr. Assefa: I think the Ethiopian-Eritrean War is one of those conflicts that is very difficult to describe or analyze because it doesn't fall into the frameworks that we usually have to understand and analyze conflicts. And what is most tragic about this is that when you look at this conflict on the people-to-people level, even at this stage where lots of brutalities have been committed, the readiness of people to forgive and reestablish the old relationship is very high. And this capacity for people to forgive is the kind of thing that also gives me hope about Africa.
Unfortunately, Ethiopia and Eritrea have not been blessed by leadership that tries to take advantage of the good in people. There is a sense of incompatibility between the leadership that is in Eritrea and in Ethiopia. The leaders in these two countries were very close colleagues at one time, but as soon as this conflict erupted they began to hit at each other's vulnerabilities and pushed it to a point of no return. And what is sad is that people are being held hostage by a conflict that is not serious enough to cause such bloodshed.
After all, there are many creative options to deal with a boundary issue. One possibility is to make the border loose so that people on both sides can maintain their common identity. But cutting the same people into two and giving them an artificial identity does not make sense to their history and to who they are. In fact, I am at a loss in terms of understanding that conflict. And many people are at a loss, which is why it has been so difficult to deal with. I have tried to work on a people-to-people reconciliation basis, and have been extremely encouraged by the kind of response that I was able to get both from the Ethiopian and the Eritrean side. Once I organized a meeting for about thirty officials from Ethiopia and twenty officials from Eritrea. The exchange that took place and the desire for reconciliation was amazing. But it does not seem to have political space, and this is its tragedy.
Dr. Assefa: I don't envy Obasanjo. He is has a very difficult balancing act. If he continues alienating the military I don't know how long he might stay in power. So, how does he bring about reform that's acceptable to his own followers, the military and the international community — particularly the World Bank and the IMF? So far, I think he is doing a good job. One of the things that I hear he has done is to restructure the military and to take out some of the corrupt military leaders that could be possible threats to him. But that doesn't give security because if a person has the intention to start an insurgency, it is not very difficult to do so. The other problem is that the IMF is putting a lot of pressure on Nigeria to repay its thirty billion dollar international debt. And therefore, instead of showing economic results from the reform process that he is undertaking in Nigeria, Obasanjo might have to use those same resources to repay the debt, and people will not see a difference. And they will ask, “We've got a new person but what difference has he made for us?” And this can create a new opposition that could undermine him. So I think it is too early to pass a verdict on his ability to bring about meaningful reform in Nigeria, but I commend him for his good start and the courage that he has shown in terms of dealing with the military.
Dr. Assefa: Of course, what happens in Africa is also connected to what happens in the rest of the world. And sometimes these are the kinds of things that we miss. The danger in that kind of thinking lies in externalizing everything and saying that everything bad and evil comes from outside. There are some bad and evil things that also come out of the continent of Africa. But there is a fertile ground in the international system that tends to nurture and take advantage of these kinds of behavior. Take Congo, which used to be Zaire — one of the most corrupt countries on earth that had an extremely brutal dictatorship. But, until recently, some of the greatest proponents of democracy including the United States and France, were its greatest supporters. They knew what was happening in the country but they never hesitated to provide weapons and advice for almost 30 years. So yes, outsiders did not make Mobutu. But, Mobutu would not have stayed as long as he did had he not been nurtured and supported by the international community. So, in a way, what makes dealing with African problems difficult is its interconnection with the global system. And in some instances, even if Africans were to say they want to have peace, the international system may not allow that to happen because it benefits from the consequence of conflict as arms suppliers, beneficiaries and illicit resource imports etc. Many are taking advantage of the tremendous wealth of Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. For example, during the brutal war in Liberia, the brother of the French prime minister was actively engaged in exporting timber out of Liberia. And these are the secondary parties that are very difficult to bring to the negotiating table and make peace-building even more difficult. Anyway, this is what I mean by a partnership between the North and South. And as much as there needs to be peace-building work in Africa, there also needs to be a similar drive in North America and in Europe. It is not only important to see what Africans could do to change the situation in Africa, but what it is that the big powers — the industrial and affluent North — can do to contribute to and restrain from the behavior that feeds these conflicts in Africa.
And often, Africans in the Diaspora are more extremists than Africans inside Africa. The latter have to be realistic about conflict and how to coexist with each other because coexistence is not a luxury — it is a necessity. So, my message is also to those Africans in the Diaspora that would have to learn how to take responsible leadership. We also need to develop a new ethic for the African intellectual who thinks that everything has to be criticized, and the role and responsibility of the intellectual ends in destroying — theoretically — whatever exists there. While we need academic honesty, we need have to also be constructive — we have the responsibility of also putting together.
Dr. Assefa: I think this is one of the difficulties of conflicts. To a certain extent, every conflict situation is unique and a solution has to be appropriate to that situation. And when it comes to African conflicts it is a great mistake to say that if this worked in one place, then it should work also in other places. However, we might be able to make observations. And there are lots of lessons that we can learn from each other in terms of various processes. We do not have to reinvent the wheel every time. In fact, there is a saying in my culture which says, “A fool learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
In the case of settler societies like Zimbabwe and in South Africa, I think the big danger is to realize, as in the example of South Africa, that because there has been a black take-over of political power the problem has not yet been resolved. In fact, you can even say an even more serious conflict is going on, which previously was blatant and easier to mobilize support from the world, but now has an invisible enemy. And to a certain extent, giving political power to blacks, while whites still control the economic system, is a way of perpetuating rather than resolving that conflict.
So, what happened under Mandela? What happened during that transition in South Africa? This is only the beginning of long journey for peace in South Africa. Sometimes we make the mistake of confusing the first step with the last, and we forget the commitment that we have to keep on with this work. And when things go back to the way they were before, we become easily disillusioned and say “Well, we tried it, it doesn't work, therefore it must be the fault of these people.” But the fault is in our thinking because this is not a short-term problem. If it took decades to develop, it is going to take decades to solve. Naturally we should celebrate hope when we see it, but we should not be deceived by what is happening on the outside. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in South Africa.
Dr. Assefa: It is very important to think of what kind of models we are leaving behind for our youth. And it's very important to involve them early enough and help them to begin making their own contributions. I realized recently that my mother suffers from rheumatism and she has been advised by doctors to rest. But when I call home, I don't find her. And that upsets me, because her suffering is not just hers, it is also mine. And once I had the opportunity to confront her, and after a lot of pushing, I came to learn that she and another seven or eight women had organized to go from community to community, to identify people that have been alienated from each other during a terrible period in my country which we called Red Terror and White Terror, and bring them together. And the more I pushed her, the more I found out that in close to a three-year period they had managed to reconcile over a thousand people. And the kinds of things that they were doing were just the reverse of what my theoretical training would tell me to do in those kinds of situations. Well, it humbled me tremendously that they didn't have to do a PhD in conflict resolution to do this marvelous work that I am having difficulty doing with all my "training, skills, and experience." So perhaps there were some innate characteristics in her and in the environment that I grew up in that passed certain values onto me.
I remember how much of a peacemaker my mother was. An aspect of my mother, which is also an important part of peace making, is her capacity to say that nothing is too small to share. It would amaze me how, if there were visitors and we and had something at home, she would bring it out, multiply it and share it with everybody there. This capacity to make something large out of something small is a characteristic of traditional societies that is being replaced by the so-called moral value that more is better.