Who Can Keep the Peace in Africa?

Abstract

The African Union: Pan-Africanism, peacebuilding and development, by Timothy Murithi. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. vi + 182 pp. £50 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-3953-3 (hardback). Uniting Africa: Building regional peace and security systems, by David J. Francis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. ix + 296 pp. £20 (paperback). ISBN 0-7546-4689-0 (paperback). Dangers of Co-Deployment: UN co-operative peacekeeping in Africa, by David J. Francis, Mohammed Faal, John Kabia and Alex Ramsbotham. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. xii + 192 pp. £47.50 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-4027-2 (hardback). Twisting Arms and Flexing Muscles: Humanitarian intervention and peacebuilding in perspective, edited by Natalie Mychajlyszyn and Timothy M. Shaw. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. vii + 162 pp. £49.95 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-1671-1 (hardback). In the contemporary world, Africa is the continent where the demand for peacekeeping is most acute. UN peacekeeping operations have been the predominant type of conflict management instrument on the continent, and it is therefore no surprise that African conflicts have influenced UN peacekeeping techniques or that UN peacekeeping techniques have offered models and inspiration for intra-African attempts at peacekeeping missions.1 Conflict in Africa cannot be easily pigeonholed, but many share the conviction that African conflicts in the post-Cold War world are complex and multidimensional. Most often, they are protracted intra-state conflicts in which peacekeeping missions based on the principles of consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force seem doomed to be insufficient dressings for large open wounds. Warring factions may consist of militias, armed civilians, and parts of regular armies. These actors may be undisciplined and devoid of hierarchical structures. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that the belligerents will have a political agenda or a desire to end the conflict. In these circumstances, civilians are the main victims and often the main targets of the conflicting parties. Among the multiple causes of such conflicts, the internal causes cannot be separated from their international contexts. Global causes may consist in historical legacies, such as the imposed state borders, external involvement, such as the structural adjustment programmes, and the negative effects that the configuration of the international economic and trade system has in Africa.