Conflict resolution in Africa

Abstract

In an attempt to draw lessons from African experience with conflict resolution, this paper examines three disputes: the Western Sahara conflict between Morocco and the Polisario, the thirty-year armed strife between North and South Sudan and the emergence of the breakaway Somaliland following the overthrow of Siad Barre. The Western Sahara dispute, under consideration by the United Nations since 1965, would have long been settled had it not been for late King Hassan's intransigence, US support of his unjust claim to sovereignty of the former Spanish colony and the reluctance of African leaders to incur his displeasure. The Southern Sudan was the victim of well-nigh-complete neglect under the British colonial administration and, thanks to the prejudice and shortsightedness of Northern politicians, it has faired even worse after independence. Memories of past slavery have been rankled by present injustice and marginalisation. Moreover, any hope for reconciliation has been shattered by the determination of the ruling Islamic fundamentalist regime of Khartoum to transform the Sudan into an out-and-out Islamic state. The former British protectorate of Somaliland, driven by the irredentism then prevailing among the Somali-speaking people scattered in different parts of East Africa, precipitated, a week after independence, into union with the former Italian-administered trust territory to form the Republic of Somalia on 26 June 1965. Ten years after independence, however, Siad Barre seized power by coup d'et ushering two decades of misrule characterised by a sinister mix of clanism, nepotism and an ignorant understanding of scientific socialism. Resentment which at first took the form of peaceful, political opposition in the north gradually developed into a full-fledged countrywide civil war. When Siad Barre was overthrown, anarchy ensued in Mogadiscio. By contrast, the Somalilanders succeeded, through a series of traditionally styled conferences, in resolving tribal conflicts, disbanding tribal militias and establishing a primordial but working system of government. But the OAU, the Arab League and the rest of the international community rewarded them by refusing to recognise Somaliland's claim to separate statehood.