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by Young, Crawford

  This chapter explores the patterns of violent civil war in Africa, primarily those of the last two decades, underlining an array of attributes distinctive to the current political moment.3 In the 1990s, the number and intensity of such conflicts increased, affecting more than a third of the fifty-three states. Although in some cases (for example, Sudan and Angola), they were continuations of struggles that dated from the independence era, in the majority of instances they were new eruptions. There were a couple of overarching effects of the patterns of the 1980s: a widespread delegitimation of the state and a corrosion of its capacities. I argue that a number of additional novel factors specific to the post-1990 context in both the African and global environment facilitated the outbreak of civil conflict and sustained internal warfare. I explore the nature of these armed conflicts through a detailed examination of a handful of particularly important and protracted instances: Liberia-Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan. Some others are briefly covered in chapters 5 (Chad, Mozambique) and 6 (Algeria, Rwanda, and Burundi), and the remainder receive brief treatment here. Since 2000, the spread of such conflicts has notably declined; this as well requires attention. To set the stage, I begin with a backward glance at the episodes of guerrilla combat and African warfare of the earlier period. The chapter then turns to the recent episodes of African armed conflict, seeking out their commonalities as well as their differences.

  In terms of the sequencing of political change in Africa that I have employed, the earlier instances of violent conflict fall into three time phases. The majority of them relate to the liberation struggle era. Although the heart of the battle for decolonization took place at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, the end point of decolonization came only three decades later, when it finally reached the southern African terminus. The decolonization era gave rise to two types of wars. The first was the armed liberation struggle that began in Algeria in 1954, spread to the Portuguese territories in 1961, and then on to Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa shortly after. A second type of decolonization war occurred in the two countries where armed movements in territories with a distinct colonial identity resisted attachment to existing countries, namely, Western Sahara (Morocco) and Eritrea (Ethiopia).

  The second phase, the moment of postindependence consolidation, also produced a pair of warfare types. The first arose as a consequence of the failure of the independence settlements to produce a regime capable of governing the entire realm. Into this category falls the 1963–65 Congo rebellions, the sporadic Chad civil wars from 1966 to 1982, and the Angolan civil war that raged from 1975 to 1991 and then reignited from 1992 to 2002. The second, separatist wars in eastern Nigeria (Biafra) and southern Sudan resulted from flawed constitutional dispositions leading important groups to feel excluded (Igbo in Nigeria, non-Arab Christians and other non-Muslims in southern Sudan).

  The third phase, in the 1980s, reflected the failure of the integral state project examined in chapters 2 and 5. Two of these insurgencies, the ones in Uganda and Ethiopia, called for the remaking of the state. A third, rather different, instance is the RENAMO rebellion in Mozambique; it likewise found sustenance in the state overreach inherent to the initial Afromarxist ambitions of FRELIMO, although the insurgency was contaminated by its organization and support by the neighboring white minority regimes.

  Throughout this pre-1990 era, aside from the ongoing national liberation struggles, at any given moment there were few such internal wars. Thus they always appeared to be the product of unique circumstances and were never seen as forming a pattern. The new states mostly inherited a functioning governmental apparatus, and were not assumed to be ready prey for insurgent challenge. Employing the categorization traced above, I turn first to the national liberation wars.

  LIBERATION STRUGGLES 1

  Though urban rioting in Cairo in 1919 led to the nominal independence of Egypt in 1922, the role of violent protest in anticolonial politics assumed wider importance only after World War II. Major revolts bringing brutal military repression occurred in Algeria in 1945 and Madagascar in 1947. A handful of urban-centered protest episodes, such as the 1946 railway workers strike in Senegal and the Accra (Ghana) disorders in 1948 were also forerunners. In the early 1950s, sporadic urban violence accelerated the independence of Tunisia and Morocco in 1956. But by far the most resonant guerrilla liberation struggle began in Algeria in 1954. In its scale, the intensity of its liberation ideology, and its capacity over eight years to fight the half-million-strong French army to a standstill and to attract global sympathy and an important flow of external support, the Algerian revolution was an extraordinary drama; it accelerated decolonization elsewhere and served as inspirational model in Portuguese-occupied Africa and white-ruled southern Africa where the doors to negotiated decolonization were long closed.

  In 1961, guerrilla movements in Angola took form, followed by uprisings in Guinea-Bissau (1963) and Mozambique (1964), that became a major challenge later in the decade. Also in 1961, the first South African prospective guerrillas sought external training, followed in the mid-1960s by those from what became Zimbabwe and Namibia. Armed liberation struggle thus assumed a central place in the annals of independence, even though in military terms only Guinea-Bissau (and to a lesser extent Mozambique and Zimbabwe) came close to matching the Algerian performance in convincing the colonial armies they could never triumph militarily. In Angola and Zimbabwe, the existence of rival armed liberation movements with different regional bases was a major limitation to the effectiveness of their struggle.

  A potent factor affecting the strategy and organization of the liberation movements was the relative bureaucratic strength of the terminal colonial state and its capacity to draw on repressive reinforcement from the colonial centers. This placed a premium on the insurgents’ organizational abilities, as well as on the capacity to achieve high commitment from rebel ranks through ideological means and to enforce rigid discipline. In addition, the image of the colonial state was mirrored in the projects to construct a counterstate in liberated areas, especially in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Algeria and later Eritrea.

  In all these cases, access to external support and sanctuary was crucial. In the Algerian case, Cairo served as a rear base and organizational center from the outset. With the 1956 independence of Tunisia and Morocco, Algerians acquired neighboring sanctuary, bases, and supply routes; in the latter stages of the war, the bulk of Algerian forces were located in this near abroad. After initial hesitation, the two states bordering Guinea-Bissau, especially Guinea, became key support bases for the guerrilla insurgents. In southern Africa, liberation combat gained momentum only with the opening of borders to independent countries; Tanzania, Zambia, the two Congos, and later Angola were key external sanctuaries. In most instances, a secure retreat for the leadership was crucial to prevent their capture. Over time, it became possible to filter a growing flow of weapons and supplies into the country where the insurgency was taking place, as the global context became steadily more favorable to the liberation agenda.

  This in turn reflected the success of liberation movements in establishing the moral legitimacy of their struggle. By skillfully drawing on a normative repertoire of values holding sway in the global community—freedom, liberation, and self-determination—guerrilla violence against the colonial occupation became a virtuous necessity in many external eyes. The movements effectively portrayed themselves as the authentic and unified voice of the subject population, though this was never entirely the case. The more sordid dimensions of insurgent warfare on the ground—violent account settling among guerrilla factions, extortion of supply from villagers, executions of purported colonial collaborators—were veiled from view by the ethical superiority of liberation.4

  Drawing on this reservoir of moral support, diplomacy became a crucial, indeed decisive, weapon. The inability of the colonial armies to eliminate the insurgencies and prolonged stalemates that usually ensued placed the imperial powers under the pressure of deepening international opprobr
ium and growing domestic skepticism, deftly exploited by the diplomatic arms of the liberation movements. In South Africa and Namibia, the apartheid regime security forces were able to limit their liberation adversaries to sporadic raids but could never eliminate their external bases. The movements enjoyed access to valuable international forums, especially the UN. The creation of the OAU in 1963, which found a primary unifying focus in completing continental liberation, provided a valuable platform and organizational support. Other African states facilitated the international travel of liberation movement leaders by granting diplomatic passports and often travel funds, an insufficiently recognized advantage. In addition, the more activist states hosted and funded external offices for the movements.

  Summing these factors, a crucial element differentiated the decolonization struggle moment from the postcolonial era. Time, history, and global opinion were on the side of the original liberation movements. This was not the case with most postindependence insurgent forces.

  Not all terminal colonial uprisings succeeded; two important rural-based violent protest movements in the 1950s were defeated in Cameroon (1955– 60) and Kenya (1952–57). In both cases, large reinforcements of metropolitan forces were required; especially in Kenya, the repression was harsh, with massive internment of suspects. The rebel movements—the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) in Cameroon, Mau Mau in Kenya—were stigmatized as rooted in ethnic backing (Bassa and Bamileke in Cameroon, Kikuyu in Kenya). Even within their ethnic base, support was far from unanimous; the Mau Mau struggle in Kenya in particular took on the aspects of an intraethnic civil war. Though the UPC did employ a radical, marxisant discourse, winning some limited external sympathy, the language and rituals of mobilization for Mau Mau could resonate only within an enclosed Kikuyu universe, and then only partially. Ideology on the battleground proved a decisive resource for the colonial power rather than the protest movement; the UPC was successfully portrayed as a Soviet-inspired “Communist” party, while the British persuaded most outside Kikuyuland that the Mau Mau insurgency was an atavistic and primitive rebellion. Surrounded by still colonial realms, the movements had no possibility of being externally supplied or supported; thus they faced crippling limitations in the armed means of resistance.5 Their failure further illuminates the core determinants of success in armed liberation movements.

  LIBERATION STRUGGLES 2: WESTERN SAHARA AND ERITREA

  A different form of liberation struggle took place in Western Sahara and Eritrea, two territories joined by the vagaries of decolonization politics to the independent polities of Morocco and Ethiopia, respectively. As noted in chapter 3, Spain in effect simply abandoned Western Sahara in late 1975, confronted with the Moroccan “Green March” of a half million volunteers into the territory. With ruler Francisco Franco on his deathbed and a difficult transition pending, a forceful response was politically impossible. Morocco then initially shared the territory with Mauritania. Meanwhile, in February 1976 the Frente popular para la liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y Rio de Oro (POLISARIO) declared Western Sahara a sovereign independent state. Operating from Algeria, its guerrillas initially inflicted serious pain on Morocco and all but drove the much weaker Mauritanian army out of the annexed southern sector. Mauritania abandoned its claim in 1979, and the Moroccan army at once moved into the zone. Even with its army tripled in size, Morocco faced serious internal unrest at the time, making Western Sahara appear indigestible. However, by the mid-1980s, Morocco managed to virtually seal the Algerian border with a wall of sand berms, linked by outposts equipped with electronic surveillance. POLISARIO fighters never found an answer to this strategy, and the guerrilla operations diminished in intensity, all but ceasing by the 1990s.6 But the diplomatic battle continues.

  Moroccan claims to historical sovereignty were rejected by the World Court, and for most of the external world effective Moroccan occupation ever since enjoys tacit acknowledgment but not full recognition. However, the majority of OAU/AU members, and the organization itself, have accorded full diplomatic recognition to Western Sahara; by 1983, fifty-four states, almost all in the third world, officially endorsed Western Sahara sovereignty. More importantly, Algeria has provided sanctuary, arms, and support to POLISARIO since 1975 and currently shelters an exile population estimated by aid agencies at 165,000, perhaps half the Saharoui total.7

  The Eritrean liberation struggle lasted more than three decades and in its last stages in the 1980s was fought on a large scale. An Italian colony carved out of territory with historic ties to Ethiopia, Eritrea acquired a clear territorial identity in the colonial era under Italian rule, which lasted until 1941. After a complex postwar diplomatic struggle in which Eritreans played little part, agreement was reached by 1952 to join the territory to Ethiopia as an autonomous federated entity with an internationally defined special status. Although the link to Ethiopia initially had some support among Eritreans, opposition to Ethiopian rule gradually built, especially after a unitary state was imposed and all traces of special status erased by 1960. In 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) emerged, drawing most of its support from the Muslim coast. Its first attack in 1961 phased into sporadic skirmishes, at first little different from the armed banditry endemic on the coast, and then transformed into small-scale insurgency. In 1970, a rival movement, the Eritrean Peoples’ Liberation Front (EPLF), took the field, its initial core support coming from the highlands. A ferocious civil war ensued from 1971 to 1974 between the two; the EPLF emerged as dominant challenger to Ethiopia at the same time the national army overthrew the monarchy, and a bitter and murderous power struggle unfolded.

  A rapid escalation in the scale of hostilities followed, along with a transformation in its nature. An ideologically radical EPLF leadership turned a guerrilla campaign into an all-out people’s war, achieving a remarkable degree of unity. With a secure rear base in Sudan, insurgent bands became hardened revolutionary warriors, kept in line by tight discipline and indoctrinated by rigorous ideological schooling. On the Ethiopian side, a regime now committed to Marxism-Leninism and a Soviet alliance pursued a revolutionary agenda and mobilized for full war. The EPLF swiftly expanded, and by the end of 1977 it controlled the key district capital of Nakfa and 90% of the territory.

  The Ethiopians responded with major offensives, supported by large Soviet arms flows and reinforced with contingents of Soviet advisors and Cuban auxiliaries. Although an invasion on another front by the Somali army in 1977 was beaten back, EPLF resistance proved impossible to overcome. The sheer scale of the civil war has no parallel in postcolonial Africa; at its peak, the Ethiopian army had 250,000 professionals and an equal number of conscripts; the EPLF fielded over 100,000 warriors. The major engagements were no longer insurgent warfare but major combat between well-armed adversaries. Operation Red Star in 1982, a turning point in the war, pitted in the battle for the EPLF redoubt of Nakfa 84,000 Ethiopian troops with 99 tanks, 94 armored vehicles, 283 artillery pieces, a dozen MiG 21s and MiG 23s plus Mi-24 helicopter gunships, and a contingent of Soviet advisors; they faced 22,000 guerrilla fighters with smaller but significant armament including tanks, armored cars, artillery and mortars, and machine guns.8 Both sides fought courageously and tenaciously, and there were heavy casualties, but the giant offensive failed, and Ethiopia never again came close to defeating the EPLF.

  De facto independence came in 1991, formalized by referendum in 1993. The legacy of the thirty-year struggle was a highly militarized society, unified around the scriptures of revolutionary national liberation. Though instrumental to success in the liberation war, the precepts of enforced unity and iron discipline have shackled the postliberation polity.9

  FAILED INDEPENDENCE: ANGOLA, CONGO-KINSHASA, AND CHAD

  In three instances, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, and Chad, failure in power transfer led immediately to widespread disorder or protracted civil war. In the case of Angola as in Western Sahara, a weakened and disorganized colonial power, facing deep internal crisis, simply withdrew without s
uccessfully brokering a postcolonial settlement. The vacuum left by the Portuguese abandonment of its residual authority in November 1975 gave rise at once to a civil war that raged from 1975 to 2002. The aborted decolonization and radical deflation of state authority that immediately followed in Congo-Kinshasa set the stage for the wave of rebellions from 1963 to 1965. In Chad, the flawed postcolonial arrangements also led to early political impasse and sporadic civil war from 1966 to 1982.

  The Angolan war, which raged intermittently from its anticolonial origins in 1961 until its final end in 2002, went through several metamorphoses, from liberation struggle to cold war–driven combat and then finally resource-driven internal war of the 1990s.10 In contrast to the relatively unified struggle in Mozambique, the independence war had a quadrangular form. What proved the most important theater had its center in Luanda and its hinterland, homeland to the Movimento para a libertaçâo de Angola (MPLA) that has ruled since independence. Its support drew on the Mbundu ethnic group, the large Luanda community of mestizos, and some radical white settlers. The movement reflecting Kongo aspirations evolved into the Frente nacional para a libertaçâ de Angola (FNLA). The third major movement, whose major support base was the Ovimbundu ethnic cluster in southern Angola, was the Uniâo para a ndependência total de Angola (UNITA). Leadership of the three came from separate Protestant missions (Methodist, Baptist, and Congregationalist, respectively). The ethnic constituencies of the three major groups, Mbundu, Kongo, and Ovimbundu, constituted roughly 25%, 10%, and 40% of the population. A fourth identity zone, giving rise to periodic separatist movements, was the enclave of Cabinda, separated from Angola by a sliver of CongoKinshasa. The initial center of oil production, the claims of Cabinda to have once constituted a separate colonial entity entitled by the code of decolonization to independent status found initial support from the neighboring two Congos (attracted to its oil). Needless to say, Angola could never accept the loss of its oil center, and through the 1980s, reinforced with Cuban detachments, the Angolan army was always able to crush revolts in Cabinda.