The Curse of Berlin: Africa’s Security Dilemmas ADEKEYE ADEBAJO* Introduction Africa suffers from a curse inflicted in one of Europe’s most famous and cosmopolitan cities: Berlin. The Berlin conference of 1884–1885, under the supervision of Germany’s»Iron Chancellor,« Otto von Bismarck, carved up Africa into territories that reflected compromises struck between avaricious European imperialists – Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and Germany – rather than the political and economic interests of Africa. 1 The European curse of artificial borders has caused untold suffering in post-colonial Africa. However, just as Berlin marked the division of Africa, the gods of Africa wrought their revenge on Europe 76 years after Bismarck’s conference. Many African states gained their independence just as the Berlin wall was being erected in 1961. A city that had symbolized the division of Africa now symbolized the division of Germany and Europe. As Kenyan political scientist Ali Mazrui put it: »Europe was … sentenced to the same fate to which Europe had previously condemned Africa – partition and artificial frontiers.« 2 However, post-independence Africa soon suffered from dozens of conflicts, with the curse of Berlin playing a role in border disputes between Morocco and Algeria; Ghana and Togo; Burkina Faso and Mali; Somalia and Ethiopia; Libya and Chad; and Nigeria and Cameroon. Wars were also fuelled by the superpower rivalries of the Cold War, as well as internal governance deficiencies on the part of autocratic African leaders. Since 1960, 32 wars have killed over 10 million Africans and pro* The author would like to thank Dr Tim Murithi and Ms Angela Ndinga-Muvumba for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1. This article builds on Adekeye Adebajo,»From Cape to Casablanca: Africa’s Evolving Security Architecture,« in Favorita Papers of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna , No. 3, 2004. 2. Ali Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (London: bbc Publications, 1986), p. 279. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 83

duced 10 million refugees. In the post-Cold War era, United Nations ( un ) debacles in Somalia(1993) and Rwanda(1994) led to powerful Western actors abandoning Africa to its own fate. The neglect of the continent forced regional actors like the Organization of African Unity( oau ) – now the African Union( au ); the Southern African Development Community( sadc ); the Economic Community of West African States( ecowas ); the Economic Community of Central African States( eccas ); and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development( igad ) – many of them primarily economic organizations – to adopt security roles. However, these institutions remain weak, lacking financial and logistical means. Regional interventions became embroiled in political difficulties. The increasing recognition of the link between bad governance and insecurity resulted in increased efforts by civil society actors in Africa to contribute to peacemaking and democratization efforts on their continent. This further led, in 2001, to the establishment by a group of African leaders of a New Partnership for Africa’s Development( nepad ) which seeks greater Western aid, investment, and debt relief in exchange for a selfmonitored African peer-review system of»good governance.« 3 This essay examines Africa’s evolving security architecture, starting with an analysis of the African Union, before focusing on security actors and dynamics in West, Southern, Central and Eastern Africa. The essay will focus particularly on five important themes: the financial and logistical weaknesses of regional organizations; the lack of political consensus among African leaders on collective security norms and practices; the controversial peacekeeping role of regional hegemons; the centrality of the un ’s peacekeeping role in Africa; and the need to establish a clear division of labor among Africa’s security actors. We will, in effect, examine efforts by African actors to achieve a»Pax Africana« on their continent. 4 Some progress has been made in stemming some of Africa’s most intractable conflicts largely through the efforts of regional peacekeepers. Nigerian-led ecomog ( ecowas Ceasefire Monitoring Group) interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1998 cost the Nigerian trea3. See, for example, Adebayo Adedeji,»From Lagos to nepad ,« in New Agenda , Issue 8, Fourth quarter 2002, pp. 32–47; and International Peace Academy, nepad : African Initiative, New Partnership?, report of a policy seminar in New York, July 2002. 4. See Ali Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 84 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

sury over one billion and resulted in more than 1,000 peacekeeping fatalities. West Africa’s aspiring hegemon, Nigeria, led a peacekeeping force back into Liberia in August 2003, which was subsumed under a un umbrella three months later. South Africa, the continent’s other potential hegemon, 5 launched an intervention into Lesotho in 1998, and currently has peacekeepers in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ( drc ) under the un flag. The return of un peacekeepers to Africa is a clear manifestation of the continuing weaknesses of Africa’s regional organizations: despite efforts by these organizations to create security mechanisms to manage local conflicts, the un ’s role remains significant to Africa’s evolving security architecture. We will next assess the au ’s conflict management role before addressing conflict management efforts in sub-Saharan Africa’s four subregions. The African Union: Old Wine in New Bottles? Despite the creation of the oau ’s mechanism for Conflict Management, Prevention and Resolution in 1993, the organization’s deployment of tiny military observer missions(of less than 100 persons) to Rwanda, Burundi, and Comoros failed to stem instability in these countries and exposed the organization’s logistical and financial weaknesses. Seventyfive percent of funding for these missions was provided by external donors. The new au , now under the visionary leadership of former Malian president Alpha Konaré, has not yet defined a proper division of labor between itself and Africa’s security mechanisms and actors. Unlike the oau Charter, however, the au ’s Constitutive Act of 2002 allows for interference in the internal affairs of member states in cases of unconstitutional changes of government; egregious human rights abuses and genocide; and conflicts that threaten regional stability. The Act also provides for the participation of African civil society actors in the activities of the organization through the Economic, Social, and Cultural Council( ecosocc ), which elected Kenyan Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai as its head in March 2005. A Pan-African Parliament was established in South Africa in 5. See Adekeye Adebajo and Christopher Landsberg,»South Africa and Nigeria as Regional Hegemons,« in Mwesiga Baregu and Christopher Landsberg(eds.), From Cape to Congo: Southern Africa’s Evolving Security Challenges (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2003), pp. 171–203. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 85

March 2004 and is expected to assume legislative powers in five years. 6 Twenty-three African governments have signed up to the African peer review mechanism( aprm ), a voluntary system to monitor political and economic governance. nepad is to become a specialized agency of the au by 2006. These innovations are potentially revolutionary in light of the oau ’s rigid, non-interventionist posture in the first three decades of its existence. As Alpha Konaré noted:»The African Union is not the former oau , they are completely different. The au will provide the potential leadership and take appropriate action without which conflicts cannot be resolved.« 7 The new AU, now under the visionary leadership of former Malian president Alpha Konaré, has not yet defined a proper division of labor between itself and Africa’s security mechanisms and actors. au leaders established a 15-member Peace and Security Council( psc ) in July 2004 to make decisions on conflict prevention and peacebuilding, its centerpiece project being the establishment of an African Standby Force( asf ) by 2010. The asf is to be built around five subregional pillars and will undertake peace support operations. 8 A Military Staff Committee of military officers from au member states, modeled on the un system, is to provide the psc with advice on deployment and security requirements. There was a heated debate about regional hegemons such as Nigeria and South Africa being allowed permanent seats and veto power on the au ’s Council. 9 In the end, neither was permitted. However, the 6. See The au / nepad and Africa’s Evolving Governance and Security Architecture, Centre for Conflict Resolution/Centre for Policy Studies seminar report, Johannesburg, December 11–12, 2004.(Available at http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za). 7. Quoted in Tim Murithi, The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development (Hampshire, uk , and Burlington, us : Ashgate, 2005), p. 109. 8. See The African Union, Roadmap for the Operationalization of the African Standby Force, Experts’ Meeting on the Relationship between the au and the Regional Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution; Addis Ababa, March 22–23, 2005; exp / au -Recs/ asf /4(I); Jakkie Cilliers and Mark Malan, Progress with the African Standby Force, Institute for Security Studies( iss ), South Africa, Paper 107, May 2005; and Musifiky Mwanasali, Emerging Security Architecture in Africa, Centre for Policy Studies, Policy: Issues and Actors , vol. 7, no. 4, February 2004. 9. Mwanasali, Emerging Security Architecture in Africa, p. 14. 86 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

creation of five renewable three-year seats(currently Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Ethiopia, and Gabon) to work alongside 10 non-renewable two-year seats(Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Kenya, Sudan, Libya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Ghana, Senegal, and Togo) is a recognition that some countries are still more equal than others. Membership of the psc , which has met about 30 times in its first year, is based on four basic criteria: peacekeeping experience; capacity to pay; financial contributions to the au ’s Peace Fund; and constitutional governance commitments. Voting on substantive issues is by a two-thirds majority, unlike the oau ’s insistence on consensus, and representatives of subregional organizations and civil society can be invited to attend psc sessions. A five-member Panel of the Wise is also envisaged to assist the chair of the commission in the au ’s mediation efforts. 10 The African Union stresses conflict prevention, but has ambitions to contribute to peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding efforts. Based on past experience and the more recent cases of Burundi and Darfur, these latter tasks are probably better left to the better-endowed and more experienced un and World Bank(in the case of peacebuilding). The current efforts to reform the un will be important for Africa in this regard. 11 The largest consensus for the recommendations of the un highlevel panel report of December 2004 is around the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission to improve un post-conflict planning, focusing particularly on establishing institutions, ensuring financing, and improving coordination of un bodies and other key regional and global actors. 12 Though welcome, many Africans are skeptical – based on un experiences in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Central African Republic – that this Commission will be able to mobilize the resources required for postconflict reconstruction in Africa. un Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report to the General Assembly of March 2005,»In Larger Freedom,« built on the un high-level panel report and called on donors to devize a 10-year 10. See the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union. 11. See A More Secure Continent: African Perspectives on the un High-Level Panel Report. Centre for Conflict Resolution seminar report. Cape Town April 23–24, 2005.(Available at http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za). 12. See A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Published by the United Nations Department of Public Information dpi /2367, December 2004. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 87

capacity-building plan with the au . Both reports envisage un financial support for Africa’s regional organizations in exceptional circumstances. This is a sensible recommendation that should go further in supporting Africa’s regional organizations. 13 The au has been explicitly mandated to coordinate the activities of Africa’s subregional mechanisms. However, organizations like ecowas and sadc which established security mechanisms before the au was born – and in the case of ecowas have solid peacekeeping experience – often feel that the au has more to learn from them than vice-versa. The au ’s Peace and Security Protocol envisages the establishment of a continental early warning system, with the au coordinating Africa’s subregional early warning systems and linking the continent to the un ’s early warning system. But experience so far has not been encouraging. Though both the au and igad early warning systems are based in Addis Ababa, there has been only limited contact between both institutions. The au also suffers from many financial and personnel deficiencies that could hamper its conflict management ambitions. In 2003, the European Union( eu ) announced the creation of an African Peace Support Facility( apsf ) to establish an African peacekeeping fund of about usd 250–300 million a year. However, the dangers of relying excessively on external donors for such an important task could prove unsustainable in the long run. In 2004, the au budget was increased from usd 43 million to usd 158 million, with usd 62.2 million expected to go towards the regular budget and usd 95.2 million towards peace and security. Member states, however, failed to keep their accounts current even when the au had a smaller budget of around usd 40 million. In addition to receiving regular contributions, the au must improve its internal financial processes and recruit more able staff – as it is increasingly doing – before it can absorb larger funds. Operationalizing the au ’s new security mechanism will require a political will and commitment that its leaders have not always demonstrated in the past. 13. In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights For All , Report of the un Secretary-General, Follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit. March 21, 2005, A/59/2005. 88 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

West Africa: The Heirs of Nkrumah At the time of the creation of the oau in 1963, Ghana’s founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, was in a minority of one in calling for the establishment of an African High Command. The idea was to establish a supranational standing army involving all independent African states pooling their resources to advance the liberation of the continent and to protect Africa from external intervention. Newly-independent African leaders distrusted Nkrumah’s intentions, and many placed more faith in defense agreements with external powers, most notably France, whose interventionist role earned it the sobriquet»gendarme d’Afrique«. Africa’s leaders sought to freeze the colonial map of Africa inherited from the Berlin conference, stressing the inviolability of borders and seeking to entrench their own positions behind the shield of sovereignty. Today, Nkrumah’s West African heirs are attempting to establish the common security institution that the visionary Ghanaian leader advocated four decades ago. West African leaders have gone further than any other African subregion in devising a security mechanism. The three civil conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau in the 1990s claimed over 250,000 lives and resulted in over 1.2 million refugees. 14 All three countries remain fragile today(as do Guinea and Togo). Guinea-Bissau suffered its second coup d’état in four years in September 2003, while Côte d’Ivoire’s government is currently faced with an insurgency, launched in September 2002, that has exposed the country’s ethnic and religious fault lines. In response to these crises, ecowas leaders have established three key organs to implement security decisions: a Mediation and Security Council, a Defense and Security Commission, and a Council of Elders. An observation center has also been set up at the ecowas secretariat in Abuja, Nigeria, to analyze early warning information. About 40 full-time personnel currently staff ecowas ’ security institutions. 14. For accounts of these civil wars, see Adekeye Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002); Herbert Howe,»Lessons of Liberia: ecomog and Regional Peacekeeping,« in International Security , vol. 21, issue 3, Winter 1996/1997; and Robert Mortimer,»From ecomog to ecomog ii : Intervention in Sierra Leone,« in John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild(eds.), Africa in World Politics: The African State System in Flux (Colorado and Oxford: Westview Press, Third Edition, 2000), pp. 188–207. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 89

Encouragingly, civil society actors in West Africa have been consulted by ecowas to determine how they can contribute to its early warning system. The ecowas security mechanism also reflects some of the lessons learned from ecomog ’s peacekeeping experiences in the last decade. The Mediation and Security Council was inspired by the ecowas Committee of Nine on Liberia which coordinated subregional peacemaking efforts in the 1990s. Ten members are now elected to two-year terms, with decisions being made by a two-thirds majority of six members, and regular meetings have been held. The Defense and Security Commission – consisting of military technocrats – advises the Mediation and Security Council. All three ecomog interventions clearly exposed the logistical weaknesses of West Africa’s armies. For the foreseeable future, such logistical support will have to come from external actors until the subregion develops its own capabilities. The issue of financing is particularly important to the building of ecomog ’s stand-by force. ecowas envisages a standby force( esf ) – as part of the African standby force – of 5,000 troops which can be deployed within 90 days(as well as a 1,500-strong rapid-reaction force to be deployed within 30 days). Nigeria ended up footing over 80 percent of the peacekeeping costs and providing over 70 percent of the troops in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. Under the new ecowas mechanism, a Special Peace Fund has been established to raise revenue through a community levy, with funding also expected to be provided by external donors. The implementation of the ecowas levy in 2004 has yielded some positive results: Nigeria alone provided usd 20 million in 2004 from this levy. More consistent sources of funding will be needed to support ecowas ’ efforts in future. Southern Africa: The Pied Piper of Pretoria An analysis of security in Southern Africa must necessarily begin with the centrality of South Africa’s role in the subregion. Apartheid South Africa used its military strength aggressively to subdue its neighbors through a destructive policy of military destabilization that resulted in about one million deaths and cost Southern Africa an estimated usd 60 billion between 1980 and 1988. 15 South Africa currently accounts for 80 percent of 15. Adebayo Adedeji, South Africa in Africa: Within or Apart? (London: Zed Books, 1996), p. 9. 90 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

the subregion’s economic strength. 16 A democratic South Africa joined sadc in 1994. 17 During Nelson Mandela’s presidency, 1994–1999, South Africa largely shunned a military role in the subregion out of fear of arousing charges of hegemonic domination. As sadc chair, however, Mandela became embroiled in a spat with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe over the structure of the sadc Organ on Politics, Defense and Security ( opds ) which Mugabe chaired. 18 South Africa’s first major peacekeeping mission was also marred by controversy. After a constitutional crisis in Lesotho, its government invited South Africa to send troops to the country to help restore order. South Africa undertook the intervention with Botswana in September 1998, but faced stiff opposition from sections of Lesotho’s army and parts of the population, resulting in widespread disorder before the situation was brought under control. The legitimacy of the intervention as an sadc -sanctioned action was widely questioned. The leadership of the peacekeeping force by white South African officers from the apartheid army further fuelled passions. 19 Chastened by Mandela’s bitter foreign policy experiences, his successor, Thabo Mbeki, has consistently sought multilateral solutions to resolving regional conflicts and skillfully used both a strategic partnership with Nigeria and his chairmanship of the au between 2002 and 2003 to pursue his goals. Mbeki has been more prepared than Mandela to send 16. See, for example, James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy 1948– 88: The Search for Status and Security (Johannesburg and Cambridge: Southern Book Publishers and Cambridge University Press, 1988). 17. Other members of sadc include: Angola, Botswana, drc , Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 18. See, for example, Anne Hammerstad, Defending the State or Protecting the People? sadc Security Integration at a Crossroads, the South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, Report no. 39, November 2003; Rocklyn Williams,»From Collective Security to Peacebuilding? The Challenges of Managing Regional Security in Southern Africa,« in Christopher Clapham, Greg Mills, Anna Morner, and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos(eds.), Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Comparative International Perspectives (Johannesburg: The South African Institute of International Affairs, 2001), pp. 105–113; and Agostinho Zacarias,»Redefining Security,« in Baregu and Landsberg(eds), From Cape to Congo , pp. 31–51. 19. See Khabele Matlosa,»The Lesotho Conflict: Major Causes and Management,« in Kato Lambrechts(ed.), Crisis in Lesotho: The Challenge of Managing Conflict in Southern Africa , Foundation for Global Dialogue, South Africa, African Dialogue Series no. 2, March 1999, pp. 6–10; and Roger Southall,»Is Lesotho South Africa’s Tenth Province?,« in Lambrechts(ed.), Crisis in Lesotho , pp. 19–25. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 91

peacekeepers abroad. 20 He has acted as a»Pied Piper of Pretoria« in playing the diplomatic tunes to which warlords, rebels, and politicians have danced in drc , Burundi, and Côte d’Ivoire. All diplomatic roads have recently led to Tshwane(the new name for Pretoria). In a decade, South Africa has gone from being the most destabilizing force in Africa to being its most active peacemaker. 21 Mbeki’s idea of an African peacekeeping force is based on standby forces built around regional pillars which the vast majority of African leaders support. He is conducting an Africa-centred foreign policy that aims to force the culturally schizophrenic and previously isolated South African pariah to become an African power. Like ecowas , sadc is currently attempting to create a security mechanism with clearly articulated structures to promote more predictable decision-making. The dispute over the sadc security organ has now been resolved with the establishment of a troika system whereby the current, past, and future chairs take joint decisions on security issues. At sadc ’s summit in Malawi in August 2001, a Protocol on Politics, Defense and Security Cooperation was agreed, outlining criteria for subregional interventions. sadc ’s protocol established an Interstate Defense and Security Committee( isdsc ) consisting of ministers of foreign affairs, defense, public security and state security; and an Interstate Politics and Diplomacy Committee( ispdc ) consisting of subregional foreign ministers. The protocol seeks to harmonize its members’ foreign policy, and calls for initiatives ranging from conflict prevention to peace enforcement. sadc ’s protocol places far more emphasis than the ecowas security mechanism on prior approval of peacekeeping missions by the un Security Council. The sadc standby force( sadcbrig ) – part of the African standby system – envisages a planning cell in the sadc secretariat in Botswana and deployment under the au and un umbrellas. Member states are expected to sustain the mission for 3–6 months until the au or un take over funding. However, South Africa’s experience in Burundi(discussed below) should 20. For a rich comparison of the foreign policy styles of Mandela and Mbeki, see Christopher Landsberg,»Promoting Democracy: The Mandela–Mbeki Doctrine,« in Journal Of Democracy, July 2000, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 107–121. See also Chris Alden and Garth Le Pere, South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Foreign Policy – From Reconciliation to Revival ?(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Adelphi Paper 362. 21. See Adekeye Adebajo,»The Pied Piper of Pretoria,« in Global Dialogue, vol. 10(February 1, 2005), pp. 1–3. 92 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

give members pause for thought over this uncertain arrangement. The sadc Peacekeeping Training Centre in Zimbabwe, which has trained 3,000 soldiers from six sadc states, has just been revived after funding problems had led to many of its programs being discontinued. sadc has also made progress in developing an early warning system. In 2004, sadc unveiled a Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ ( sipo ) as a five-year program to implement its security protocol. sipo outlined plans for work in four broad sectors: politics, defense, state security, and public security. sipo seeks to work more explicitly than ecowas with civil society actors and think-tanks in the subregion, and even seeks, unlike ecowas , to coordinate the participation of its members in un peacekeeping missions. However, the plan has often been rightly criticized for being too vague and general in its goals which talk often of»harmonizing,«»enhancing,«»encouraging« and»promoting«. This is, according to critics, more a long laundry list of desirable actions than an actionable, focused implementation plan. The fact that sadc has fewer than five staff in its secretariat working on security issues underlines the continuing lack of capacity within the organization. Central Africa: The Great Lakes of Crocodiles The Great Lakes have become infested with ethnic crocodiles of the genocidal variety. Rwanda and Burundi are tragic twins seemingly fated to repeat cycles of bloody massacres in a struggle between a Hutu majority and Tutsi minority with deep roots in a pernicious process of Belgian colonial social engineering. The conflict in drc has involved seven foreign armies and a myriad of militias and mercenaries in a state the size of Western Europe that was destroyed by the 31-year autocratic misrule of the Western-backed Mobutu Sese Seko. 22 Military clashes between former al22. See René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (New York: Woodrow Wilson Centre and Cambridge University Press, 1994); Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001); Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila (London and New York: Zed Books and Palgrave, 2002); Gérard Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); and Crawford Young and Thomas Turner , The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 93

lies, Uganda and Rwanda, and their reported looting of the Congo’s mineral resources, further exacerbated the conflict. An estimated 2.5 million people have died in the Congo since August 1998, and the war has produced more than 600,000 refugees. The withdrawal of most of the foreign armies from the country by 2002 offered an opportunity for the 16,700-strong un Mission in the Congo( monuc ) to oversee peace efforts. However, instability continues in the Ituri and Kivu provinces, and the un force is clearly insufficient to keep the peace. In December 2002, the Global and All-Inclusive Agreement on the Transition in the drc was signed in Pretoria by all of Congo’s main parties. The accord called for a two-year transition period during which Joseph Kabila would run the country with four vice-presidents selected by all parties. The fractious coalition of warlords has often worked at cross purposes, and the postponement, by nearly a year, of elections originally scheduled for June 2005, as well as the laggardly pace of disarmament, do not bode well for future stability in this huge country in the heart of Africa. The civil war in neighboring Burundi has lasted for a decade and resulted in over 200,000 deaths. Under the auspices of the au , the South African-led African Mission in Burundi( amib ), bolstered in 2003 by Ethiopian and Mozambican troops, attempted to implement a fragile peace accord. The small peacekeeping mission struggled to maintain security and was largely bankrolled by South Africa which eventually convinced the un to take over the force by November 2004. Three of the major challenges of conflict management in the Great Lakes region are: the reluctance of the un Security Council to play a substantial peacekeeping role; the lack of effective security institutions in this subregion; and the absence of a regional hegemon. The un mission in Congo has struggled to keep the peace amidst logistical and other difficulties. The Great Lakes region itself does not have an established institutionalized framework for managing conflicts. The Communauté Économique des Pays des Grand Lacs( cepgl ) involving Rwanda, Burundi and drc , has long become moribund. The potential of the Congo to play a lead role in the Great Lakes, as Nigeria has done in West Africa and South Africa in Southern Africa, has been diminished by the fact that the state has become a carcass on which neighboring vultures have feasted. The Economic Community of Central African States was created in 1983 to promote regional integration, and brought together eleven coun94 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

tries. 23 At a meeting in Gabon in 1997, Central African leaders proposed the creation of a security mechanism for the prevention and management of conflicts. The aim of the mechanism was to establish a legal and institutional framework to promote and strengthen peace and security in Central Africa. The Conseil de Paix et de Securité de l’Afrique Centrale ( copax ) was established under the auspices of the un Standing Committee for Security Questions in Central Africa. 24 However, technical problems with creating eccas ’s structures, as well as the pursuit of parochial national interests by member states, have frustrated the effective operation of this security mechanism. eccas ’s members have struggled to agree on the relationship between eccas , copax , and its early warning mechanism. Central African states have, moreover, responded to the failure to create an institutional framework for managing conflicts by seeking membership of alternative subregional organizations: drc joined sadc in 1997, while Burundi and Rwanda have applied to join the East African Community( eac ) consisting of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. On a more optimistic note, senior government officials from eccas states met six times between July 2003 and December 2004 and are planning to establish a 2,177-strong regional brigade as their contribution to the African standby force. Eastern Africa: Nyerere’s Triple Legacy Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding president, left an enduring legacy in three of Africa’s subregions. Nyerere, an ardent supporter of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa who hosted the oau ’s Liberation Committee, ordered his troops into the Eastern African state of Uganda in 1979 to end the tyrannical reign of Idi Amin whose soldiers had earlier launched incursions into Tanzanian territory. The revered Mwalimu was also a patient and skilful mediator who dedicated his last years to trying to find a solution to the conflict in Burundi. He thus left a legacy in respect of security issues in Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa. 23. eccas ’s members are: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, drc , Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Principe. 24. See Musifiky Mwanasali,»Politics and Security in Central Africa,« in African Journal of Political Science, vol. 4, no. 2, 1999. ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 95

Nyerere’s heirs in the Eastern African states of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda are members of igad , a subregional body originally created in 1986 to combat drought and to promote development. igad has since developed an intricate Conflict Early Warning System( cewarn ), in 2002, with strong assistance from civil society groups. cewarn focuses on cattle rustling, small arms trafficking, and refugee flows, and has national focal points in each igad member state who work with civil society groups. Critics have, however, noted that the mechanism does not address the root cause of conflicts based on problems of governance and inter-state disputes. 25 Like Africa’s other subregional organizations, igad remains poorly-staffed, poorlyfunded, and poorly-equipped. Despite these problems, the organization is coordinating the East African Standby Force( easbrig ) which also involves Mauritius, Seychelles, and Rwanda as members. In a»great leap forward,« East African states established their own security mechanism in 2005, and called for a brigade and logistical headquarters in Addis Ababa as well as a planning cell in Nairobi for easbrig . Like sadc , but unlike ecowas , the force is to come under an au or un umbrella. Centers of excellence for training subregional peacekeepers have been identified in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Despite this progress, igad members remain deeply divided: Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody border war between 1998 and 2000; Uganda and Sudan have supported each other’s rebels; Eritrea has clashed with Djibouti and Sudan; and Ethiopia and Somalia have lingering historical animosity from Somalia’s failed irredentist bid to claim Ethiopia’s Ogaden region in 1977–1978. Somalia itself currently remains a failed state after a botched un peacekeeping mission was withdrawn from the country in 1995. Significantly, under the chairmanship of Algerian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it was the oau , and not igad , which devised the peace plan for ending the Ethiopia/Eritrea war in 2000. It is the au that is currently deploying 6,171 peacekeepers to Sudan’s volatile Darfur region. igad has also asked the au to take over the proposed igad Peace 25. See Kasaija Phillip Apuuli,» igad ’s Protocol on Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism( cewarn ): A Ray of Hope in Conflict Prevention,« in Alfred G. Nhema(ed.), The Quest for Peace in Africa: Transformations, Democracy and Public Policy (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: ossrea , 2004), pp. 173–187; and Strengthening the Role of IGAD in Regional Peace Initiatives and Post Conflict Reconstruction , Report of a Conference of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development( igad ), Nairobi, Kenya, December 1–3, 2003. 96 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005

Support Mission in Somalia( igasom ). It is the un , and not igad , that decided, in March 2005, to deploy 10,000 troops to oversee the peace process in southern Sudan. However, despite its deficiencies, igad has devoted much time and resources to peacemaking initiatives in Sudan and Somalia, with the financial support of the us and the eu . Towards a New Pax Africana In concluding this essay, it is important to note that there remains an urgent need for Western donors to demonstrate a similar generosity to Africa to what they have shown in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Afghanistan. There is a pressing need to establish a proper division of labor between the un and Africa’s fledgling security organizations. In Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burundi, the un took over peacekeeping duties from African regional institutions. The willingness of Western peacekeepers, who have both the equipment and resources, to continue to contribute to un missions in Africa remains important. The missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, and Congo could signify an innovative approach to un peacekeeping in Africa based on regional pillars supported by local hegemons like Nigeria and South Africa whose political dominance is diluted by multinational peacekeepers from outside their subregions. By placing regional forces under the un flag, the hope is that the peacekeepers will enjoy the legitimacy and impartiality that the un ’s universal membership often provides, while some of the financial and logistical problems of regional peacekeepers can be alleviated through greater burden-sharing. By placing regional forces under the UN flag, the hope is that the peacekeepers will enjoy the legitimacy and impartiality that the UN’s universal membership often provides, while some of the financial and logistical problems of regional peacekeepers can be alleviated through greater burden-sharing. In concluding this journey, which has stretched from Nouakchott to Nairobi, it is important that we return to Berlin, where we started. After the Cold War ended in 1989, events in Berlin would once again have an enormous impact on Africa. The fall of the Berlin Wall appeared to lift ipg 4/2005 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas 97

the curse of Africa’s ancestors on the division of Germany and Europe, marking the end of communist rule. As Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka noted in 1990:»Such is the poetic mischief of which history often proves itself capable. A century to the partitioning of the African continent at the Berlin conference, Berlin itself is liberated and reunited …« 26 But the earlier Bismarckian curse of the past still remains to haunt Africa’s future: a bloody brother’s war was fought over the colonial border of Ethiopia and Eritrea; Nigeria and Cameroon are still squabbling about the Bakassi peninsula – a legacy of German and British colonialism – which has been decided largely in favor of Cameroon by the International Court of Justice( icj ). Where Africa had once feared intervention during the Cold War, marginalization has now become a greater concern, as attention and investment have shifted to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and resources have been diverted from African conflicts to reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the uneasy aftermath of the bloody wars of secession in the Balkans. African leaders must now organize a new Berlin conference on their own continent. While the decision to freeze the map of Africa in the 1960s was wise in a sovereignty-obsessed era, 27 Africans must now muster the ingenuity to negotiate new arrangements that better reflect their own current realities. Federations and regional trade blocs must be negotiated and territorial concessions made which reflect better the political, socioeconomic, and cultural realities of a vast continent and help to avoid future conflicts. After detailed planning, African leaders must proceed to the ancient empire of Ethiopia – the seat of African diplomacy – and reverse the scandalous act of cartographic mischief inflicted on the continent by European statesmen in Berlin over a century ago. African leaders should invite the ancestors to this continental diplomatic feast, so that Nkrumah can hand over the torch of Pan-Africanism to Mbeki, and the curse of Berlin on Africa can be finally lifted. 26. Wole Soyinka,»Beyond the Berlin Wall.« Lecture delivered on September 1, 1990 (Accra: Sedco Publishing and W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, 1993), p. 63. 27. For a summary of the lively debates on this issue in Africa, see A.I. Asiwaju, Boundaries and African Integration: Essays in Comparative History and Policy Analysis (Lagos, Nigeria: Panaf Publishing, 2003), pp. 431–448. 98 Adebajo, Africa’s Security Dilemmas ipg 4/2005