News coverage of Africa isn’t just about starvation, disease and corruption. It’s also about war – or, as modern policy-speak seems to have labelled it, Conflict. Many Africans are sick of the continent being associated with non-stop war, just like they’re sick of it being associated with non-stop starvation and misery. But just as, despite the regular arrival of new photos of starving people on our screens, the full scale of death and misery still has the capacity to shock; so again, the sheer full force of Africa’s conflicts drops the jaw. As the Report of the Commission for Africa notes, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo was claiming 1,000 lives a day in late 2004 – a year after the peace deal that supposedly brought it to a close. And it’s got worse since then. Overall, the war has killed well over 4 million people – the largest conflict death toll since World War Two.

Stop and think about that for a second. Think about the politics of the last eight or so years. New Labour. Bush’s election. Kyoto. September 11. The Washington Sniper. Ian Huntley. The second Intifada in Palestine. Iraq. All this time, the bloodiest war in fifty years was taking place. How many of us even knew it was happening?

The trouble is, it’s hard to think of war as something the west can help with. Famine? Send food. Disease? Send medicines. Problems not going away? Devise proper, long-term development assistance. But war? You can send peacekeepers, with a huge amount of political effort. You can employ sanctions – assuming you can agree on who the bad guys are. You can, sometimes, broker peace. But it’s hard, and expensive, and who knows when the next one will come along? And of course, it’s their fault. Famines you can call an act of God. But African wars are Africa’s problem.

All this and more has been said. So the Commission have a job on their hands presenting conflict as just another aspect of the array of problems facing Africa, just another obstacle to be tackled with the right policies and funding. But that’s what they attempt to do.

First, the Commission goes over the bad news: not just the headline figures like those for DR Congo (not to be confused with Congo, fact-fans), but the score of local conflicts that do just as much damage, killing a few thousand people but displacing hundreds of thousands more. And, of course, there’s the development cost. As distasteful as I find the recent trend for referring to AIDS, war and the like in terms of their economic damage rather than their human cost, it’s important to recognise that it’s an effective trick. After all, even the most selfish of national-interest politicians must recognise that conflicts which retard African growth, preventing debt repayment and prolonging aid reliance, are in no-one’s interest. And, of course, there’s the essential nod to 9/11, noting that states weakened by war become havens for terrorists.

Having made the case for action, the Commission weighs in with its core recommendation: that conflict action must focus on prevention, not cure. War is often predictable but rarely inevitable, and certain key steps, the Commission argues, can prevent catastrophes later on. The economic case is certainly strong: the report quotes an estimate that it would have cost US$1.5bn to prevent the war of the 90’s in Somalia, compared to the $7.3bn spent on the response (p51).1 So how does the Commission argue conflict can be prevented?

  1. Control small arms. Striking statistic alert: In some parts of Africa an AK-47 costs as little as US$6 (it’s much more shocking if you imagine a BBC reporter saying it in a shocked voice). Existing agreements are full of loopholes; they need to be better enforced, and backed up by an international Arms Trade Treaty.2 Basically, we should stop selling guns to people having brutal civil wars.
  2. Handle mineral wealth better. Not quite as obvious as point one, but in fact there’s a strong body of evidence that the more reliant a country is on one high-value commodity such as diamonds or oil, the more conflict it’s likely to suffer.3 Primarily, this is because looted mineral wealth keeps rebel groups in operation. But it can’t if they can’t sell them. The Kimberley Process has made the sale of “conflict diamonds” much harder – but oil, timber, and a host of other resources have similar problems. A single definition of, and approach to, “conflict resources,” with permanent monitoring by the UN, could stop it.
  3. Control Western companies. Foreign companies fuel conflict both unwittingly and, in some cases, deliberately. Pretty obviously, bribing oppressive governments, warlords or rebels fuels conflict, as does displacing people from their land. But simply hiring private security firms, a common practise, can be trouble if the firm bullies the local populace, or its arms are stolen by rebels. Voluntary codes of conduct need to be tightened, and laws enforced, through the UN.
  4. Support African organisations. The African Union, and regional economic unions, can play a valuable role in monitoring and mediating conflicts before they boil over. Ongoing financial support will build the capacity of such systems. At the same time, actual peacekeeping abilities need to be supported with training by western troops.
  5. Take action after wars end. Half of all peace settlements fail within five years. The collapse of infrastructure that accompanies war, alongside problems of re-integrating combatants and refugees into society, create the ideal tensions for conflict to begin again. So-called “post-conflict peacebuilding” can help reduce this chance, with measures like employment programmes for returning soldiers and quick, transparent justice for war crimes. This requires special funding, not just for countries emerging from conflict, but for co-ordinating bodies like the proposed UN Peacebuilding Commission.4

The report also notes that, in general, development progress reduces the likelihood of conflict and therefore, “this Commission’s recommendations as a whole have a fundamental contribution to make to peace.”

There’s a slightly disjointed nature to this chapter; as if a range of essentially unrelated reform proposals have been stitched together into a single programme. But then, that’s the nature of the Commission’s job, I suppose: to review and collate the evidence and make recommendations. Certainly, there are good, concrete proposals here. I’ll discuss the issue of conflict in more detail later on. Next, it’s on to the real core stuff – economic growth: how to get it, how to keep it, and how to make sure it reduces poverty.

The report has two sections addressing conflict in detail: pages 38-47 of Part 1: The Argument, and Chapter 5 of Part 2: Evidence & Analysis.
.
Notes

  1. You’re probably wondering how on Earth they estimate what it would have cost to prevent the Somalian conflict. Well, the Report’s references point us to a 2002 lecture by somebody called Schnabel at United Nations University. Yes, apparently there is such a thing. The lecture does indeed quote the same statistic (p1). And provides no evidence. So that’s helpful.
  2. You’re also probably wondering what an Arms Trade Treaty would do, exactly. The answers are herein. This draft convention would form the basis of any treaty; it basically brings together existing rules and makes everyone collaborate on them. Don’t look at me, it’s not my bloody idea. Ask this lot.
  3. Predictably, there’s also convincing evidence to the contrary. But the debate in these papers over whether “greed” or “grievance” is the primary cause of strife is irrelevant – pretty much everyone agrees it’s a major factor. Even Kanye West.
  4. This World Bank report contains a lot of detail about peacebuilding strategies. It notes that aid to post-conflict countries tend to flow in quickly after the end of wars, when there often isn’t the capacity to use it; then after four or five years, when the infrastructure is in place to use the money best, the TV cameras have gone and the aid has dried up.