STRATEGIC PRECONDITIONS FOR INTERVENTION
With the US holding its position as the 'last remaining superpower', interventions in the 1990s largely reflected the realities of a monopolar world system, with US political will being pivotal to what constitutes 'Western intervention'. This period seems to be nearing its end, gradually being replaced by a multipolar global order that increasingly reflects the controversial 'clash of civilisations' paradigm first postulated by Samuel Huntington in 1993. Certainly, the inability of the US to prevent nuclear proliferation on the Indian subcontinent, the humiliating setback in Somalia, followed by a series of successful strikes by fundamentalists against US installations, have forced it to concentrate on priorities such as the Korean peninsula and the Middle East.
Consequently, the preconditions for intervention have been reduced to include the following:
"¢ The situation must constitute a threat to the stability of an important region of the world, e.g. Lebanon or Kashmir. Africa, as has previously been pointed out, holds little importance and is a marginal continent.
"¢ The conflict must be generating mass suffering, resulting in domestic pressure and support for military intervention. Conflicts that receive little attention in the media, and are therefore not transported into the living rooms of Western societies are not taking place in the minds of the masses, for all practical purposes. With the Kosovo campaign, a 'C List Category' interest was elevated to an 'A List Category' due to media pressure generated by the attention focusing on the suffering of the Kosovo Albanians, a dangerous reality of the information age.24 In the case of Africa, the extent of suffering witnessed over the decades seems to have had a numbing effect on audiences in the West. Apparently resigned to the inevitability of bad news from Africa, the pictures of suffering have become less frequent and seldom elicit anything other than sympathy and the routine air drops of basic supplies.
"¢ The conflict must be threatening a multi-ethnic democracy, e.g. Bosnia. The scarcity of multi-ethnic democracies is most apparent in Africa and this point consequently hardly applies at all.
"¢ There should be a close historical link with Europe or the US. Apart from US involvement in seeking solutions to the Northern Ireland conflict, much of its foreign policy is increasingly determined by the lobbies of its various ethnic diasporas. Most of these originate in non-African areas, and utilise their influence to elevate their own countries of origin on the list of priorities and foreign policy objectives.25
The US has committed the most resources to those conflicts that have included the above criteria and where national interests needed to be secured. Parts of the globe that did not comply with the above preconditions have seen little efforts at possible intervention, e.g. Burundi, Rwanda and Sri Lanka.26 Nonetheless, the role of the Afrocentrist lobby in American politics, and its growing influence and desire for greater ties with Africa are at least likely to maintain some efforts on the part of the US. Whether this can act as a serious counterweight to the marginalisation of the continent remains to be seen. In the final analysis, though, the combined marginalisation of sub-Saharan Africa and the receding Western influence world-wide, are megapolitical trends which ultimately dictate the future of Western intervention. The need to concentrate forces and resources where Western interests are considered to be the most at stake, makes Kosovo of greater importance than the Congo.
The last decade of the millennium has seen more Western efforts aimed at improving Africa's own capacity to secure peace. Regional co-operation, in the form of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), created the ECOWAS Military Observer Group (ECOMOG), with the aim of implementing peace agreements and conducting peacekeeping operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Co-ordination with the UN was to be secured through a UN Observer Mission (UNOMIL). ECOMOG's performance as an intervention force has not only been substandard in military terms, but has little to do with peacekeeping in the UN sense of the word, with the assembled forces suffering from major force degradation in the form of ill-disciplined and violent behaviour.27 Subsequent US efforts aimed at building peacekeeping and intervention capacity among African states have so far borne little fruit.
In the final analysis, it might be prudent for African states to accept that they are unlikely to receive massive foreign assistance in expanding regional capabilities and that they cannot expect direct foreign intervention to be more than a rare exception. Solutions to the continent's plagued conflict areas will ultimately require a new approach stemming from an internal paradigm shift.
RETHINKING AFRICAN CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
Africa is yearning for a new approach to conflict management, and it will require a fundamental paradigm shift in this regard. The following approach will need to be considered.
Allowing and managing the disintegration of non-viable states
Allowing ethnic partition on the basis of self-determination can be reconciled with the need to form more viable states. Fears of a 'domino effect' and greater violence are largely offset by the already existing reality that the 'psychological geography' of Africa's inhabitants bears no relation to the maps of published atlases. In addition, those areas currently rendered non-viable due to structural ethnic conflict as a result of arbitrary colonial boundaries, could return to relative stability. Of 27 ethnic civil wars which were ended over the period 1944 to 1994, twelve were suppressed through the complete victory of one side, five through partition, and two through military occupation by a third party. In the end, only eight were ended through an agreement that did not partition the country.28 In fact, between 1945 and 1987, nine of fourteen UN peace operations were interstate, whereas only six of 24 were interstate since then.29 Even when measured in terms of lives, implemented partition models hold an average of 13 000 deaths, while multi-ethnic models stand at an average of 250 000, the latter also being inherently less stable and permanent than the former.30
The basis for ethnic conflict resolution seems to lie in the recognition and acceptance, on the part of all the parties involved, of an underlying ethnocultural incompatibility which can best be addressed in a peaceful manner by implementing partition. Separatists tend to propagate partition as a first option over secession, which has a higher conflict potential, arguing that when ethnic conflict is inevitable or already at a stage where it has culminated in violence, partition is a humane way of "... achieving through negotiation what would otherwise be achieved through fighting."31 The fear that this merely transforms an intrastate conflict into an interstate one, is unjustified. In the case of interstate conflict, a certain degree of objectivity prevails because the conflict is controlled by state structures, therefore allowing for the possibility of external influence, structural adjustments and a change in power relations. Ethnocultural intrastate conflict, in stark contrast, is a subjective and emotional form of communal conflict that seems to depend more on changes in mass perceptions in order to improve the relationship between distinct parallel communities, aiming at the way these behave and understand each other.32 It is important to be dealing with visible, legitimate leaders and organisations which have influence among the various warring factions and which can be held responsible.33 Allowing ethnic groups state or state-like structures tend to ensure this to some extent.
The fear that even less viable states will result from allowing such fragmentation, is not entirely unfounded. It is more likely, however, to be compensated by the realisation by ethnic groups that their desire for independence will have to be balanced against the desire to be prosperous. An example might be the 'Tutsi triangle' of Rwanda, Burundi and Zaïre that, in all likelihood, would result in a state characterised by greater stability. Due to the relative cultural homogeneity of such a structure, this would enable national consensus and the establishment of development priorities. National values determine national interests and this is the primary reason why an ethnically almost homogeneous, though relatively poor and landlocked Botswana has remained more stable than most other states in Africa, although the latter often hold far greater geopolitical and resource assets than the former.
Allowing certain conflicts to burn out
The current international fascination with cease-fires and conventional steps towards achieving peace are prolonging and postponing conflicts rather than solving them. During the Cold War with its possibility of escalating a regional conflict into a world war and the scenario of mutually assured destruction (MAD), arresting conflict through cease-fires was a prudent and necessary measure.
In the current circumstances, this approach has turned into what could be termed a 'peace industry', providing a sense of mission for many people who desire a life of doing good things. Driven by the good intentions of individuals and organisations or just plain gratitude junkies from Western surplus societies, this industry perpetuates rather than resolves conflicts. Its refugee camps have provided bases and safe havens for the combatants of a number of warring parties in Lebanon, Zaïre and Cambodia, while also preserving resentment and allowing recruitment drives. If not through bias, UN structures and highly competitive non-governmental organisations (NGOs) aid combatants through their inability to defend their supplies and infrastructure from becoming part and parcel of the logistic inventory of warring parties.
Cease-fires allow the warring sides to rest, regroup, refit and retrain. Once cease-fires are negotiated, none of the sides are faced with imminent defeat or the prospect of intolerable losses. Most of their energy is now invested in the 'next round' and a 'better luck next time' attitude prevails. The very incentive for a lasting settlement is removed, with the various parties returning to their preparations for the next round of conflict. Angola offers a model example of how wars can be prolonged and how peacekeeping can fail dismally in the face of international organisations preferring to treat symptoms rather than causes.34
It is sometimes better to let the conflict burn until a clear winner emerges or the parties experience fatigue through mutual attrition. It is important for people in conflict zones to become tired of war, before they develop a capability to reach consensus that would be conducive to the resolution of the conflict and the implementation of a lasting peace.
Consistency in Military Intervention
If and when military intervention is decided upon, it must be swift and decisive. It must become clear to the combatants that the intervention forces have a mandate to engage forces contravening security council resolutions and/or agreements, including cease-fires. Facing the reality that multinational commands have the problem of ensuring quality and a common standard of conduct among the composite forces from member states, one dominant and militarily capable force must provide the core of any task force that is deployed. This was the case in the Kosovo campaign, where seventy per cent of forces in the air were US, and with the intervention in East Timor where the Australian contingent provided the core.
Multinational forces hold the same problems of cohesion as multi-ethnic militaries, and consequently suffer from troop degradation that remains hidden from the external observer until a force is put to the test and fails dismally, for example, the South African National Defence Force in Lesotho in 1998. Cohesion in heterogeneous forces is their Achilles heel and even the French Foreign Legion has shown varying combat performance based upon its ethnocultural composition at the time of deployment.35
CONCLUSION
Interventions are products of a number of coinciding factors. The preconditions are seldom applied fairly and instead base themselves predominantly on a geopolitical priority list. Africa's place on that priority list will vary from case to case, but it generally appears more likely that the West will neither have the sustained will nor the capabilities to put the lid on every current or future conflict in Africa.
While its presence will be felt, military intervention will be limited to sporadic interventions at most, predominantly aimed at minimising casualties among 'own forces'.
Hence, it is advisable that Africa should take control of its own destiny in dealing with ethnic regional conflicts in a more tolerant and flexible manner, thus departing from the rigidity of the ideological era. Boundaries must coincide with the ethnic composition of the population, or should at least not attempt to integrate incompatible cultures forcefully under a ruling multi-ethnic power élite. Such a new approach will involve the management of the fragmentation that will beset African states, but that can be channelled in a positive manner and allow for a gradual and constructive restructuring process.
ENDNOTES
This article is published in support of Training for Peace, a project sponsored by Norway and executed by the ISS in partnership with the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) and the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).
1. British troops were equally shocked by what they often faced in Africa, e.g. the Benin campaign. The conduct of war throughout Africa before, during and after colonisation has apparently not changed much in terms of savagery. The level of cruelty sometimes experienced, became so intolerable that British troops have been seen to open fire on allied Massai tribesmen because these could not be otherwise dissuaded from butchering the non-combatants of the opposing side en masse. See L James, The savage wars, Robert Hale, London, 1985, pp 121-124.
2. D D'Souza, The end of racism, Free Press, New York, 1995, pp 72-73.
3. JDDavidson & W Rees-Mogg, The great reckoning, Pan, London, 1992, p 147.
4. Sorrow and shame: Brutal North African slave trade ignored and denied, The City Sun, 22 March 1996.
5. T Sowell, Conquests and cultures, Free Press, New York, 1998, pp 111-112.
6. RDKaplan, The ends of the earth, Random House, New York, 1996, p 18.
7. As the profit margin was a mere ten per cent, the interest of slave traders to bring their 'cargo' alive to the destined ports was high. In later years, slaves would even be inoculated and more spaciously loaded into ships in an effort to maximise profits by raising survival rates. See Der Spiegel, 8, 1998, pp 148-150.
8. J Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations, Free Press, New York, 1998, pp 117-118.
9. The abolition of slavery destabilised African societies by taking away an important economic pillar, while their traditional way of life was being questioned. See D'Souza, op cit, p 106.
10. Ibid, p 105.
11. At the turn of the century, the British launched several military operations into the more remote regions of West Africa for this very purpose, encountering numerous scenes of mass sacrifice, crucifixion, massacre and ritual cannibalism. See James, op cit, pp 121-124.
12. Arab slave traders along the east coast of Africa were notorious for throwing slaves overboard as soon as British ships were sighted. This way, they could at least save their ships and hope for better luck next time. See Sowell, op cit, p 112.
13. James, op cit, p 124.
14. The private sector investments were hardly worth the trouble, with only eight out of nineteen sisal plantations, four out of 22 cocoa plantations, eight out of 58 rubber plantations, and three out of 48 diamond mines paying any dividends. See Sowell, op cit, p 117.
15. Ibid, pp 117-118.
16. R Peters, Fighting for the future, Stackpole, US, 1999, pp 155-157.
17. W Connor, Ethnonationalism: The quest for understanding, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995, p 29.
18. D Callahan, Unwinnable wars, Hill and Wang, New York, 1999, pp 135-165.
19. Unlike warriors, soldiers depend almost entirely on the state. They pledge allegiance to it, enjoy recognised legal status, and function as the 'restorer of order' both within and beyond the boundaries of the state.
20. Noord Transvaler, 28 Julie 1995, pp 21-22.
21. R Herbert, Dark sacrifice, Sunday Times, 7 September 1997, pp 14-17.
22. RDKaplan, The coming anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, p 74.
23. This is also described as a distinguishing characteristic of the West, with Huntington citing one study where out of fifty countries examined, nineteen of the twenty with the highest individualism index were Western. Elsewhere, the concept was situated near the bottom of the list of priorities cited by participants from non-Western cultures. See SPHuntington, The West: Unique, not universal, Foreign Affairs, 75(6), November/December 1996, p 32.
24. JSNye, Redefining national interest, Foreign Affairs, 78(4),July/August 1999, p 32.
25. SPHuntington, The erosion of American national interests, Foreign Affairs, 76(1), January/February 1997, p 53.
26. Callahan, op cit, p 133.
27. A Parsons, From Cold War to hot place: UN interventions 1947-1994, Michael Joseph, London, 1995, pp 215-219.
28. C Kaufmann, Possible and impossible solutions to ethnic civil wars, International Security, 20(4), Spring 1996, p 161.
29. T Cucolo, Grunt diplomacy: In the beginning there were only soldiers, Parameters, Spring 1999, p 112.
30. Kaufmann, op cit.
31. JTMathews, Power shift, Foreign Affairs, 76(1), January/February 1997, pp 23-24.
32. T Woodhouse, Commentary: Negotiating a new millennium? Prospects for African conflict resolution, Review of African Political Economy, 68, 1996, p 136.
33. Western observers have difficulty accepting the possibility of legitimate leaders not necessarily being democratically elected. In most cases of conflict resolution, however, the West's preferred discussion partner has seldom been the one with the most influence among the people.
34. ENLuttwak, Give war a chance, Foreign Affairs, July/August 1999, p 39.
35. D Porch, The French Foreign Legion, 1993, p 619, points out that the legion performed at its best when it was dominated by Germans who "were not to be outdone in skills or courage by legionnaires from other countries." One legionnaire said, "[t]he legion is only as good as its worst German legionnaire."
