Draft
March 2006

AFRICA’S BONDAGE OF BOUNDARIES:
CAN THE SHACKLES BE LOOSENED?

 by
Ali A. Mazrui

Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and
Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities
Binghamton University
State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA
Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large University of Jos, Jos, Nigeria
Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of
Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya

Public Lecture delivered at Hargeisa University under the Chairmanship of the President of the University, Hargeisa, Republic of Somaliland,Wednesday March 22, 2006.

The lecture was sponsored by the Academy for Peace and Development, Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Among the major causes of instability in postcolonial Africa are the artificial borders created by Europe’s imperial order in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book is a major contribution towards our understanding of the link between the politics of identity and national boundaries.

We need to distinguish between conflicts caused by borders and conflicts about borders. Clearly any dispute concerning borders between two states like Ethiopia and Eritrea is, at least in part, a quarrel about borders. So was the war between independent Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden. Secessionist confrontations like the first Sudanese civil war (1955-1972) and the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) were similarly conflagrations about borders.

But this lecture argues that there are many other conflicts which can be traced to the artificial borders, even if the national boundaries are not explicitly being challenged. The civil war and instability in Sierra Leone have been partly a product of which groups were arbitrarily enclosed together by the colonial map-makers.

The Congo (former Zaire) has sometimes experienced secessionist conflict, and in the internationally celebrated case of Katanga in the 1960s. But even those ethnic tensions in the Congo which have not challenged the national boundaries have in part been a product of the unwieldy diversity and scale of the entity originally determined by King Leopold II’s territorial appetites. Borders are the skeleton of the body politic. Whether the skeletal frame is strong or weak has consequences for the health of the body politic.

As the 21 st century has unfolded Africa consists of some 54 countries. Since

independence about a third of them have experienced large scale political violence or war. This does not include those countries which had relatively bloodless military coups or occasional assassinations. What this book does argue is that the ultimate fault lines of Africa’s conflicts are indeed its colonial boundaries.

The Paradox of Fatal Borders

Let us repeat one basic paradox. While most African conflicts are caused by borders, those conflicts are not necessarily themselves about borders. Most major conflicts are partly caused by borders because those were boundaries created by colonial powers to enclose groups with no traditions of shared authority or shared systems of settling disputes. The human chemistry between those groups has not necessarily had time to become congenial.

On the other hand, African governments have tended to be possessive about colonial borders and have discouraged challenging them. The union between British and Italian Somaliland was originally designed to re-draw colonial borders in an inclusive way. That union created more problems than it solved. Unfortunately we are not allowed to solve the problems by returning to the status-quo-ante unless both parties agree. Marriage between two countries normally requires mutual consent. So does divorce between two countries.

Since former Italian Somaliland has not consented to the divorce, the marriage is supposed to stand. In any case, since Mogadishu has no real government, whose voice in Somalia can give the consent?

Moreover, what if the marriage included spouse abuse? In a union between two individuals, wife beating can be grounds for divorce. Is it not about time that partner-abuse became grounds for divorce in a marriage between states also?

Another apparent paradox is that while the worst conflicts in Arab Africa are religious, the worst conflicts in Black Africa are ethnic (so called "tribal") or sub-ethnic (like clan). Postcolonial Algeria has had one of the worst conflicts in Arab Africa proper -- the conflict between Islamists and military secularists. It was one of the ugliest wars in the world. Egypt in Arab Africa also has had a religious conflict from time to time. The worst conflict in Black Africa in the 1990s was between the Hutu and the Tutsi, especially with the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and genocidal behavior in Burundi since the 1990s. This has been ethnic or sub-ethnic.

Sudan is caught in-between. Is the conflict between North-South primarily ethnic or primarily religious? You may take your pick. The more recent Sudanese War in Darfur is ethno-racial -- between more Arabized and the less Arabized Blacks. In Somalia the conflict was sub-ethnic -- i.e., between clans rather than between tribes.

Between Identities and Resources

For most of the twentieth century Black against White in Africa was a clash over resources, while Black against Black was a clash of identities. The thesis here was that racial conflicts in Africa were ultimately economic, whereas tribal wars were ultimately cultural. White folks and Black folks fought each other about who owns what. Black folks and Black folks fought each other about who is who. Apartheid was ultimately an economic war, while Hutu against Tutsi was a culture-conflict. This book illustrates that such bifurcation between economic and cultural causes has been neutralized by the politics of borders. Culture and economics now intersect.

Modern Weapons, Pre-Modern Armies

Security and military matters are inseparable from state-building. Yet while African wars are fought with modern weapons, African armies are not yet modern armies. One of the destabilizing forces which colonialism bequeathed to independent Africa was a standing army with Western weapons. In inter-state conflicts like the Ethiopian-Eritrean war, armies have fought over borders. In civil wars the national armies have sought to defend the territorial integrity of the state (as in Sudan and Congo).

Before independence the weapons of African armies were less modern but the armies themselves were more disciplined and professional. After independence the armies deteriorated, but the weapons were more advanced. Among the larger African countries, the least disciplined national army since independence has been that of the Congo. The war lords in Southern Somalia are a classic example of modern weapons in the hands of pre-modern militias.

Between Dual and Plural Societies

Where borders are drawn may distinguish between plural and dual societies. While there are many more plural societies than dual societies in Africa, dual societies may be more dangerous per capita. The distinction which this presentation makes is between a plural society and a dual society. A plural society is one which has multiple groups defined ethnically, racially, religiously, culturally, or by other parameters.

A dual society is one in which two groups account for over 80% of the population. The United States is a plural society, but Belgium is a dual society of Flemish and Francophone-identities. Dual societies worldwide run the following high risks:

I. Prolonged stalemate between the two groups, as in Cyprus between Greek and Turkish Cypriots;

II. Prolonged culture of polarized ethnic distrust, as in the case of Belgium, Guyana and perhaps Trinidad and Tobago;

III. Prolonged period of tension and violence between the two groups - as in the case of Northern Ireland and potentially between Berbers and Arabs in Algeria;

IV. Separatism and secessionism either accomplished or imminent -- as in Czechoslovakia (now split between Czechs and Slovaks) or Sri Lanka (still torn by a Tamil bid to secede from a Sinhalese-dominated polity). Is there a risk in the future between the Shona and Ndebele in Zimbabwe? Is there a potential explosion between Arabs and Berbers in Algeria? The explosion between Arab and Black in Sudan is still unfolding.

V. Genocide and potential genocidal reprisal -- Hutu and Tutsi confrontations in 1994 and the fear of more genocidal eruptions in both Rwanda and Burundi.

Between Regional and Ethnic Dualism

While ethnic dual societies should indeed be watched, regional dual societies can be at least as dangerous. Regional dual societies (as distinct from ethnic dual societies) include the

following:

(1) Northern Sudan vs. Southern Sudan (civil war 1955-1972 and new Civil war from 1983). In Darfur the dualism is between more Arabized and less.

Northern Nigeria vs. Southern Nigeria (civil war 1967 - 1970);

(3) Northern Uganda vs. Southern Uganda (civil conflicts since 1980 to present day);
(4) Historically: Eritrea versus Ethiopia, when the two were conjoined.

(5) The union between Italian and British Somaliland created a dual society in the regional sense – although the populations of the two segments appeared homogenous and singular in shared language, shared religion and shared culture.

On the evidence so far, dualism in society and politics may conceivably be even more dangerous than pluralism.

Between Civil and Interstate Wars

While Africa should indeed celebrate that it has relatively few conflicts between states today, should Africa also lament that it did not have more such interstate wars in the past? In Africa has the balance between external conflict and internal conflict tilted too far on the side of internal? And as human history has repeated time and time again, civil wars often leave deeper scars, are often more indiscriminate and more ruthless than are inter-state conflicts short of either a world war or a nuclear war. The United States, for example, lost more people in its own civil war in the 1860s than in any other single war in its 200-year history, including Korea, Vietnam and the two world wars.

The history of the nation-state in Europe reveals a persistent tendency of the European state to externalize conflict and thus help promote greater unity at home. A sense of nationhood within each European country was partly fostered by a sense of rivalry and occasional conflict with its neighbors. And the consolidation of the European state as a sovereign state was also partly forged in the fire of inter-European conflicts. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which has often been credited with being the original formal launching of the nation-state system, was signed after thirty years of yet further inter-state European conflicts.

However, war has become too dangerous to be a reliable instrument of nation-building and state formation in the future. If pluralism is to be diverted away from divisiveness towards more creative formations, certain positive values would need to be more clearly identified, cultivated and institutionally consolidated.

This is what brings constructive pluralism into relevance. Given Africa’s artificial borders, how can a constructive plural order be built? Most studies demonstrate that consolidated nationhood and stable statehood are necessary but not sufficient conditions.

In Search of Pan-African Solutions

Conflict prevention requires greater and greater sophistication in diagnosing conflict-prone situations. Unfortunately Africa is full of contradictions – conflict generated by too much government versus conflict generated by too little; conflict generated by too many ethnic groups, as distinct from conflict ignited by too few ethnic groups. It is dark outside. Africa is waiting for her real dawn. It is to be hoped that the wait is not too long.

What is the solution in situations of acute-failure or political collapse? The state before total collapse may be the equivalent of a political refugee-desperate, bewildered, sometimes destructive, but fundamentally moaning to be rescued from a nightmare which may in part be of its own making.

One option is unilateral cross-border intervention by a single neighboring power in order to restore order. There is the precedent of Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda in 1979, with troops marching all the way to Kampala. Tanzania then put Uganda virtually under military occupation for a couple of years. The Ugandan state was temporarily a refugee camp. Tanzania’s cross-border intervention was very similar to Vietnam’s cross-border intervention into Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot – except that the Vietnamese stayed on in Cambodia much longer. The question arises whether Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda should have intervened across the border in Rwanda in April 1994 the way Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania intervened in Uganda fifteen years earlier. Have Uganda and Rwanda also intervened across the border in Zaire/Congo?

Another scenario of cross-border intervention is that by a single power but with the blessing of a regional organization. There is an Arab precedent of Syria’s intervention in the Lebanese civil war with the blessing of the League of Arab States. De facto, the Lebanese state was a refugee camp with Syria as a sentry. Nigeria’s intervention in Sierra Leone and Liberia was an African illustration of such cross-border peace enforcement.

A third scenario of intervention is inter-African colonization and annexation. In a sense this is a kind of cross-border self-colonization. One precedent is Tanganyika’s annexation of Zanzibar in 1964, partly under pressure form Lyndon B. Johnson of the U.S.A. and Sir Alec Douglas-Home of Great Britain. The West wanted to avert the danger of a Marxist Cuba on the clove island off the East African coast. Nyerere was persuaded that an unstable or subversive Zanzibar would be a threat to the mainland. He got the dictator of Zanzibar at the time, Abeid Karume, to agree to a treaty of union – very much like the British use to convince African chiefs to “accept” treaties by which they ceased to be sovereign. Nobody held a referendum in Zanzibar to check if he people in the country wanted to cease being a separate independent nation. But the annexation of Zanzibar was the most daring case of what became, de facto, Pax Tanzaniana.

The fourth scenario as a solution to political collapse is regional integration across two or more borders. This alters borders by enlargement of scale. This is when the state is integrated with its neighbors. In the longer run, one solution to Rwanda and Burundi may well be a federation with Tanzania so the Hutus and Tutsis stop having de facto ethnic armies of their own, but have those soldiers retrained as part of the federal army of the United Republic of Tanzania. German colonialism before World War I had leaned towards Tanganyika and Rwanda-Urundi as one single area of jurisdiction.

Union with Tanzania for Rwanda and Burundi, would, in the short run, be safer than union with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire, and hereafter DR Congo) in spite of the shared Belgian connection with DR Congo, and a safer haven for Hutus and Tutsis. It is indeed significant that Hutus and Tutsis on the run are more likely to flee to Tanzania than to DR Congo in spite of ethnic ties across the border with DR Congo. Moreover, Hutu and Tutsi are getting partially Swahilized and should be able to get on well with “fellow” Tanzanian citizens. As citizens they would be assimilated in due course; their former refugee state would be integrated.

A fifth scenario for conflict-resolution is the establishment of an African Security Council, complete with permanent members in the style of leading members. The permanent members could be Egypt from North Africa, Nigeria from West Africa, Ethiopia from eastern Africa, and the Republic of South Africa from Southern Africa. There should be some non-permanent members, ranging from three to five. The principle of permanent members would be reviewed every 30 years. For example, in thirty years it may be necessary to add DR Congo as a permanent member to represent Central Africa. In times of crisis should the African Security Council meet at the level of African heads of state? Should each permanent member have a veto or not? These issues would also have to be addressed.

The sixth scenario of conflict-resolution in times of political collapse is the establishment of a Pan-African Emergency force – a cross-border fire brigade to put out fires from one collapsed state or civil war to another, and teach Africans the art of a Pax Africana. Should this cross-border Pan-African force be independently recruited and trained in a specialized manner? Or should it be drawn from units of the armed forces of member states? And how is the training, maintenance and deployment of the Emergency Force to be paid for? How can Western friends of Africa like the U.S. and the European Union help? Certainly the successes and failures of ECOMOG in Liberia should be studies carefully in preparation for this new venture. There are times when renegade states are basically refugee states. Brutal villains in power are also pathetic casualties of history. The emergency force should be trained to use minimum violence. The Clinton Administration had once joined the search for answers.

Another proposal is a High Commissioner for Refugees and Displaced Africans under the Organization of African Unity. Since Africa has become one of the biggest concentrations of displaced persons in the world, it is increasingly imperative that Africans should assume responsibility for at least some of the functions of cross-border refugee relief. A continent of one tenth of the world’s population is rapidly becoming a region of a third of the displaced people of the world. What is demanded is not merely Africa’s participation in refugee-relief; it is Africa’s leadership which is needed. An O.A.U. High Commissioner for Refugees and Displaced Africans would be a start, equipped with the necessary resources to coordinate with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

The eighth scenario of conflict management would consist of ad hoc solutions from crisis to crisis – more in the tradition of mediation and search for solutions than in the tradition of the use of force. The African Union should mediate for a divorce between two countries if the marriage has become abusive and no longer sustainable. Unsuccessful marriages between two individuals may be dissolved in a court of law. Unsuccessful marriages between African countries should allow for dissolution after fact finding by the UN or the AU.

In this more modes tradition of cross-border intervention was the Organization of African Unity’s Mechanism on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution, which for the first time gave the continent’s inter-governmental organization a more active role in internal civil conflicts. Modest as the mechanism was, it signified a qualitative shift in the orientation of African heads of state. The new African Union created in 2002 is seeking newer cross-border solutions to Africa’s political and economic problems.

Conclusion

But behind all the scenarios and all the search for solutions, behind the pain and the anguish, is the paramount question – are we facing birth-pangs or death-pangs in the present crisis? Are we witnessing the bloody consequences of artificial borders – as the colonial structures are decaying or collapsing? Is the colonial slate being washed clean with the blood of victims, villains and martyrs? Are the refugees victims of a dying order, or are they traumatized to an epoch-making rebirth? Is Africa caught between the death of colonial states and the birth of postcolonial nations?

Is this blood from the womb of history – giving painful birth to a new order? Are old colonial states disintegrating to permit the real emergence of postcolonial national identities? Perhaps Africa’s bondage of boundaries is being painfully loosened at long last, combining aches with new aspirations.

Africa should also be sensitive to how problems of political dissension and national fragilities have been handled elsewhere. By mutual consent Czechoslovakia split into Czech and Slovak Republics. Greek and Turkish Cypriots are in a state of a split sovereignty. Palestine is not yet a state, but enjoys the recognition of the world community as a political and economic actor. Palestinians can negotiate agreements with states, apply for loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have ambassadors in select countries, and enjoy observer status in global and regional institutions.

Can the Republic of Somaliland fall short of statehood and still enjoy at least the same rights and privileges as the Palestinian Authority?

The African Union may want to explore such a wider range of options for some of Africa’s most intractable problems. The bondage of boundaries may need to be softened; the stubborn chains of colonial borders may need to be loosened in exceptional cases. Amen!

Endnotes

See the table in James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay, A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, Third Edition (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996), pp. 651-653.

Not surprisingly, an article in The Economist 352 (January 25, 1997), p. 17, argues that borders have not been the primary cause of conflict.

An overview of this conflict may be found in Robert A. Mortimer, “Islamists, Soldiers and Democrats: The Second Algerian War,” The Middle East Journal 50 (Winter 1996), pp. 18-39.

The struggle between religious groups in Egypt is analyzed in Hamlet A. Ansari, "Sectarian Conflict in Egypt and The Political Expediency of Religion," The Middle East Journal 38 (Summer 1984), pp. 18-39, and for a recent article on the conflict, see The Economist 354 (January 8, 2000), p. 41.

Descriptions of the genocide may be found in Edward Nyakanvzi, Genocide: Rwanda and Burundi (Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books, 1998).

For one analysis of the identity conflicts that have bedeviled Sudan and brought war among the Sudanese, see Francis Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995).

The Somalian descent is chronicled in Alice B. Hashim, The Fallen State: Dissonance, Dictatorship and Death in Somalia (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997).

These societies may also be termed as "ethnically bipolar"; see R. S. Milne, Politics in Ethnically Bipolar States: Guyana, Malaysia and Fiji (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1981).

For a positive assessment of the Belgian experience, see Michael O'Neill, "Re-imagining Belgium: New Federalism and the Political Management of Cultural Diversity ," Parliamentary Affairs51, 2 (April 1998), pp. 241-258.

An overview of the Cyprus situation may be found in Robert McDonald, The Problem of Cyprus (London: Brassey's, for the International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1989).

The split was peaceful; see Jiri Musil, The End of Czechoslovakia (Budapest and New York: Central University Press and Oxford University Press, 1995).

The various kinds of violence bedeviling Sri Lanka are detailed in Jagath P. Senaratne, Political Violence in Sri Lanka, 1977-1990: Riots, Insurrections, Counterinsurgencies, Foreign Intervention (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1997).

For an overview of the situation in the Great Lakes, consult the special issue of the African Studies Review 41, 1 (April 1999), pp. 1-97.

See Ann M. Lesch, The Sudan: Contested National Identities(Bloomington, IN and Oxford, UK: Indiana University Press and J. Curfey, 1998) for an overview of the conflicts and peace efforts.

For a guide to the Biafra war, consult Zdenek Cervenka, The Nigerian War, 1967-70: History of The War, Selected Bibliography and Documents (Frankfurt Am Main: Bernard & Graef, 1971).

The Westphalian compact also led to mores against international intervention in territories covered by a state's sovereignty but internal excesses may be testing these mores; relatedly, see Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanutono, eds., Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

A description of the Tanzanian intervention in Uganda may be found in Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, War in Uganda: The Legacy of Idi Amin (Westport, CT: L. Hill, 1982.

The conditions leading to the Syrian intervention in Lebanon are descrived in Karen Rasler, “Internationalizaing Civil War: A Dynamic Analysis of the Syrian Intevention in Lebanon,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 27 (September 1983), pp. 421-456.

See Kenneth L. Cain, “Meanwhile in Africa,” SAIS Review 20, 1 (Winter/Spring 2000), pp. 153-76.

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