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<text>
<title>
Finding Peace through Democracy in Sahelian Africa
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Current History, May 1992
Finding Peace through Democracy in Sahelian Africa
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Richard L. Sklar--professor of political science at the
University of California at Los Angeles, and Mark Strege--completing his master's degree in African studies at the
University of California at Los Angeles.
</p>
<p> Africa today is tormented by the scourge of war. At the
beginning of 1991, 15 African wars took their daily toll of
casualties. (For a concise summary, see Raymond W. Copson,
"Peace in Africa? The Influence of Regional and International
Change," in Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, eds.,
Conflict Resolution in Africa (Washington DC,: The Brookings
Institution, 1991), pp. 22-24.) These included civil wars in
Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Liberia, Angola, Mozambique, and South
Africa; clan and factional warfare in Somalia; an invasion of
armed exiles into Rwanda; ethnic insurrections in northern
Uganda; revolts by the Tuareg people in Mali and Niger; an
insurrection against the non-Moorish, African minority in
Mauritania; and the war in Western Sahara, where the Sahrawi
are fighting for the region's independence from Morocco. All
these conflicts were basically internal wars, yet their
crossboundary ramifications embittered relations between
neighboring states. In the somber view of Jacques Delors,
president of the Commission of the European Community, Africa
was on the verge of becoming "a zone of fundamental
instability." (Quoted in Le Monde by Jacques de Barrin, "Africa--A Zone of Fundamental Instability?" Manchester Guardian
Weekly, November 18, 1990, p. 16.)
</p>
<p> While recent current, and impending warfare in Africa
underscored Delors's dire forecast, some conflicts on the
continent have been resolved, and the manner in which they were
concluded offers pathways to end ongoing disputes. No fewer than
eight major military conflicts have ended since the Burkina
Faso-Mali war of December 1985. They include the intermittent
war between Chad and Libya, which appears to have ended in
1987; the western Zimbabwe insurrection, at its peak during the
early 1980s and finally resolved through political negotiations
in 1987; South Africa's attempts to destabilize Angola between
1975 and 1989; the Namibian war of independence from South
Africa, concluded in 1989; the African National Congress's
armed struggle against South Africa, which was suspended by the
ANC in 1991 as part of a process designed to result in a
non-racial democracy; a 30-yar civil war in Ethiopia, which
concluded with the fall of Addis Ababa in 1991 and led to
negotiations for the resolution of sundry disputes; a 16-year
civil war in Angola, ended in 1991 as a result of negotiations
sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union as well as
Portugal; the Liberian civil war of 1989-1991, which resulted
in military intervention by the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) and subsequent, albeit as yet
inconclusive, political negotiations.
</p>
<p> During 1991, several smoldering wars in the Sahelian region
of West Africa appear to have been mitigated by conciliatory
attitudes arising from a regional--and continental--movement
for political democracy. In Mali and Niger, increased political
freedom, representative national conferences, and transitional
governments with democratic objectives have reduced the
intensity of domestic conflicts. In Mauritania, political
reforms, including multiparty elections in January 1992, may
help reduce crossborder violence in the Senegal River Valley.
However, in Chad, ethnic and factional violence continues to
complicate a proclaimed transition to democracy.
</p>
<p> The simultaneous mitigation of these low-intensity conflicts
provides an opportunity to assess comparatively the relationship
between democratization and international conflict resolution
in a single region. It has often been remarked that, in modern
times, democracies have hardly ever waged wars against one
another. Yet this obvious relationship between democracy and
peace appears to have been discounted and largely overlooked by
students of African international relations.
</p>
<p> A causal relationship between democracy and peace in Africa
was nearly acknowledged in the report of a 1990 Conference on
Security, Stability, Development and Co-operation in Africa,
organized by the African Leadership Forum in collaboration with
the secretariats of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and
the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. While the
conferees specified the existence of a "link between development
and democracy," they did not identify a similar link between
democracy and peace. ("Report of a Brainstorming Meeting for a
Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Co-operation
in Africa," Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, November 17-18, 1990, pp. 7-
8.) The discussion that follows examines the presumptive
relationship between democratization and the collective security
of the states in Sahelian Africa.
</p>
<p>The Tuareg Insurrection in Mali and Niger
</p>
<p> The Tuareg, a Berber people who number between 1 million and
1.5 million, inhabit the northern regions of Mali and Niger.
Their main urban settlement in Mali is in the city of Timbuktu,
which was founded by Tuaregs in the twelfth century; in Niger
their historical capital is Agadez. French colonial rule
terminated an era of predation by the "blue men," so named for
the Tuaregs' flowing indigo robes. By the time of Niger's and
Mali's independence in 1960, the Tuareg were a relatively small
minority of less than 10 percent in countries governed by those
who had once been their victims. The sins of their forebears
were visited on present-day Tuaregs in 1964, when a Tuareg
rebellion was brutally subdued by the Malian armed forces.
</p>
<p> During the 1980s, periodic episodes of drought and famine led
to an exodus of Tuaregs from Mali to Algeria, Libya, and other
neighboring countries. Many of those who have since voluntarily
returned or have been expelled as illegal immigrants live
miserably in refugee camps in both Niger and Mali. Protests
against alleged maltreatment in those camps set the stage for
armed attacks against government installations in both countries
during 1990. One group of Tuareg dissidents plotted to overthrow
the one-party regime of General Moussa Traore; others have been
secessionist. The counterinsurgency methods of the Malian army
have been condemned for their brutality by Amnesty International
and France's Socialist party. In turn, Traore's regime alleges
that the rebels are Libyan proxies and that many of them belong
to the Libyan Islamic Legion. To be sure, many able-bodied
Sahelian emigres have soldiered for Libya, as they have for Iraq
and the Afghan resistance. And the flames of Tuareg separatism
are fanned by a belief that the French promised to create an
independent Tuareg state in return for Tuareg participation in
the French force fighting in colonial Indochina.
</p>
<p> In 1990, a United Nations Development Program report found
that Niger and Mali were the two most deprived countries in the
world. The report based this assessment on a new "human
development index," which reflects "life expectancy, literacy,
and command over the resources to enjoy a decent standard of
living." Neither country has experienced effective economic
management; at the same time, the two have faced recurrent
drought and relentless ecological deterioration. (On Niger, see
Robert B. Charlick, Niger: Personal Rule and Survival in the
Sahel (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1991). On Mali, see Joseph
Roger de Benoist, Le Mali (Paris: Harmattan, 1989), and Pascal
J. Imperato, Mali: A Search for Direction (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1989).) In March 1991, after 23 years in power, the
unpopular Traore regime was toppled by the Malian army.
Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Toumani Toure, advised by
representative civilians, began a political reform proces